MTA votes on New York congestion pricing plan Wednesday

New York City continues to be the most congested city in the world, according to a report Monday from transportation data and analytics firm Inrix. In 2023, it saw a 13% increase in downtown trips compared to the prior year. The nation’s first congestion pricing plan aimed to relieve some of that traffic congestion while generating funds for the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s capital investment program.

The MTA board of directors voted 11-1 on March 27 to approve the toll rates. But they will meet Wednesday to decide whether to go ahead with the state’s tolling plan for Manhattan or follow the lead of Gov. Kathy Hochul, who ordered an indefinite pause on implementing the program three weeks ago. 

Congestion pricing was scheduled to launch June 30 and was expected to deliver up to $15 billion toward subway extensions and modernization, new subway cars and zero-emission buses.

“Traffic congestion is both a bane and a barometer of economic health; it symbolizes bustling activity yet simultaneously hampers it,” said Bob Pishue, transportation analyst at Inrix, in a statement. Drivers in New York City lost 101 hours to delays in 2023, at an estimated cost of $1,762 to each motorist, according to Inrix.

“The beauty of New York” is that it is a walkable city, said Dan Kaplan, senior partner at the Brooklyn-based architectural firm, FXCollaborative. Kaplan said that in the five years since the New York State Legislature passed the central business district tolling program, his firm has frequently looked into opportunities for “a general rebalancing of the public realm” away from a car-centric environment to one that gives more equal weight to pedestrians, bicyclists and motor vehicles. That might include raised crosswalks, curb extensions and more bus and bike lanes. “My feeling is that the quality of the public space, the quality of the public ground, will be one of the best things we can do to get people to return to the CBD,” Kaplan said.

The consequences of the governor’s action have already begun to reverberate throughout the MTA’s construction projects. Due to uncertain funding, the agency ordered a halt to preliminary work on the Second Avenue subway extension to 125th Street in East Harlem, which could lead to the loss of a $3.4 billion federal grant.

Separately, a June 17 letter from MTA Construction & Development to a Long Island contractor, viewed by Smart Cities Dive, ordered Forte Construction to stop work at two Long Island Rail Road stations in Queens: Forest Hills and Hollis. The project plan was to modernize the stations to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act by adding new ramps that include automatic systems to melt snow and ice.

Other projects at risk, according to Crain’s New York Business, include the renovation of LIRR platforms at Penn Station in Manhattan, modernizing subway signal systems and procuring new subway cars and transit buses.

“There’s a whole ecosystem of jobs that are very much dependent on the MTA’s capital [investment] program,” said Dani Simons, vice president for communications and public affairs at Alstom, which manufactures rail cars, signal products and components at facilities in New York state and elsewhere in the United States. She referred to the many small businesses in upstate New York that Alstom and other companies rely on, noting that they operate on smaller margins. “When the future outlook is uncertain, it casts a lot of uncertainty on these smaller businesses,” she said.

Kaplan said he was dismayed at Hochul’s decision to stop the congestion pricing program and believes it was driven by election-year politics. He said that after November, “when enough dust has settled and we know where we’re going, I think it will resurrect.”