New York City will soon have a new congestion pricing program. At peak hours, it will cost $15 to enter lower Manhattan by car. Naturally lots of people don't like this, so just as naturally they're suing over it. And naturally naturally, they're suing over allegedly insufficient environmental review:
In court papers, they have challenged the agency’s “decision to rubber-stamp the environmental review phase” of the tolling program based on its “inexplicable finding” that there will be no significant effects, according to court filings.
....Six lawsuits, including New Jersey’s, have been brought against the program in local federal courts. The mayor of Fort Lee, N.J., Mark J. Sokolich, has filed a related lawsuit.
And four additional lawsuits have been brought in New York: one by Ed Day, the Rockland County executive; one by the United Federation of Teachers and Vito Fossella, the Staten Island borough president; and two by separate groups of city residents.
There has to be a way to find some reasonable middle ground on environmental review. Everyone agrees that it's a good concept, but it's also broken. Cities and developers with projects in mind spend years producing thousand page EIRs that might as well get tossed in the trash as soon as they're done. Regardless of how good or bad they are, some well-heeled person or group who objects to a project will claim that the environmental review is inadequate. The fact that judges frequently uphold them suggests that the standards for review are simply too strict.
This all goes under the umbrella rubric of "permitting reform," which gets a lot of attention these days but not much action. This is unfortunate, since the US could use a strong dose of common sense injected into the building process.
Joe Manchin pushed a permit reform bill that died in the Senate. The bill was far from perfect but had some good (and some less desirable) elements. The paradox both Democrats and Republicans agree that permitting reform is desirable, perhaps necessary: however, there is limited agreement on the details of what reform might look like.
Absent some broad based permit reform, items such as an updated national electrical grid will be near impossible/or be a painfully long permitting process: hundreds, perhaps thousands of local municipalities must individually agree, may ask for unique accommodations, may even desire to kill the broad project.
Basically, without aggressive permitting reform, much of the desired US Green Transition is near impossible.
Precisely
"Basically, without aggressive permitting reform, much of the desired US Green Transition is near impossible."
RE connexions, required grid (distribution and transmission) expansions and upgrades will not be timely causing faillures (up to blackouts) and risking long-term damage to such transition credibility.
Massive streamling - although this will gore many Green Lefty sacred Oxes is the sole way.
Core to the problem, the particularly although not uniquely Left do-good fraction who load every possible concern onto every action generating analysis-paralysis, making the Perfect the enemy of the Good.
Up next: Where's your EIR for that transit fare increase?
I work in transit. There already is an onerous review process called Title VI that requires transit providers that receive federal funds (which is to say 99+% of them) to analyze how any service or fare change impacts riders and whether any negative impacts are disproportionately borne by various minority groups and the poor in general. If it finds that minorities or the poor bear too much of the burden, the transit provider has to mitigate it (usually by cutting service in whiter areas to offset it) or cancel it altogether. And then of course if anything physical is built, from a station to a bus shelter, an EIR needs to be done too. So in effect this means that it’s easier for a transit provider to cease existing altogether - everybody is equally impacted! - than it is to change service or fares. You can google Title VI reforms and find plenty online, but this is a big reason why transit service seems set in stone in many places: routes are rarely updated for new travel patterns or destinations, because Title VI analysis is expensive.
I was eventually going to make the point that the purpose of public transportation should cause it to be free, paid by taxes. Can't imagine a better way to improve emissions right now.
That is a shit "point" as there is more than enough global case study that 'free' public transit results in under-investment and collapse. It is typical Left innumeracy however.
I don't see a link to any of these "more than enough global case stud[ies]" in your comment.
Put up or shut up.
I can show you explicit data showing how rising fares slashes ridership and takes years to recover. Shall we compare?
The assumption has to be that fewer cars is better for the environment. If I were a judge, I'd toss these lawsuits posthaste.
It's probably more along the lines of: Less idling = less emissions.
It will push a lot of traffic from demographically white areas into non-white areas. Yet, somehow it is very progressive?
It also will provide more funds (all that toll money) to transit for the entire city so that non-white areas get more frequent service. That is a benefit, especially for the carless (of which non-white people make up a majority in most urbanized areas).
And pollution generated in Manhattan’s gridlocked intersections does drift into the outer boroughs too. So the non-white people there will have fewer lung problems.
Gotta look at the whole picture before simply concluding “more traffic in outer boroughs = bad.” And if the concern still is for outer borough residents I’m sure NYC would be cool with congestion charging at the city limits too. Eventually if you draw the cordon big enough you do get non-white drivers inside it enjoying traffic reduced roads.
Also, even if it ultimately isn’t “progressive,” it is democratic. The citizens of New York could’ve voted against the panoply of city and state politicians implementing this or allowing it to be implemented. The majority chose not to over many elections, and the principle of majority rule is cited in plenty of other places to justify policies disapproved of by lots of “concerned people” who don’t happen to actually live there. Why do you hate democracy and self-governance?
I don't hate democracy and I think you make a very good point there. Time will tell whether people remember that. I bet they won't.
In days of old, when people weren't adding to large inventories of unresolved dilemmas, they were resolving dilemmas in difficult but successful face-to-face conversations. Now, it seems like we just add to the inventory.
So, what's the alternative? One great example is the "Ukrainian Boss" from Boston. The description is in the below podcast between 20 & 26 minutes:
https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/passion-isnt-enough/
It's worth listening to the whole podcast if you have the time.
The Trash?!? Come now Kevin, shirley one would recycle those pages…
Surge pricing is unmitigated evil. I hope the lawsuits fucking break them and whoever had this idea gets monkey pox.
Haha. Best idea ever. Spend anytime in Mid Town Manhattan? Can barely move.
Please. At midnight, when roads are mostly empty, one extra car doesn't cause any harm or delay to anybody. But at rush hour, when roads are packed, one extra car causes delay for everyone.
Surge pricing on traffic is a straightforward way to disincentivize people from making traffic jams worse.
Surge pricing is unmitigated evil.
Yes. I definitely think it's a sin that a condo in Telluride costs more to rent at the peak of ski season than during the second week of June. That should be illegal!
/s
If they don't want to exempt more stuff or weaken the law itself, then they really need the equivalent of an Anti-SLAPP hearing before allowing the cases to proceed. Basically a quick ruling that determines whether this is even worth allowing a dispute over, or whether it's an obvious bad faith attempt to engage in obstructionism and mounting legal costs to kill a project.
Loser Pays Double Legal Fees would help as well, but be a harder lift.