While I study for my 1L law school exams, I’ve recruited a guest post or two for the next few weeks. Today, Chris Carrera, better know as the East Village Idiot, offers up his take on the response to the Ravitch Plan. As a general note, if anyone reading wants to contribute to SAS, feel free to contact me.

Now that the Ravich Report is out, New York’s politicians are lashing out in defense of “the little guy.” Unfortunately, it seems that those speaking out against the recommendations aren’t clear on who “the little guy” is. Here’s a glimpse of their perception of this mysterious citizen:

“Raising annual fees for driver licenses to $50 would yield nearly $300 million.” – Micah Kellner, Assemblyman (D-Manhattan)

Kellner’s perception of the little guy: a Manhattanite in his district who never, ever drives, and sees absolutely no need for a drivers’ license. He never drives for work, he never drives when he travels, and he never drives to relocate. Everyone else, however, should be forced to pay outrageous annual fees – nearly five times what any other state’s resident pays – isn’t the little guy, and should be screwed, even though they too rely daily on the transit system that this fee would fund.

“Placing tolls along these bridges penalizes people for living in The Bronx, Queens, Staten Island and Brooklyn boroughs, especially those who don’t have the best access to subway and bus transportation.” – Bill DeBlasio, City Councilman (D-Brooklyn)

DeBlasio’s perception of the little guy: someone lives and works in the outer boroughs. If you live and work in the same outer borough, East River tolls are of no consequence to you. If you live in, say, Queens and work in the Bronx, you have to pay $10 in tolls every day during your commute (unless you severely inconvenience yourself via the Queensboro Bridge, FDR, and Harlem River bridges). If you live in, say, Brooklyn and work on Staten Island, you have to pay a $10 toll every day during your commute. Forget about those people, because the real “little guy” is the one who lives in Brooklyn or Queens and works in Manhattan, an island with quite possibly the best mass transit in the world… who doesn’t take the Queens Midtown or Brooklyn Battery Tunnel (also $10 in tolls every day).

“How can you tax people to enter Manhattan when you don’t provide them reasonable alternatives?” – Simcha Felder, City Councilman (D-Brooklyn)

Felder’s perception of the little guy: someone who lives in an outer borough and wants to get to Manhattan who lacks “reasonable alternatives.” This “little guy” does not find 23 subway lines, 38 express and local bus routes, or 5 commuter rail lines to be “reasonable alternatives.” These are all infinitely less expensive alternatives than driving to Manhattan under any circumstances now, before any tolls are instituted on East River crossings. But they’re unreasonable to this “little guy,” and are therefore not the best choice for solving the MTA’s fiscal crisis.

It’s time for opponents to the Ravich plan to fess up: They don’t have a good explanation as to why they’re against tolling the East River crossings, they don’t have a reasonable suggestion to raise the revenue needed otherwise, and they don’t really know or care that a small group of people, if any at all, will be inconvenienced by the Ravich plan, which literally millions of New Yorkers will stand to benefit from. “Just because” is not a reason to block a plan that will keep our city’s lifeline from falling into an irreparable fiscal crisis.

Remember the Kheel plan, a Ted Kheel-funded study by Charles Komanoff and other transit experts? In it, the study’s creators proposed a way to fund the MTA via a steep congestion fee while keeping transit free. While it’s a very revolutionary plan, it hasn’t been embraced politically.

Well, as Ben Fried at Streetsblog reported this morning, Kheel is unveiling a new version of the plan. Kheel apparently doesn’t like the Ravitch plan. He calls it an immobility tax and doesn’t think it addresses the problems of congestion and car overuse that plague New York.

“The Ravitch Immobility Tax is a 1970’s-era plan that disconnects transit and traffic, making no real impact on the congestion problem that chokes our regional economy,” Kheel said in a press release. “The Ravitch Plan ignores the staggering social cost to the city of automobile traffic, leaving drivers to pay little for mass transit, and imposing the burden instead on vulnerable segments of our society that can ill afford it in these times. Instead of taxing jobs during the largest period of unemployment in recent history, we need an innovative plan that fuels economic growth, fixes traffic, and provides long-term benefit for working New Yorkers.”

Rather, Kheel proposes free subways except at rush hour and higher tolls for all. Kheel’s new plan, according to Fried, includes the following:

• A dramatic cut in subway fares (75 percent on average), including a complete fare elimination on weekends and holidays, overnight and mid-day,
• A variable fare during the weekday peak periods that’s lower than the current fare;
• Complete fare elimination on all NYC Transit buses at all times;
• Congestion pricing on car and truck traffic into the Manhattan Central Business District (CBD), with tolls varying sharply by time of day and averaging $16 per trip;
• A 46% surcharge on medallion taxi fares (note that medallion taxis, and no other vehicles, would be exempt from the congestion pricing charge);
• 25% higher tolls on MTA bridges that don’t directly access the Manhattan CBD.

