The city’s scooter owners aren’t pleased with Mayor Bloomberg’s congestion-pricing plan. London’s system, on which New York’s is based, excludes scooters and motorcycles from fees, but here they’ll be charged half-fare, $4 (assuming they use a special E-Z Pass). “They’re addressing the problem backwards,” says Jonathan Perkel, a founder of the New York Scooter Club. “We’re part of the solution. In London, they exempted scooters, and people started riding them, and that took a lot of cars off the road.” He’s mad at Transportation Alternatives, the bicycle-advocacy group, which helped develop the proposal. “They’re not interested in any change that wouldn’t favor bicycles or mass transit,” Perkel says. But Bloomberg spokesman John Gallagher is no scooter fan: “They contribute to congestion and have a negative impact on the environment, which is precisely what congestion pricing is aimed at reducing.”

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• Archive: “Intelligencer”
• Articles by Geoffrey Gray
• Table of Contents: Apr 14, 2008 issue of New York | Subscribe!