The MTA last fall claimed the Traffic Mobility Review Board is not covered by the Open Meetings Law, and therefore its meetings are not open to the public because it is an advisory board.
But the Committee on Open Government disagreed.
The panel’s meetings should be open to the public because it was established in state law to help create policy, Kristin O’Neill, the committee’s assistant director, said in a Nov. 21 ruling.
The MTA has yet to respond to the decision, transit advocates said.
We want the TMRB’s meetings open to the public. Congestion pricing is going to affect millions of people and provide billions of dollars in revenue to the MTA,” said Lisa Daglian of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA.
“There will be people who won’t like paying a congestion fee but at least they’ll know how the decisions were made,” Daglian said, adding that “there should be no back-room deals.”
7 comments:
Scumbags with their "congestion fees" - is fucking THEFT of money.
All of them need to be indicted on racketeering charges.
Living in NYC and long island is like living in jail before the new bail reform system was implemented.
It is disgusting that legal residents are penalized in favor of illegals. Just look at the recent driver license rules in NYS. If you are an illegal, you don’t have to provide the same level of information as those that are legal. The state should be required to purge all data on the legal population which they do not require for illegals. This is discriminatory and punitive.
Isn't it funny that they're trying to force congestion pricing at the same time they're trying to reduce bus service to Eastern Queens? It's like they want to force us to drive so we'll have to pay. Don't need to tax the rich in Manhattan or Brooklyn when they can squeeze working class Queens instead.
> The board that will recommend congestion pricing tolls to enter Midtown must deliberate in public and not behind closed doors, the state Committee on Open Government has ruled.
Glad to see they're actually living up to their name.
MTA scumbags will steal many billions from motorists in the coming months and years but nothing will get better in the NYC subways. Remember Mike Bloomberg started this congestion pricing crap when he was mayor. Replace your Bloomberg terminal with FACTSET and screw Bloomberg.
Congestion pricing was devised by Tyler Duvall of the Dubya administration to replace taxes with user fees. User fees would charge you for contributing to congestion, which is not what the current proposals would do. The current proposals pretend to be congestion pricing in order to qualify for federal funds, but distort the original idea to conform to their absurd ideologies. Cutting the day into two zones is absurd. When I take a taxi, I never get off in the middle avenues, because it would cost twice as much. So you can ban single occupant vehicles form the middle avenues. Also, move deliveries to off hours unless you have an indoor truck bay. If you can have indoor public spaces, you can heave indoor truck bays. And we have needed one or two cross town highways since Robert Moses. And that LI-NJ Cross Harbor Freight Tunnel, as LI-NJ traffic (with NO Manhattan stopover) causes a third of congestion. And move pedestrian traffic to underground concourses. Tokyo seems to do this very well but even Rockefeller Center seems to forever have leaking, collapsing ceilings in the concourse. (Please tell me WHY?)
see
https://www.nysun.com/opinion/traffic-troubles/52395/
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-Harbor_Rail_Tunnel
Someone picked up on the last comments and got Trump to force
re-evaluation. NYC pols took the federal idea and warped it beyond recognition,
so it is probably illegal after all.
https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/transit/2020/02/18/congestion-pricing-nyc-when-does-congestion-pricing-start-in-nyc-federal-government-could-delay-it
Post a Comment