Gridlock Sam Talks Congestion Pricing
The Brian Lehrer Show
WNYC
4.6 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 8 December 2023
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On Wednesday, the MTA board voted to approve New York City's congestion pricing plan. Sam Schwartz, former longtime "Gridlock Sam" columnist at the Daily News, former NYC Traffic Commissioner, president and CEO of Sam Schwartz Pedestrian Traffic Management and author of No One at the Wheel: Driverless Cars and the Road of the Future (Public Affairs, 2018), discusses the plan and warns of some of its possible undesirable side effects.
Transcript
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| 0:12.5 | Brian Lear on WNYC So on Wednesday the MTA Board approved New York City's congestion pricing plan. |
| 0:18.4 | The plan will soon alter the dynamic of driving in Manhattan, |
| 0:22.1 | at least that's what proponents hope advocates and |
| 0:25.4 | opponents have some lingering questions though the main one depending on which |
| 0:29.2 | side Iran is does congestion pricing go too far or does congestion pricing go far enough? |
| 0:37.0 | Will it unfairly penalized drivers on the Jersey side of the Hudson River? |
| 0:40.0 | As Congressman Josh Gotheimer and others have declared, is it a good first step towards unclogging |
| 0:46.0 | Manhattan streets? Will it divert even more truck traffic and therefore |
| 0:50.3 | pollution and asthma rates in the Bronx negating its own environmental benefits. |
| 0:56.6 | And the plan is expected to generate $1 billion a year for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. |
| 1:03.0 | One of the biggest reasons for congestion pricing at this point to enhance mass transit for the future. |
| 1:09.0 | But what about all those people who already tamper with their license plates to evade speed and |
| 1:13.3 | toll cameras will they get out of it negating the impact last December the New York |
| 1:17.9 | Times reported that obstructed plates cost New York City agencies $100 million a year in lost tolls and fines. |
| 1:27.5 | Now they have just started one more 60-day comment period on the latest version of congestion pricing. |
| 1:34.8 | Gothamist reports that don't expect it to be tweaked very much after this though and |
| 1:40.7 | it's likely to go into effect in the spring. |
| 1:43.6 | But let's go over the details. |
| 1:46.4 | Hear those arguments from you one more time |
| 1:48.6 | and we'll tell you how you can still have input, |
| 1:50.5 | at least theoretically. |
| 1:52.1 | And we'll try to answer some of those lingering questions with |
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