The road to implementing congestion pricing in New York City has had more twists and turns than the Monaco Grand Prix, but none nearly as abrupt and baffling as Gov. Kathy Hochul’s “indefinite” pause on the toll mere weeks before it was set for launch. I remember thinking, way back in 2007, when then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced his congestion toll proposal, that he had a very steep hill to climb – and up until a few years ago, I was not particularly confident the concept would gain enough traction to become a reality. But by early June of this year, the tolling apparatus had been installed, the pricing structure announced, a specific date had been set (June 30), and lawsuits were being batted down, making congestion pricing seem like a foregone conclusion. That is, until Gov. Hochul slammed on the brakes, leaving many of us with mental whiplash.
The benefits of reducing the number of cars entering Manhattan each day have long been clear to me. Traffic congestion induces stress, reduces productivity and pollutes our air with poison that is impacting the climate and causes dangerous health issues for the vulnerable.
My biggest concern had been how it would affect the city’s TLC-regulated drivers and businesses. Could it pose an existential threat to the industry? Would it decimate businesses that count on visitors coming into the city? Would it harm families already struggling to pay the bills? The city clearly sees TLC-regulated drivers as low-hanging fruit when tax money is needed, so I had concerns… but then I read the “final” congestion pricing fee structure, and it turned my head around.
Hiring a car into the city, with a small congestion fee tacked onto the ride, could start sounding like a pretty good deal to a lot more people when you factor in the extra $15 they would have to spend to enter the city, on top of the exorbitant fees for parking in an NYC garage or the general hassle of trying to find a decent spot on the street.
I was suddenly feeling much better about congestion pricing, dramatically lowering my anxiety levels… but then, of course, Gov. Hochul suddenly changed her mind. She said she was concerned the toll would negatively impact blue-collar New Yorkers at a time when inflation is high and the city is still recovering from the COVID pandemic, but I’m not so sure. I recommend reading this month’s columns by Ira Goldstein and Matthew Daus for additional insights into what her motivation might actually have been. (Spoiler: It appears it was political.)
Maybe it’s the whiplash, but I don’t have a whole lot more to say at the moment about congestion pricing, so I’ll just wrap up this month’s column with a quote from an article by Charles Komanoff, a national expert on congestion pricing and traffic modeling, that ran in StreetsBlog NYC: “Congestion pricing isn’t fundamentally an environmental or air pollution program. [It] is a policy to help New York City and the region work better by letting residents and businesses avoid vast amounts of time and frustration lost in traffic and needlessly slow trains. For every dollar’s worth of air-quality improvements, congestion pricing will bestow on city transit riders $12 and on the region’s drivers $25 in saved time. With congestion pricing, an estimated 50,000 more people will travel to the congestion zone each day, thanks to better transit and a projected 9% uptick in car occupancy rates. The projected 12% gain in travel speeds inside the zone and 6-7% on routes to and from the zone will reward plumbers and electricians and produce-delivery drivers – and others in this essential sector of New York’s economy – with time savings worth more than the tolls. The same applies to for-hire-vehicle drivers and passengers. Fewer traffic jams in the congestion zone will bring not just faster taxi and Uber trips but also fare reductions (due to less metered ‘wait time’) offsetting some of the hit from the new surcharges on FHV trips in the zone. My modeling projects a net 9% rise in yellow-cab trips, and 2% for Ubers and Lyfts. The main climate benefit lies in making inherently climate-friendly New York a more inviting and efficient place to work, visit and live relative to the distant suburbs or the Sun Belt.”
