“We’re talking about a 28-county region, we have to model the impacts on
traffic all the way down to close to the suburbs of Philadelphia.
That’s the way that the federal environmental review requires"
Hey, NYC. Play the game for all its worth.
If Philly (via the Feds) claims they need to be included in a NYC traffic.transit issue, then throw this right back at them.
Whenever any of the two dozen counties want to widen a road, put in a traffic circle, or, well, just about anything, demand they supply a similar EIS.
Then watch how quickly this stupidity disappears.

Again. here is what you are missing. The game only works against transit and bicycles.

Lots of people wrote about the EIS for congestion pricing. And, of course, the environmental review for a subway entrance on the Upper East Side and subsequent litigation went on for years.

Did any of them compare this with the time and cost of the environmental review for adding four lanes to the Staten Island Expressway? The pols are just gaming and sneering at the serfs, and it's not a surprise. My question is about the media. Why have they decided not to make that comparison? Because no special interest group issued a press release?

The NYC metro region needs comprehensive multi model long term transportation planning, and not the overly simplistic revenge tactics dating back to the mass "de-mappings" of every single planned new expressway link, The region needs additional corridors, which can all employ electronic tolling:

1st a New Jersey - Cross Harbor/Brooklyn Expressway Tunnel, enclosed I-78/I-878 together with heavy rail and the proposed Bi Borough IRT, encased beneath a new linear park, extending to a similarly reconstructed/expanded.tunnel box enclosed Belt to a split near Belmont Park for a tunnel link to the Clearview,

2nd, a New Jersey to Yonkers Hudson River Bridge fed by cut and cover tunnels.

3rd, the I-287 Cross Sound Bridge, with box tunnel enclosure for the shoreline areas, extending more than 1,000 feet beyond covered by new pier shaped parkspace

Don't you think defunding the transit system for 25 years and loading it with $50 billion in debt, plus the 2000 pension increase, featherbedding on the LIRR, and soaring capital costs to pay for pension increases in the construction industry (so private developers wouldn't have to) is revenge tactics?

The mass demappings were implemented by Baby Boomers who drive everywhere, but don't want expressways near them, and don't want their house torn down to build one. The transit system was defunded, and new housing downzoned out of existence, at the same time.

The region needs additional corridors, which can all employ electronic tolling.

Tens of $billions were spent rebuilding existing roads and bridges that were originally tolled, some into the 1990s. How about putting those back?

What do you mean by “revenge tactics”? There is no revenge tactics being planned here.

Succumbing to a high finance backed Robert Moses-Jane Jacobs/Marcy Benstock dog and puppy show. One done in accordance with the petrochemical industry fear of pollution hot spots at tunnel portals embarrassing their product, coupled with a strange argument that we can not afford both transit and highways, but against the backdrop of the NYSE obtaining a 100% refund upon the small 0.1% stock transfer tax since Dec. 1981- representing a far greater amount of funds.

What? You make no sense, especially since congestion pricing works in London.

Electronic tolling would work, and pricing could be variable based upon time of day etc.

You are simply deflecting.

How am I deflecting?

What are the figures on the 100% rebate (refund) on NYSE transaction 0.1% transfer (sales) tax? There are going to be figures for each and every year since N.Y. Gov Hugh Carey enacted that in late 181- coincidentally mere months before the NYSE trading went computerized and volume drastically increased.

Imagine how much infrastructure NY could thus afford.

Why is such a matter so blissfully ignored?

What are you talking about? Why do you not want to talk about congestion pricing?

I do want to talk about congestion pricing for paying fpr new facilities.

National Motorists Association equals real facts.

NYU Langone Researchers Find Concentrations of Hazardous Metals & Organic Particles That Ranged Anywhere from Two to Seven Times That of Outdoor Air Samples. Why would anyone want to ride NY subways with underground pollution that terrible. Samples taken during rush hours were much worse.
Other than that this plan was pushed by Cuomo because of his cozy relationship with the MTA, One of the most wastefull quasi government organizations in NY history.

The air inside cars is also deadly.

I have to respectfully disagree here. IMO there are two concerns from feds and state: (1) DOT need a rock solid review to ensure ultimate approval withstands legal challenge. And (2) WH probably wants to help state (and state certainly wants this help!) avoid any bad news stories about “new taxes” ahead of an already tough election year. This will be approved and it will be enacted. But there will be no substantive news on the details (ie cost) until post-election. Better to get this right (survive legal challenge and not have supportive governor lose seat to Guliani Jr) even if later than it should be.

