NYC Councilmember David Yassky Opines on Failure, Prospects of Bloomberg's Congestion Pricing Plan

A month ago, the New York Observer began an article on congestion pricing with: "Congestion pricing, for all practical purposes, died this week. But Councilman David Yassky hasn't lost faith." Why, if that is true, haven't you lost the "faith"?

The Observer was opining that New York City was not going to adopt a congestion pricing plan. They were plainly correct that we're not going to adopt it right away. But I continue to think that sooner or later, we're going to have to try something like what Mayor Bloomberg proposed. It could even be in the next year or so. Here in New York, congestion pricing would require approval by our State Legislature, but they didn't vote on it. They declined to do so by a certain deadline. The reason they didn't vote was that the legislative leaders said that it was clear that it would lose if a vote were taken. This is just the beginning of the debate and discussion. As time goes by and more and more legislators are able to really dig in and think it through, they'll decide that it is in the public interest.

Elaborate on what legislators will be considering when they "think it through." What, for you, are the pros and cons of Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan for New York City?

I am glad you asked for the pros and cons, because the first thing to do is to be realistic with the public and ourselves. There are pros as well as cons; this is not something where all the arguments are on one side of the ledger. The pros are threefold. Number one, if you reduce the number of vehicle miles traveled in New York City in the core business district of Manhattan, traffic will flow better. That is good for business; it is good for the traveling businessperson who needs to take a cab across midtown Manhattan; it is good for the small businessperson who relies on deliveries. (Businesses in Manhattan have to pay a premium to get delivery by truck because it is so difficult to get around.)

Number two, it is good for the environment. Fewer cars traveling in Manhattan means fewer auto emissions. That's good in a city where one in every eight kids has asthma. The EPA has flunked New York City every year since it began testing air quality.

Number three is that is generates a significant amount of funding for mass transit. New Yorkers rely primarily on mass transit. This debate is about traffic, but far more New Yorkers take the subways and buses each day than drive. We're operating with a subway infrastructure and a subway system that was laid out 100 years ago, where buses-in part due to traffic and in part due to the fact that we don't have as many as we should-are too infrequent and too slow. The $400-500 million a year that congestion pricing could generate-depending on what the fees are set at and how much the operational costs are-would pay for very significant expansions in our mass transit system.

The cons are that individual New Yorkers would have to pay to drive into midtown Manhattan-people who would need to do that because they really have no plausible alternative for getting into work or folks who are coming in to visit the doctor or visit relatives. The charge would be a burden on them. There would be some people for whom the charge would be costly enough that they would feel like they can't do it. There is no question that that is a cost.

What was Mayor's Bloomberg's goal? Isn't it increasingly clear from polls that voters will perceive any congestion charge that doesn't change travel behavior as a "tax grab" rather than a transit solution?

Exactly. The goal is to change behavior, to encourage some percentage of drivers to get out of their cars and onto the bus and subways. You don't need to reduce the number of cars coming in dramatically to have a dramatic impact on traffic flow. Every traffic model shows you that even a five percent reduction on the amount of cars coming in will increase the speed of traffic substantially. That's an achievable goal.

The New York Observer quoted you saying: "We can't stay the economic capital of the world if it takes you an hour to get 10 blocks." Is New York City approaching permanent gridlock?

I absolutely fear that we are. The numbers show it in consistent reductions in traffic speed. We've been able to offset that somewhat with some innovative traffic management policies in midtown. Our transportation department is trying a series of "no-turn" streets, which have had some positive impact. But I do fear that we're approaching permanent gridlock and we need an aggressive policy to prevent that.

London's mayoral election-and Ken Livingston's defeat last month- is still being examined for political meaning. Mayor Livingstone had been a champion of congestion pricing, and his defeat raised the prospect that public support had diminished for such public policies. Was Mayor Livingston's defeat important to Mayor Bloomberg, you, and others, who have supported congestion pricing as a mitigation solution for New York's gridlock and climate change challenges?

I have talked to a number of London political folks, primarily people who come here to work for one reason or another. They say, for the most part, that congestion pricing has proved popular there. Universally popular-of course not-but in the main, popular. I believe the plan is a good one that will prove to have positive effects. If it were implemented, voters would see that, and rather than punish political supporters, they would reward them.

