As part of its adopted 2019 budget, New York state has approved the imposition of "congestion pricing" (in effect, tolls) in Manhattan, south of 60th Street, no earlier than December 31, 2020. While cities such as London, Singapore and Stockholm have imposed similar regimens to address their traffic congestion issues, New York is the first city in the United States to do so; and its rollout will no doubt be closely watched by other large U.S. cities facing similar issues and crises, such as Philadelphia, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle.
Many details remain to be worked out, including, for example, the amount of the charges applicable to cars and trucks. Those implementation details, and the operation of the program itself, will be left to an existing state public authority, the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority (the “TBTA”) that will establish a "traffic mobility review" board, consisting of a chair and five appointed members, including a member recommended by the Mayor of New York, one living in the Metro-North commuter railroad region (encompassing the suburbs north of the City), and a third residing in the region served by the Long Island Rail Road. Revenues from the program will be targeted to support the metropolitan area’s public mass transit systems, with proceeds being divided among the three major public transportation systems in the region: 80 percent to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that operates the City’s subway and elevated rail systems; 10 percent to the Metro-North commuter rail system; and 10 percent to the Long Island Rail Road.
The program does provide for three limited exemptions from the program: one for “authorized emergency vehicle[s]” as defined by the state traffic law; one for “qualifying vehicles transporting a person with disabilities,” and a tax credit for Manhattanites living below 61st Street and making less than $60,001 per year (they would pay the congestion toll, but get it back from the state when they file their taxes).
This newly-adopted congestion pricing program does not represent New York City’s first effort to control vehicular traffic within its boundaries or to raise revenues as part of those efforts. The four bridges that span the East River into Manhattan - the Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg and Queensboro (a/k/a 59th Street, a/k/a Ed Koch) Bridges - all initially had tolls that were eliminated prior to the Great Depression. With the Great Depression, and the resulting loss of revenue to the City, proposals were advanced to reinstate the tolls as well as impose fees for car ownership in Manhattan. In the face of widespread opposition to those plans, however, those proposals were not pursued further. Plans, proposals and suggestions to impose or increase tolls on those and other bridges on the east side of Manhattan resurfaced in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, all to no avail.
Efforts to reduce traffic congestion periodically included restrictions, proposed and implemented, to ban traffic or certain forms of traffic (such as noncommercial traffic) and parking from certain streets or portions of Manhattan on certain days or times of day. Under the administration of Mayor Edward Koch, consideration was even given to banning all private cars and allowing only commercial delivery and emergency services vehicles, and an effort by the City under his administration to ban single-occupancy cars from the East River bridges during morning rush hours was overturned by the courts. Most recently, congestion pricing legislation by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2008 and Move NY in 2015 failed to gain traction in the state legislature.
The deleterious effects of traffic congestion on the environment and the quality of life in our country’s major cities are, by all accounts, being felt now more than ever before. In her excellent article in the April 1 edition of The New York Times (“Congestion Pricing: NY Embraced It. Will Other Clogged Cities Follow?”), reporter Winnie Chu cites a number of compelling factors that have contributed to the increased congestion in our cities and the resulting impacts. She points out, for example, that more people than ever are driving to work---130 million in 2017 compared to 121 million five years earlier. “Of those, more than 116 million drove alone, and only 14 million carpooled. Just 8 million workers took public transportation.” The growth in popularity and population of major urban centers has also contributed to the worsening congestion as well as the burgeoning car-sharing service industry, such as Uber and Lyft, and the growth of Americans’ utilization of delivery services like Amazon. As a result, drivers spend on average 97 hours a year sitting in traffic, an increase of 15 hours in just three years. Traffic in Los Angeles now moves at less than 12 miles an hour, and in San Francisco at an even slower pace of 10 miles per hour. Chu also notes that the growth in urban traffic has resulted in increased health and safety concerns as pedestrian fatalities are reaching a three-decade high.
Congestion pricing presents its own issues, fairness being one of them. Critics have expressed concerns regarding the impact on poor and working-class people who necessarily rely on the car to take them to and from work in urban areas that are otherwise too expensive to live in. Moreover, those who live in areas not serviced, or not serviced reliably, by public transportation systems may have no real option but to drive their vehicles and incur what may be a substantial daily cost imposed by congestion pricing. There are also concerns about the potential worsening of congestion in neighboring areas of the city located outside of the boundaries of the program. As we follow the rollout of New York City’s experiment, we will also attempt to follow how these and other issues are addressed.
