Is anyone really surprised that outer-borough residents would be against congestion pricing?

You would have thought that the sky fell from the heavens last Thursday after the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute released a poll finding that New Yorkers do not support Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan, which would charge drivers $8 when they entered Manhattan below 86th Street from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays. Overall, voters were opposed to the plan by a margin of 56-37. Manhattan residents support the plan 62-29, but those numbers are reversed when you exit the island and enter the rest of the city. The poll did find voters just about even when it came to supporting some form of congestion pricing, but Bloomberg’s proposal appears dead in the water.

“It’s all but unanimous. New Yorkers think traffic-choked streets are a big problem. But Mayor Bloomberg will need every ounce of support from his 74 percent approval rating to convince New York City voters that congestion pricing is the answer,” said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. “As on so many city questions, congestion pricing is Manhattan against everybody else. Most New Yorkers say it would impose an unfair charge on outer-borough drivers.”

After the poll came out, congestion pricing supporters immediately moved to discredit it, charging that Carroll’s question on congestion pricing was unfair. What did he ask? “Some have suggested using congestion pricing to help relieve traffic in Manhattan. Do you support or oppose charging vehicle owners a fee to drive into Manhattan below 86th street on weekdays from 6 AM to 6 PM?” Pro-pricing supporters are furious that Carroll did not include a paragraph-long description of the many benefits of congestion pricing, those being the transit improvements the plan will supposedly provide and cleaner air for all, even though the offending cars that pollute that air would probably just move to different roadways. If you collect money for the congestion charge, that doesn’t mean the emissions never happened.

Bloomberg has known all along that congestion pricing would never fly in the outer boroughs, that’s why he lied about it during his 2005 reelection campaign. At that time congestion pricing wasn’t on his radar, now it’s his biggest initiative. Had he been honest in the first place he might have opened the door for Fernando Ferrer or Congressman Anthony Weiner, who is currently the plan’s most high-profile opponent, to make headway into Bloomberg’s huge polling advantage. At that time, we would have looked at a congestion-pricing proposal as a self-inflicted wound on Bloomberg’s part. Today, it’s ushering in his green legacy and giving him a huge platform for a potential independent presidential run.

By a margin or 59-36, those polled think congestion pricing is an unfair tax on those who cannot afford to live in Manhattan in the first place. While residents of Manhattan below 86th Street might clink their glasses at cocktail parties and hail Bloomberg for ridding their streets of those pesky drivers, outer-borough commuters will suffer. The common line is that a similar program has been just an enormous success in London, and that everybody loves it there. That’s not the case. A poll released in 2006 by England’s RAC Foundation for Motoring found that fewer British motorists are willing to pay the congestion charge than they were in 2002.

So-called carbon offsets have been criticized in many corners, Left and Right, as nothing more than a way for people with money to feel better about their own pollution without having to change their lifestyle one bit. In a way, congestion pricing is just like that. Rather than give tax breaks to hybrid vehicle purchasers or any number of other eco-friendly incentives, the city has decided it would rather just pay you. Emissions will not noticeably decrease, the city will have more of your money and transportation improvements will be developed at the typical snail’s pace of a government project, if they’re developed at all. Second Avenue subway, anyone?

I drive to work everyday. Where my office is located in the Bronx it would be almost impossible to take public transportation in the morning without a map, rations for two weeks and a Sherpa guide, and given the immediacy of news I’m required to have a car anyway. If the city is honest about not charging the approaches to both the bridges and the highways below 86th Street then I would never have to pay this charge. This proposal might never affect me. That doesn’t mean it’s not a bad idea.