Congestion Pricing Gains Momentum

I live on 79th St. and DRIVE to Queens daily for work. Does this mean that when I come home every night and head directly for my garage on 80th Street I will have to pay $8??? Taking a train is not an option because I'm a salesperson with many customers all over Queens.

This plan will only hurt the working middle class. Bloomberg needs to look at the real reason why there is so much congestion, unreliable mass transit options, double parked cars and trucks, cabs zigzaging and blocking cars just to get a fare, Con Ed repairs left and right! Why not addressed these issues and I am sure others before "stealing" money from the hard working everyday folk.

Twice a week I cross lower Manhattan to go to or return from the Holland Tunnel. This would now cost $16 or I could buck traffic and drive miles more around. Also, my wife runs a business based in Manhattan but may well be in NJ, LI, Westchester in a given day. Does she pay $8 for every time that she returns to her office on Bdway?

For the first time I am seriously disappointed with Mayor Bloomberg. This is a totally regressive idea with little positive payback except adding more money to NYCs coffers. If we are truly serious about controlling congestion we must come up with outside of the box ideas. Free tolls at night to encourage nighttime deliveries. Key dropoff points for secondary delivery by smaller vehicles or even some tram or similar method of delivery. Ideas like this will take NYC to the future. Not another tax or fee. This will hurt NYC, for sure.

I think other traffic problems should be addressed first before imposing a fee to drivers. Mass transit should be more reliable and affordable. Try explaining almost daily to your boss why you are late. Bloomberg has no idea what that feels like. Buses purposely slow down when they are ahead of schedule which adds to the congestion. Trains are unsafe especially if you work at night. Taxis drive slowly looking for fares causing traffic then they dart out when they see a fare which is dangerous. Trucks double park at all hours of the day. Bloomberg has no clue what it is to live paycheck to paycheck and then have yet another cost added to your daily commute just to keep afloat.

This only benefits the rich. Slowly but surely the poor and middle class are being pushed out of NY. This has been the norm for the rich which are the only ones who benefit from any money NY collects off the back of the poor.

If you want to live in Manhattan, you have to pay top dollar. If you want to park in Manhattan, you have to pay top dollar. If you want to drive into Manhattan, same thing! The less driving we do, the more gas we save. The more gas we save, the longer it lasts. America's young people are hip to this already. They ride bikes, they feel no stigma from taking mass transit. They're more responsbile that the grown ups!

Manhattan is too congested. Well then, why are there four bridges that are toll free? Why will commercial vehicles that have no choice but to go where deliveries must be made be punished in this way? the result of those charges will be that all deliveries to Manhattan will be assessed yet another surcharge and raise the cost of doing business in New York a little further.

It's a horrible idea for those who live in the affected areas. That means I'd have to pay $16 to visit my grandmother in Hells Kitchen (& since I'm using bringing food & other staples, public trans isn't an option). Also, most of my friends on the West side regularly drive to Jersey to grocery shop; that $16 will erase the savings from that; If you've ever had a family in Manhattan, you'd realize what a pain it is to do a week's grocery shopping & get it home w/o a car. The people who support this are those who have so much money that $16 a trip is chump change to them-unfortunately there's a lot of us who could use that $16 for other things. Way to go Bloomie-just another reason NOT to live or shop in NYC anymore!

I hope every form of nyc business suffers from this - then that idiot Bloomberg can use his own money to make up for the drop off in money coming into the city. Just another reason to avoid visiting the armpit of New York State...

No one on the West Side needs to shop in Jersey. Talk about a waste. There's Fairway, Zabar's, Food Emporium, West Side Market, and a dozen good Korean greengrocers. Sure, it's a bit more expensive, but the food is higher quality, and you're spendingtime, money, tolls, and gas to buy crappy white bread in Secaucus. Why?

It sounds like a great idea to someone like me who rides the bus to work from NJ (or Staten Island depending on wheter I'm at my house or my girlfriends)If it speeds up my commute. I rarely, if never drive into Manhattan cause parking is too much of a pain.

Nobody in their right mind would drive into Manhattan during the day if they didn't have to. They're all working. It's just going to soak the poor and the middle class once again. Bloomberg has proven time and again that he's just a billionaire who is clueless about what average working people go through. If you're not a billionaire too, too bad, go live somewhere else. He's just as convinced he's right and sticking to it as Bush is.

I love it,tax the smokers-feel our pain in your smoking cars now!!! Hahahahaha

I understand that the traffic load in Manhattan needs to be reduced and the $8 charge to drivers may be a way to do this but do you pay twice if you leave and return? What is the cost of implementing this? Will it be like the NJ EZ PASS fiasco? The $21 cost for trucks will not reduce truck traffic just increase the cost of doing business in NYC so how does businesses leaving the city help the traffic problem. Ahh, I see, no businesses no traffic. Problem solved. Great Idea! More people on unemployment and welfare. This one needs to go back to the drawing board. London is not NYC.

