47 years old? Where have the years gone?

XXOO, Esther

For example, by charging all commercial vehicles $21 to enter the zone, it means everyone who services me will pay more and the cost of living for me and everyone else who lives within the zone will rise. Every service and every vendor that serves me will be paying substantially more to make deliveries, and this means there will be a dramatic increase in the cost of living for all residents within the “congestion” zone. Every time I go out to buy a loaf of bread or have a delivery the cost to the delivery drives up the cost of living—perhaps significantly.

NYC must be very careful that dramatic increases in entry to the zone do not make us less competitive so that instead of stimulating business it stiffles business with higher costs of living and doing business.

Next, I work outside NYC, so while I am leaving the area for most of the day you are charging me $8.00 a day when I return home just before 6:00! You could easily say, “Well, leave before 6:00 AM and return back after 6:00 PM”. So to avoid the tax, I would have work a 14 hour day, every day. What needs to be done is a REVERSE TAX for residents within the area to encourage them to leave the area by car in the day time, and help defray the higher cost of living this tax imposes on every component of the service community.

Yes, A REVERSE TAX, or a TAX CREDIT is necessary for residents within the area!

Another approach is to give residents time to leave and get back in a span of say a 9 hour day. From 8:00 to 5:00, rather than 6:00 to 6:00.

While I am not in the theater business, or the convention business, both of these industries depend on out of area patrons. While I did not park a car the last time I went to the Javits Convention Center, I observed the lack of adequate parking for out of town guests results in a mind blowing $50.00/day parking fee for visiting a convention for 3 or 4 hours! With Congestion Pricing, it will be $58.00! Do you think this is good for business?

So it seems that Congestion Pricing dictates better mass transit within the zone. Where is the subway to the Javits Convention Center? Oh, did you not notice Gov. Spitzer wants to spend $4 billion EXPANDING the Javits Convention Center. An expansion without adequate delivery or parking space! An expansion that assumes the cost of going to and being at the Convention Center is open ended, with a cost per square foot of over $7,000 which is many times the nearest competitor in any rival city. Congesiton Pricing will add to the internal costs making participation at the Convention Center so high it will encourage conventions to move to other cities!

So, Ms. Sadik-Khan, the idea of Congestion Pricing is good, but the devil is in the details. The original designers of the Javit’s Convention Center won an award for not sweating the transportation details. Let’s hope you have some answers so you to not mushroom the costs for residents within the area.

Or, here is another idea. If you insist in sticking it to everyone who drives into the Congestion zone, why not go right ahead and do that, and simulaneously give residents within this area free Metro Cards to encourage them to use mass transit?

Sincerely,

Geoffrey Kovall