New York mayor proposes congestion charging

The Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, has put forward proposals for New York in 2030. It would be both “greater” and “greener,” a city with nearly a million more residents, as well as cleaner water, new open space, and zippier transportation. This bigger, better metropolis would be a leader in combatting global warming; despite its increased population, the New York of the future would produce thirty per cent less CO2, resulting, as the Mayor put it, in “the most dramatic reduction in greenhouse gases ever achieved by any American city.”

The printed version of Bloomberg’s plan ran to a hundred and fifty-five full-color pages and contained a hundred and twenty-seven new initiatives. Just one of them—congestion pricing—got almost all the attention, much of it negative .