Brian Benjamin: Hello, and welcome to this edition of Represent NYC on Neighborhood Network. I'm State senator Brian Benjamin. This may not come as much of a surprise that is the third most congested city in the world, in terms of traffic, and second worst in the . According to a 2017 analysis, New York drivers average 91 peak hours stuck in traffic last year, and New York drivers spent 13 percent of their time sitting in congestion, with 11 percent of that being attributed to daytime traffic.

Brian Benjamin: Some say one of the solutions to this problem is congestion pricing, but what exactly is it, and why is it being discussed? Here's a short video package with more information.

Speaker 2: The idea behind congestion pricing is to simply charge for use of our roads, so that we can spread out traffic, reduce traffic and raise revenue for our transit system.

Speaker 3: The part of congestion pricing that I object to is charging vehicles to go into certain parts of Manhattan, just for being in Manhattan.

Speaker 2: Sometimes when you have so much traffic congestion like we do here in New York city, it's a good idea to follow the model of many other cities around the world who have put a price on the use of those roads. In particular, in this case, if you want to enter the most congested part of the city, which is the central business district.

Speaker 3: Manhattan is no longer a business district, it's also a residential district. Everywhere where the congestion is being proposed, or has been proposed, is not only a major commercial place where people do business, but it's also a residential area, and this would also affect those residents who are living in Manhattan.

Speaker 2: If you really care about low income and middle income New Yorkers and helping them make this city more affordable, then you invest in the transit system and you don't worry about that very tiny fraction who may face a charge to drive into the most congested part of the city.

Speaker 3: Many of my constituents who live in Eastern Queens are no where near a subway line. There's miles and miles from the nearest subway line, and they're not necessarily on a bus line as well. So in order to get to midtown Manhattan from Eastern Queens, like Glen Oaks, like Belrose, where I represent, it often is an hour and a half to two hours to get into midtown Manhattan, whereas they took their car and drove, even with traffic, they could still make it within an hour.

Speaker 2: Only two percent, less than two percent of working poor who are driving around are going to be potentially facing a new charge to come into the central business direct. Speaker 3: Two percent doesn't sound like a lot but if those low income families are disproportionately affected and hurt by it, my argument to that is that is one, I think it's much larger than two percent and there are a lot of people that drive into Manhattan not necessarily everyday, but drive into Manhattan on a regular basis, whether it be two or three days a week or on weekends, and those are not counted in that statistic.

Speaker 2: I would just say to New Yorkers, we have a one in a lifetime opportunity to really do something transformative for the city of New York, and that is to reduce our chronic traffic congestion. Let's not waste that crisis, let's seize this moment to actually do something transformative for ourselves and for our kids and future generations.

Brian Benjamin: Today I'm joined by Veronica Vanter, principal of V-squared strategies, and MTA board member, and Kathy Wylde, president and CEO of the partnership for New York city. Thank you for coming.

Veronica Vanter: Thank you.

Brian Benjamin: So let's start. I want to start with you Kathy, if you don't mind. Can you talk a little bit about the history of congestion pricing, what exactly is it, and where did this concept come from?

Kathryn Wylde: So, the history of the cities of the world, the great world cities like New York, is one that in the 1970s, we were shrinking rapidly and we had lost a million people during that decade, we lost half our fortune 500 companies, we were hemorrhaging jobs. The good news is, we have recovered. The bad new is, our streets and our capacity to absorb a lot of people, including the transportation system, have not expanded at the same rate as our population and our economy.

Kathryn Wylde: So as a result, we have a real crunch. Part of that is traffic congestion, which costs us our productivity, slows everything down. We did an analysis in 2004, that said it cost us 13 billion dollars a year. People stuck in traffic, deliveries slowed down, people not able to get to their jobs in time. That was then. Today, we just revisited that study at the end of last year, it's now 20 billion a year in loses. So this is a real cost to our economy, traffic congestion. At the same time, the funding to support our transportation system, expanding and improving and modernizing to meet the needs is not there. So this is where we find ourselves, and congestion pricing has been in great world cities, a solution. And we're looking at that as a solution for New York.

