Manhattan congestion fee needed ‘urgently,’ de Blasio says
Mayor Bill de Blasio on Thursday attempted to pressure Gov. Andrew Cuomo to implement a long-delayed Manhattan driving fee — nominating a member of a board that oversees new tolls and calling on the governor to “urgently” enact congestion pricing.
The mayor announced he chose Department of Finance Commissioner Sherif Soliman to serve on the Traffic Mobility Review Board, a body that consults on a dollar figure for the toll and who won’t have to pay it.
“Sherif Soliman has the vision and expertise to get the Traffic Mobility Review Board moving and deliver a congestion pricing plan that works for everyone,” said de Blasio. “The MTA should meet its obligation to convene experts like Sherif on this board and kick this process into overdrive.”
Tolls on cars driving in the Manhattan Central Business District — which is the borough south of 60th Street — were scheduled to start at the start of 2021, after the state passed congestion pricing in 2019. But the start of the congestion pricing fee — a policy aimed at disincentivizing car use and raising a bit of revenue for the MTA — has been delayed due to COVID-19 and federal foot-dragging under two administrations.
“Congestion pricing has always been part of the solution,” de Blasio — a longtime opponent of congestion pricing before proclaiming support for it in February 2019 — said Thursday. “We got to an agreement, but it still hasn’t happened. And it needs to, it needs to happen urgently.”
“The state runs the MTA, it’s time for the state to get in gear and get congestion pricing done,” the mayor added. “We desperately need the congestion pricing to move now.”
De Blasio said congestion pricing is needed to reduce traffic — which has already reached pre-pandemic levels — and to raise revenue for the MTA, a transit agency experiencing reduced ridership throughout the pandemic.
“Right when the recovery is coming on with a lot of momentum and people are ready to come back to the subways — the subways, the heartbeat of New York City — we’ve seen unprecedented problems,” said de Blasio, rattling off the state-run MTA’s recent list of maladies, including thousands of subway train runs canceled because of staffing shortages.
“The city is coming back, the economy’s coming back, kids are going back to school in September,” he said. “You’re going to see more and more people ready to come back to the subways, but they’ve got to know that the subways are going to be better.”
De Blasio’s Manhattan car trip toll boost comes after he said Tuesday that congestion pricing fees should be imposed “as fast as humanly possible.”
The mayor on Thursday got support for his call to action from a progressive state lawmaker.
“For working families in New York, time really is money,” said state Sen. Jessica Ramos of Queens at the press conference, listing the extra costs that New Yorkers stuck on delayed trains often face. “Not only can your pay be docked, but perhaps you end up paying extra fees in child care.”
“We don’t have to tell New Yorkers, unfortunately, that the state of our public transportation is decrepit,” she added. “But what we do need is for everyone to get on board, to help us get the state to make serious investments in the MTA and stop using it like an ATM. … Congestion pricing will help us check off many things on the to-do list.”
The MTA said in a statement that it remains committed to implementing the tolling program, but offered no firm timeline in response to de Blasio’s remarks.
“Like the Governor and other leaders who got it passed, we believe the Central Business District Tolling Program will be a huge environmental benefit for the region while also providing a major boost to mass transit — and we’re working hard to implement it as soon as possible,” said Ken Lovett, a senior advisor to MTA chairman Pat Foye, in a statement. “We will move forward on a timeline that meets all requirements set out for us.”
