Though the deadline passed and the proposal seemed dead, Mayor Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan has been given a new lease on life by the State Legislature, which has agreed to study the plan and others like it in a committee. The new deal supposedly keeps the city in the running for up to $500 million in federal funding to get the program kicked off, money that Bloomberg has stated he will use to purchase the necessary equipment to make his new toll a reality.

“This agreement makes clear that delay was unacceptable and the need to protect our environment and fight congestion simply could not wait. We will begin immediately to prepare for the installation of needed equipment to make our traffic plan a reality,” said Bloomberg in a statement after the agreement was announced. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver did note that Bloomberg needs Albany approval to use those cameras to collect fees, but the mayor seems to think that congestion pricing is well on its way, and therefore the time to buy cameras is now.

Whether you agree or disagree with Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan, which would see drivers pay $8 and commercial vehicles $21 to enter Manhattan below 86th Street on weekdays, you have to be willing to admit that many of the arguments that Bloomberg and other plan supporters used to build support for the measure were at least dishonest, if not outright lies. Unless, of course, you are one of those lying advocates. For starters, Bloomberg had insisted that Albany needed to act by July 16 for the city to remain eligible for the federal funding, yet an agreement made on July 19 was still good enough to meet this requirement, despite months of the mayor insisting otherwise.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Bloomberg and many others also used the spectre of rising asthma rates to make their case for congestion pricing, pointing to certain areas of Brooklyn, upper Manhattan and the South Bronx as target neighborhoods with high asthma rates where the situation would only get worse if congestion pricing was not approved. But how less traffic at 14th Street will lower asthma in Hunts Point remains a mystery to many, and in fact upper Manhattan could actually see more traffic if the plan had been approved. Supporters of the plan will tell you this is not the case, but there’s no study of the proposal either proving or disproving the “more traffic outside the pricing zone” theory. Though many supporters of Bloomberg’s plan have relied largely on anecdotal evidence to make their points, in the long run anecdotal evidence does not count. Is an environmental impact statement so much to ask for?

Perhaps the biggest lie congestion pricing supporters threw out to the masses was the fare hike myth. Bloomberg himself actually said just the day before the July 16 deadline that, without congestion pricing, subway and bus fares would have to be raised. “We need the monies to pay the people who work for our mass transit system, for the MTA we want to be able to hold the fares down because you don’t want to have disincentives for people to take mass transit,” said Bloomberg. The New York League of Conservation Voters did the same, sending a mailing to targeted Assembly district that flat-out states the subway and bus fare will have to be raised if congestion pricing does not pass.

But the congestion pricing funds are supposed to pay for transit improvements, not the MTA’s operating budget. And when you asked advocates of the plan if passing congestion pricing would explicitly mean no new subway and bus fare hikes, they never seemed to want to answer the question. That’s because fare hikes could have never been ruled out. But if Bloomberg had told the city that the subway fare might still rise even with his plan in place, he might have made more opponents. What’s a little white lie among commuters?

Depending on when you read this, the MTA might have already announced their proposed fare hike, which is scheduled to be discussed at a July 25 meeting. This comes despite movement on congestion pricing and despite assurances from Bloomberg that his plan could rule out such a hike. Mayor Bloomberg is now in the position of having lied to commuters to raise support for his plan. When congestion pricing appeared to be dead, we were told to blame the State Legislature for future fare hikes. Who should you blame now?