With congestion pricing one step closer to the finish line after decades of anticipation and planning, millions of transit riders around the region can finally breathe more easily. As rider advocates, we couldn’t be happier.
Congestion pricing will be good for subway, bus, Staten Island Railway and commuter rail riders, good for the region and good for our economy. It will even be good for those who choose to — or must — drive into the Central Business District, who will find it easier to get around. The same goes for the emergency and paratransit vehicles and buses that are caught in torturous gridlock.
The benefits are many-fold: cleaner air, less traffic and $15 billion raised for critical transit infrastructure, including state-of-good-repair and accessibility work, essential resiliency and sustainability efforts, and expansion projects like IBX and Penn Access. The downside is equally clear: signal upgrades on the A and C lines in Brooklyn have already been delayed, and the MTA’s operating budget is next in the crosshairs to pay off new debt.
To make it worse, add in billions of dollars in productivity lost across the region with hundreds of hours spent in traffic every year. We can look backward at years of neglect, or forward to the building blocks of the transit system we need for our 21st century region.
Simply put, congestion pricing is an investment in our future.
After more than two decades of debate, legislation in 2019 finally paved the way for the congestion pricing plan that is now before us. The MTA — along with city and state Departments of Transportation, its partners in applying to the Federal Highway Administration for approval to move forward with the Central Business District Tolling Program — held hundreds of hours of public meetings over more than a year-and-a-half.
Comments were received from thousands of people across the region, including drivers, motorcyclists, cyclists, transit riders, elected officials, residents of the CBD, the suburbs and those living in the boroughs outside Manhattan, along with a host of stakeholders clamoring for more than 120 exemptions, resulting in an extremely thorough Environmental Assessment that came in at more than 4,000 pages — which includes a 28,000-page appendix detailing the comments, responses and public outreach process, including targeted outreach to environmental justice communities that is ongoing.
Traffic Mobility Review Board (TMRB) members, selected by the governor and mayor, then held spirited public meetings to discuss different scenarios before releasing their recommendations on Nov. 30.
The recommendations are fair, equitable, reasonable, rational and realistic, and reflect TMRB’s deliberative process. They are examples of public process and public input at work. The base $15 congestion rate charged once per day is a good balance: high enough to make people think twice about driving, but not too high for those with no choice. Concerns about shift workers being double tolled resulted in healthier overnight discounts. That should also give drivers reason to consider driving when there is less traffic and lower tolls. TMRB members also listened to motorcyclists and came out with a lower rate.
This has been and continues to be a considered yet arduous process. Today’s MTA Board vote will trigger the state Administrative Procedure Act, opening yet another round of public review and comment opportunities over several more months.
To say that there hasn’t been a public process or opportunity to weigh is flat out wrong.
Transit riders from Montauk to Wassaic can be grateful that New York has a transit champion in Gov. Hochul, who threw her strong support behind congestion pricing and worked with the Legislature to fully fund transit service for the next five years. The contrast could not be clearer: while NJTransit is buckling after decades of fiscal instability, in New York, the MTA will finally be on solid financial footing for the first time in memory.
New York City has an ongoing key role to play to make congestion pricing even more successful: by fulfilling its Streets Plan mandate to construct 150 miles of bus and bike lanes by the end of 2025. Getting drivers out of cars and onto transit must be a shared effort between the MTA and its partners in New Jersey, NYC DOT and City Hall.
Delaying progress with lawsuits and endless indecision does more than create bad feelings, it creates bad policy and precedent, bad air quality and congestion and does a disservice to millions of commuters across our region — including drivers.
To opponents of congestion pricing in New Jersey who are holding up transit improvements their own constituents will benefit from, we say this: get on board or get out of the way!
Daglian is the executive director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA.
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