At the Copenhagen Climate Summit, as he watched New York State legislaters grapple with budget cutbacks, Michael Bloomberg tried reviving a failed green initiative that could put money back into the local economy: congestion pricing.
“I don’t think congestion pricing, or those kind of things, are dead,” he said on CNBC this morning. Read More
Lieutenant Governor Richard Ravitch does not have a rosy view of the state’s finances.
Speaking Wednesday morning at N.Y.U., Mr. Ravitch, the state’s point man on the ongoing fiscal crisis, warned of tremendous new budget gaps in coming years, saying the state faces a deficit of about $25 billion over the next two-and-a-half years, about Read More
Michael Bloomberg's campaign office has released a "Mass Transit Reform Plan" that contains some obvious components, like reinstatement of express service on the F train, and some more ambitious-sounding ones, like "open road and gateless tolling" in "West and Northeast Queens, South and East Bronx, North Brooklyn, North Manhattan and the East shore Read More
It is amazing to me how the media can both create and resolve its own conflicts. On April 10 John Broder wrote a piece for The New York Times, “Obama, Who Vowed Rapid Action on Climate Change, Turns More Cautious.” In the story Broder asks, “Has the administration scaled back its global-warming goals, Read More
ALBANY—Michael Bloomberg and his top aides are here lobbying for education aid with U.F.T. President Randi Weingarten. They spoke to reporters on the Great Western Staircase about meetings with David Paterson, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith and Minority Leader Dean Skelos (Bloomberg said Assembly Minority Leader Jim Tedisco was "out of Read More
David Paterson explicitly came out in support of the Ravitch Commission’s recommendations to fund mass transit by taxing business payrolls and tolling the East River Bridges.
“We need a smarter, better infrastructure” and “we should implement the Ravitch Commission recommendations to improve an essential piece of our infrastructure, the M.T.A.,” Paterson said in Read More
Here’s Marty Markowitz at the press conference yesterday making the case that charging tolls on the East River bridges is essentially congestion pricing, which he opposed.
Many opponents of congestion pricing also oppose tolling the bridges, but not all.
Among the elected officials who came out at a press conference yesterday against the Ravitch Commission’s recommendation to raise revenue for the M.T.A. by tolling the East River bridges was Senator-elect Dan Squadron.
It’s interesting because while Squadron opposes tolling East River Bridges, he is in favor of congestion pricing.
Squadron, though a spokesman, Read More
After Sheldon Silver dropped the news that he’s open to reinstituting the commuter tax, Michael Bloomberg told reporters in City Hall that he himself is also in favor of bringing it back. Bloomberg stopped short of demanding Republican state lawmakers take action.
“I’ve always thought it was a very bad mistake to give up Read More
If we are to make this planet more sustainable, all of us–individuals, families, schools, nonprofits, and especially corporations–will need to change our behavior. This does not mean that we must live grim lives where we stay at home freezing in the dark. It does mean that we need to pay attention to the resources we Read More
