Congestion pricing, we hardly knew ye.
New York City’s spectacularly unpopular congestion pricing scheme is on death row as the Trump administration will announce Wednesday it is pulling its approval of the toll — slamming it as “backwards and unfair” — in a major blow to Gov. Kathy Hochul, The Post has learned.
The US Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration will terminate the approval of the controversial program, according to a letter Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is set to send to Hochul Wednesday afternoon.
“New York State’s congestion pricing plan is a slap in the face to working class Americans and small business owners,” said Duffy, noting that commuters entering NYC have already financed the construction and improvement of city roadways through their taxes.
“But now the toll program leaves drivers without any free highway alternative, and instead, takes more money from working people to pay for a transit system and not highways. It’s backwards and unfair,” he said, blasting the program as harmful to small businesses in the Big Apple that depend on customers from New Jersey and Connecticut.
The department will officially rescind the Nov. 21 agreement signed under the Value Pricing Pilot Program (VPPP) that imposed a stiff $9 surcharge for drivers entering Manhattan below 60th Street starting in January.
“Every American should be able to access New York City regardless of their economic means. It shouldn’t be reserved for an elite few.”
The department said the congestion pricing toll runs counter to the federal aid highway program, which prohibits tolling on roads built with federal funds unless Congress grants an exception.
The DOT letter further outlines Duffy’s justification for terminating the pilot, including that it fails to provide a toll-free alternative for drivers who have no choice but to traverse city roads by vehicle.
It also claims the toll rate — which instantly made NYC the most expensive city in the US to drive in — was established to be a revenue generator for the MTA, rather than set at an amount actually designed to reduce connection in accordance with the plan’s stated purpose.
“The pilot runs contrary to the purpose of the VPPP, which is to impose tolls for congestion reduction — not transit revenue generation.”
In the letter to Hochul viewed by The Post, Duffy writes, “To be sure, the termination of the program may deprive the transit system of funding, but any reliance on that funding stream was not reasonable given that [Federal Highway Administration] approved only a ‘pilot project.’”
At a press conference last month, The Post asked Hochul how the MTA – which is tens of billions in arrears — or the state planned to determine the efficacy of the toll scheme, which aimed to raise billions to fund the transportation network’s $15 billion 2020-2024 capital improvement plan.
“There’ll be more data than you can imagine. Today is the first day, I wouldn’t count today’s data. Let’s give it a few days to sink in and get a trend,” Hochul said at the time.
The toll scheme was so unpopular that NYC drivers began implementing stealthy methods of ducking the surcharge within days of its Jan. 5 implementation.
The Department of Transportation said it will work with the project sponsors on an “orderly termination” of the tolls, but it was not immediately known when the tolls would cease being collected.
Read the full article here
