I spoke briefly with New York Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff yesterday following his New School presentation on New York's sweeping new PLANYC 2030. [More on our take on the plan here.]

Doctoroff had a very different take on the impact the of the $21 fee for trucks to enter the city between 6 pm and 6 am than what we wrote earlier this week. He expects the fee to have a minimal effect on number of trucks in the city during the day, mostly because tolls are deducted from the fee, meaning it will cost most trucks little if anything to enter Manhattan. Instead, he thinks this element of the plan will mostly help reduce traffic in Long Island City (in Queens) and Downtown Brooklyn, where trucks go out of their way to take untolled routes to the city, creating oft-times huge delays at the crossings. It's an interesting idea, though we're still not convinced that functionally replacing all Manhattan tolls with a flat price for entering the city, regardless of route (at least during the congestion pricing hours) makes much sense at all. We'll see, though, if the administration can sell this logic to the outer boroughs.