Pratt Center for Community Development

Planning, Building, & Educating for Change.

COMMUTE
Communities United for Transportation Equity


COMMUTE: Making Congestion Pricing Work for Working Families (Click image to open document in PDF format)

Making Congestion Pricing Work for Working Families

COMMUTE is a coalition of New York City community groups that have come together to make congestion pricing work for working families. The Pratt Center is coordinating COMMUTE and providing supporting research.

We're advocating for what most New Yorkers need. Ninety-five percent of New York City commuters use mass transit to get to Manhattan's central business district. The 5 percent who drive earn on average more than twice as much as everyone else. The congestion pricing fees those drivers will pay can help New York's mass transit riders, who urgently need more and better service.

Congestion pricing is projected to generate more than $50 billion over the next ten years, which the City and MTA are pledging to spend on mass transit. But current proposals allocate only a sliver of promised funds to the neighborhoods that need it most.

Three-quarters of a million New Yorkers travel more than an hour each way to work, and two-thirds of them earn less than $35,000 a year. The average black commuter rides 47 minutes to work -- 25 percent longer than the typical white commuter. On the whole, New Yorkers have longer rides to work than commuters anywhere else in the U.S.

Members of the New York City Council, the State Assembly and State Senate have a chance to seize the opportunity presented by congestion pricing and insist on a final proposal that does more to cut commute times and improve transit options for working class New Yorkers by dedicating more funding to building a real bus rapid transit (BRT) system for underserved outer-borough neighborhoods. Our elected representatives must make sure that congestion pricing revenues will be spent where they're needed most.

Let your representatives know that you're counting on them to support congestion pricing and investments in faster rides for New Yorkers, who have the longest commutes in the U.S.

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Bus Rapid Transit

Bus Rapid Transit makes buses move people almost as quickly and efficiently as a subway system, but at a much lower cost. BRT uses dedicated lanes on existing streets, and doesn't require the construction of rails or tunnels. A new BRT line can therefore be put in place much more quickly and cheaply than a new subway line, and with much less disruption of the communities it will serve.

BRT requires:

  • Dedicated lanes used exclusively by buses that exclude other vehicles using physical barriers and enforcement cameras.
  • Electronic systems that increase efficiency by synchronizing traffic lights with bus movements, preventing buses from bunching, and providing real-time bus information at bus stops.
  • Station-like bus stops where riders pay their fare before the bus arrives, allowing people to board the bus quickly from a platform that is level with the bus floor.

The MTA and New York City Department of Transportation have announced a BRT pilot program, launching one route in each of the city's boroughs. COMMUTE is calling for additional routes, to be rolled out before congestion pricing launches, incorporating the dedicated lanes, electronic systems, and bus stations that make BRT truly rapid.

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Enrique Peñalosa

In February, COMMUTE was privileged to host Enrique Peñalosa, who as mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, launched Bus Rapid Transit and in the process brought a new level of mobility to residents of his city, at low cost. See video of his talk, courtesy of Streetfilms.

More on Bus Rapid Transit:

Press about COMMUTE

COMMUTE IS:

Catholic Charities of Brooklyn and Queens, Centro Hispano Cuzcatlán, El Puente, Erasmus Neighborhood Federation, Fifth Avenue Committee, Nos Quedamos, Inc., The POINT CDC/ACTION, Sustainable South Bronx, United Community Centers, Washington Heights Club of the Working Families Party, West Harlem Morningside Heights Sanitation Coalition, Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice

Contact: Elena Conte, Pratt Center for Community Development, 718-399-4416, [Sorry, display of this email address requires a Javascript-aware browser, in order to deter spam. Please use the general contact page instead.].