The headlines make it appear to be a very good thing, calling it a “Manhattan traffic reduction plan.”
Who may be against it?
But a more realistic way to describe the congestion charging scheme, which is due to start next yr, is that it is another nail in the city’s coffin.
At a time when hundreds of families have moved to safer, cleaner and healthier pastures, charging people much more to come to the city is tantamount to inviting them not to come.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy rightly sees the plan as another big tax on commuters from his state and calls it “extortion” by New York.
He believes that each New Jersey Transit and the Port Authority will suffer.
Democrat Murphy blames the Biden administration for approving the idea and has tried to reason with Governor Hochul, but as along with her plan to ban gas stoves, she is immune to common sense.
Enlarging it
Increasing the price of staying here also undermines the efforts of city hall and employers fighting to get staff out of their homes and back to their offices.
Most buildings should not even close to a full-time pre-COVID-19 population, and congestion charges will give reluctant staff another reason to expand.
Downtown and downtown foot traffic declines are already having a devastating impact on some restaurants and other stores and adding to the feeling of unsafe streets.
Half-empty office buildings and closed storefronts raise concerns about business mortgage defaults compounded by rising rates of interest.
Listed here are a few of the more obvious the reason why congestion charges are a disruptive, presumptuous way to give the government more cash to spend.
![Governor Kathy Hochul](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000013300785.jpg?w=1024)
Listed here are others.
To start with, the nearly 50,000 migrants who crossed the Mexican border illegally now live free in Gotham’s facilities for so long as they need, lots of them in Midtown hotels.
Nonetheless, commuters and residents of outer districts whose taxes support these freebies and who want or need to enter Manhattan will probably be penalized an extra $23 a day for this privilege.
So New York is a sanctuary city only for many who cannot pay while everyone else is to be cheated until they get away.
It will possibly’t last.
The plan comes at a time when there is a rare consensus on each the left and the right that New York City is increasingly inaccessible to increasingly more people, making it especially silly to adopt a public policy that makes it inaccessible to much more people. number of individuals.
Nonetheless, that is what congestion charges will do.
![traffic in New York](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/033123_NYC_evening_traffic_03.jpg?w=1024)
The costs will increase much more
It is inevitable that the sky-high cost of living and dealing in the city, largely driven by government taxes and bureaucracy, will increase much more.
The prices of on a regular basis goods bought and sold in Manhattan, from potato chips to medicine and furniture, will rise as buyers’ delivery costs increase.
And there is no limit to how high the driving costs will probably be.
If the congestion charging system succeeds in reducing traffic, which it almost definitely will, the price for many who pay it can have to be consistently increased to collect the same sum of money.
How long before the price hits $30 and even $40 per day?
![Subway cars](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000013077881.jpg?w=1024)
The idea is also controversial due to where the estimated annual revenue of $1 billion or more is going to go.
Most will go to the MTA, an agency whose funds are largely in dire straits because it may possibly’t or won’t crack down on price beatings.
Officials admit it has lost as much as $650 million a yr as passengers skip subway turnstiles and board buses through the back door, with one study showing as many as one in three bus passengers fail to pay.
As a substitute of waging an all-out war on tariff cheaters, the progressive solution is to have honest people proceed to subsidize dead beats.
Free for me, congestion charges for you.
![Subway cars](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000013067859.jpg?w=1024)
Meanwhile, the transit agency is also notorious for uncontrollable construction costs.
Listed here are excerpts from a February Post article based on an NYU study: “The Metropolitan Transportation Authority spent almost twice as much on consultants for the Second Avenue subway because it did on actually digging the tunnel from 63rd to 96th Streets.”
The report also stated that “contractors and unions overburdened the project, dug caves for platforms that were twice the size required, and drafted station designs in order that each of the three recent stops has escalators made by a unique manufacturer.”
Improving the management and maintenance of contractor and union costs is difficult, and taxing drivers who don’t have any other selection is easy.
The second pot of traffic money will probably be used to pay for a brand recent bureaucracy running the program that may include parking permits for those living in the restricted traffic area or near the planned northern sixtieth Street congestion limit.
There may even be layoffs for the poor, government vehicles, and after all political patronage, which is able to lead to waste and waste.
Boss Tweed can be jealous of the possibilities.
Finally, congestion charging would reward the same bureaucrats who helped create the congested streets in the first place.
The proliferation of high-priced bike lanes, pedestrian plazas, bicycle rental stands, bus lanes, double parking lots, countless construction barricades, dining sheds, and other traffic-reducing ideas have all played a job in slowing down traffic.
Avoiding the subway
As well as, crime and the subway’s largely uncontrollable homeless problem have driven many passengers to ground transportation, helping fuel the explosion of Uber and other private automotive services.
The dirty truth is that elitist, anti-car fanatics in successive mayors have been dreaming for a long time of the day once they can ditch cars entirely.
They need New York to be Europe, and congestion charges are a part of the means to that end.
While they’re closer than ever to getting their way, working individuals who have to pay their bills are getting shafted.
Why not ask Obama?
Reader Don Kasprzak thinks we’re improper to call Washington a swamp because swamps bring environmental advantages. He writes: “The DC Septic is much deeper than anyone can imagine.
“Why wasn’t Barack Obama summoned to court, sworn in and questioned about the corrupt and criminal activities of Joe and Hunter Biden? Jill Biden also needs to be questioned. I guarantee you that almost all wives know exactly what their husbands do, especially when it comes to money.
Selecting to cheat
Reader Kevin Hartman says the Department of Justice and the FBI haven’t tried to cover up what they’re doing to influence the 2020 election. He writes: “Most of this was done in plain sight and was just a matter of what one wanted to read and what to imagine.
“It was typical government psychological behavior of ‘don’t think your lying eyes’.
AP bias
From the AP Bias Office:
“state GOP legislatures seek greater control over state and native electoral offices.”
Are we to imagine that Democrats want less control?