Most congestion pricing opponents, however, pitch more modest alternatives. Many have suggested that stricter enforcement of the city's parking rules on double parking and "blocking the box" would reduce traffic by making more road capacity usable. Limiting municipal employees' use of parking permits could also discourage driving. Another set of proposals, advanced by Queens Assemblyman Rory Lancman, includes tax breaks to encourage telecommuting and car pooling. Still other ideas include lowering the subway fare during peak times, adjusting existing bridge and tunnel tolls according to traffic volume and imposing "congestion rationing," which would bar every car from the downtown zone on some days of the week based on license plate number.
But backers of the mayor's plan don't think any of those more limited approaches can achieve what pricing would. "If you don’t look at demand [for road space] and try to mitigate it one way or another, you're likely to always be playing catch-up," adds Polytechnic University professor John Falcocchio, who supports congestion pricing but is skeptical about the specifics of the mayor's plan. Adds Charles Komanoff, a transportation economist who endorses the Bloomberg proposal: "The mayor could have every double-parked car or illegally parked car airlifted out by helicopter. He could have traffic agents at every single intersection. The breathing room you get would very quickly be filled" by new traffic.
Even though the mayor's scheme could increase average city travel speed by a modest 0.6 miles per hour, City Hall projects that it would reduce traffic volume in the Manhattan zone by 6.3 percent, allowing downtown streets to operate closer to the capacities at which cars can navigate smoothly. That would reduce the delivery delays and other frustrations that cost city businesses an estimated $13 billion each year, as well as limit the amount of stop-and-go traffic that tends to cause the most car-related air quality problems. What's more, only congestion pricing promises to both ease traffic and raise revenue that—if today's promises are kept—would go to funding mass transit at a time when the MTA faces annual budget gaps as large as $1.8 billion.
Despite those attributes, the mayor's plan could follow earlier New York City tolling proposals to defeat (Bids to toll the free East River bridges came and went under mayors Lindsay, Koch, Dinkins and—in his first term—Bloomberg). If that happens, looking at alternatives will be the only option for transit advocates. They have said that today's alignment of available federal dollars to fund the needed technological and other improvements, a reformist governor in Albany and a can-do mayor in City Hall represent the best shot ever to win approval of congestion pricing in New York City. "If Bloomberg can't make this happen," says Komanoff, "you really have to wonder who is ever going to make this happen."
