New York City will issue a request for proposals in April to firms interested in developing and operating a congestion-pricing system if the state Legislature and City Council enact authorizing legislation by the end of March, a city official said yesterday.
“We at [the New York City Department of Transportation] are … developing an RFP for the design, construction, operation, and maintenance for a congestion-pricing system,” Bruce Schaller, the DOT’s deputy commissioner for planning and sustainability, said at a conference here sponsored by the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association. “We plan to be ready to release the RFP shortly after the Legislature takes action in March.”
Prior to action by the state and city governments, the New York City Traffic Mitigation Commission will issue recommendations at the end of January that are expected to tweak a congestion-pricing plan unveiled by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in April, which includes charging drivers $8 and commercial vehicles $21 to enter or leave Manhattan below 86th Street on weekdays during peak driving hours.
The dollars raised by the plan would be used to finance mass transit improvement projects, possibly with municipal bonds. The city has identified nearly $31 billion of unfunded transit capital needs.
“We are working through the commission process, which is expected to make recommendations for some type of revised congestion-pricing plan,” Schaller said.
Possible modifications to the Bloomberg proposal include, charging higher parking fees, not exempting cabs from the congestion charge, shrinking the size of the congestion pricing area to below 86th Street, scrapping the part of the plan to subdivide the area within the congestion zone into smaller zones and charging a $4 inter-zonal fee. These and other changes will be the topic of commission meetings over the next two weeks, Schaller said.
The transportation official pointed out that the package of recommendations that emerges from the commission must reduce “vehicle miles traveled” in the city by 6.3% over an 18-month period to receive a $354.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation under the agency’s urban partnerships program, which is designed to encourage cities to experiment with tolling.
“We are very focused on coming up with a plan that will achieve that 6.3% VMT reduction,” he said.
Schaller believes that, if the city can clearly explain that the plan will reduce congestion, increase mass transit options, and lower pollution, critics — particularly leaders of the state assembly who opposed Bloomberg’s plan — can be won over.
“We know we have a lot of work ahead of us,” Schaller said. “I think if we do our job well ... we will be successful.”
Meanwhile, a Florida Department of Transportation official, who also spoke at the IBTTA conference, said that highlighting the transit benefits of a plan to add two high occupancy toll lanes to Interstate-95 in south Florida between Miami and Fort Lauderdale helped win support for the tolling proposal. Under the plan, additional fast buses, known as bus rapid transit, would operate for free in the lanes.
“Early on when we were formulating the project we were focused on how many of the vehicles we were moving … [but at a subsequent] brainstorming meeting we discussed that this was really a transit project when you look at the people throughput capacity,” said Alice Bravo, FDOT’s director of transportation systems development. “And at that point we kind of changed our messaging a bit and said, ‘this is a transit project, we are creating bus lanes on I-95 and we are selling that excess capacity to those willing to pay a toll for the reliable option. I think that took a life of its own and helped gain acceptance.”
The first phase of the project will be paid for with funds allocated by the Legislature and a U.S. DOT grant, Bravo said. For the second phase the FDOT will seek authorization from the Legislature to issue bonds.
