Transit Activists Split on NYC Congestion Pricing as Court Hearing Looms

Traffic congestion on Second Avenue after merging from the Queensborough Bridge in New York City. Benjamin Chasteen/The Epoch Times

NEW YORK CITY–As congestion pricing heads to court, New Yorkers have expressed divergent views on the policy of charging drivers $15 tolls when they enter Manhattan below 60th Street.

The stated purpose of congestion pricing is to alleviate rush hour traffic while raising money for the city to qualify for the issuance of bonds that supporters say are critical for far-reaching upgrades and renovations of Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) systems and facilities. Yet another goal is ecological: to cut carbon emissions and keep New York City’s air breathable.

Congestion pricing was originally set to go into effect on June 30, pursuant to the 2019 MTA Reform and Traffic Mobility Act. It enjoyed strong support from New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, the New York City Transit Riders Council, members of the City Council, and an array of community organizers and activists.

Gov. Kathy Hochul put the policy on pause, however, saying that $15 tolls place too high of a burden on commuters who enter the city to go to work.

“Now is not the time to put it on the backs of hardworking New Yorkers who are still feeling the cost of inflation on their pocketbooks,” the governor said at a June 7 press conference.

The decision prompted supporters of the policy to file two lawsuits at the end of July. The first, City Club of New York et al. v. Hochul, alleged the governor overstepped her legal authority by flouting the 2019 act that authorized congestion pricing.

The second lawsuit, Riders Alliance v. Hochul, alleged that Hochul’s pause violated the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, a New York State statute that calls for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by the year 2030.

With the legal challenges to the governor’s pause proceeding and two hearings scheduled for the trial-level New York State Supreme Court on the morning of Sept. 27, neither side in the legal battle looks ready to make concessions to the other.

Proponents’ Fiscal Rationales

While some might complain that $15 is a steep toll for those entering the city, supporters of the fee say it is important to have some perspective on the costs and expenses that New York City faces under current arrangements.

That’s the view of Alexa Sledge, an activist and director of communications for Transportation Alternatives, which has compiled data on the costs that travel time, fuel and operating expenses, and pollution incur.

Sledge cited a Partnership for New York study that traffic congestion and the slowing down of transit that it causes in vital regions of the city will drain $100 billion from the New York metropolitan area’s economy over the next five years. According to the study, excess congestion has gone up 23 percent since the organization began tracking the phenomenon back in 2006 and now costs the metro area $20 billion per year.

Broken down by driver, that comes to $1,595 per driver per year, Sledge said, citing 2022 figures compiled by INRIX, a company that analyzes traffic data.

According to the MTA’s own data, 71 percent of drivers do not currently pay any toll to enter the city, Sledge noted. But driving a car into the city imposes significant costs on others—to the tune of $233 on average, she said, citing data from energy policy analyst Charles Komanoff, who presented his findings in a document he calls the Balance Transportation Analyzer.

For all these reasons, Sledge and her colleagues said that encouraging commuters to find other means of transportation will save the city many billions of dollars, and that those commuters who continue to drive will simply be doing their fair share to offset the costs that congested streets entail for commerce and the quality of life in the city.

“There’s a ton of data on who is actually driving into Lower Manhattan every single day, and it is disproportionately wealthy people. Members of the working class, for the most part, are absolutely not driving into Lower Manhattan,” Sledge told The Epoch Times.

“Look at the people who are going to pay for the congestion pricing, and it is primarily wealthy commuters.”

Sledge additionally said the difficulty that ambulances face in situations where the difference between life and death may come down to a few seconds saved or lost in transit.

“If you go into Midtown Manhattan any day of the week, you’re going to see dozens of ambulances trapped in traffic,“ she said. ”That is so dangerous for everyone having a medical emergency.”

First Avenue traffic in Manhattan, New York City, on April 22, 2021. Andrew Kelly/Reuters

Sledge noted that the city of London has successfully implemented a Congestion Charge zone with a toll of 15 British pounds, which has helped make biking to work a common practice. She urged New York to follow London’s example.

