My doctor looked at me dubiously. “So you haven’t been smoking?” he asked for the second time. No, I told him. Evidently, I got asthmatic bronchitis this spring and it’s often caused by smoking, or excessive pollen, or, eh, air pollution.
As much as I adore the NYC skyline, the smog may have made me sick. I’ve also lived in smoggy places like Los Angeles and London, where I came down with bronchitis several times. It’s time to do better. The air quality in urban centers has got to improve for the next generation.
Congestion pricing might be one solution. In New York City, Major Bloomberg has been working toward a plan recently. But although the bill he signed in July 2007 would authorize the city to apply for federal financing of the plan, congestion pricing is still, well, choking—because it still lacks approval by the Legislature, which strongly opposes it.
Congestion pricing plans charge drivers a fee to drive in traffic-heavy zones. The notion is that such a tax changes people’s behavior: they’re more likely to leave their cars at home in favor of mass transit. In the case of NYC, Bloomberg’s particular plan proposed that drivers who enter Manhattan below 86th Street from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays would pay $8 ($21 for trucks). Those living inside the zone would also pay to leave the city, though the majority of people affected tend to be from the boroughs and surrounding suburbs, many of whom opposed the plan.
NYC is competing with several other U.S. cities for federal funds ($500 million) under an initiative that seeks to help urban areas cut down on traffic jams. Much of the federal money would be used to buy buses, install sensors and cameras along the pricing zone’s border, and other mass transit projects.
Other cities, such as London, Singapore, and Stockholm have congestion pricing already in place—and they’ve been, for the most part, successful. In Stockholm, traffic has dropped 20 percent and more technology is being implemented there by IBM.
Bloomberg argues that asthma rates in NYC are some of the highest in the U.S. and much of it is caused by tail pipe emissions. According to a brief from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, “Children and adults who suffer from asthma and live near heavy vehicular traffic are nearly three times more likely to visit the emergency room or be hospitalized for their condition than those who live near low traffic areas. For adults with asthma, medium and high traffic exposure increases the likelihood of daily or weekly asthma symptoms by 40 percent and 80 percent, respectively, compared with low traffic exposure.” If you live anywhere near the 59th Street Bridge in Manhattan, you probably know someone with asthma.
But how would it affect subway riders? When Bloomberg suggested on a NPR radio broadcast that the Lexington Avenue subway line was not that crowded in the morning, I nearly fell out of my chair. I spent many years riding that 4/5 train—and it is the most crowded train in NYC—and possibly the nation. (Commuters in other cities, please chime in!) The Mayor is notorious for riding it—albeit very early in the morning with lots of security, unlike most of us poor shleps who by 8 a.m. are crammed in like little sardines waiting to be devoured by delays. The Metropolitan Transit Authority says these lines (4, 5, and 6) are already running at full capacity.
Many drivers don’t like the plan either. Manhattanites who drive to the outer boroughs for work (or contemplate a subway, bus, and then another bus) don’t like it. Other drivers feel that only people entering the city should be taxed. Outer borough residents and suburbanites from Brooklyn, Queens, and Westchester who drive into Manhattan for work, including those who own trucks (contractors, etc), have issues with it, too.
