The Money's There

Mayor Mike Bloomberg's congestion pricing tax may have been killed by the legislature, but that doesn't mean that he's given up on the idea of raising hundreds of millions of dollars every year by taxing everyone coming into Manhattan across the previously free bridges and tacking on additional tolls on the already existing tolled bridges and tunnels.

His folks are busy trying to come up with a new scheme.

I have a much better idea. Take the $1.2 billion collected via the 1% sales and use tax surcharge previously scheduled to sunset July 1, 2008 because the MAC debt has been retired and make it a dedicated revenue stream for transportation projects. However, one should not allow the MTA to control the money directly as the MTA has shown that they are completely incapable of managing the finances and capital construction projects that are already on their agenda.

Of course, Bloomberg doesn't want to do that since the $1.2 billion collected annually via that sales tax helps him with general revenues. However, if he were truly serious about reducing congestion in the city, this is the best way to accomplish it - by dedicating revenues to assist in the construction of much needed and hopelessly late projects like the Second Avenue Subway and the 7 line extensions, among others.

The billions collected via the 1% sales tax could go a long way to reducing congestion around the city if Bloomberg chose to devote so much of that amount each year as dedicated to congestion reduction initiatives, including bus rapid transit, purchases of new buses and subways to increase capacity, and the infrastructure projects that are so delayed that few may live to see them completed (the second avenue line has been proposed since the 1940s).