May Hurt Minority Neighborhoods
Congestion Pricing's Flaws

By BRANDON L. WARD

BRANDON L. WARD

When in a hole, the beginning of wisdom is to stop digging. According to the latest United Nations report on global warming, the rich industrialized societies of Europe, North America and Australia have done the greatest harm to the environment, as a result of industrialization, to cause global warming through greenhouse gas emissions.

The report details the effects of global warming, while highlighting the divisions between rich and poor countries as a result of climate change in the coming years.

Increased drought, crop failure, disease, extreme weather events and sea level rise are all likely to fall much more heavily on struggling populations in Africa, Asia and South America. Indeed an inconvenient truth of global warming is that the world's poor are its disproportionate victims.

Mayor's Summer Coup

For better or worse (I think for the better), Mayor Bloomberg has abandoned the political rhetoric of the global warming debate and is exercising his CEO authority to peddle a congestion pricing plan - which calls for imposing fees of $8 on cars and $21 on trucks entering Manhattan below 86th Street during the workday. Without straying into the politics of Albany, I could not ignore the Mayor's huffing and puffing, like an asthmatic who lost his inhaler, after lawmakers failed to approve his plan by July 16 - the Federal deadline for the city to secure $500 million in Federal grant monies. As he put it, they failed to read the mail explaining his plan and the Assembly Speaker, Sheldon Silver, failed to take the plan seriously.

Since then, however, the Mayor scored a summer coup by getting lawmakers to return to Albany; to read the mail and to vote on his plan; albeit a bastardized version. The good news for now is, NYC is still in the running for the Federal dollars.

As an incurable optimist, Mayor Bloomberg is bullish on the city's financial future - so much so that he is more than willing to add another fee to the quotidian concerns of working class New Yorkers. In fact, the city anticipates raising $380 million in revenue the first year of the three-year pilot. Still, for me, the trouble with imposing fees is that, at first, it fools people into thinking that they are paying to get more and better services.

Take the case of the MTA. Trains are shinier and cleaner. They hired a new CEO and broke ground for the 2nd Avenue subway line. However, God forbid Roger Toussaint should consider asking for pay raises for his members. Lately the talk coming out of the MTA is fare increase - like it or not.

Certainly as a successful businessman turned political visionary, Mayor Bloomberg thinks he can see what the average New Yorker has never seen: the future. And thinks he can know what no New Yorker has ever known - not only what is good to curb traffic but what is good for the environment.

Plan May Backfire

Unfortunately, even visionaries have blind spots. After all, from this observer's chair, close inspection of his congestion pricing plan revealed the ironies, the paradox and contradictions of political life for this CEO turned politician. For instance, paradoxically, it seems to this observer that the proposed congestion pricing plan would not prevent the reduction of  CO₂ polluting emissions in the neighborhoods above 86th Street and the outer boroughs. In other words, cleaning the air by unclogging the streets in the congestion zone has the potential backlash of increasing polluting emissions in other neighborhoods as a result of commuters clogging the air with CO₂ while searching for scarce parking. Bluntly speaking, it seems that the administration's plan for unclogging the air of CO₂ emissions is more of an unintended benefit of the congestion pricing plan rather than an intended plan to bring about environmental justice for minority communities besieged by increased asthma hospitalization rates that are four times the national average. Evidence of this is revealed in the fact that, according to environmental advocates, 80 percent of the city's solid waste is hauled through low-income communities like the South Bronx, Greenpoint-Williamsburg and Sunset Park in Brooklyn, as well as Southeast Queens.

Reasonable people can agree that it would be foolish for anyone to argue categorically against the merits of congestion pricing in New York City. In fact, due to the mounting concern over climate change, our dependency on Middle Eastern oil and skyrocketing gas prices, the political wind has shifted to plotting green as "an inconvenient truth."

Image vs. Reality

The fact is, one of the hard truths I have repeatedly talked about is the fact that the Bloomberg administration is no advertisement of the city's racial diversity. Indeed, no one should feign surprise that I wondered if there is a correlation between the images presented by some of the administration's green-peddlers and the collective mind-set of the administration. For instance, it seemed appropriate to the Mayor and some green-peddlers to invoke the image of a kid, of the racial minority variety, gasping for clean air on a respirator to secure a yes vote from state legislators representing districts in Brooklyn, Queens and The Bronx.

As it turns out, everyone with a beef conveniently invokes the images of blacks (for good or bad) or racial minorities to advance their cause. Mayor Bloomberg is using Ronaldo Martinez breathing through a hole in his throat and using a machine to speak in his anti-smoking ad campaign. Animal rights activist have been known to compare the lot of lab rats with that of lynching victims. Gay rights activists often compare their struggle to legalize gay marriage to the demands by blacks during the civil right movement. Perhaps we should be grateful. After all, invoking images of the injustices perpetrated against black people and poor communities is a tacit admission that we have suffered the worst human-rights abuses.

Thinking Hurts Mayor

Admirers of the Mayor have often attributed his mayoral successes to his easy-going management style. However, from this employee's chair, Mayor Bloomberg's leadership on congestion pricing brings to my mind the trouble I generally see with people of action, and specifically their imitators in a professional setting. It seems that they despise thinking of any sort because the more they think, the more their actions are beset by doubts and arriére-pensées: the more man thinks, the slower he moves. It seems as if thought uncovers the limitations of their plans. For example, the Assembly Speaker complained about the vagueness of the Mayor's plan. However, as these arguments tend to go, the solution to the problem falls back on the naysayers. In other words, no criticism is valid without an alternative plan. The bottom line: an uncritical acceptance of their plan is preferred. Having said that, it is worth noting that the response of the Mayor to lawmakers, specifically the "minority" members, critical of his plan was to characterize them as lacking "guts."

Unfortunately, my sense is that most New Yorkers will not be driving less to protect the environment from CO₂ emissions; more likely they will drive less as a reaction to gasoline prices and the congestion-pricing fee.

Brandon L. Ward is president of the New York City Municipal Chapter of Blacks in Government, an employee advocacy group. He is a Mechanical Engineer with the Department of Transportation. He can be reached at brandonward@nycbig.com.