But most official presentations by participants from this region were less heartening. The NY State Thruway gave a lackluster and defeatist presentation of its look at pricing policies to reduce Tappan Zee Bridge corridor congestion that was immediately seized upon by a NY Motorist Association representative as evidence that congestion-busting toll policies will fail.

The Port Authority's outlook seemed somewhat more optimistic. Amid a lengthy explanation of the difficulties of imposing graduated toll rates, especially with regard to trucks, the Port representative said the agency had a good sense of how variable tolls would affect passenger car demand at its crossings and was further studying truck issues. He said several times that progress toward implementation required a high degree of regional coordination.

The strong implication was that the Port Authority is waiting for the MTA to come to the table. While the MTA has for some time blamed its inaction on several announced toll policy studies on difficulty coordinating with the Port Authority, it appears now as if the MTA is the real stick in the mud. At an MTA Bridges & Tunnels Committee meeting earlier this week, NYC Deputy Mayor Rudy Washington expressed his profound exasperation at the MTA's lack of action on toll policy. Washington's outburst prompted a pro-pricing editorial today in the Daily News that cited a March letter to the editor by the Campaign's Jessica Astrof noting that the MTA has stalled on the issue for the past three years.

The News piece was widely distributed at the FHWA seminar today, which the MTA had been invited to but had withdrawn from in recent weeks.

Agencies aside, the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance's Omar Freilla drew a powerful picture of highway system impacts on lower income city communities, and called for road pricing to be set in a policy context that seeks not only to unclog rush hour traffic jams, but to reduce those impacts overall.

Freilla's comments provided a strong complement to a stimulating presentation by former MTA executive Jay Walder, now with Harvard University. Walder argued that roadway pricing not be seen simply as a congestion-buster, but as a source of transportation finance. He showed the very significant hike in capital funding - able to meet needs for projects like the Second Avenue Subway and Gowanus Tunnel - the region could expect if Port Authority crossing rates were raised to those now charged by the MTA, and East River bridges charged the same rates as well.

Walder suggested that the region's leaders seek a grand infrastructure deal. Motorists would get a highway system free of toll barriers and reduced growth in traffic due to large investments in new transit. The trade-off would be the higher rates at toll facilities, which would all be converted for non-stop electronic toll collection.