I totally agree that this will be another expense on the middle class, but the government subsidizes mass transit to help them, and mass transit is an alternative resource that is available for anyone who doesn't want to pay the congestion charge. Millionaires in their chauffeured cars hog up all the parking anyway. If you take the train, you can read a book, listen to music, basically utilize the time much more productively than sitting in traffic. Anyway, I cannot imagine that there are any middle-class people with jobs in Manhattan who actually drive, unless they work for the government. They'd spend a fortune on parking, or spend an hour trying to find a free space.

The $8.00 a day fee will not control congestion. The people that have to go there will just pay the fee.

They finally get the city cleaned up, now no one will want to go there. Give me a break!

Can not wait to vote again- against Bloombomb and Stinkey up north.

The whole idea is preposterous!

what a joke.

Mayor Bloomberg has once again demonstrated his disregard for the non-limo classes on NYC. First he can't keep our children safe on the streets of NY but won't let working parents have the comfort of knowing their children are safe by disallowing cell phones in schools without compromise, now he and his new crony in Albany want to squeeze out the working class who don't have adequate mass transit options altogether. Why not just condemn every non-luxury building and get it over with and let the developers have their way? Turn Manhattan into a resort island! I think he's spent too much time in Bermuda. Remember Mr. Bloomberg et al, non-billionaires vote also!

Many people who live in Manhattan are not rich. This is just another tax on the middle class and businesses will pass the charge along to consumers and in the end, we will be paying twice; once for driving and once for the added prices at stores, etc.

This is another half-assed idea by an out-of-towner. We already pay an additional $15 to register cars in the City! I rarely drive into the city and I don't intend to pay to drive into my own city. And, FYI, the OUTER BOROUGHS are New Jersey, Westchester, and Nassau/Suffolk counties. Get rid of the cabs! That will ease congestion.

WHAT AN EINSTEIN!

The most effective way to solve congestion is to bruatlly enforce standing and parking regulations. Cars, limos and trucks standing in non-standing zones should be issued extremely expensive tickets (eg,$500) or immediately towed if unoccupied. The city will have to give up much of it's precious meter income to make sidewalk space for legitimate "unloadeers" and repairmen, but not more parkers. The city should not allow "wiaters"--such as limos and personal vehicles to use these spaces. Ex-police chief Frank Rizzo became mayor in Philadelphia in the 1970s and immediately started a ticketing and towing blitz. There was great outcry but, you know what, the traffic started to flow again.

After this idea, he will charge pedestrians to walk across times square due to congestion. What a Moron

WHAT WOULD THE 67 TH RICHEST MAN IN THE WORLD CARE ABOUT PAYING 8 OR MORE DOLLARS FOR ENTERING NYC.HE DOESNT WANT THE WORKING CLASS OR LESS TO CROWD HIS ISLAND. WAKE UP PEOPLE VOTE FOR THE WORKING CLASS PERSON

WHAT DOES HE KNOW ABOUT HOW IT AFFECTS THE WORKING CLASS OR LOWER YOU ARE CROWDING HIS ISLAND

And what happens when this plan works and everyone uses mass transit? How long before the subway and LIRR begin "congestion pricing" because of too many riders? There are better ways to ease traffic without going right to our wallets, Mikey.

This is just another stupid Bloombutt idea. People pay ENOUGH to live in NYC. This includes horrendous parking ticket penalties, for often unjustified tickets. And now this insane idea, paying just to enter Manhattan. What about people whose livelihood depends on driving into Manhattan? Billionaire Bloombutt can always produce an "expert" or two to call any of his asinine schemes the best idea since sliced bread. One only need look at the mess the school system has become to see how "good" his ideas really are. And how well the cadre of professional spinners and liars he employs or pays off to endorse his ideas do their job.

Discrimination at it's highest. If the mayor would change garbage pick up to night time pick up, Allow deliveries at night, stop police from taking up more lanes than the should, make more right on Red where feasible, Limit the number of construction sites, hold contractors accountable for road repair including DOT crews he would be amazed at how much we could do without increasing and already heavy burden.

Does the mayor think that the transit system could handle the overflow? This would be great for Lower Manhattan but how about the other neighborhoods? Why not put congestion pricing there too? BAD idea!!!!

Congestion Zone pricing is unfair because drivers already in Manhattan wouldn't have to pay to drive into the congestion zone. You would have to make the congestion zone a gated community and make people pay at the point of entry. Now that would REALLY cause congestion.

This is not about pollution, only 19% of the air pollution according to the Mayor's own study says so. In three years all taxi's will be hybrids according to Bloombucks. The congestion issue is a smoke screen, we are all against "congestion". This is a tax on those least able to afford it. To the rest it is like another latte`! Ticket & bring back the tow trucks all over midtown for the non paying munimeter hogging limos all over the side streets. Make freight deliveries from 8pm to 4am like all over Europe outside of London! Congestion is everywhere in all 5 boro's! Bring back the fairest most equitable tax we ever had, The Communter" tax and treat all the 5 boros equally, not just rich midtown! Will Speaker Silver be the savior like hew was with the Mayor's West side congestion generating stadium plan? We have alternatives if we really want to alleviate this problem. Help the middle class and those that must drive here.

