This is America. If ten people need something that only four people can have, the _only_ equitable and just thing is to put a price tag on it high enough that only four can afford it.

Subsidies for interest groups lobbying electeds are easily arranged after-the-fact by special ezpasses for your yellow or black car, etc.

I live in downtown brooklyn, and I’d kill for anything that stopped this flow of cars northbound from the ever-effed Gowanus over the free bridges.

I generally avoid NYC during the workday in a car, unless I’m carpooling, in which case the toll would be no big deal at all. And at night, there’s no toll – because CP’s designers know there’s no sense tolling a non-scarce resource.

Prohibiting Brooklyn and Staten Island families from using the West Side and FDR as alternatives to the BQE would destroy the BQE to no effect on the Manhattan surface streets.

And IIRC, the money raised would’ve gone entirely to transit and emergency highway repair.

I can also defend congestion pricing on purely capitalist grounds, which is appealing. It’s use-fees for scarce resources, and the market decides who goes in and who stays out. There’s no social engineering involved.

It was a vastly superior plan to everything since proposed.

The Ravitch plan does specify a massive increase in bus service in the outer boroughs before any tolls are put in place, but you might not know that if you relied on the TV networks for your transit news.

My dad owns a flower shop in Queens. My dad used to deliver in a truck to Manhattan–it’s no longer profitable thanks to the “time tax”– it takes too long, the gas is too expensive. There are business owners in the outer ring who are making the decision every day about getting into Manhattan, and the congestion fee is just putting a number on that.

In other words, the cost of the toll is more than offset by the savings from not having to pay employees to sit in traffic, or from being able to make more deliveries per day.

It’s possible that multiple tolls per day might add up to a net loss. I don’t have a problem with charging people only once per day, as was proposed for congestion pricing.