Guess What People Have To Say About Congestion Pricing

mandatory public input meetings are underway [FORWARD TO A FRIEND]( [VIEW IN BROWSER]( [DONATE]( [WNYC Politics Brief] The MTA Invited Public Input About Congestion Pricing. Guess What People Had To Say. Plus: The Times surveys the decline and current rise of traffic deaths under Mayor de Blasio. Traffic is destroying a downtown bus route. And one MTA worker's decade-long scheme to evade tolls on bridges and tunnels. By James Ramsay --------------------------------------------------------------- 🚆 --------------------------------------------------------------- [congestion in Manhattan] RBLFMR/Shutterstock Though duly elected New York lawmakers approved of congestion pricing two years ago, the plan to charge drivers entering Manhattan below 60th Street is still over a year away from taking effect. As part of the process of getting congestion pricing over the finish line, the MTA, which would be charged with enforcing the tolls, has been mandated by the federal government to hold a series of ten public input sessions for residents of the five boroughs and the surrounding suburbs. As of today, five of those sessions have taken place. ([See details on the sessions still to come]( Here's an overview of what's been said so far: I've Lived Here All My Life, How Can You Charge Me? During one session for outer borough residents, a retired teacher from Queens named Mario Asaro recalled driving into the city on weekends for trips to the park and to see the museums, and worried a toll charge would discourage people like him from traveling to Manhattan. "Restricting Manhattan for those of us that live in the outer boroughs with further taxation, especially during non-congestion hours and weekends, is elitist, immoral, and just plain wrong," he said. The final fee structure has yet to be determined, but it’s possible the MTA would levy off-peak charges that are cheaper than rush hour fees. Can I Get An Exemption? Vaylateena Jones, a retired nurse and part of the group the Lower East Side Power Partnership, argued that the Lower East Side shouldn't be part of the Central Business District because so many people live there. She also asked that any truck that delivers medicine be exempt from the fees. "Any tolls [that] trucks have to pay will be transferred through inflated prices," she said. "I really would not like to see people coming to the hospital because they’ve not been taking their medication because they can’t afford it." Blame Uber And Lyft, Not Us "I have concerns about the proposal, because I believe it makes outer-borough residents pay for subway repair[s] while not addressing the actual reason for the increased congestion in Manhattan over the last decade, which has been the increase in for-hire vehicles from companies like Uber and Lyft," said Philip Papaelias, a lifelong Bronx resident. It’s true that in the recent past, app-based taxis were clogging city streets, but there's been extensive legislation to curb their growth. The city capped the number of new taxi licenses allowed, and it has restricted the amount of time drivers can cruise around Manhattan looking for passengers. Additionally, app-based cars and yellow taxis already pay an extra fee for driving in Manhattan below 96th Street, as part of an earlier congestion pricing bill that has been in effect since 2019. This Is Unfair To New Jersey At an input session exclusively for Garden State residents, [people complained that they'd be double-tolled]( — once for crossing the Hudson, and again for entering Manhattan — and that it was unfair to make New Jersey drivers subsidize New York City's public transit system. Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a Democrat who represents parts of Bergen County, has emerged as a leading foe of congestion pricing, [calling it a "sick joke"]( and threatening with other lawmakers to impose a retaliatory toll for New Yorkers crossing into his state. Hurry It Up! Transit advocates who want to see congestion pricing take effect are increasing frustrated by all these hurdles. "Too much time has already been wasted, and too much time is going to be seemingly spent reaching out to the public," said transit aficionado Jason Rabinowitz in one meeting last week. "New York City is choking on car exhaust, the streets are overly congested all day, everyday." Interim MTA Chairman and CEO Janno Lieber, meanwhile, has characterized the 16-month environmental review underway, and the two-year schedule to implement congestion pricing, as "aggressive." Lieber also warned if the project doesn’t take every single legally required step, the MTA could be sued, which would further delay the process. — [Reporting by Stephen Nessen]( --------------------------------------------------------------- 🚆 --------------------------------------------------------------- This MTA Worker Racked Up $100,000 In Tolls And Fines By Hiding His License Plates [an obscured license plate] Office of the MTA Inspector General Between 2011 and 2021, an assistant general superintendent at