What would the 67th richest man in the world know about having to pay 8 or more dollars to get into nyc. He has no idea how he hurts the middle to lower class. People, it time to put working class people in office. The ones who know and feel our pain.Besides YOUR HONOR DOESNT WANT YOU TO CROWD HIS ISLAND!

I can't imagine that a couple dollars is going to break anyone, after all, don't care owners shell out huge money for insurance and gas? There's so much mass transit in the metropolitan area for people who want to get into New York, cars are pretty much redundant. But people are addicted to their cars, like drugs. ...and addicted to pity-me whining.

Let me get this straight. Con Edison wants to raise electric rates 17% for residences and 10.6% for businesses. The Water Board is raising water rates 11% July 1st. Now Bloomberg wants to charge people $8 to drive into Manhattan, and charge trucks $21. What all this will accomplish is quite apparent - the middle class will leave NYC, small businesses will leave NYC, and the city will only have the very rich, who can afford everything anyway, and the very poor, who are supported by welfare. The cost of doing business in the city will skyrocket, food costs will increase tremendously, etc. etc. etc. Even before this idea of congestion pricing was floated, the MTA was talking about raising fares. So, as I said, the middle class will leave, and companies that stay here will have major problems in finding employees. Just the ticket to kill NYC. Dumb idea, Bloomberg. By the way, when was the last time Bloomberg went food shopping? He has no idea of the price of living. He is in a dreamland full of money, hand has no idea of how people really have to live. He is totally out of touch with 99.9% of us.

I agree with Congressman Weiner: ban truck traffic (except postal and overnight services) from 6:00-10:00am. Also, is the MTA prepared to accommodate the increased ridership that will result? If it isn't, then commuters and visitors will be faced with aCatch-22, with no real alternative to avoid the additional cost.

Anyone who, as I do, has to CROSS Manhattan to go from Queens or Brooklyn,to go to New Jersey will have to do it by driving AROUND Manhattan to avoid the toll! AROUND means going up nto the Bronx paying a toll at theTriboro Bridge or going down over the Verazzano Bridge paying ANOTHER toll! So eight dollars to Manhattan and another toll to the Lincoln of Holland tunnel times two if I want to go ome again! Not so good!

I live in a section of Brooklyn called Canarsie. In order to get to Broqdway and Exchange in lower Manhattan I have to take 2 buses and 3 trains. It will take 2 hours. If I drive it takes 35 minutes. Which would you prefer?

Mayor Bloomberg should clean his own house first! How about taking away the Crown Vics from every commissioner that drives him/herself to work everyday and uses the HOV lanes (with one passenger!) to boot? How much is this luxury costing us, with gas so high? Let our city managers lead by example - give up your Crown Vics and take mass transit like the rest of us - I'd rather give them free monthly metrocards instead. That will help reduce congestion (who hasn't seen one of these vehicles parked illegally?) and air pollution.

Bloomberg has no clue what the value of the dollar is to the working class. He a rich arrogant businessman that consistantly looks to screw NYC working class.

Why aren't the city officials looking at other ways to east congestion. For example, more left turn arrows could be installed on city streets. Double parking regulations could be enforced more rigorously. Perhaps trucks would have to make deliveries during certain off-peak hours. But, to impose this exorbitant tax on the common people of this city is reprehensible. This idea is worse than putting meter rules in effect on Sunday and sanitation rules in effect 24 hours every day. But, it shows how this mayor doesn't care about the middle and lower classes of society. If he runs for higher office, people will not forget.

Who supports this money grabing scheme? Our rich elected morons who have no clue what it feels like to have a real job. They think we all popped out of a cookie cutter. I've been a woring professional musician in NYC for 45 years. A drummer. If no clue Bloomberg can demonstrate how easy it would be to tarvel with a set of drums using mass transit, then I'll keep my mouth shut. The other posts on this issue have just about said it all. Bloomberg and the other elites, will turn NYC from the city that never sleeps, to the city you can't live or work in, or enjoy. By the way, how about craking down on the pedestrians who totaly disrecard the walk don't walk signs. Our leaders. What a bunch of arrogant fools.

If you want to reduce traffic and cut down on car emissions and save on utilities just put in place a four day work week ten hours a day four days a week.But who is kidding who its the money. Bleed them let them eat cake his majesty says!

If you want to reduce traffic and cut down on car emissions and save on utilities just put in place a four day work week ten hours a day four days a week.But who is kidding who its the money. Bleed them let them eat cake his majesty says!

They are gangsters in suits and nothing more ,beating on the working class as usual.King Bloomberg prides himself on the fact that special interest cant buy him.This maybe true ,but he is the special interest and influence peddler we should be concerned with!

Tell us what you think about the congestion pricing plan.