I don't have a car. And I live on a journalist's salary. So I don't have some fancy summer home on some sylvan lake or in some verdant forest. But fortunately, I have very generous wealthy friends who do.
So that's how I found myself on a Coach USA bus out of Port Authority on Thursday night, stuck in outbound traffic and on the same bus on Sunday afternoon, stuck in inbound traffic. On the ride, I had plenty of time to stare at Coach USA's anti-congestion pricing propaganda.
I'm all for the commuter bus company being exempt from congestion pricing — which it is (see page 19) — but I was a bit infuriated that the company chose to whip up rider anger and encourage letter-writing to the governor with a fake complaint about a pennies-per-customer toll instead of focusing on the real threat to public transit: congestion!
So I used the handy QR code to write the governor myself, urging her to build bus lanes on every highway into and out of the city so that people who chose to not own a car and instead pick a sustainable mode of transportation can get around smoothly and quickly and not be stuck behind the people who are causing the congestion in the first place.
I'll let you know if the gridlock governor writes me back.
I wasn't the only one thinking about congestion pricing this weekend. The governor's abject failure to support transit riders was all over the news:
- Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella is still spouting lies about congestion pricing (i.e. that it won't reduce congestion but is simply a "money grab"), the Post reported, but lest we forget, Fossella's lawsuit against the toll has already been tossed — and rather brusquely.
- Meanwhile, though Nicole Gelinas is no fan of Hochul's proposal to exempt city workers from the congestion toll, she ended up drawing the same conclusion as Fossella. (NY Post)
- They both should probably talk to Bradley Tusk, the former Bloomberg official turned venture capitalist, who has lots of ideas for raising congestion pricing-levels of cash. (NYDN)
- Crain's and Streetsblog covered a pretty damn important court filing: several state lawmakers say that if they wanted to give the governor the power to stall creating congestion, they would have written it into the law. But they didn't. So there.
- Speaking of congestion pricing, MTA CEO Janno Lieber is already talking about the next capital renovation plan ... which, like the current one, isn't funded. (amNY)
- And our friends at Unpause NYC have a nice website up in hopes of unfreezing congestion pricing.
There was other news, too:
- The East River greenway is coming along. (Gothamist)
- A groom-to-be was killed by a reckless pickup truck driver on the Henry Hudson Parkway. (NYDN, NY Post)
- Not only was the Long Island mom who killed her son in a crash driving on drugs, but her license had previously been suspended 56 times (!) for her recklessness. (Newsday, NY Post)
- More e-car charging stations are coming, fortunately not on the sidewalk but in existing parking lots. (Bronx Times)
- Gothamist's take on the failed McGuinness Boulevard redesign was oddly in favor of a compromise that no one seems to like. Plus it's dangerous as fuck.
- Is the Cuomo Bridge unsafe? (LoHud)
- London's bike share system is a lot cheaper than ours. (Hell Gate)
- Cops arrested a cop for driving drunk. (NY Post)
- Sometimes it's nice to watch a nice hustle-and-bustle walk through Lower Manhattan and be reminded how great New York City's public spaces can be. (NY Post)
