On Apr 7, 2008, at 11:30 PM, Joseph Catron wrote:
> Fine and good. So why penalize it only in the city's wealthiest
> neighborhoods - and more specifically, by "outsiders" in those
> neighborhoods? Both you and Doug seem to be going out of your ways to
> duck this most obvious of questions.
They're the densest neighborhoods. Fifth Ave in the 90s, one of the richest neighborhoods in the world, was outside even the original congestion zone (below 86th St), and was well outside the revised one (below 60th St).
One of the reasons that opposition to this scheme is reactionary populism is that it involved the use of class warfare language by people who'd never otherwise subscribe to class warfare to oppose a fundamentally progressive plan - to internalize the cost of driving a car in densely trafficked areas and using the proceeds to promote transit and other environmentally friendly strategies. Raising the cost of driving is problematic in a lot of other parts of the USA because there's no alternative to driving. That's not true in Manhattan. The Albany hacks were pandering to a constituency that likes to spread its blubby ass on the seat of an SUV rather than mix with the masses in the subway.
Doug