As a quick follow up to my comments about the Fattah Transportation Plan, I direct your attention to Inquirer architecture critic Inga Saffron's "Changing Skyline" blog.
She pays special attention to Fattah's suggestion about considering a London-esque congestion tax. She and I made the same basic point about how SEPTA must be fixed first before you could consider discouraging people from driving in Center City but she also points out, correctly, that driving in Center City really isn't all that difficult right now:
Will someone tell Chaka he's been away from Philly too long? Proposing such a tax for modestly congested Philadelphia suggests he doesn't have a clue about the real nature of the city's car problem. Center City isn't suffering from too much congestion; it has too little. Right now, it's way too easy to drive into town.
Yet another example that if you're going to offer a plan to fix something, it may help to be an actual user of that thing so you know what's wrong. Again, any candidates want to take a stroll with me through the City Hall Concourse?
Comments (2)
Congestion Tax.... What a shame. If elected mayor, what else will Fattah want to tax.
Posted by Joel | February 14, 2007 7:15 AM
I've long believed Fattah would win this election, and i have until recently been fairly comfortable with that. he isn't my first choice, but he certainly is my last choice either.
however, as his campaign keeps coming out with vapid, electioneering proposals like this one, i find myself becoming less and less comfortable with the idea of a fattah mayoralty.
this is a horrible proposal. by proposing it, fattah and his staff are not looking to solve any problems, but rather to cash in on the anti-commuter sentiment city residents often experience when they can't find a parking space or when their city taxes rise and they realize that many of the people with the high-paying jobs in philly don't actually live here. he is merely lashing out at suburbanites, knowing they don't vote in city elections and are therefore safe targets in his eyes.
a similar plan was floated (for similar reasons) in new york city not long ago. i was disgusted by the divide-and-conquer strategy then, and i am disgusted by it now.
we already tax people for working in philadelphia. taxing them again to get to those jobs is not fair, not beneficial and, worst of all, not a serious policy proposal.
Posted by Phaedrus | February 14, 2007 3:15 PM