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I-80 toll plans moving forward
The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission will take over operation of I-80 and turn the freeway into a toll road under terms of a 50-year lease signed late Monday.The lease with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation was signed just before a midnight deadline set by the legislature. Tolls could be in place by 2010 if permission is obtained from the Federal Highway Administration.
The state's two highway agencies made formal application for that approval on Saturday. In the application, the turnpike agency said it planned to double the money available for I-80 repairs and upgrades over the next decade to $2 billion.
The state's plan envisions as many as 10 toll booths between New Jersey and Ohio, with an initial cost of about $25 for motorists to drive the entire 311-mile highway.
The I-80 tolls would be set at the turnpike's rate, which is anticipated to be about 8 cents per mile in three years, for cars. That would represent a 33 percent increase from the current turnpike toll rate, which now averages about 6 cents per mile. (Tolls would be 23 cents per mile for trucks weighing 30,001 to 45,000 pounds.)
Tolls on I-80 are part of a plan created last July by the legislature to raise about $965 million more per year over the next 10 years for highways, bridges and mass transit. The new law, Act 44, has been under fire from northern Pennsylvanians along the I-80 corridor who fear it will hurt the economy of the region.
Will gridlocked L.A. heed this toll call?
While Orange County officials have built a network of toll roads to address growing traffic, L.A. officials have invested much more heavily in rail and bus service.
By Rong-Gong Lin II and Steve Hymon, Times Staff Writers
June 29, 2007
The land of the freeway is poised to become a little less free.
Los Angeles County transit leaders on Thursday agreed to develop plans for toll roads within the next three years, after decades of opposition to the concept of motorists paying tolls to use the roads.
The decision by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board comes amid criticism that Los Angeles has not joined other metropolitan areas around the nation in experimenting with "congestion pricing," in which motorists pay to use less crowded lanes.
Last month, L.A. County lost out on a major federal grant because it did not have any congestion pricing in the works.
Manhattanites Face Driving Fee on the Way Out
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
In promoting his sweeping traffic reduction plan, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his aides have stressed one provision: drivers who enter Manhattan below 86th Street would be charged an $8 fee.
But what has not been widely mentioned is a measure that could startle some Manhattanites: those who live within the zone would have to pay $8 to drive out.
The congestion pricing program was devised to cut traffic, chiefly by persuading people from the other boroughs and beyond to leave their cars behind and take public transit into Manhattan. But planners say that those who live inside the congestion pricing zone also contribute to traffic when they drive out, and should pay their share, too.
That means a man from Greenwich Village who drives to visit his grandmother in Queens would pay the fee. So would a C.E.O. who has a reverse commute, driving from the East Side to Stamford, Conn., each morning, and an Upper Eastsider who likes to drive to the Fairway supermarket in Harlem.
It might seem that anyone taking a car out of the congestion zone ought to be rewarded instead of penalized, but officials disagreed.
"We're not trying to get people to leave the zone in their cars," said Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff, who played a leading role in fashioning the plan. "Overall what we're trying to do is get people to use their cars less."
Are You Ready to Pay to Park on Your Street?
By Danny Hakim
New York City could start charging residents to park in their own neighborhoods under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan. The mayor's proposal, which was introduced in the State Senate this month, would charge most drivers $8 to enter Manhattan below 86th Street on weekdays. To mollify people just outside the zone who feared their streets would turn into parking lots, the Senate bill would allow the city to issue permits so that most parking spots would be restricted to neighborhood residents.
But the bill says there would be unspecified fees that residents would have to pay to get those permits. The money would go to the city's general fund.
John Gallagher, a spokesman for the mayor, said "discussion of a fee structure for residential permit parking is very premature." Among other details of the plan, visitors coming into the city could deduct the cost of bridge and tunnel tolls from an $8 fee to enter Manhattan, but only if they use E-ZPass. And the state's environmental review process would be waived to speed up the plan.
We took a dive into the fine print of the mayor's proposal. As one might expect with such a voluminous piece of legislation, a number of notable items emerge from the fine print.
It's not spelled out how visitors driving into New York City would be made aware that they had to pay $8 within 48 hours or face a $115 fine. The mayor and his administration have said most people would likely have heard about the congestion fee, though some lawmakers say many might not. The mayor's staff says there would also be adequate signage. Lawmakers have wondered how this would actually work: The signs, presumably, would have to explain how and where to pay, requiring a lot more words than "toll ahead."
City Traffic Pricing Wins U.S. and Spitzer's Favor
By DANNY HAKIM and RAY RIVERA
ALBANY, June 7 - Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's plan to reduce traffic by charging people who drive into the busiest parts of Manhattan received significant support on Thursday as Gov. Eliot Spitzer endorsed the idea and the Bush administration indicated that New York stood to gain hundreds of millions of dollars if the plan were enacted.
If the measure is approved by the Legislature, New York will become the first city in the United States to impose a broad system of congestion pricing, which was introduced in London in 2003 and has been credited with reducing traffic there.
