As Mayor Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan rose and fell in inglorious fashion, another congestion pricing plan has lingered on the horizon, not quite dying but not quite getting the attention it deserves.

That plan is, of course, Ted Kheel’s plan to make the subways free while implementing a high congestion fee and delivering all the revenue to the MTA. When I first wrote about Kheel’s plan in January, it generated 20 comments worth of discussion, and the Kheel Plan still stands as something of a Holy Grail for congestion pricing advocates.

On the one hand, this plan solves a lot of the problems inherent in Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC2030 proposal. All of the money from the plan would go toward improving mass transit. If you accept the baseline assumptions inherent in the plan, the proposed fees — $16 for cars and $32 for trucks at all hours — would generate a significant surplus for capital expansion and infrastructure maintenance, and the subways and buses could be free. The extra money generated by the high fees would also allow the NYPD and the MTA to increase police presence to counter fears of unsafe subways if the barrier to entrance — in this case, the fare — is dropped.

When congestion pricing died at the hands of Sheldon Silver and the New York State Assembly Democrats, Ted Kheel vowed to make his plan an issue in the upcoming mayoral race in New York City. Kheel has commissioned Charles Komanoff, the research director and lead writer of the original plan, to refine the original Kheel plan. Yesterday on Streetsblog, he outlined the goals of the second version of the computer model for the Kheel Plan. In his words:

• Time-variable congestion fees: instead of being locked into a straight $16 fee 24-7, we’ll assess higher peak-periods fees along with offsetting, lower fees when traffic is light.
• Time-variable subway fares: we’ll test retaining the fare during the a.m. peak as a possible transition strategy to ease subway crowding and improve system efficiencies (buses will be free 24-7, regardless).
• Closer integration of parking pricing with road pricing.
• Possible differential tolls into the Central Business District by “portal” (New Jersey vs. Long Island vs. Bronx/Westchester).
• Intra-Manhattan congestion charging: according to some GPS developers, it may soon be possible to charge per-mile or per-minute for driving within the CBD; this would open the door to even more revenue and less traffic and further dispel the rap on congestion pricing as a giveaway to Manhattan.

I, for one, am intrigued by these tantalizing glimpses into the future of the Kheel Plan, and I’m glad to see Kheel, 94, pushing to make this plan a central issue during the next election cycle. I also think this plan is the key to the future of congestion pricing in the city. As Komanoff wrote, “In retrospect, it seems clear that Bloomberg’s plan appeared to too many people to be ‘all stick.’ There wasn’t enough direct and concrete payoff, for anybody, to attract wide public support. The Kheel Plan remedies this defect with the very considerable, tangible, obvious ‘carrot’ of free transit.”

This is a plan that clearly benefits every subway and bus rider in the city. With these additions, the plan can be refined further with adjustments in how and when to charge what prices for driving and what fares for mass transit. While drivers and die-hard civil libertarians will not be too keen on using GPS devices to charge by the mile within Manhattan, this part of the proposed Kheel Plan 2 would ensure that the groundbreaking plan would not discriminate against the outer boroughs.

Later today, Komanoff will host a brown bag lunch at the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council. He’ll discuss the current model and elaborate on his goals for the future plan.

In the end, this plan — and whatever comes out of Kheel v. 2 in the fall — holds up to scrutiny pretty well. Economists and city planners may challenge the traffic assumptions of models, but the biggest challenge Kheel and his supporters face is in the political arena. If they can turn the Kheel Plan into a populist cause and really drive home the point of free and good public transit in exchange for the congestion pricing, a candidate supporting this plan could garner enough support to win. Otherwise, it will forever remain just another good idea that never saw the light of day.