A reality ‘check’
Blaz pushed dream of congestion pricing
Mayor de Blasio pulled out a fake outsized check during his daily briefing on Tuesday to demonstrate how much cash the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is missing out on by dragging its feet on implementing congestion pricing in Manhattan.
The spoof check, written out to the MTA in the amount of $15 billion, speaks to the “profound impact” that the long-stalled congestion pricing plan could have for fixing public transit in the city and unclogging Manhattan’s chronic traffic jams, de Blasio said.
“The MTA talks all the time about their problems. I got something for them, I got a solution for them. How about this check for — yes, you see it — $15 billion,” de Blasio said at City Hall while flashing the cartoonish check. “That’s what congestion pricing means: $15 billion. It’s ready to go and would make this kind of impact. Imagine what $15 billion could do for your daily commute on the subway? Any problem the MTA says they have can be addressed with this.”
The plan — which was supposed to take effect in early 2021 but got pushed back because
of the pandemic and a lack of direction from the Trump administration’s Transportation Department — would slap tolls on any motorists driving south of 60th St. in Manhattan.
The thinking goes that the tolls would discourage New Yorkers from driving in Manhattan, easing traffic congestion and curbing climate-killing fossil fuel emissions, while the revenue collected from the levies would be spent on improving public transit.
State legislators approved the plan in 2019, but a long,
bureaucratic road remains before it can get up and running.
First, the Traffic Mobility Review Board must convene a meeting to set toll prices and consider which drivers, if any, should be exempt.
But the MTA — which is effectively controlled by Gov. Cuomo — has not yet named appointees to the board, angering de Blasio.
“The state and the MTA are not acting. They’re not naming any members, they’re not calling the meeting, they’re not moving the process,” said the mayor, who last week tapped Sherif Soliman, his Department of Finance commissioner, to serve as his representative on the board.
The MTA, which hasn’t convened a Traffic Mobility Review Board meeting since last November, contended that it is focusing on an environmental assessment of the congestion pricing plan, which the federal government must sign off on before work can begin on installing tolling infrastructure.
“The MTA is following that detailed process which doesn’t allow arbitrarily cutting corners,” MTA spokesman Ken Lovett said. “An environmental assessment is complicated, and we are working through issues with the Federal Highway Administration and our partners at the New York City and New York State Departments of Transportation.”
President Biden’s administration sought to speed up the process in March by allowing the MTA to conduct an environmental assessment instead of drawing up a much more time-consuming environmental-impact statement.
“They are trying to point the finger at Washington,” de Blasio said of the MTA. “Well, that worked with the Trump administration. That doesn’t work anymore.”