Brian Benjamin: Sure. Veronica, talk a little bit about your background. You're a member of the MTA board. Talk a little bit about your background and your getting involve in the congestion pricing conversation. Veronica Vanter: Absolutely. Congestion pricing is a practice where goods or services are charged based on demand. So we are not unfamiliar with congestion pricing. We deal with congestion pricing when we book a flight. We deal with congestion pricing when we go on vacation and we're scheduling that vacation package. We deal with congestion pricing when we're going to dinner or we're going to a Broadway show. It's just being applied to our roadways, which are that good or that service that is in limited demand, is incredibly controversial. But we need to understand that it's a concept that we are familiar with and we employ every single day in our lives.

Veronica Vanter: So my background with this is, I came 11 years ago into the congestion pricing discussion from the advocacy perspective. I, until very recently, used to run a non-profit group called Tri-state Transportation Campaign. We were on the front lines along with Kathy's organization and many other civic and legislative partners who were talking about the benefits of congestion pricing, really saying that this is progressive transportation policy if all the proceeds are going toward transit, which benefits predominantly people of color, low income individuals, students, those who are mobility impaired. That is why it was important for us to elevate our voices and talk about this being progressive transportation policy, and not regressive.

Veronica Vanter: There are schools of data that have been published far longer than the 11 years that I've been engaged in this conversation, that discuss why this is progressive transportation policy. And I think that message continually is lost. The most recent discussion and debate around this during the state budget cycle has highlighted some of that data. But I think we need to be very clear, very real what the benefits are, and we need as many people to do that. Kathy's analysis and partnership for New York city's analysis was groundbreaking. It was the first time congestion in New York city was quantified. And it was essential to bringing the business community on board and really monetizing what the economic loss is to congestion in the city.

Veronica Vanter: But there's so many other elements to that. There's pedestrian fatalities associated with increased congestion. Our subways are in a state of emergency as declared by the government.

Kathryn Wylde: Environmental pollution is another one.

Veronica Vanter: Environmental pollution [crosstalk 00:08:36].

Kathryn Wylde: Public health, asthma in children. There's a whole series of things that you can relate to in terms of congestion. But it's just being stuck in traffic. New Yorkers have the longest commute, I guess today, the second longest commute, because of so much traffic. Even if you're on a bus, you're stuck in traffic. You have to figure out how to address this problem frontally. You've got to reduce the amount of cars on the streets, and then you can say okay, and how do we make up to those people that say, well how do I get to work? I don't have a subway near me. Kathryn Wylde: We've got to look at that in every instance across the five Burroughs and across the region, because this is a regional problem. A third of the workers in Manhattan are coming in from counties outside the five Burroughs. We've got to figure out how we're going to fill the transportation desert to provide people with reasonable public transit alternatives, and congestion pricing is part of the way we can pay for it. [crosstalk 00:09:39].

Veronica Vanter: And if I may just hone in on the progressive argument. So let me give you some district-specific data for your district.

Brian Benjamin: Sure.

Veronica Vanter: So in your senate district, 30th district, 3.1 percent of your district residence could be impacted by a congestion pricing charge. That means that 3.1 percent of your constituents are driving into the congestion pricing zone, the CBD, the central business [crosstalk 00:10:06] district. In your community, 69.3 percent of your constituents are relying overwhelmingly on transit to get around.

Veronica Vanter: So to say that this is a regressive tax or fee, one of the meeting social service organizations in this city, the Community Service Society recently did a report. They are supportive of congestion pricing. What they found is that two percent of the working poor would be impacted by a congested pricing charge. That's 5000 individuals. So for everyone one person who would pay a congestion pricing charge, 18 would benefit from the benefits invested, back in our transit system. Those are the sorts of numbers that we need to continue to talk about when we're talking about whether this is a regressive type of policy.

Brian Benjamin: Gotcha, alright. So let's jump into this. I'm asked all the time, "Do you support congestion pricing?", I always say, what does that mean? There's so many different components to this. We just passed, in the state budget, a surcharge on for hire vehicles. That's going to happen. What, in addition to that, is congestion pricing made of? Is it also value capture? Which one of you hopefully can explain. Is it also, we need cars from Long Island to get ... what comprises the totality of congestion pricing as it relates to solutions that you're looking for?