Governor Spitzer said he would work to ensure passage of the plan, which is a major part of the mayor's blueprint for improving air quality and traffic flow for the next several decades. The Bloomberg administration has estimated that it could put the program into effect within 18 months of legislative approval.
"This is a necessary investment for the future of New York City, which is to a great extent the economic engine of New York State," the governor said. "And so this is not really a question of whether, it's a question of how, it's a question of making sure that we do it properly."
Mr. Spitzer appeared alongside the United States transportation secretary, Mary E. Peters, who announced that New York City was one of nine finalists for a share of $1.1 billion in federal aid to fight urban traffic. Ms. Peters warned, however, that the city's potential share could be endangered if the mayor's plan did not have state approval by August.
Heavy New York Traffic Puts Health at Risk
Mayor's groundbreaking plan to make New York the world's cleanest, healthiest city is welcome
Posted on: 04/19/2007
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Mayor's Sustainabilty Plan
New York mayor Michael Bloomberg wants the city to have "the cleanest air of any big city in America" by 2030.
Just after Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced his bold "greenprint" for New York City, Environmental Defense called for people to share stories about traffic. Arturo, a resident of Long Island City, Queens, New York, responded. He describes the perils of living on a busy high-speed thoroughfare:
"Trucks, buses, cars whiz by at high speeds. The green [light for drivers] is at least 90 seconds, perhaps longer, so vehicles are inclined to drive very fast. .... I play a game of chicken every time I cross. And during rush hours, other pedestrians like me are forced to jaywalk," he writes. (Share your story, too. How does traffic affect you? Does your child go to school or play near a busy road?)
By Mark Ginocchio
Staff Writer
Published March 21 2007
WESTPORT - Federal Highway Administration officials yesterday urged state lawmakers to install highway tolls that charge motorists different rates based on peak and off-peak hours.
The tolling method, called congestion or value pricing, helps reduce traffic during rush hour while providing the state with cash for transportation improvements, said Patrick DeCorla-Souza, program manager for the administration's congestion pricing initiative.
Other cities worldwide use the method successfully, and other transportation systems, such as airlines and railroads, already charge varying rates based on peak hours, DeCorla-Souza said at a meeting at Westport Police Department headquarters organized by the South Western Regional Planning Agency.
"People understand that at certain times during the year, certain goods and services are more valuable," DeCorla-Souza said at the event, attended by about 30 municipal leaders and legislators from Fairfield County. "The idea now is to help them understand it in the transportation arena."
February 11, 2007
Economic View
What's the Toll? It Depends on the Time of Day
By DANIEL GROSS
FOR the small group of economists and policy wonks interested in applying supply-and-demand theories to the thorny problems of gridlock and ever-longer commutes, the $2.9 trillion fiscal 2008 budget released by President Bush on Monday contained some excellent news: $130 million in grants to finance construction of so-called congestion pricing systems.
Congestion pricing - the concept of charging higher fees to consumers for a good or a service at times of heavy use - is well established in businesses like hotels, long-distance phone service and air travel. And while London and Stockholm have successfully enacted plans that levy fees on drivers who want to enter traffic-clogged city streets, the United States has been slow to apply the concept on the roads. When Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg proposed last year that New York look into congestion pricing as a means of unclogging the city's famously clogged roadways, he was roundly criticized.
Actually, congestion pricing was born and bred in New York City. William Vickrey, the longtime Columbia University economist and 1996 Nobel laureate, is viewed as the father of the concept. In 1959, long before E-ZPass was a twinkle in a planner's eye, Mr. Vickrey proposed that cities could reduce traffic by using electronic systems to charge drivers for the privilege of nosing their sedans into urban grids.
Congestion Pricing And The Future Of NYC: Addressing The Objections
by Bruce Schaller
13 Dec 2006
In his much-anticipated speech on long-term planning for New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg laid out “10 aggressive but achievable goals” to meet the “three major challenges” of the future. One of the major challenges, he said, will be an expected explosion in population growth; one of the goals within that challenge will be to make sure traffic congestion “doesn’t bring our economy grinding to a halt.” And what would assure this? In his speech, the mayor talked about “adding to the capacity of our regional mass transit system, so that travel times stay the same – or get better.” But members of the panel discussion immediately afterwards specifically touched on whether congestion pricing – charging a fee to use congested streets or highways – should be used to provide traffic relief.
by Tom Angotti
December, 2006
DOI: 10.1177/0739456X06288093
© 2006 Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning
Unraveling Equity in HOT Lane Planning
A View from Practice
Asha Weinstein
urban and regional planning, San José State University
Gian-Claudia Sciara
University of California, Berkeley
This article investigates how concern about equity has arisen in the planning and implementation of high-occupancy/toll lane projects, or so-called "HOT lanes." Specifically, the research assesses (1) where and how equity issues have surfaced in the debate over HOT lanes and (2) how practicing planners have responded to these equity concerns. By looking explicitly at the planning process through a series of case studies and a review of newspaper coverage, the research suggests strategies for how practitioners can craft a comprehensive and meaningful framework for assessing and addressing equity issues.
Key Words: transportation planning • transportation finance • HOT lanes • congestion pricing • equity