As As recently as two and a half weeks agoNew York State Governor Kathy Hawkle has boasted about her commitment to standing up to drivers who are “set in their ways” to implement congestion pricing that would improve the lives of New Yorkers and save them hours of time stuck in traffic. Yesterday, Hawkle suddenly announced that she was “pausing the program indefinitely.”
The program, scheduled to begin on June 30, would have imposed a $15-a-day toll on drivers entering Manhattan’s central business district below 60th Street. The congestion charge was supposed to have two major benefits: it would reduce the number of vehicles in Manhattan, thereby increasing traffic speeds, improving air quality, and reducing noise; and it would generate $1 billion in annual revenue for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to fund capital investments. (Congestion fee revenues could be used to support additional bond issuance capacity, so $1 billion a year in revenues is commonly cited as enough to support $15 billion in capital investments over five years, although of course taxpayers and commuters would ultimately bear the financing costs associated with these bonds in later years.)
Hokel’s reason for “pausing” the plan is that she’s worried the toll will discourage people from driving into Manhattan, which would hurt the economy (isn’t that the point?), but her real reason seems to be that congestion pricing is unpopular. POLITICO Rep. Hokel and U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries reportedly worried that congestion pricing would hurt Democrats’ efforts to pick up three suburban New York seats in the November election and hurt Rep. Hokel’s own reelection prospects in 2026. I don’t think their concerns were unfounded: A Siena Poll in April found that New York state voters oppose congestion pricing by 63-25.
This objection is not unjustified, but politically and policy-wise, Hoekl again got it wrong.
As Purely a political issueI would have had more respect for Mr. Hawkle’s actions if he had announced that congestion pricing was going to be scrapped. Dead, dead, dead“This “indefinite suspension” nonsense doesn’t even get the issue off the table. Republicans will claim in the November campaign that Democrats will impose this toll sooner or later, but I’m pretty sure that’s never going to happen in reality. Also, I’d have more respect for the political implications of her change of attitude if she’d done this before she started plastering variable message signs on suburban interstates.” week A message appeared, informing me that the Congestion Charge was coming soon and that I’d better make sure my E-ZPass was up to date.Literal government sign She touted one of her most unpopular policy agendas and then never even followed through on it. Horckle wasn’t just weak here; she waited too long to weaken and therefore missed out on all the political gains that would come from abandoning one of her party’s most unpopular programs.
I personally support congestion pricing, but I can’t blame voters for being against it. Contrary to the protests of transit advocates, I don’t think you need to have a car-centric perspective to think pricing is a bad idea; all it takes is a basic appreciation of how easily the MTA could squander $1 billion in new revenue.
Consider another transportation project that has been underway for a long time in New York.
In January 2023, a huge new terminal for the Long Island Railroad (LIRR) will open on Manhattan’s east side, 120 feet below Grand Central Station. The project, called East Side Access, has been decades in the planning and was even a pet project of Republican Senator Alfonse D’Amato, who lost his seat to Chuck Schumer in 1998. But the idea for East Side Access is older than that. Lawmakers started talking about building it in the early 1960s, and in the ’80s, the MTA built a subway tunnel under the East River, leaving the lower levels open so they could be used to carry the project’s trains in the future. After decades of delays, it wasn’t until the late ’90s that D’Amato took over the project and money started to move to finally build the rest of it.
The rationale for the project was that most of the offices in Midtown were on the east side of Manhattan, close to Grand Central Station, but far from the LIRR’s existing western terminus at Penn Station. Adding a second terminal would “increase rail capacity into Manhattan by nearly 50 percent, while also saving eastbound travelers 30-40 minutes per day,” according to a classic 2012 report from New York’s PBS station WNET. Yes, 2012. It’s been almost 50 years since lawmakers started talking about building this facility. The 2012 report also noted the unfortunate delays in completing the project. Also (They said we’d have to wait until 2019) And the price went up. Also (Up to $8.2 billion). Of course, by 2023, when service actually begins, the price tag will rise to more than $11 billion, making it the world’s most expensive urban rail project to date, on a per-mile basis.
But who’s counting? New York’s megaprojects always take too long and cost too much. At least now that it’s open, Long Island commuters are probably very happy about their shorter commutes. Right?
