Can congestion pricing change New York’s car culture?

Good morning. It’s Monday. Today we’ll look at New York’s congestion pricing plan – what it’s expected to mean for motorists and whether it goes far enough.

Will New York’s Congestion Pricing Plan Go Far Enough?

In New Jersey, officials complain it is inherently unfair to motorists on their side of the Hudson River. On the New York side, some transportation experts told me it was at best a first step — albeit a good one — as a source of funding for the subways and buses and as a way to make the streets of Midtown Manhattan less congested with traffic.

First a summary. Congestion pricing is expected to generate $1 billion a year in revenue for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Here’s what the latest proposal would mean for drivers, according to recommendations released last week by an MTA advisory panel

Cars would pay $15 once a day to enter Manhattan under 60th Street, and commercial trucks would have to pay as much as $36. Taxis add $1.25 to fares for trips below 60th Street. Ride-hail services like Uber and Lyft would add $2.50.

The plan calls for discounts for drivers with household incomes of less than $50,000 per year. The reductions probably wouldn’t cut deeply into revenue for the MTA: A 2022 survey by the nonprofit Community Service Society of New York found that a large majority of commuters entering Manhattan have moderate or high incomes. The survey found that only 4 percent of commuters from Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens and Staten Island regularly pay tolls.

Congestion pricing offers an opportunity to change the city’s car culture. Some think it is not ambitious enough.

“You have to start somewhere, and this is a good start,” said Howard Yaruss, a transportation committee member for Community Board 7 on the Upper West Side.

He went on to say that the congestion charge should ideally be gradually expanded until it covers all five boroughs.

In the past, Yaruss and Community Board 7’s transportation committee have called for almost unthinkable changes for cars and the streetscape: In 2019, the committee introduced a plan to eliminate free on-street parking. He also said the board, which is just north of where the congestion pricing will begin, passed a resolution in its favor.

“If I take my two tons of steel that pollutes the environment into town,” he said, referring to his car, “I pay nothing. When I travel by public transport, I pay $2.90. That is terrible public policy.”

Heather Thompson, the CEO of the nonprofit Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, echoed the idea that congestion pricing was the right approach, at least for now. “One step at a time,” Thompson said. “We have to deal with climate change car emissions, air quality issues and traffic safety issues, which we’ve seen getting worse and worse in Manhattan and throughout the boroughs. It all comes from too many cars.”

Samuel Schwartz, a transportation consultant who served as the city’s traffic commissioner in the 1980s, said the $15 price was “probably the right price for cars.”

But he added that “they went too low on the Ubers and Lyfts by $2.50.” He blamed ride-share vehicles for the crawl-speed traffic, as traffic volume had dropped between 2010 and 2019 — a sign, he said, that Uber and Lyft vehicles (and vans) were clogging the streets.

Over the years, as congestion pricing was debated, concerns arose about unwanted side effects, including increased truck traffic in the Bronx as drivers would try to avoid Manhattan. Schwartz predicted something else: a wave of fake license plates.

He noted that the plan called for any vehicle from any state with a disability license plate to be exempt. He said he saw such a board for sale on eBay for $7.

Cameras have already been installed to read license plates once the congestion charge starts. It is unclear whether they can recognize an invalid license plate. Schwartz said congestion pricing could give people new incentives to tamper with their license plates. “A 3 becomes an 8, a letter is missing, the paint has been scraped off or plastic has been stuck to the sign, making it unreadable,” he said.

Schwartz said the number of unreadable messages in Toronto rose to 17 per cent after speed cameras were introduced there a few years ago. He worried that New York’s rate could rise to 20 percent, which amounts to $300 million a year of projected annual revenue. “I absolutely predict that a year after this program starts, the city or state comptroller will issue a report saying that $200 to $300 million was never collected,” he said.

“You can write that story now,” he told me. I said I would wait for the report.

Weather

It’s a partly sunny day in the low fifties. A mostly cloudy evening will become mostly clear, with temperatures dropping into the upper 30s.

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In effect until Friday (Immaculate Conception).

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METROPOLITAN diary

‘Doolittle’

Dear Diary:

In the late 1980s, I was the manager of an upscale bakery in the West Village. It was one of those places where a new manager came every year, and I was there for nine months.

The front of the house was a typical café setup: half a dozen tables, some glass display cases and every conceivable type of coffee and pastry, mostly served to-go.

The back of the house, which was four times the size, was where the real money was made, with wedding cakes often running into the many thousands of dollars.

One positive aspect of the job was that I got a long lunch break every day. After making myself a turkey and brie sandwich on a baguette with sun-dried tomatoes and garlic aioli, I grabbed a bottle of iced tea and a bag of chips and rushed to my nearby apartment.

Once there, I sat and ate while looking out of my second-floor window at the Christopher Street theater and loudly playing the Pixies’ recently released cassette “Doolittle.” Very loud. After listening to both sides of the tape, I returned to the cafe.

One day the owner asked why I was away for so long. I apologized and said I was in a hurry to get out of there.

He told me never to be in a hurry to get out of there. Then he said he wanted me to take my lunch breaks at the cafe so I could keep an eye on things.

I nodded in agreement, but quit a week later without telling him the real reason.

I had to hear the Pixies.

–Doug Sylver

Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send your entries here And read more Metropolitan Diary here.