Congestion Pricing
The 2006-2007 legislative session comes to an end without doing anything about congestion pricing within Manhattan during business hours. The biggest complaint that came from elected officials has been that the people that would have to pay the $8/day would be the car owners in the outer boroughs and suburbs they represent. A question to those that believe $8 would be too onerous to the daily commuters... where are you parking for free?!? There is no where in Manhattan where these people are parking for less than $40/day so save your money and take the train or bus into the city.
This is the huge failure of Robert Moses a generation ago who refused to construct any mass transit infrastructure. So as the elected officials from State Sen Sabini and State Sen Padavan to Assemblyman William Brennan and Assemblyman Rory Lancman all oppose this common sense approach to solving traffic and encourage use of green transit solutions, the city and the greater New York metropolitan area suffocates from the exhaust and drown in the traffic.
The same legislators that refuse to create the revenue to fix mass transit claim the reason that congestion pricing should not take effect is because their needs to be mass transit improvement before hand. Proposing the Chicken-Egg paradox is simply ducking the issue. Anyone who opposes the congestion pricing simply wants the status quo to rule our lives and are practicing the type of politics that belittles us all.