In agreement with Sledge is Andrew Alpert, chair of the New York City Riders Council, who appeared alongside Lander and others at a June 12 press conference vowing legal action if congestion pricing did not go into effect by the end of the month as envisioned.

Aside from benefitting the city’s air quality, Alpert said the policy is necessary given the current state of the transit system. Upgrades are unavoidable and it will be expensive, he said.

“There’s the air quality issue, and then there’s the MTA’s resiliency issue,“ Alpert said. ”Some of the dollars are going to go to reinforce the Hudson Metro North line and various tunnels.”

While some say it would be possible to find funds for the transit system elsewhere, Alpert said the overhaul would cost some $54 billion, and meeting this expense requires bond issuances that the city will not be in a position to make without the $1 billion that congestion pricing could bring in.

“You can’t sell bonds on a promise or an IOU. You’ve got to have funding in place,” Alpert said.

He argued that there is presently a dire need for funding to improve or replace subway cars, tunnels, signaling systems, and to procure new electric buses and rail cars. Once the funding is in place and the upgrades are underway, he said, the benefits will be tangible far beyond New York City’s limits.

“The MTA is the economic engine which moves the city, which moves the state, which moves the entire nation,” Alpert said.

Congestion on the Long Island Expressway heading into Manhattan, near the turn-off for the Queensborough Bridge in New York on Nov. 1, 2012. Support is growing for a fair tolling plan as New Yorkers become increasingly concerned about infrastructure funding. Jason DeCrow/AP

Oppositions

Charlton d’Souza, founder and president of Passengers United, a New York-based advocacy group opposed to congestion pricing, said that supporters of the policy had failed to make the case that it will bring significant benefits.

As a member of a panel devoted to analyzing congestion pricing, d’Souza said he used to meet regularly with MTA representatives and found that they gave evasive answers to questions about whether they had done environmental assessments and fully understood how the policy would play out in practice.

“We were asking them simple questions: Was there going to be more bus service added? What would the bus capacity be?“ d’Souza told The Epoch Times. ”And they couldn’t answer these basic questions. We asked them about bus lanes on the highways, and they didn’t have an answer for that, which I found deeply disturbing.”

“I feel that their case has no merit because the governor does have the right to enact this pause,” he added.

D’Souza said his biggest concern is the impact that congestion pricing will have on the middle class and workers who commute into the city.

D’Souza said those who will pay the congestion pricing tolls are primarily wealthier people. He said they are typically the ones who support the policy because, unlike others who commute into the city, a $15 daily toll is not beyond their means.

D’Souza recalled former New York Gov. David Paterson’s characterization of the MTA as the fifth-largest debtor in the United States. As of 2023, the agency’s debt was estimated to be $48 billion.

“If the MTA doesn’t know how to manage its money, I have a serious problem with that. It’s got to get its house in order before it asks for any more funds,” D’Souza said.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul speaks in Chicago on Aug. 19, 2024. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

Jack Nierenberg, vice president of Passengers United, said Hochul was within her legal rights to pause the implementation of congestion pricing because, under federal law, the New York State Department of Transportation must sign off on the plan first. The pause that the governor has placed on it does not mean that it will never go into effect; it simply means that state officials are proceeding with due caution, he said.

Besides the technical legal issue, Nierenberg took issue with the assumption that congestion pricing would yield significant fiscal benefits for the MTA and the city. If it achieves its intended effect, and forces more people to bike, walk, or ride buses or trains, then the much lower inflow of drivers into the city may negate any profits from collecting $15 tolls, he said.

Nierenberg also questioned whether London’s congestion pricing has been the unqualified success that stateside advocates of the policy like to claim it is.

“We saw these issues in London’s pricing program, which New York City’s is modeled on,“ Nierenberg said. ”There are studies that evaluate the impacts that London’s program has had on equity. The richest 20 percent were able to do as they pleased, but the poorest 20 percent did not have those options and were effectively priced out of central London.”

He added that “that is very likely what is going to happen in New York City if this plan goes into effect.”

Nierenberg said the city would do well to explore other options to raise money for the needed upgrades, such as taxing SUVs at the time of purchase.

The governor’s office did not respond by publication time to a request for comment.