Using their comprehensive proprietary model of the city’s transit system and road network, Kheel’s team concluded that the plan would:

• Yield over $1 billion in net revenue — sufficient to wipe out more than three-fourths of the MTA’s projected FY-2009 deficit;
• Increase overall subway ridership by 12% even as use of the system shrinks by 6% in the morning peak hour (8-9 a.m.) and 10% in the evening peak hour (5-6 p.m.);
• Raise traffic speeds in the chronically gridlocked CBD by one-third during the day and one-quarter overall, while also boosting travel speeds throughout the City.

I want to like this plan, and I want to support. But something gnaws at me. Maybe it’s the fact that Ravitch’s plan generates more than the MTA needs so they can help fund the capital campaign. Maybe it’s the fact that Kheel’s plan is just too far out there for most New Yorkers to appreciate. Sadly, I think Kheel’s plan will forever remain a good idea in principle but will never be a New York reality.

Let’s talk New York State drivers licenses for a bit. They have become quite the hot topic on the transit front lately.

Right now, it seem as though the most popular alternate to the Ravitch proposal concerns drivers licenses. As I discussed last week, a group led by Assembly rep Micah Kellner and New York City Comptroller William Thompson have proposed increased fees for car registrations and licensing fees in lieu of the controversial East River tolls.

A few readers e-mailed me skeptically about the registration fee plan, noting that the numbers did not quite seem to add up. So I ran the numbers. There are, according to the 2007 DMV records, 6.78 million licensed drivers in the 12 counties served by the MTA and 5.59 million licensed automobiles. It was then that I realized the catch.

Right now, those of us with New York State drivers licenses pay, more or less, around $50 once every eight years to renew our licenses. It was my understanding that this alternate plan would simply raise this rate to $100 every eight years. The way I figured it, this new fee would generate an additional $42 million a year and not the promise $300 million Kellner and Thompson had noted.

The catch, you see, is that Kellner and Thompson would charge New Yorkers that $50 fee every year. Instead of paying $50 for eight years, we would instead be paying $400 extra over that eight-year period to enjoy the privileges and benefits of having a drivers license no matter how little or how much we drive.

To me, this doesn’t quite get at the heart of the problem. It certainly provides an alternate source of revenue and wouldn’t require tolling the East River bridges, but it’s an unfair demand. In fact, while Thompson claims that the East River crossing tolls would hit those who cannot afford to pay them the hardest, I believe his alternate registration plan would.

Take me, for example. I have a New York State drivers license, and I always will. The last time I personally drove a vehicle across one of the East River bridges was in 2006 when I had to drive a van from Manhattan to Brooklyn. Under the Ravitch plan, I would pay $0 a year to cross the East River bridges because I take the subway to Manhattan every day. It’s significantly cheaper than owning a car; it’s convenient; it’s quick. But I’m not going to give up my drivers license.

Under the Kellner/Thompson plan, I would be paying an additional $50 a year to own a form of government identification. The people who can afford this plan will shrug it off and pass the costs on; the people who can’t will have to decide between relinquishing a drivers license of paying more. It’s not really equitable.

On the other hand, the Ravitch proposal would charge you for use. If you use the East River bridge tolls —  if you avail yourself of a service that isn’t free to New York City but that the city refuses to charge for right now — you should have to pay. My ownership of a drivers license shouldn’t fund mass transit, but your use of the roads at the economic, social and environmental expense to everyone else should. And that’s why this registration fee plan is bogus.

Richard Ravitch has heard the critics over the last few days, and he doesn’t like it. Responding to those who are skeptical of his bailout plan, Ravitch took a hardline position in an interview with the Daily News.

“Obviously, I have to assume they must know of some secret fairy godmother who has piles of money she is going to send and solve the problem,” Ravitch said. “Otherwise, they’d better damn well explain how the system is going to be paid.”

For the most part, these critics are pushing the standard line. As City Comptroller Bill Thomson has argued, the tolls will supposedly penalize those who don’t have access to the buses and subways. Never mind that every toll will be along a route that has ample bus and subway service. Never mind that people who can’t afford these tolls generally can’t afford a car in New York City either. Tolling roads in New York — actually charging people for the city services they use — has become some political taboo. No wonder Ravitch is a bit feisty.

But of course there are other concerns beyond obstructionist politicians. William Neuman highlights some of the legal challenges facing implementation of the Ravitch proposals. No one seems to know quite yet who has the ability to transfer control of the bridges from the city to the MTA or how the city could go about doing so.

“Our conclusion is that the city would not be permitted to transfer the bridges to the M.T.A. without a new state law,” Kate O’Brien Ahlers, the communications director for the city’s Law Department, said in a written statement on Friday.

