Assemblyman Hevesi Slams Pricing as Transit “Money Grab”

At a Queens Community Board 5 meeting earlier this month, Assembly Member Andrew Hevesi made what may be the first hevesi.jpgattack against congestion pricing based on one of its primary selling points.

The Times Ledger reports:

At the meeting, state Assemblyman Andrew Hevesi (D-Forest Hills) slammed Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan, which would charge $8 to passenger vehicles and $21 to trucks entering Manhattan below 60th Street.


"This is a money grab to pay for mass transit," he said. "This is not about the environment."

Hear that, Queens subway and bus commuters? Your assemblyman opposes a program that would fund transit because it would fund transit.

In January Hevesi and his colleague Rory Lancman showed up at a Congestion Mitigation Commission hearing just long enough to knock pricing and demand improvements to public transportation, to quote one attendee, "without explaining where the money would come from or why as state legislators they haven’t allocated more money to the MTA themselves."

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