The New York Daily News last week included an article headlined "The Price of Folly," blaming the miserable situation of NYC's subways, buses, and suburban rail lines on Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. Do you lay the blame there? If, in a few years' time, this plan could come back, what would be the change in circumstance that could lead to a change of votes in the Assembly?

First of all, no, I don't blame the Assembly Speaker. The truth is that the votes weren't there among the assemblymembers. It wasn't that the Speaker was blocking it-the votes just weren't there among the state legislators. What will change that? Number one, if the state legislators only focused on this issue for the last month or so before the vote-a lot of people didn't think it would pass through the City Council, so they didn't focus. We all have to budget our time and deal with what we have to deal with. A lot of the state legislators figured, "I'll worry about this when it gets through the council, so then I know it is really performing." This is a big, complicated, and, in some ways, dramatic idea. I'm not surprised if it takes awhile for people to get comfortable with it. If they weigh the pros and cons, more and more state legislators will decide that this is a good idea.

The impetus to think it through will arise even more with our budget crunch. The reality is that the state government has produced a budget that most impartial observers think will prove unsustainable; there won't be the level of revenue that the state expects. That means that everything, including state funding for mass transit, will be under pressure. I think that some of the state leaders will look to revive congestion pricing as a way to keep funding the mass transit work that we need.

Last month, The Planning Report printed an interview with Robert Yaro of New York's Regional Plan Association. He contends infrastructure planning must be done at the regional level. Do you agree?

Our biggest single failure here in city and state government for the last decade, if not more, has been the failure to deal with infrastructure. We've had ten, if not more, major projects that had wide support but that simply haven't gotten done. The problem is that we need a governor-because that is what it will take-to say, "Yes, there are 10-14 important projects that I support. But here are the two or three that we are absolutely going to do." I am talking about things like the so-called Second Avenue Subway Line, a major renovation of one of our major rail hubs (Penn Station, below Madison Square Garden), proposals to enable people to take the subway from midtown Manhattan and downtown Manhattan directly to the airports, and a proposal to enable commuters to go from Long Island directly to the east side of Manhattan. Like I said, these are all good projects, but realistically, we have to pick the two or three that we really can do and do them.

Your environmental record on the City Council has been lauded in New York. Please share some highlights with our readers.

We really are blazing a trail in the city on environmental matters. Five years ago, when we were talking about the environment, no one thought it was urgent. The whole context is different now. For example, we passed a law here that is turning all our taxis-and in New York City we have 13,000 taxicabs-into gas-electric hybrids. They are being phased in as the old taxis are retired. By 2012, every taxicab will be a high-fuel-efficiency hybrid. That means going from 13 miles per gallon, which is what the cabs get now, to 35 or more. That's huge.

We're really pioneering the use of biofuel for heat. There is a lot of debate in the environmental community now about how to do biofuels right so that it is an environmental win. But when you are talking about heating fuel-not for vehicle fuel-and when you are talking about soy- or palm-based biofuels, there is no question that it's an environmental win. The heating fuel that the city itself buys is 30 percent biofuel. That's for public housing and schools, so that is a lot of fuel.

We're starting to grapple with this. The reality is that we didn't get into the environmental mess we are in in one fell swoop, and we're not going to get out of it in one fell swoop. We have to do it piece by piece by piece. What we are doing here in New York are important pieces.

The League of Conservation Voters endorsed you in your last campaign because of your Waterfront Planning Act. What were your goals for that piece of legislation?

We have started implementing that proposal, which was a comprehensive revitalization of the city's waterfront, to accomplish four goals: housing, recreation, transportation, and job creation. We're doing all of those. We're building two very significant waterfront parks-one in Manhattan and one in Brooklyn-which will open up what had been completely closed-off waterfront. In North Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, we have taken empty factories and warehouses that were literally falling down and are redeveloping them into housing that includes 20 percent affordable housing. We are instituting new ferry lines that will take advantage of our natural highways-the waterways.

Lastly, we are reinvesting in our port. We still have a container port in Brooklyn and one in Howland Hook. We're taking parts of the waterfront, like in Sunset Park Brooklyn, where there is still a small but hardy manufacturing base, and protecting them with zoning that will allow people to invest and know that they can build businesses that will be there for awhile. That's the plan, and I feel like we've made quite a bit of progress.

And when we talk in a years' time, will you be city comptroller?

That is where I expect to be in January 2010.