I have never been so pissed off in my life. Let me rephrase that. I have never been so pissed on in my life. The introduction of Bloomberg’s money grab stated clearly that 50% of then new driving tax will be paid by people who live in the city.
No govornment body seems to be able to do a single constructive thing about green house gases or emissions that will upset business but one clown of a mayor comes on TV to say "I’m gonna wack everybody that drives into Manhattan for eight bucks" and everybody is so busy clapping their hands that nobody seems to notice it’s coming from the mayor who suspended the recycle program and gave us Sunday parking meters.
Now this proposed fee, known as congestion pricing, is applauded by environmentalists and alternative transportation groups on one side as the media with the business leaders stand on the other side clapping their hands. Everybody is so jazzed about a new tax imposed on the people who already pay the highest tax in the nation, that nobody is taking a close enough look at it to realize that this is just another New York City bureaucracy in the making, that will come to no good!
I read a diary here at Daily Kos that was in favor of adding a driving tax. The comments that followed believed that there was a solution in Bloomberg’s plan. Without going into the elitist side of this plot or the fact that it will be abused to the max by this money grubbing city, let me offer an insiders view. Or to put it more bluntly, take a walk in my moccasins.
Of course only New York, the center of "capitalism run amok" could come up with a brand new sin tax. The workers that drive in from the boroughs; already dealing with as much as thirty bucks for parking may not be the sinners in this scenario. As a very suspicious New Yorker I have many reasons to list why I don’t think Bloomberg’s motivation are pure.
For a realistic gauge of the sincerity of this new congestion pricing ploy, you just have to look at one of the several major differences between Bloomberg’s scheme and The London program. London’s revenue from their driving tax is guaranteed by law to go toward mass transit. In an attempt to mimic that program, New York left that part out and we have only Bloomberg’s word that a city that has refused to upgrade mass transit in any way shape or form will start doing the right thing once the car commuters start paying for it.
Just like when the city and state promised revenue would go to education when resistance to the Lotto was strongest, this is another lie. This extra spending will be to feed the worst runaway bureaucracy in the nation. In this city that is already the highest taxed large city in the nation, 1997 figures put city employees at 15 percent of the population.
I can’t count how many times I paid a tax increase to get the potholes fixed and there still there! Now the mayor wants to charge me so instead of breaking my axles, I'll only be able to afford breaking my ankles on his streets. The streets that I pay all of those taxes to maintain that are never maintained will be one big toll road for the taxpayers.
We hear talk about upgrading the transit system that they never upgraded and we are suppose to be stupid enough not to remember all of the previous goal oriented tax increases. As a native New Yorker who has watched this city deliberately avoid any sort of transit upgrade since World War II and actually take steps to disable the mass transit system, I’m quite skeptical. It would be nice to wish this was about anything more than money for a wasteful city but Bloomberg is just full of shit.
You will never hear the opinion of the people who live in the Boroughs because this is New York and we just don’t matter. The city newspapers are pretending that people are in favor of this new tax. This city that can never agree on any legislature that may perform some service goes into fast-track mode once a new and daring tax is invented. Bloomberg could receive hate mail from every single person living in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens and this will still go through.
Did you ever hear those jokes about three buses arriving at the same time? It’s not so funny! This photo was shot at the 231th Street station of the Number One train. It is all to common for a Bronxite to wait 45 minutes fot the connecting bus. Years back there were dispaches standing at key stations to prevent the ganging up of buses. You don’t see those guys anymore.
Then there’s the fact that the congestion in New York doesn’t come anywhere near the traffic jams in London but the Mayor of London came up with a few exemptions that were never mentioned in Bloomberg’s speech. There is no fee in London for motorcycles, alternate fuel and electric vehicles.
A driving tax makes sense in a very congested London where the government has maintained and upgraded the transit system. Here in New York where the government has just ignored mass transit, where the subways and commuter rails are filled beyond capacity, there may just be another motive.
To Bloomberg the real issue is probably all of those people from the Boroughs driving across those free bridges. One of the really smelly parts of this is the fact that bridge tolls will be deducted from the exorbitant fee.
This ploy is probably because the lawmakers up in Albany have crushed anything that smells like a commuter tax in the past. Bloomberg figures correctly that state legislators won’t care less about the people in the boroughs. But the fact is that with bridge tolls deducted, everybody that can drive to work without paying a toll will pay the largest tax with the new Manhattan driving fee!
Historically the fact that workers from the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens can drive across free bridges had driven these Republican Mayors crazy. They lose sleep over it and whine about in public. They are like Mafia Dons who are pissed off because they aren’t getting their taste.
Just the people in the Bronx Brooklyn and Queens, who pay for those streets and avenues will get the full screw from Bloomberg. Just the overworked and overtaxed workers will feel the full brunt of this driving tax. The suburbanites get over big time and the Manhattanites don’t have to look at middle class workers in automobiles. The most annoying part of this plot is that it will be free for the Republican base on Staten Island because they have very expensive bridge tolls when they drive to work.
As a New Yorker, a person who pays the highest tax in the nation then has to drive to work because this foul city will not take an interest in a perfectly good transit system, adding $8.00 to my commute won’t get me off the road. Taking 45 minutes off the 90 minute 12 mile commute will.
