New Yorkers oppose proposed traffic toll - survey

By Edith Honan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New Yorkers may hate the city's traffic but not enough to back a proposal by Mayor Michael Bloomberg to impose a toll on drivers in midtown Manhattan, according to poll released on Thursday.

Just 37 percent support congestion pricing, part of the mayor's plan to cut city carbon emissions by one-third by 2030, the Quinnipiac University survey said.

Under congestion pricing, an $8 toll would be levied on each vehicle entering parts of Manhattan during peak hours on weekdays.

Some 59 percent think traffic congestion is a very serious problem, and Manhattan residents support Bloomberg's plan by a two-to-one margin, the poll showed.

But fewer than one-third of those surveyed in the city's other boroughs -- the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island -- agree, with many saying congestion pricing would unfairly tax people who live outside Manhattan.

The telephone survey polled 1,018 New York City registered voters from May 15 to May 21 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Warning the city would lose several hundred million dollars of federal aid if the state blocked congestion pricing, Bloomberg criticized the poll results.

He said the answers would be different "if you went and asked the kids who are being taken to the hospital with asthma problems at four times the national rate, 'Do you think people should stop polluting the air with an $8 charge to do that?'"

Earlier this month, a coalition of civic, business, environmental, religious and community groups called the Campaign for New York's Future released its own poll that found more support for the congestion pricing proposal.

Most New Yorkers responded positively when told it would help improve public health, raise money for mass transit and fight global warming, it said.

When informed that money collected through congestion pricing would raise more than a half billion dollars every year to improve mass transit, 71 percent said they found the argument convincing, the survey showed.

That poll, conducted by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, was a telephone survey of 800 residents of New York City and three neighboring counties from April 24 to April 30 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.