an MTA bus depot in East New York put together a nifty scheme to avoid paying tolls on bridge and tunnel crossings: He removed the front license plate from his Nissan Sentra, used three different E-Z Pass accounts, and changed his rear license plate multiple times, as well as covered it with a "cloudy semi-clear plastic." He also allegedly bragged about the scheme to his co-workers, which is likely how the MTA's Inspector General, which got an anonymous tip about him, decided to look into his misdeeds. This week, the IG released a report claiming that this employee, who isn't being named, owed $8,470 in tolls and $95,800 in penalty fees. When the MTA learned about what happened earlier this year, the agency suspended him for three months without pay and demoted him to superintendent, but he only had to repay his employer $10,373. (The rest of the money is owed to either the Port Authority or the New York State Thruway Authority.) Though the MTA eventually caught the guy, this saga raises questions about the competence of the Bridges and Tunnels division ahead of the start of congestion pricing. Close watchers warn that scofflaws may try to evade tolls — just as one of the MTA's own employees did for a decade. — [Reporting by Stephen Nessen]( --------------------------------------------------------------- 🚆 --------------------------------------------------------------- Here's What Else Is Happening So far this year, a driver has killed a pedestrian in New York City on average once every three days. After five years of declining traffic fatalities under Mayor Bill de Blasio — who made ending traffic deaths a centerpiece of his tenure with the Vision Zero program — fatal crashes increased in 2019 and 2020. An overview from the Times points to weak traffic enforcement by the NYPD, minimal changes to street design, and the growing popularity of giant SUVs as main reasons why drivers keep killing people so frequently. ([The New York Times]( Traffic overloads at the Holland Tunnel keep forcing the MTA to suspend rush hour bus service on a crucial crosstown line. The M21 bus, which is supposed to run across town from the Lower East Side to the Hudson River waterfront, has suspended service at the last few west side stops on about two-thirds of weekdays over the last six months because drivers trying to get to New Jersey clog the streets. "Few things are a better argument for congestion pricing," said Danny Pearlstein, a transit advocate with the group Riders Alliance. ([AM New York]( Two leading Queens politicians have joined calls to halt the LaGuardia AirTrain project. Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, who previously supported the AirTrain, and State Sen. Leroy Comrie, who leads the senate committee that has oversight of the Port Authority, are now both urging Gov. Kathy Hochul to suspend the plan to build the train. Opponents of the AirTrain have characterized it as a vanity project from former Gov. Andrew Cuomo that wouldn't actually make it faster or easier for New Yorkers to get to the airport from Manhattan or western Queens. ([New York Post]( A carriage horse was injured last week after colliding with a parked car on West 55th Street. The NYPD said that last Thursday — this horse's first day pulling a carriage — the animal got startled, the operator lost control, and the horse ran into a parked BMW at the corner of 55th and 8th Avenue. The horse, which suffered lacerations on multiple parts of its body, was sent to recover at the Clinton Park Stables. The incident prompted the animal advocacy group NYCLASS to renew calls for banning the use carriage horses in Midtown. ([Gothamist]( NJ Transit has installed its first solar-powered bus shelter. The $11,900 shelter at a bus stop in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, outside Camden, has solar panels on its roof that power both the lights inside and charging outlets for passengers waiting for the bus. NJ Transit said that if the shelter proves durable and useful, it'll add more of them across the state as part of the agency's bigger plan to have zero emissions by 2040. ([NJ.com]( --------------------------------------------------------------- 🚆 --------------------------------------------------------------- And Finally: This Looks Unsafe! [a video of a guy standing on top of a subway car]( [@davenewworld_2/Twitter]( --------------------------------------------------------------- 🚆 --------------------------------------------------------------- Support WNYC + Gothamist Make a donation to support local, independent journalism. Your contributions are our largest source of funding and pays for essential election coverage and more. [DONATE]( [Facebook]( [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Twitter]( [Instagram]( [Instagram]( [WNYC]( [WQXR]( [NJPR]( [GOTHAMIST]( [WNYC STUDIOS]( [THE GREENE SPACE]( Copyright © New York Public Radio. 160 Varick Street, New York, NY 10013 All rights reserved. [Terms of Use.]( Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your [preferences]( or [unsubscribe]( from this list