Good morning. It’s Monday. Today we’ll look at the ripple effects of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s decision to put congestion pricing on an indefinite hold.
New York has spent the better part of half a century trying to figure out how to deal with traffic and congestion — and in the process, to capitalize on that traffic to benefit people who take public transit, which is most people in the city.
Yes, there are lower-income people in the city who own cars, some who live in underserved parts of town that subways don’t reach because New York basically stopped expanding the public transit network years ago. But the fact is that those earning less than $60,000 who have cars constitute a vanishingly small percentage of drivers into what would have been Manhattan’s congestion toll zone below 60th Street. And they would have been exempt from the tolls.
So when the governor floated the notion of fairness and equity for lower-income drivers, it made no real sense. The obviously equitable thing to do is to benefit transit riders. Her decision now leaves millions of people with a failing transit system that has lost its financial lifeline.
You wrote that Hochul’s decision reflects a leadership crisis in New York. Really?
The congestion pricing plan went through every conceivable review and court challenge. Then the governor pulls out the rug from under it at the last moment for reasons that may not entirely have to do with the merits of the program but instead with concerns about the November elections and the potential response of people who don’t live in the city, mostly suburban voters.
This promotes a feeling that the normal processes of governance can’t be trusted, and that the state can’t run the city when called on to do so.
Because the M.T.A., which has run the subways since the 1960s, is a state agency.
Exactly. New York City’s inability to control its past problems now puts it at the mercy of a governor beholden to parts of the state whose interests are sometimes antithetical to the city’s. I understand nobody likes paying tolls, and for good reason New Yorkers don’t entirely trust the M.T.A. to spend its money wisely, but those same drivers who complain about the tolls are the ones losing precious hours stuck in traffic.
How much do you think politics figured in the governor’s decision?
She strongly denied that she declared this “indefinite pause” for political reasons. But she is not an appointed official, she’s an elected one, and elected leaders have to lead. That requires long-term, not short-term, thinking. I find it hard to imagine that, come November, congestion pricing tolls on that small portion of people who insist on driving into Lower Manhattan will be the issue that swings the House of Representatives.
At the same time, the governor left an impression that she still doesn’t really understand the city well, because her other argument, aside from the equity one, was that the timing was off, that the city is still hurting after Covid and could be hurt more by congestion pricing.
One could make the exact opposite argument: that the city has recovered remarkably, that it is again crowded, that the subways are straining and that congestion pricing is exactly what we need at this moment. Businesses in the city largely supported congestion pricing, which tells you something about the economic impact they expected and their reliance on public transit. The more the subways collapse and fail us, the worse the traffic will be and the less capable New York will be of fixing itself.
Nobody thinks that the M.T.A. is a perfect institution. But it is what we have, and it is destined to fail if we impoverish it, and therefore so is the rest of the city.
Announcing the decision at almost the last possible moment made it all the more unsettling, didn’t it?
The sense of rudderlessness is, to me, almost the most alarming aspect of this.
Look, for people who didn’t ever like the idea, or felt that congestion pricing was imperfect, which it is, her announcement at the 59th second of the last minute of the 11th hour may have seemed a demonstration of leadership. I get it. But that argument flies in the face of what we know about congestion pricing. We’ve seen in other cities like Singapore and Stockholm and London how the program has been instituted, adapted, tweaked and achieved results and finally widespread acceptance once it was given a shot — which is the only way progress happens.
Is New York no longer thinking big?
That’s the other worry this raises. The city has a history of taking big swings. They all involved big risks, and were typically opposed by many people in their time. That includes Central Park, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan street grid.
But after a generation, opposition is usually forgotten.
Right. And it doesn’t always take a generation. Sometimes it takes a day. The Brooklyn Bridge was considered a terrible gamble until it was finished, and then almost overnight, it became the shining symbol of accomplishment.
It ran way over budget, was years late and considered a scandal because workers died and a major contractor ended up in jail.
Then it opened.
You say that there are other projects that could die on the vine because the money from congestion pricing won’t be there. Like what?
A subway signal system from the era of Prohibition. Anybody who’s taken public transit in another major city and seen an efficient, reliable metro knows this system is wildly, bizarrely antiquated. We rely on dangerously outdated technology.
But we’re amnesiacs. We forget what happens when we ignore a problem and then have to deal with the consequences. We waited for the elevated West Side Highway in the 1970s to deteriorate until literally a truck fell through it, carrying materials to repair the highway. Then we had to shut the highway down and rebuild the whole West Side of Manhattan at enormous cost. Everyone had known the highway needed to be fixed, but we lacked the political will, collective consciousness and leadership to get it done.
We’re heading down that road again.
Weather
It’s going to be a mostly sunny day in the mid-80s. The evening will be mostly clear, with temperatures in the low 70s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
Suspended today and tomorrow (Eid al-Adha) and Wednesday (Juneteenth).
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Chess in Bryant Park
Dear Diary:
On a day less wet
I was inclined to finance a rematch
I felt good
Pieces landed on proper squares
I felt good
Giving my combatant reason to pause
But in the end, I was going up against
A champion
A legend
I was going up against
Moses
A man who when asked
When is the last time you’ve lost
Smiled kindness
While softly saying
It’s been awhile
I can’t quite remember
— Danny Klecko
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.