It's beyond comprehension why anyone should accept any statement from the MTA at face value. This same agency was recently caught selectively editing a video to back up its claim that 30% of riders don't pay fares. During Ms. Trottenberg's tenure on the MTA Board, it diverted money to an upstate ski resort. It's an agency that resists FOIL requests by trying to charge exorbitant fees.

Anyone is naive to accept any MTA statement at face value. Ms. Trottenberg, from her tenure on the MTA Board, probably knows that more than anyone in Washington.

I want to see the 400+ "technical" questions that the MTA finds difficult to expeditiously answer. Unlike Mr. Komanoff, I believe their release should be available to all - not just Congestion Pricing supporters.

The geographic scope of traffic and pollution studies are known before such studies are undertaken. I'm not surprised that the area extends to Philadelphia's outskirts. It's only 60 miles away. (Use Google Map's measurement tool to verify that.) That's less than the MTA's reach to Montauk or Poughkeepsie. Weather and traffic patterns don't respect artificial government boundaries.

I wrote computer simulations of missile flights early in my engineering career. I find it difficult to believe the simulations that the MTA is required to perform take days of computer time. Such computer programs should be open source, so that everyone can verify their accuracy and execution time.

I would adopt a wait and see approach, before reaching any conclusion as to which party is dragging its feet.

Traffic simulation and modeling is extremely complex and can indeed take days at a time to perform one full round of simulation. I am not sure the level of detail that is being requested or required, however traffic simulation and modeling is not simple and there are no open source programs available. The major vendors are PTV Vissim and Aimsun, though they and other vendors perform validation white papers for the public and professionals to review. Most firms will also perform their own validation tests. You can simplify the analysis based on the level of detail you require. I encourage you to check out this article from FHWA about the different kinds of analysis conducted: https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/tr...

When you are studying roads across entire regions for example, you can reduce the fine detail required (macroscopic model) but the "simulation" time can still be substantial. There are regional Cube (a Bentley product) and TransCAD models I've heard of that take 3 days to run for example to perform travel demand forecasting. Another good example is the NY Best Practice Model (NYBPM): https://www.nymtc.org/Data-.... Hope this helps!

Air Quality emissions modeling is a different story which I'm not personally experienced with so I can't comment on it, sorry.

To your other points, yes the comments should be publicly available, this process should be transparent and we should be able to understand who is the delay factor here. Is FDOT being pedantic and asking stupid and asinine questions? Is the MTA being slow to reply? I would say that Pete should be taking an active role and getting his engineers in line to not nitpick every single thing here. It's a disconnect between logic here when a project which reduces congestion and pollution needs a massive study, if anything this kind of proposal should be exempt from the EIS process in my opinion.

Thank you for that information regarding the state of traffic simulations. It's going to take me some time to digest the linked websites. The big question about them is their accuracy.

NYCDOT stated they used the Aimsun simulation for analyzing SBS and bus lanes on Woodhaven Blv. One of the simulation results regarding present running time was inaccurate, according to both the static and real time gtfs data. NYCDOT showed little interest in the inaccuracy.

The most effective opposition to Congestion Pricing appears to be from NJ's congressional delegation. The Feds will need simulations for all of NJ, to counter any technical objections. Any delays will go past the coming election and the NJ's objections will be important immediately after November.

I'm not willing to give the current Congestion Pricing proposal a pass on its potential for reducing either congestion or pollution. Besides, every road project within my memory has promised such reductions. Were it not for its EIS, we would have had Westway.

What was the EIS that was required for adding four lanes to the Staten Island Expressway?

You see what this is. The reality of "progressive" politics. Why is no media source asking how far each component of the transit system is from a state of good repair, and where the money is coming from?

Congestion pricing has become the new welfare for the poor. The latter never amounted to all that much money, and the former won't either -- the next 30 years of revenues would be spent in five. But they are an excuse that allows the politicians to avoid being asked where all the damn money actually went.

Guns, abortion, where the transgendered go to the bathroom, Trump -- the three reasons the Democrats get to destroy the country to benefit Generation Greed, the executive/financial class, and the political/union class, and no one dares to call them out on it. Isn't that the same reasons the Republicans use? No one calls them out they way they should be either.

When will transit advocates come to the realization that Congestion Pricing doesn't raise anything close to $1 billion per year and won't fund $15 billion towards any capital plan? A disappearing car doesn't bring toll revenues yet advocates keep that propaganda alive. The cp legislation needs to be amended to remove any minimum toll revenue stipulation. No politician wants to be associated with false advertising and promises they can't keep.

Pete Buttigieg is just a politician who already has one foot out the door as he's planning for another presidential run in the 2024 election. New York ironically may move up to an early primary state so no presidential candidate will want to alienate the potential voters. This means ambiguity towards a Congestion Pricing program before the 2024 elections.