Back in March of 2006, I wrote a diary on my commute. The title was A "Bronx Cheer" for New York City;
Usually when I take a vacation from the Big Apple, the first thing I notice is there aren't that many cops on the street. The second thing that comes to me is the fact that more useful public services are abundant. The little things like public toilets.
Yesterday was my first day back to work from a well deserved sabbatical. By the time I got to work, I needed a vacation. One twelve mile ride on public transit and I almost blew a gasket.
The dysfunctional method by which the MTA runs things is bad enough. Consider the fact that it takes 90 minutes to travel twelve miles. That is not a "crow flies" measurement; it is the actual odometer reading from a car ride. It takes me about fifteen minutes to drive in, twenty-five on the bicycle and when I was younger I could almost match the MTA's speed by jogging to work.
If you read the rest of that diary, you see why the so called lazy people for the boroughs drive instead of taking mass transit.
Did you know that the switching system on the New York Subway is original equipment? This city will gladly copy London’s surcharge but they would never do anything to improve service. London has upgraded the system so passengers can see a read out that explains when the next train will be pulling into the station. The advanced computerized system also makes going around disabled trains possible. In New York a breakdown usually stops the entire subway line.
The city of New York hasn’t even taken the simple measure of creating up and down stairs or turnstiles designated for entrance and exits, which is so common on many transit systems. They would rather New Yorkers constantly bump into each other rather than perform any sort of service up grade.
Did you know that there have been no improvements or upgrades to make traveling out to the Boroughs practical? Not a single new track has been built in the past fifty years. Two lines have been torn down though. Both the lines along Webster Ave. in the Bronx and Myrtle Ave. in Brooklyn were demolished. There was a White Elephant built from the Howard Beach Station of the A Train but that is really about people flying in and out of New York and is only a practical means of getting to long term parking. The city has been getting positive press for restarting the Second Avenue Subway the city has been building since the 1920’s but that only to service Manhattanites on the Upper West Side.
Did you know that New York Closed down almost all of the subway bathrooms in the 1970’s and has never reopened them. With an aging population and commutes from the boroughs often taking two hours, you might call the people running this city a bunch of scumbags.
While there are many solutions, New York refuses to address any of them. The end of each subway line, many convenient to major thruways, should have large municipal parking lots but they don’t. There is plenty of available space on the outer edges of the city but they can’t be bothered. Here’s a no brainer. At 57th Street and the Hudson River, right where the elevated highway ends because it fell down due to lack of maintenance, the city should have places a ten thousand car parking lot and serviced it with shuttle buses. The list could go on and on but really all this city will ever do is come up with new taxes and throw the money away.
Did you ever wonder what the NYPD does to clear up delays after a fender bender? I wrote a comment in Open Thread with photographic evidence.
A good way to clear up congestion in this city would be to pull this poor lady’s car and the cop car that smashed into her off the road so traffic can get moving again but they just don’t give a shit.
It is almost impossible to explain the theft of service and information by this cities government. People just don’t believe that 40 first responders show up to a fender bender and close down a major road, causing a traffic jam in three boroughs and two states.
Did you know that New York still has not installed illuminated signs that inform drivers of congestion ahead so drivers can save time and not waste gas in traffic jams? There were illuminated signs installed on key highways and at toll booths but the city didn’t want to go to the expense of processing information. Now those signs have the same message twenty-four hours a day. "If you see something, say something."
When I explain New York City Government to an outsider I usually say "When I was a little boy, there were men cleaning the sidewalks with garbage cans on wheels. Then one day they all just disappeared. The jobs were filled with new sanitation employees. Instead of cleaning the sidewalks, right after the automatic street sweepers drive down the block and spray garbage onto the sidewalk, the new Sanitation Inspectors would issue summons for a dirty sidewalk to the property owners." That’s New York in a nutshell. The city payroll has expanded greatly over the years as services were removed the people who were paid for performing a service have mostly been replace by new fangled authorities whose sole purpose is busting New Yorker’s chops.
Any opportunity to create a money generating agency has been done very efficiently while no service can be preformed. That is why there is an army of tow trucks trolling the streets looking for a car that is fourteen feet from a fire hydrant. It’s $400 to get your car back. That is why there is an army of traffic cops walking the streets. The minimum parking ticket is $105.
And all of these cameras being placed on New York streets will also become another bureaucracy dedicated to grabbing more money from the people who pay the highest taxes in the nation. That’s all it’s about! The mayor of Sunday parking meters and suspended recycle programs does not care about New Yorkers. If he did, he would leave us enough money to eat dinner.
Just another new sector of city government whose sole purpose is to soak New Yorkers who have so little left! The $21 fee for the trucks will make our lunch more expensive and the Eight Bucks will take groceries of the table at home.
There are good reasons for a new tax that creates a greener city. In most any city in the nation it would be commendable. In New York where the people are already way overtaxed and the city has done absolutely nothing to improve the mass transit system, where the mayor won’t even commit the funds to mass transit, it is obviously a commuter tax created to pay for all of those extra cops and bureaucrats in an economic downturn.