New York was to make history on June 30 as the first American city to implement a congestion pricing program, decades in the making. Now, just three weeks before the planned start date, history has been made of a different kind: New York is the first American city to very nearly adopt congestion pricing, before dropping it at the last minute without an equal alternative in place. On Wednesday, Gov.
Kathy Hochul indefinitely postponed the MTA’s congestion pricing plan , which would have charged $15 for most motorists to enter lower Manhattan in a bid to reduce punishing traffic in the central business district and finance the modernization of the city’s mass transit. In a prerecorded address, Hochul said she could not allow the plan to move forward, citing concern over the toll’s impact on New Yorkers’ cost-of-living. Others, however, suspect that Hochul’s move is a political one, as Democrats seek to recover congressional seats in suburban areas particularly hostile to the toll.
“It’s nonsense. It’s all politics,” opined Sam Schwartz, the legendary traffic engineer and former city transportation official who coined the term “gridlock.” “This is really a poor decision by the governor if she’s worried about the economy.
” Schwartz was just three weeks away from seeing his decades-long dream of pricing motor vehicle traffic come into being. “It’s 2024, we’re 25 days from implementing it, and the governor got cold feet,” Schwartz said, describin.