City officials said that under state law, the bridges were similar to streets and parks, which are inalienable properties of the city. It is a status that requires state legislative action if they are to be sold, leased or otherwise removed from city control.

There is a law that allows the city to transfer property to the authority if it is to be used for transit purposes, such as land for a subway station. But the city officials said they did not believe that would apply to the bridges.

In reality, this is more of a political issue than it is a legal issue. If the impetus is there, city and state officials will work to affect the transfer. But as Neuman explores, the political impetus just isn’t there.

At some point, we’ll have to pay. Someone will have to shoulder the costs of running a transit system. It could be all of us; it could be some of us. Sadly, this decision will wind up in the hands of New York’s risk-averse politicians.

Now that we’ve all had a weekend to digest the Ravitch Report, let’s check in with the prevailing opinion. How the wind blows in the pages of New York’s editorial pages will go a long way toward determining the success or failure of this plan as it hits the state legislature.

Let’s start with the Paper of Record. The New York Times voiced its unconditional support for the plan:

Almost every commuter recognizes that a fare increase is inevitable, but that is unnecessarily onerous. The cost of a vibrant city, fed by its daily influx of commuters, should be shared by others who benefit. That means drivers, who face less traffic because so many other people leave their cars at home. And businesses that can draw employees from across the metropolitan area should also contribute…

Some of New York City’s most vocal politicians complained about how the Ravitch plan affects local drivers, especially in Queens and Brooklyn. Vetoing new tolls makes little sense unless these officials can come up with other ways to maintain and improve the enormous city transportation network.

Governor Paterson said New Yorkers face “one source of pain or another” to keep the M.T.A. up to speed. The right choice would be to spread that pain around beyond those who take public transit.

The Daily News, somewhat surprisingly but very pragmatically, liked the plan as well:

It is particularly sensible to build long-term fiscal stability on the three-legged stool of reasonably increased fares for riders, a modest tax on businesses and new tolls for drivers. Without effective and functioning mass transit, businesses might as well relocate to Toledo. A small additional per-employee fee would yield huge dividends.

Drivers coming over the bridges benefit from the reduced traffic and cleaner air that trains, buses and subways help provide. Which was the idea behind the congestion pricing proposal Mayor Bloomberg put forward – though without the $354 million in federal transit money the city would have gotten along with it. And for those who use public transportation every day – well, an 8% increase is far, far preferable to the doomsday 23% hike that would be required if Ravitch hadn’t found a way to spread responsibility around. Plus, the predictability of biannual fare hikes, tagged to inflation, makes sense for family budgets.

Paterson is right to have come out in support of this plan. Now, it falls to lawmakers to have the courage to implement it, even as they face the massive, still-outstanding challenge of grappling with gallons of red ink.

On the other side of the aisle, The Post wrote a disjointed piece bemoaning the tax increases. They write:

Think about it: Do companies need further incentive to cut labor costs in New York’s current recession economy?

It would be one thing if Ravitch had suggested sharing the pain – by squeezing some concessions from the MTA’s labor force, for example, but he does not. And while there is a lot of talk about cutting state and city spending, very little has actually happened – and very little is likely to happen.

Finally, Newsday thinks Ravitch was too kind on the MTA, and the Long Island paper voices its support for the alternative licensing and registration fee increase proposal that I will get around to debating as soon as the demands of my finals allow me to:

A report delivered last week by a high-profile commission, intended to solve the MTA’s funding problems for good, dances around the integrity issue but never addresses it head-on. The problem with the MTA is not just lack of money but lack of faith.

In this respect, the report is a disappointment. It offers no reassurance that management has wrung wasteful expense out of the behemoth agency. Yet, one after another, news stories suggest there are savings to be had. A report by State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli last month found the agency weighted down with 70,000 employees, many in redundant jobs, with plans to hire hundreds more. In marketing and public relations alone, the MTA employs 444…

The commission, headed by the highly respected former MTA chief Richard Ravitch, was charged with finding new revenue sources to cover a $1.2-billion shortfall next year, as well as a five-year construction and maintenance program. The Ravitch Commission should have looked internally first. How about a five-point plan, outlining how the agency would be restructured, top to bottom?

I’m particularly intrigued by the Newsday suggestion. I know some commenters here and on Streetsblog were a bit shocked that the report did not advocate more internal cost-cutting measures at the MTA. But otherwise, support is shaking down as expected. While Newsday’s support is lukewarm, three papers champion the East River tolling plan while one out-right dismisses the whole endeavor. Hopefully, the voices for change can outshine those clamoring for a disastrous status quo.

In the end, we’ll either get slammed with a huge fare hike or everyone can bear the costs. I know what I prefer. Do you?