NEW YORK | Congestion Pricing

New York Zoning
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It will. Its huge for trucking and logistics companies. When you have trucking carriers that send dozens of units daily into the city, yeah… it’ll add up. Just one day… factor in the rest of the year. Will impact the bottom line, and this will warrant price increases. And its just not trucks, don’t kid yourself, its everything else that requires transportation into South of 59th. Even maintenance and prevention. Subcontractors for Con Ed or any other services for the city.

Will impact a lot of people. Its not just the cost of the toll that will hit people daily but also the long term price increases as a result of “X” toll.

We have to call it what it is. A tax! All it is. And the tolls… as we know… are subject to rise. Fifteen for cars, than what, 20 dollars a few years down the line. They never remain static.

Will indeed impact New Jerseyans in areas with poor transit options. Than you have the parking capacity at the existing train stations.

The region is not ready for this. We do not have Tokyo levels of efficiency to warrant it at this time without causing a lot of issues.

Now… will we be ready in the future? Yes if gaps are fixed. But right now, is not a good time. Too many issues and conditions in the city that need to be fixed. Last thing we need is something that will hurt recovery.

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If your business cannot pay $24-36 to carry thousands of dollars of cargo into the most high-demand area in NYC, your business does not deserve to exist. Residents in this area are already subsidizing the outsized impact that trucks (and cars) have on our streets by enduring the cost of massive road wear, noise pollution, air pollution, transit disruption, occupation of street space, and risk of physical harm every day. Why should cars and trucks get a free ride when they impose all these costly externalities on city residents?

You say the region is not ready for this, but we cannot allow perfect to be the enemy of good. There will always be people less served by transit than others, but NYC still has the only world-class transit network in the country. We don’t have to compare to Tokyo- London has higher car ownership than NYC (55% vs. 45%), and they successfully implemented congestion pricing decades ago.

Already, only 8% of NJ commuters and 3% of NY commuters choose to drive- why do we cave to this vocal minority of commuters at the expense of improving transit for the vast majority of New Yorkers?

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Here are the current stats on fare beaters. I can confirm those numbers as one who rides both subway & busses frequently around Manhattan. It is appalling to me, and often feel a bit duped as I am one who ‘always’ pays my fare. Also, there is practically NO crackdown of fare beating: I know from simple casual observation as a frequent mass transit rider. If this congestion pricing is about raising revenue for the MTA - it will do nothing more than partially make up for losses in fare beating. Things in our local government are becoming quite dysfunctional IMHO.

I say forget Congestion Pricing for now: focus on getting people to PAY THE FARE. First-things-first.

In the last three months of 2023, 45% of local bus riders did not pay their fare to board, up from 21% in the last quarter of 2019. By comparison, 13% of subway riders skipped turnstiles over the same period last year, up from 5% at the end of 2019.May 28, 2024

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400,000+ New Jerseyans would be impacted. That’s a lot of folks. Not to mentioned rent burdened New Yorkers in the outer boroughs

That’s not how businesses operate nor is that a salient idea of thinking

.That 24 to 36 dollars is a lot. Starts to add up. If you were creating a budget and looking at your projected P/L… red flags would pop up.

It isn’t at the moment due to inflationary pressure. We are still recovering. And those prices will not be static. It will only rise in time, as with every other toll.

Now what they can do in the meantime is look for ways to curtail waste. That’s a big one. Optimize different verticals in the city. There is a ton of waste that adds a ton of soft-cost expenses to the city, things that could be refined.

We all know bureaucracy is a major hinderance. And also gaps in existing transit options.

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Thank you for bringing this up.

Like I said above as a response to another member, there is a lot of WASTE that occurs in this city. Efficiency and optimization should be key.

Money bleeding all the time. Why burden people even more when the root causes of many issues aren’t being addressed. Fair beating as an example.

The time is not right. Major housing crisis, rents are up, not enough housing, cost of goods and services are sky high… for NYC and even NJ… last thing we need at this crucial time, during recovery, is another tax… one to add that will fund a unoptimized money pit like the MTA. Full of, as they say in the lean word… WASTE!

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NYC business owners elated by congestion pricing postponement

Many small business owners in Manhattan’s congestion pricing zone say they support Governor Kathy Hochul’s decision to indefinitely postpone the rollout of the plan.

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I’m absolutely DONE with Hochul, will never vote for her again after this. A lot of my progressive friends saying the same.

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With respect, this is just a nimby talking point. NYC is not special in this regard nor is it even close to the first to implement congestion pricing.

Those points have been brought up before, and argued for years until it was eventually passed and what do ya know, it was completely fine and brought all the benefits it was expected too

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There is no doubt it would aid to solve some of the gridlock. No doubt on that, as has been seen in case studies where it has been implemented in other global cities. No doubt… but will it impact people in the sense of prices, especially a struggling and overburdened Middle Class, of course it will.

This is my humble opinion and in the spirit of discussion, fair game, even at risk of irking folks.

Fundamentally I am not super against the idea, but when we have a city that at the moment, due to self-inflicted housing woes, bureaucracy with the very transit agencies that are responsible for the network and gaps, like @infoshare mentioned such as fair collection… one has to ask if there are also other means to preserve the tax payers money and also expand on long term opportunity.

Continuous improvement is key, and so if this extra time allows the system to be refined a little more, to say accommodate the concerns of others, all the merrier. Maybe in time, such a delay will be seen as added value. Also a good time considering the COL at the moment.

Better to get it right the first time. More time may allow it to become even more refined.

We have to, IMO, also think of the masses. You know for some of us, an extra 15 a day, is not much but for a lot people, it adds up. Even small businesses, the lifeblood of the city. There are a lot of impacts, hence why some are against it in its current form.

