Congestion pricing, the long-debated effort to get Manhattan traffic under control and fund the modernization of New York City’s mass transit system, entered the twilight zone on Wednesday, unlikely to ever return.
The MTA board may exaggerate rumors of congestion pricing’s demise, noting that it only confirmed the pause that Gov. Kathy Hochul suddenly and unexpectedly instated on June 5. The pause came just 25 days before the Manhattan central business district tolling system was to be turned on — and pump about a billion dollars in annual revenue into the MTA’s coffers.
In our view, there is no way congestion pricing will ever be, in Star Wars terminology, thawed out of the carbonite — especially if those who have the power to do so would rather focus on winning elections than solving the pressing problems facing New York City.
What a waste this whole experience has been.
Nearly two decades of debate, forums and meetings of all kinds, a massive environmental review, the drafting and passing of legislation authorizing the program, the tedium of clearing bureaucratic hurdles of all levels, surviving a pandemic, enduring the dithering of the apathetic Trump administration, finally getting the green light from the Biden administration, MTA board approval, and a host of last-ditch lawsuits by opponents on both sides of the Hudson River who wanted to derail at the very last second all the progress that came to this moment.
All of this, for nothing!
Oh, and the MTA spent an estimated half-billion dollars on a network of computers, gantries and cameras that would have collected the toll money from drivers. They now stand around Manhattan as the most expensive street furniture in the city.
Where does the MTA go from here? In throwing congestion pricing on the back burner, the board also put some $16 billion in planned transit improvements into limbo. That includes the $5 billion extension of the Second Avenue Subway to East Harlem, and upgrading the nearly century-old signal systems that keep the A/C lines in Brooklyn and the B/D/F/M lines in Manhattan running today on a wing and a prayer.
Hochul, for her part, said that she would work “in the coming months” with the MTA and the state legislature “to further develop a comprehensive approach to funding the remaining projects in the 2020-24 capital plan,” and the next five-year capital plan which the MTA will vote on this fall.
Where the governor expects to find $16 billion in the state budget is a mystery. The MTA always has operational overhead, but not nearly that much. Taxes are already high in New York, and with Hochul deeply concerned about everyone’s economic anxiety, we can’t imagine she’ll approve any new taxes for the MTA’s benefit — especially with a 2026 re-election bid approaching.
Hochul and the state legislature must work hard and fast this summer to find $16 billion for the MTA — lest the city’s transit system is laid waste.
