Missing the last bus

There’s been a lot of talk lately in the US about congestion pricing. What is congestion pricing? It is basically a toll for taking your auto into an urban area. The program is quite successful in many large cities in Europe, and is the first step reducing pollution and breaking suburban America’s codependency on foreign oil.

NYC’s Mayor Bloomberg attempted to be the first city in American to introduce congestion pricing, only to be defeated today at the hands of the NY legislature. This, normally, would result in a bitter blog rant on my part, but the upshot is that San Francisco is likely to be next in line for a slice of the estimated $1.2b in federal funding aimed at this project:

SPUR’s Dave Snyder writes:

What the NY legislature failed to support was a grant application by the city of New York for most of the $1.2 billion the U.S. DOT has budgeted to support implementation of a congestion pricing pilot project. The money would buy the technology, pay for the outreach, the whole deal. After originally intending to dole out the money to many areas, they recently decided to give it out in one or a couple more huge grants. SF has already applied for the grant, and New York’s failure to get it really strengthens our application!

And so, it is only a question of if the city and county of San Francisco will gain for a share of this cash, and beat NYC to what the other side of the pond already has: fairly sharing public infrastructure.