What we don’t want is a system that is given the greenlight and than a year from now, we see all the negatives. Better to have it right, fine tune it to all hell. Factor in everything.

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And we are in this silly scenario because someone at some point joked about playing strip poker on an airplane. It’s sort of absurd.

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Hochul’s postponement of congestion pricing is an absolutely egregious failure of public policy.

The governor really needs to look at what has been done in cities such as London and see that there are real benefits that it brings long-term.
Congestion Charge marks 20 years of keeping London moving sustainably - Transport for London.

Apparently, some of her justification was “unintended consequences” such as public employees having to pay the fee when driving into the city after their unions complained about it.

As expected, not everyone’s happy with the decision either, including business leaders who fear (see below) a payroll tax increase that they have to pay since revenue has to come from somewhere.

Worse from the perspective of business leaders is that the governor is considering raising the payroll tax paid by New York City businesses to make up for the lost revenue.

You reap what you sow, so hopefully Hochul gets enough pushback to reverse her decision as it will only hurt the city in the long run.

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Many folks who drive into the city hire people “off the books”, so the payroll tax is unlikely to affect them.

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We can prevent fare evasion and implement congestion charge at the same time, one doesn’t have to happen before the other. The execution of the former doesn’t mean we can forgo the latter. Totally separate policies that are both needed!

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The will of the majority New Yorkers (which approve of congestion charge in poll after poll) needs to be heeded in this case. For every poor, suffering low- and middle-class car commuter posters here bring up, there are many more poor, suffering low- and middle-class transit commuters that need better service – in a country that already highly invests in car infrastructure, and neglects public transit. The selfishness is disgusting.

This below that I posted in December needs reiteration:

All this talk of all the poor NJ commuters who drive in is a bit of a false flag imo.

The pro-transit group looked at commuting patterns in 21 legislative districts in the Garden State that are closest to Manhattan and found that, on average, just 1.6 percent of commuters from those areas drive into the CBD for work — and the median income of those commuters was $107,996 per year, or roughly 22 percent higher than the $88,407 median for commuters who use transit.

For outer-borough residents:

Key Findings

  • Among all income strata of outer-borough residents (those living in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens and Staten Island), no more than four percent would regularly pay a congestion fee.
  • Of the city’s outer-borough working residents in poverty, only two percent — around 5,000 residents — will be asked to pay a congestion fee as part of their daily commute.
  • Outer-borough households in poverty are nearly three times more likely as high-income outer-borough households to lack a motor vehicle.
  • A majority of low-income essential workers living in the outer boroughs depend on public transportation to reach their jobs; no more than three percent will be asked to pay a congestion fee as part of their daily commute.
  • For every working New Yorker in poverty who will regularly face a congestion charge, 50 workers will benefit through the mandated investment of congestion revenues in transit upgrades.

Not to mention the exemptions from the congestion charge this minuscule amount of poor people were supposed to get.

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^^This data is the answer. The far majority of people who would “suffer” from this policy are people who can easily pay the fee or choose another mode of transportation.

Yes, we can always cherry pick examples of people who don’t fall into this category, but it’s the exception rather than the norm.

The other thing I’ll say is people in this country have a distorted view on what driving actually costs since it’s been historically subsidized in the form of excessive levels of free parking, subsidized gas prices, and interstate freeways that bring them directly into urban cores. These policies (and others) have given the impression that driving is a cheap, consequence free, mode of travel when in reality it’s negative externalities are literally destroying the planet and annually break the record for killing the most pedestrians every year.

When people are asked to pay the real price for driving, they equate it to some kind of fascist level of control on their lives.

Plain and simple this decision was a political stunt meant to capitulate to voters who don’t know the meaning of the word oppression.

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Those last 3 paragraphs :clap:t6::clap:t6::clap:t6:

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I’ve said it before, it already costs more to drive to and park in Manhattan as opposed to transit so all of this whining about cost is moot. Bring back the NYC income tax for out of state residents that Giuliani got rid of.

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It’s really only those who don’t use mass transit and don’t even live in the city that are up in arms over congestion pricing. They hate mass transit and the idea of funding it. They wouldn’t mind seeing the subway system fail.

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So Hochul’s revenue substitution scheme imposes a payroll tax on the city rather than asking those from outside Manhattan who clog streets to pay for their impact on midtown. Great……Ask those negatively impacted to pay for the depredations of those causing the problem. Ask the city to pay for transit that helps those living elsewhere. Her move is scandalous.

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She’s bending over for the minority of commuters, specifically the bridge and tunnel crowd who drive into the city (the same group that can easily afford the congestion pricing fee since parking is 100% more expensive than that but nobody ever talks about that), the same group who chose to cry about it because for once initiative was taken to enhance transit through a new source of funding instead catering to drivers for once.

Now people are worrying as the money stream that would enhance transit accessibility has been cut off as a result.

NJ rejoices and some politicians here erroneously claim that “the congestion tax would increase congestion in NJ” What an absolute joke. Our politicians are as much clowns as the ones in NY who are responsible for this as I am 100% sure their “complaints” were an influence in her decision to shelve the congestion charge.

Correct.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-06/ny-lawmakers-weigh-business-tax-hike-after-hochul-toll-reversal

New York lawmakers are considering raising taxes on New York City businesses to help plug a $1 billion-a-year hole created by Governor Kathy Hochul’s surprise decision to halt a congestion pricing plan that would have funded vital transit infrastructure improvements.

Here’s what is at stake due to Hochul’s absolutely erroneous decision. Over a billion in additional investment to the MTA just went down the drain.

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