Congestion pricing helps riders and our economy

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-ofgood-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!

Last choice

Brooklyn: I am certainly one of those who voted for Mayor Adams in the 2021 mayoral election, and I am now one of the 55% of those who disapprove of “the job he is doing as mayor” as described in the article by Harry Seigel (“New Yorkers aren’t buying what Adams is selling,” column, Dec. 2). However, if we look at the primaries, we can see that there is little change in the way New Yorkers look at the mayor. In the first round of the primaries, he received only 30.7% of the vote running against Kathryn Garcia and Maya Wiley. And in the final round of the primaries, he received only 50.4% of the vote against Garcia. In each round, I voted for his opponents. But when he ran against Curtis Sliwa, a conservative Republican, I had no choice but to vote for our current mayor. Adams was never a very popular candidate in his own party! Lewis Friedman

Newly installed

Jackson Heights: Instead of apprehending turnstile jumpers and fining them, hopefully discouraging others, it was wonderful to read that the MTA installed $700,000 gates in a trial run. With potentially millions of dollars being spent on building a better mousetrap, it would have been a real waste to use this money for useless purposes, such as assisting homelessness or hiring more police. Thank you, MTA. Glenn B. Jacobi

Team on ice

Glen Oaks: How can you call yourself New York’s Hometown Paper when you refuse to cover the best sports team in New York, the New York Rangers? You have many fine writers who cover the other professional teams, but for some reason, outside of an occasional Associated Press story, there is no coverage of the Rangers. Please remedy this appalling situation by hiring someone to cover the Rangers beat. Fred Fleisher

Digital drag

Bronx: Not to pile on with the complaints, but for the last month or so, the Daily News iPad app has uploaded the Metro Final as the digital copy we get. Can we go back to the Sports Final on the app and leave the Metro Final to out-of-town airport newsstands where it belongs? Chuck Shannon

Page-turner

Jamaica: How invested am I and thousands of others when we open the Daily News and the first page we turn to is the comic section to read “Mutts,” just to see what is happening to Guard Dog? Thank you for showing the world what so many millions of animals are going through each day, each hour. Many give up and not enough are saved. Saturday’s strip brought me to actual tears. He is loved, he is wanted. Run, Doozy, run! Save Guard Dog because he’s about to get the best life ever when he gets better.

Cassandra Murray