The new Tolling Program is one of the most ill-conceived ideas created by a bunch of people running this city further and further into the ground. For instance, on the East Side, most of the medical offices and hospitals are in the 60s up to the 80s. If a person living below 60th needs to go to a doctor or hospital, and if you need to go by taxi, car, or Uber, you’re going to have to pay to get back down. Anytime a person goes to the doctor or the dentist on the Upper East Side, or makes a hospital visit for any reason (to the Lenox Hill Hospital, Weill Cornell, Sloan Kettering, Mount Sinai – just to name a few) you’re going to have to pay a tax! And this is in addition to your medical bills.
This is as stupid as a solution as having everyone downtown evacuate and move uptown, or having everyone evacuate uptown and move downtown!
If, God forbid, your work involves crossing 60th street during your commute and you need a car for that purpose, you have to pay coming and going, and up and down. Be ready to pay an extra few thousand dollars every year just for going uptown and downtown.
As it has already been said, another great attribute of this brilliant system would be that it would push more traffic to the FDR, increasing the pollution and consequent asthma and health dangers to the further detriment of already underprivileged communities. All of this is brilliantly accomplished by higher taxation.
Instead of this ridiculous congestion tax, they should force every new building that’s built to build garage space. There should be garage space built into every new building in New York, owned by the city, where off-street parking would be at the same cost as on-street parking is now. Since Bloomberg was the Mayor of New York, the only people who have benefited from these tall buildings have been the building contractors. They can build taller and taller buildings on smaller and smaller spaces, obliterating light and view within the city, but without creating any parking space for the decongestion of traffic.
This genius scheme is designed to make living in New York City even more expensive and even more intolerable than it already has become for anybody who works or lives here. Instead of bringing the city back to life, instead of lowering the rents, instead of filling the empty stores, this scheme will close more doors, create more empty spaces, and shut the city down evermore.