Unfortunately, that is not the case. When the LIRR’s parent company, the MTA, built this very expensive new terminal, trainIt was necessary to provide proper service to the terminal. Nolan Hicks New York Post During September:
According to a Federal Transit Administration report obtained by The Washington Post, the federal government began warning the Long Island Railroad as early as July 2017 that it was behind on ordering and receiving about 20 eight-car trains needed to run on a promised schedule from the new $11 billion terminal beneath Grand Central Station.
LIRR officials ultimately told the FTA in 2020 that they would find trains from the “existing LIRR fleet,” which meant moving trains that already serve Pennsylvania Station and Brooklyn’s Atlantic Terminal to the new Grand Central-Madison site.
During the environmental review, the LIRR announced that it would continue to operate 37 trains per hour during peak commute hours to Penn Station and add 24 more trains to Grand Central Terminal. However, in reality, it only operates 37 trains per hour during peak hours. Combined It straddles two terminals. It’s pretty humiliating. We waited all that time, spent all that money, and now many LIRR commuters have longer commutes because the direct trains they used to take to Penn Station and Brooklyn were canceled and now they have to transfer.
Seven years after the Federal Transit Administration warned the M.T.A. Really The MTA needed to go ahead and order new LIRR trains so the new terminal could be properly used, but they haven’t done so yet. The MTA recently explained why it hasn’t ordered the trains yet is because it needs to rely on existing revenues from congestion pricing to cover the costs.
Why should New Yorkers trust a government agency that spent 16 years and $11 billion to build a new rail terminal that had been abandoned as a concept for nearly half a century?The agency then failed to purchase trains for the new terminal.— Were they actually going to collect the full $15 toll and build a better, more reliable, more extensive transportation system?
I know, I know, officials have said they really were going to buy trains this time. But this is a pattern for the MTA. There have been plenty of new revenue streams in recent years. Just last year, lawmakers in Albany increased payroll taxes on New York City businesses, stuffing more cash into the MTA’s gaping maw. But these new revenues get eaten up by ever-growing “good condition” costs before they can fund expansions and improvements. And of course, the money would have been left over to buy trains if the MTA hadn’t somehow spent seven times the average cost per mile to build East Side Access. Without it New income.
The high cost of congestion pricing itself is an argument against putting more revenue into a new capital program. Urban Institute researcher Yona Freemark lamented yesterday that the MTA spent hundreds of millions of dollars to develop congestion pricing and get it ready to roll out, and now has no revenue to cover the costs. The waste is certainly unfortunate. But the numbers themselves are damning. We spent hundreds of millions of dollars to “build” a system that required very little actual physical capital. It just installed a set of cameras and transponders on gantries strategically placed on various streets in Manhattan. As is so often the case in America, most of that money was wasted on bureaucracy and paperwork, generating endless studies (and yet Jeffries and other politicians have not stopped saying that this “indefinite pause” is necessary so that more studies can be done). Given how little they build for us, despite the enormous amount of time and money we spend on government agencies, it’s no wonder that so many people’s response is just “just.” No, I want to save the money.?
in Despite all thisAs I said earlier, I actually agreement Congestion pricing. I actually support it, even though I live in a congestion zone and have a car, and I’m angry at Mr. Hoffle for canceling it.
I support this program for two reasons: First, while I don’t believe the revenue from this program will be well spent, I believe it will achieve its other primary goal of reducing congestion and increasing travel speeds.
Another reason I support the MTA is that it is well funded. did it NYCT would be perfectly capable of providing New Yorkers with good transportation if its costs were in line with its international peers, but I don’t see the agency’s response to the repeal of the congestion fee being to improve and become more efficient. Instead, Hawkle has already proposed raising payroll taxes again. State legislative leaders are still reluctant, upset that he repealed the congestion fee without consulting them. But the MTA is nowhere near funding its entire capital plan without congestion fee revenue, meaning LIRR trains aren’t going to happen anytime soon. And ultimately, I expect lawmakers will decide to raise taxes to cover the costs, as they have done before.
It’s all very depressing, but I don’t expect New York’s transportation policy to improve in the future, even if a stronger governor is elected.
This article has been adapted from post Josh Barro on Substack Very serious.
