Kenn Lowy (member of the "Traffic & Safety Committee" of CB2) has been telling me about a new plan by the city to reroute traffic going onto the Brooklyn Bridge. The plan is to make left turns from Tillary onto the bridge illegal (gee...don't most taxis use Tillary?) and reroute the traffic down Cadman Plaza West or down Jay Street. From Kenn's blog I get these illustrations of what they plan:

The basic change:

The expected (based on what?) reroute:

From the DOT I get this description of their plan:

Brooklyn Bridge Access, Brooklyn (June 2008)

Alright, so everyone who hasn't been asleep for the last forty years must have seen this one coming: Sheldon Silver, Democrat of Manhattan, Speaker of the Assembly, refused to allow the State Assembly an up-or-down vote on congestion pricing.

The New York Times:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s far-reaching plan to ease traffic in Manhattan died here on Monday in a closed conference room on the third floor of the Capitol.

Democratic members of the State Assembly held one final meeting to debate the merits of Mr. Bloomberg’s plan and found overwhelming and persistent opposition. The plan would have charged drivers $8 to enter a congestion zone in Manhattan south of 60th Street during peak hours.

Mr. Bloomberg and his supporters, including civic, labor and environmental organizations, viewed the proposal as a bold and essential step to help manage the city’s inexorable growth.

Now, here's where it gets interesting. If the proposal didn't have the necessary votes, it could have been let to the floor and died there. Sheldon Silver didn't allow it to a vote - in the Stalinist system of Albany, only the leaders of the respective chambers, not individual legislators, in practical terms have the ability to bring legislation to a vote - because he did not want it to pass.

And there is no district in all of New York that would have benefited more from congestion pricing than Mr. Silver's own.

In normal years, residents of Silver's 62nd AD really don't have much in the way of leverage over their too-powerful Assemblyman, which is why Silver has completely escaped accountability in his marbled office in Albany. This time, however, things are different: there's a primary challenger, Paul Newell.

If the powerless voters in the 62nd Assembly District want to have a representative for their interests in Albany, this year, they have a choice.

The New York Times informs that New York City will receive $354 million from the Federal government to implement the mayor's congestion pricing scheme. That's a drop in the bucket of our annual ten billion deficit vis-à-vis the Federal government - that being the difference between what New Yorkers pay and what gets spent here - but a step in the right direction.

The United States Department of Transportation announced today that it has allocated $354 million to help Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg finance his plan to reduce traffic in Manhattan by charging tolls to drivers entering the busiest parts of the borough.

The announcement, by Mary E. Peters, the secretary of transportation, is a major lift for the mayor, and is likely to increase pressure on legislative leaders who have balked at the plan to let the city move forward. Ms. Peters said that the city would receive $1.6 million initially, but that the State Legislature must assent to the plan within 90 days of convening — roughly by the end of March 2008 —before the city can receive the balance.

Leaving aside the disturbing idea that this plan requires action by the state legislature - never a good thing - the congestion pricing plan is good Progressive policy. The simple fact is that car ownership is heavily subsidized by the state over other forms of transportation, including mass transit, simply by the maintenance of the infrastructure that makes driving a car possible. It starts with the building and maintenance of roads, bridges, tunnels, and so on; should include the cost of police units that regulate traffic and investigate infractions of traffic rules; the vast amount of public space given over exclusively to cars, including most freeways, roads, and parking spaces; continues through the Department of Motor Vehicles; and needs to include the massive environmental and health costs associated with the automobile. In economic theory, the totality of public subsidies for automobiles is a classic market distortion.