As congestion pricing goes, so goes New York
Politics killed more than just congestion pricing.
New Yorkers are used to seeing their city atop lists of global cities, for wealth, for dining, for finance, for some opaque menagerie of economic indicators. But for those of us who live here, it can often feel like a second-world city.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul recently announced that she was indefinitely pausing congestion pricing in New York — and with it, the plans to join the ranks of peer cities like London, Singapore, and Stockholm. She made this announcement only three weeks before congestion pricing was to go into effect, highlighting once again how New York differs from its “peers” in both governance and ambition.
The first-in-the-nation plan would have charged drivers up to $15 a day to enter Manhattan below 60th Street, the most congested part of the city. Significantly, for the first time in New York, the drivers of private vehicles would be charged for their use of our scarce public space.
Congestion pricing was expected to eliminate 17% of vehicle traffic from the area, improve air quality, and bring benefits we can only speculate about:
Would the buses run faster? Yes.
Would I be less likely to be struck and killed by the mayor’s Escalades? No.
Would it lead to less gridlock, and thus, less honking all goddamn day? One can only dream.
But the crown jewel would have been the $1 billion/year in revenue for the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) that would ultimately fund a $15 billion capital plan. New signals, new trains, new elevators and accessibility infrastructure, whole new stations and line extensions.
Now, thanks to this eleventh-hour “indefinite pause,” the MTA has a billion-dollar hole in its budget, and the traffic in Manhattan remains as irreconcilably gridlocked as legislation in Washington.
Mere months after claiming it would help “save the city,” Hochul explained her decision was, among other things, made out of concern for the fragile post-pandemic economy. Sadly, the real answer is that congestion pricing is another victim of modern American politics.
POLITICO reported that Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), the House Minority Leader (and representative of a district about 10 blocks from my apartment), is largely behind this reversal. Democrats are targeting a handful of districts that voted for Biden in 2020 but elected Republicans to Congress in 2022. And congestion pricing is unpopular, particularly among suburban voters in these Congressional districts. In a closely divided House, those few seats in the New York suburbs could decide control of the chamber.
Maybe Jeffries political instincts are correct: Maybe by eliminating congestion pricing as a potential attack against Democrats running for these seats, those Democrats win, the House swings back to Democratic control, Minority Leader Jeffries becomes Majority Leader Jeffries, and a second-term Biden administration (with a miraculously intact Senate majority) continues to pass laws that transition the grid to clean energy, invest in public transit, and stave off the worst impacts of climate change.
In that fantasy, after November Governor Hochul allows congestion pricing to go into effect, the MTA gets the funding it desperately needs, and the population of Manhattan can take a deep breath of cleaner air.
Yet, even if congestion pricing is reinstated after the election, or the legal challenges succeed, damage has already been done. Damage to the belief that we can act. To the belief that we can organize, build a coalition, and legislate to create a better, more equitable, more livable city.
To the belief that we can build a New York that, for once, tops the list not just of rich cities, fashionable cities, or delectable cities — but one that joins the ranks of global cities that are both great and good.