Kathryn Wylde: Well, number one, the for hire vehicle charge is really passed along to individual passengers, and often those are passengers who are carpooling or are several people riding in a for hire vehicle, a Lyft or an Uber or a Via. And that's not really going to solve our problem because the people are going to pay and we'll still have as many for hire vehicles running through the streets. So this is not a solution like congestion pricing. Congestion pricing would say, if you drive into the central business district in a private vehicle, whether it's a truck or a car, during certain hours, 'cause this can be timed, we now have the technology so you can say we'll price this, we won't charge on the weekends, we won't charge at night, and you can therefore use incentives in different ways. Kathryn Wylde: I was on the governors' Fix NYC panel which proposed the congestion pricing and the other remedies, and we talked about, for example, if you're a small business making multiple deliveries, or any business making multiple deliveries, there should be one charge a day rather than every time you come in and out of the district. So we try to look at the practical implications. If you created a charge, if you drove in south of 60th street during 7AM to 7PM, what would you have to charge to make a difference, to reduce congestion, number one, and two, how much revenues could you therefore generate for the system?

Kathryn Wylde: The final details of that have to be decided in terms of the final plan. We did some draft ideas but there is no final plan right now. There's got to be time for public comment. We had hoped, during this year's budget and legislative process, there would be those conversations. It turned out, this is an election year, it was too hot to handle, senator.

Brian Benjamin: Yes.

Kathryn Wylde: So I'm sure you would have done it if you were in charge. So we don't have a final plan at this point, there's lots of room for public comment and concern. The number that was used as a placeholder was about 11 dollars for a private car and about 25 dollars for a truck. And then we're going to look at tour buses, private buses, what was their contribution, and how do you create a formula that reduces congestion but at the same time keeps our economy growing?

Brian Benjamin: Gotcha.

Veronica Vanter: And I would add that there's schools of thought, and I'm of the school of thought that a congestion pricing plan really does have to have a [inaudible 00:14:28] which is what Kathy was explaining, 60th street and below, whatever that [inaudible 00:14:32] is. You're looking at, think of it very conceptually. You're looking at the areas of any area, we're looking at Manhattan as that area, an area of Manhattan that is the most congested.

Veronica Vanter: So no, congestion pricing is not value capture. Congestion pricing is again, a fixing of price based on demand for a good or a service. And our roadway space south of 60th street, and some would argue even a larger area than that is highly in demand. That is why we have such significant congestion.

Kathryn Wylde: And it's not going to grow. We aren't going to get more roads, in fact, it's been shrinking for the last ten years as we added bike lanes and bus lanes and pedestrian plazas in our streets. So we've had less and less and less room for vehicles, and as a result it's four miles an hour, the speed of traffic in Manhattan, and everybody is suffering from that and it's costing us 20 billion dollars a year, as a city. So what are we going to do about that is the question.

Kathryn Wylde: We think that the congestion pricing zone is a good plan, that it can be adapted. We understand that those people, the three to five percent of people who need to drive their car in for some reason, they're bringing a lot of equipment or their whatever, that we have to figure out how to make sure that they have either public transit options or were otherwise accommodating their needs, like I said, like one charge a day instead of every time they come in, whatever. Or that they have the option to come in at midnight and not have to pay.

Kathryn Wylde: All that can be built into a strategy, and the most productive cities are going to use this kind of method to manage traffic flow, or they're not going to continue to grow.

Veronica Vanter: And quite frankly, one key omission from what was passed by the state legislature is not a fixing of fee to personal vehicles. So yes, there's been a surge in vehicle miles driven by the for hire industry, one estimate is up to one billion more miles in New York city driven-

Brian Benjamin: Wow.

Veronica Vanter: -just since 2012. So yes, it's important to fix and include that group in this as the state legislature has done and the governor has done. But personal vehicles, the registrations have increased nine percent since 2012. What does that mean? More New York city residents are buying and owning cars. So that is increasing. So what we've done is, we're reducing congestion right now with this plan. One estimate is about three percent. So it's making it a little bit-

Kathryn Wylde: We would be, if we had the plan. We didn't get it.

Veronica Vanter: No, the existing [crosstalk 00:17:16], exactly, by someone named Charles [inaudible 00:17:18] who's been largely involved in this conversation. But what happens is, it's a little bit more desirable for someone with a personal vehicle now to say well, traffic, again that's a negligible decrease but it's a little bit more attractive for someone with a personal vehicle to now drive around Manhattan.

