Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s controversial Congestion Pricing plan, which would charge drivers $8 to pass into Lower Manhattan, passed through the City Council on Monday by a vote of 30 to 20.
Every Bronx council member voted in favor of the plan, except Helen Foster, who was absent and did not vote. Other outer borough members, especially from Queens and Brooklyn, were decidedly more opposed to the plan.
Most Bronx Democrats in the city council and state legislature, including a ringing endorsement by Bronx County Democratic Party Chairman Jose Rivera, signed on to the plan last fall.
While not openly opposed to the plan, Council member Oliver Koppell expressed concerns about some of the details in the plan. But, in an interview on Tuesday, he said most of those concerns had been addressed.
One of his biggest concerns, he said, was that commuters trying to avoid the Lower Manhattan entry fee would keep their cars in Bronx and take up scarce parking spots. He said the mayor’s plan to expand residential parking permits would help mitigate that problem.
He still has some concerns, including the fact that New Jersey commuters essentially get a free pass, but in the end, Koppell said he probably would have voted for the plan anyway. “I’m an environmentalist at heart,” he said. He added that the money made from congestion pricing could go a long way toward helping rehab some of the borough’s dilapidated subway stations.
One dissenting opinion in the Bronx came from State Senator Ruben Diaz, Sr., who wrote a letter to Bronx state lawmakers, urging them not to vote for congestion pricing in Albany, where it must gain approval in order for the city to receive $350 million in federal funding to start the initiative.
In the letter, Diaz called Bloomberg’s congestion pricing effort a “detrimental, dangerous, abusive and almost discriminatory plan that will possibly affect our neediest members of our community.”

