Assembly Member Brodsky's eleventh-hour traffic plan would forgo $354 million in federal up-front transit funding and only generate a fraction of the annual revenue of congestion pricing. This plan also falls down on reducing traffic congestion. By adding $4 to taxi trips while not charging trucks or private motorists a dime, congestion in and outside the zone will only worsen, continuing to cripple our health and economy. The Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission, which the State Legislature appointed and of which Mr. Brodsky was a member concluded that improving enforcement and cleaning up parking are compliments, not substitutes, of congestion pricing.

Unlike the congestion pricing plan proposed by the Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission, this latest set of taxi and parking alternative does nothing to ease the traffic burden outside of the Central Business District. Congestion pricing promises to reduce the worst traffic congestion in West Queens (39%), Northwest Brooklyn (22%) and Upper Manhattan (21%).

"The good news is that Assembly Member Brodsky has finally let go of his license plate rationing scheme," says Paul Steely White, Executive Director of Transportation Alternatives. "The bad news is that this sketch of a plan continues in the same vein: a half-baked distraction that does nothing to reduce unnecessary driving and little to improve public transit."