Veronica Vanter: So it really does need to be a holistic plan and approach, something that Kathy has talked about, something that many others have talked about, how are we addressing pedestrian safety, environmental pollution, economic stagnation, limited road space. So what has been put forward is indeed a good start. It has to be a more holistic approach.

Brian Benjamin: Can one of you explain what value capture is? 'Cause it's being thrown out there. It would be good if our viewers can hear what actually is value capture and how does it work.

Kathryn Wylde: I think the main point is, for years when we build a transportation project, basically we're borrowing public money or getting public grants from Washington or from Albany to pay for our transportation infrastructure. As we all know, Washington is spending a lot less. Albany is constrained, city resources are constrained, and if we look around the world at other cities that have built modern transportation systems, what they're doing is they're partnering with the private sector, they're figuring out how much value are we going to create, economic value, new taxes, new business activity, how much value are we going to create by creating a new Penn station? By re-zoning the area around it? How much value are we going to create, and can't we use some of that value to pay for the transportation improvement?

Kathryn Wylde: Because we're not going to get that value unless people can get in and out of there, and we have decent modern transportation. We're not going to get those benefits. So how are we going to do that? A good example, the one instance where we've done real value capture was the extension of the seven line to the far West side, so that Hudson Yards could be built and the far West side could develop. And anybody who goes, Manhattan is now titled to the West because there's so much development going on, thanks to that transportation investment of over 2 billion dollars. That is going to be paid for out of the proceeds, and the higher real estate taxes of the development of Hudson Yards.

Kathryn Wylde: That's an example. For the Second Avenue subway, the first phase, even though we're seeing a lot of increased economic activity, which there's evidence of around those subway stations, that's 100 percent paid for out of public funds. We're not getting any other benefit.

Brian Benjamin: Gotcha, fair enough.

Veronica Vanter: People simple want to live, employers, people and visitors want to live, work and visit areas that are concentrated near transit. So how do we monetize that preference?

Brian Benjamin: Right. So let's go back to the politics. So I have colleagues from Queen [crosstalk 00:20:32].

Veronica Vanter: You're in charge of that.

Brian Benjamin: I'm going to tell you some of the things that people said. I have colleagues in Queens and I have Colleagues in Long Island who have said, wait a second, you want to charge our residents for driving into the CBD, but all of the benefits of that are going to go not to us, they're going to go to people in Manhattan who are on the trains or Brooklyn on the trains. I have a colleague of mine, very good guy, said, "I live in Queens, we don't have any MTA access where I live. People are two fare zones, the buses are completely slow. How is this going to help me? All I know is my residents are going to have to pay to go into Manhattan, which is unfair".

Brian Benjamin: What is your response to people who feel like, why are we outsiders going to pay for, not we being me obviously, 'cause I'm part of Manhattan. But why are they being forced to pay for something that they're not getting any benefits from? What's your answer to that? Veronica Vanter: So I would say there's several answers. I'm going to focus on two. One is, a lot of those individuals have very valid claims. There are several areas throughout the five burrows, and particularly in the suburban areas that are also served by MTA, they're not well served by MTA. There are transit deserts, there are communities where people have to take two modes of transportation to get to a third mode. So those are very real.

Veronica Vanter: The way congestion pricing has been successful in other cities, is when they have implemented these transit improvements prior to the implementation of congestion pricing. When you look back at the 2007 Bloomberg proposal, that was on the table. How do we invest in our best network, for example, just to pull out one mode in advance of this charge being implemented. And it's certainly been part of the discussions of this most recent conversation, and that was answer number one.

Veronica Vanter: So we need to address those very valid concerns by making sure that infrastructure is in place, whether it's more bus lanes, whether it's more buses, quite frankly, more stops, faster service for communities that have those bus routes already. We need to really dive in and deliver those benefits. The second answer that I will give you is, for every driver that never steps foot on a mode of public transit, whether it's bus or train or subway or commuter rail, they benefit from making sure that those systems are well functioning, because when you don't have well functioning systems, those people migrate back to their cars, and then that creates more congestion on the road.

