Congestion Pricing Debate Continues In New York

The new group expects to release a revamped study in early December that will analyze the cost of clogged streets, estimated at $12 billion to $15 billion a year. A related study done with Environmental Defense, a national environmental group, will look at the environmental costs of excess traffic and at the potential for congestion pricing to reduce traffic and thereby cut air pollution and, as a result, illnesses like asthma.

On Nov. 14, about 50 people from a coalition of 125 civic and community groups gathered on the steps of City Hall to ask that Mayor Bloomberg consider a series of measures to reduce traffic.

Environmental Defense has gone so far as to hire the public relations and marketing firm Dan Klores Communications to help fashion a campaign that will spread the congestion pricing message.

The coalition is led by Transportation Alternatives, an organization that promotes mass transit and works to make streets more welcoming to pedestrians and cyclists. It includes neighborhood groups like Sustainable South Bronx and biking advocates like the FreeWheels Bicycle Defense Fund, which works to aid bicyclists arrested in the mass bike rides known as Critical Mass.

One of the most outspoken opponents of congestion pricing in New York has been David I. Weprin, a City Council member who represents some neighborhoods in eastern Queens that are far from subway lines and where residents with jobs in Manhattan are more likely to drive to work.

He said congestion pricing amounted to an unfair tax on residents in those areas, many of whom can ill afford it.

"The potential for causing hardship to people who rely on their cars in boroughs other than Manhattan is too great to try to implement congestion pricing at this point," Mr. Weprin said.