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For Suozzi, LIE pricing comment takes its toll

BY MICHAEL ROTHFELD | Newsday Staff Writer

May 26, 2006

New York state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is seen after a fundraiser at the Glen Oaks Country Club in Old Westbury. (Newsday / Karen Wiles Stabile / February 15, 2006)

On a grassy strip near the Long Island Expressway, Thomas Suozzi tried yesterday to escape the political jam he created three weeks ago by suggesting that drivers pay to use the highway during rush hour.

"I oppose tolls on the Long Island Expressway," Suozzi said 10 times in a 25-minute news conference.

But he refused to explain what he meant by a toll. And he reiterated his support for "congestion pricing," a concept under which drivers might pay if they choose to use faster lanes with an electronic method such as E-ZPass.

Suozzi, the Nassau County executive and a candidate for governor, appointed a commission to explore that scenario and others to reduce traffic and pollution and raise money for transportation projects.

"I think politicians recognize, and I think that they're smarter than I've been in this instance, that this is a very dangerous political topic," Suozzi said.

"I don't have all the answers, but I'm going to get smart people together to talk about how to come up with the answers because it is a real problem, and it's a bunch of phony baloneys that say, 'I'm not going to do anything.'"

Suozzi called the news conference, on the LIE's north service road, west of Exit 37 in Roslyn, in an attempt to end the difficult period he has had since praising congestion pricing to reporters at a meeting held by a Manhattan planning group on May 5. Suozzi was trying to show he had ways of paying for transit projects, and that his opponent for governor, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, did not.

Although Suozzi did not use the word "toll" then, Long Island residents and politicians have blasted him for proposing one, in a backlash over the past several weeks.

Suozzi has tried to no avail to distinguish between a toll, which he views as having a booth, and congestion pricing.

"You're very hung up on the 'T word,'" Sam Schwartz, a former New York City deputy transportation commissioner who is on Suozzi's new committee, told reporters yesterday. "It's not mandatory - that's the difference between tolls and congestion pricing."

The differences can be fuzzy. Some cities, such as London, have imposed congestion pricing plans that make it mandatory for drivers to pay to enter downtown areas during peak times. In California, congestion pricing allows motorists alone in their cars to pay for using less-clogged high-occupancy lanes. Those are called HOT lanes, or High Occupancy Toll lanes.

Suozzi said he would not recommend congestion pricing or anything else before his commission studies the issues. While he said he opposes tolls, he would not define the term when asked. "You could look it up in the dictionary if you want to," Suozzi said.

Webster's II New Riverside Dictionary defines toll as, "a fixed fee or tax, esp. for passage across a bridge or along a road."