Veronica Vanter: So whether or not you are a daily transit user, you have a vested interest in ensuring that our transit system is well funded, and well functioning. Because if you have 8.6 million people daily between buses, commuter rail and subway, then shifting to their cars, if they can-

Brian Benjamin: If they can.

Veronica Vanter: -if they can, if they have that option, what is the commute going to be like for that person who relies on his or her car every single day?

Brian Benjamin: So let's go to another problem. Let's talk about my district for a second. One of the things I have heard is wait a second, if they do congestion pricing, guess what's going to happen? Everyone's going to drive into , into the , park their cars and get on already completely congested trains. It's going to be harder for us to get to work because our trains can't even handle the capacity now, let's not even get into some of the renovation issues that are going on that are creating even more capacity. What do I say to my residents as to why I should be in support of something that, to your point, we're getting charged first before we're getting the benefits. That's not like what's happening in other cities. What do I say? Kathryn Wylde: What we talked about as options are park and ride facilities so that you can create some places where people can come and park to get on transit, number one, and number two, residential parking permits that restrict parking on the residential streets and in neighborhoods that are contiguous to the district, where people would come drive in, whether it's downtown Brooklyn or whether it's Harlem, people would drive in and leave their cars. There's not space to leave their cars, for one thing. So that's, they can't leave them in the middle of the street.

Kathryn Wylde: But in fact, you could have a system of residential parking permits where people would have indication that they lived in that neighborhood and they were allowed to park there, which if you ever try and go to a beach in Long Island, you will find that that's an effective way of managing parking.

Brian Benjamin: Right.

Veronica Vanter: I think we have to break down human behavior too. Yeah, there's going to be people who probably do that. Is that going to be a significant number? Probably not. Just think, if you're a car driver, do you want to get a new car? Do you want to deal with congestion? Do you want to circle around for parking? Then hop on a congested subway, a congested bus? People don't want two steps in their commute. You hear it from the transit riding, you hear it from the driver, you hear it from the hybrid commuter. People don't want that, it's not part of our human nature, it complicates the commute.

Veronica Vanter: Again, yes there will be individuals but I think we need to keep these arguments in perspective. Let's talk about them but let's not over blow them.

Kathryn Wylde: And I think a lot of people, the arguments are, well if I have to get to a hospital that's in the congestion [crosstalk 00:25:42] there are all those kind of concerns. You can deal with those concerns. You have to look at them one by one and figure out, okay, how do we solve that problem?

Kathryn Wylde: What we really need next senator, is we need a process, a forum where we can get serious and have around the table the legislators who represent people that have legitimate concerns. But at the same time, that want to support a less congested, more productive city and want to support new funding sources for our mass transit. Get them around the table and identify the problems and tick through them one by one. We are not the first city to look at this issue. We can look at the experience of cities that have been doing this for 20 years.

Kathryn Wylde: So we have an opportunity, and we've got better technology than anybody had for the last 20 years. So today, you can be much more precise in how you're administering this district, and you can change it if it's not working and there's a problem. You can change the assumptions. So that's what we're asking for. We're saying, let's create a forum, the legislature did in the budget create a study commission to being to look at some of these issues, that's supposed to report in December. We would like to speed that up because every year it's another 20 billion of costs and it's another loss of revenues to that the MTA needs badly.

Kathryn Wylde: So we'd like to speed that up, we'd like to add considerations for where the transit deserts, where are the needs that we have to fill so that we can put that into the 2020 capital plan that the MTA has, and let's be honest about this, there's a lot of mistrust to the MTA in the legislature. That's been a problem. I am convinced that the new leadership that the governor has put in place that the MTA are absolutely supportive and understanding, that they have to hear and respond to these local concerns. And that's not been the case in the past, but it is the case today, and so this is an opportunity. And we really hope that the legislature will decide to take this seriously, hopefully to expand the role of the study commission so that they're really in a position to negotiate what this will look like.

Kathryn Wylde: So we're not entering Albany next year starting from zero, where we are today.

Brian Benjamin: Well that was great, thank you so much. This has been a great discussion, and I want to thank Kathy and Veronica for being here and sharing their insight. For Represent NYC, I'm New York state senator Brian Benjamin. Please contact my office at 212 222 7315 with any suggestions you may have about how to tackle this issue, or for general questions and comments. Thanks for watching Represent NYC on Manhattan Neighborhood Network.