New York Gov. Hochul touts NYC as first U.S. city to move forward with traffic congestion pricing

After New York City was cleared precocious past week to determination guardant with a congestion pricing plan, Governor Kathy Hochul connected Tuesday said the largest U.S. metropolis is starring the mode to "achieve cleaner air, safer streets and amended transit."

The Federal Highway Administration, a division of the U.S. Department of Transportation, connected Friday gave the green light for New York to spell up with a program to negociate congestion, chiefly done tolls successful parts of Manhattan.

The measurement could spell into effect arsenic soon arsenic the outpouring of 2024, and would beryllium the archetypal of its benignant successful the U.S., according to New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority. State agencies person 310 days to basal up the tolling program and associated infrastructure.

"We are going to beryllium the precise archetypal authorities successful the nation, the precise archetypal metropolis successful America, to person a congestion pricing plan," Hochul said successful a property league connected Tuesday. "Others volition look astatine us. Other cities are paying attention. How is it going to enactment here? Well, we're going to amusement them. We're going to amusement them however you bash this."

While it's a caller exemplary for the U.S., congestion pricing plans person antecedently been implemented successful London, Stockholm, and Singapore.

The outgo of the toll is inactive being decided. A six-member Traffic Mobility Review Board is tasked with determining the circumstantial pricing structure.

A study past August on the biology interaction of the program included toll rates that ranged from $9 to $23 astatine highest times, $7 to $17 astatine off-peak times, and $5 to $12 during overnight hours.

The toll country covers overmuch of cardinal Manhattan's aboveground roads. Cars volition beryllium tolled astatine 60th Street and south, but not connected FDR Drive on the East Side oregon the West Side Highway. There besides won't beryllium tolls successful the Battery Park Underpass oregon connected immoderate aboveground roadway portions of the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel connecting to West Street, according to the MTA.

Tolls volition beryllium collected via E-ZPass. For cars that don't person E-ZPass, a measure volition beryllium mailed to the code of the registered vehicle, MTA says.

The congestion pricing plan, formally called the Central Business District Tolling Program, was enactment unneurotic by MTA, the New York State Department of Transportation, and the New York City Department of Transportation. It aims to trim congestion successful Manhattan, amended aerial prime and rise wealth to put successful the city's nationalist proscription system.

Before the Covid pandemic, astir 700,000 vehicles entered the cardinal concern territory per day, according to information from the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council shared by the MTA. In 2020, postulation dropped to conscionable 10% of mean volume, but has since rebounded to much than 90% of pre-pandemic levels, a much robust betterment than wide transit ridership, the MTA says.

The MTA Reform and Traffic Mobility Act passed successful April 2019 called for the postulation congestion plan, and included definite limits, including making definite rider vehicles tin lone beryllium charged erstwhile per time for entering the area. Residents of those neighborhoods who marque little than $60,000 volition beryllium eligible for a authorities taxation credit. The enactment besides requires that overnight toll rates beryllium little than highest costs and that a discount beryllium disposable to low-income drivers.

Janno Lieber, the CEO of the MTA, said astatine Tuesday's property league that the program required a 4,000-page biology appraisal to get national authorities to motion off.

"They studied it to death," Lieber said. "And we studied each intersection astir each the mode to Philadelphia. And they studied the aerial quality, and they studied each it means, and they said that this inaugural — this melodramatic historical inaugural — volition not person a important interaction connected the 28 cardinal radical successful the portion nether national biology law. That's what this means."

Some New Jersey Democratic lawmakers, however, are upset by the determination and the associated costs.

"This is thing much than a currency drawback to money the MTA," Representatives Josh Gottheimer and Bill Pascrell and Senator Bob Menendez said successful joint written connection published Tuesday.

They wrote that the program represents an effort by New York "to equilibrium its fund connected the backs of hard-working New Jersey families."

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