"Congestion Pricing": What Mayor Bloomberg must do

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's "Congestion Pricing" plan is an ego trip, or a plan to pay back Wall Street, corporate America and the real estate industry for all they've done to make Bloomberg a billionaire.

To say it works in London therefore it will work in New York is nonsense. London is laid out differently. It makes absolutely no sense to invest tax dollars on "Congestion Pricing" until you have worked out the method for providing for the additional riders to New York's mass transit system.

Our present system already does a poor job. In order for you to persuade car users to give up their cars you have to convince them that mass transportation can get them where they need to go in a timely, safe, comfortable manner, at a price that won't break them. You also must convince them that the system will stay that way.

Here is what the mayor must do.

He must upgrade the train stations and provide them all with working bathrooms. He must upgrade the trains and buses. He must figure out a way to get more mass transportation to more places and run more routes more often. If he can solve the problem of moving more people he should then bill Congress for the expenses and go on with "Congestion Pricing".

Personally, unless he has a plan for placing trains and buses on the West Side Highway and the East River Drive I'd say it can't be done with the limited North and South thoroughfares through Manhattan. But if he proceeds, he'll have to figure out how people are supposed to get to Manhattan's hospitals, hotels and Broadway shows, where everyone driving to the 86th Street border is supposed to park, whether the people who live in the 80s are going to have to pay $8 every time they move their cars and how many millions the city is going to have to spend to educate all its citizens and tourists of this crazy new plan.

Or is his real idea that people below a certain income just can't come into Manhattan anymore because they can't afford it.