Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll take another look at the consequences of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s decision to put congestion pricing on an indefinite hold. We’ll also look at what Tuesday’s primaries mean for progressive Democrats after the defeat of Representative Jamaal Bowman, a member of the “squad” in the House.
There is a price for not going ahead with congestion pricing.
That became clear on Wednesday through a report from the watchdog group Reinvent Albany and in presentations at the first meeting of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s board since Gov. Kathy Hochul put the congestion pricing plan, which had been long anticipated, on an indefinite hold.
The presentations, by agency staff members, outlined cuts that totaled $16.5 billion. The agency would defer plans to make more stations accessible to passengers with disabilities, to upgrade aging signal systems and to begin pushing the Second Avenue subway north toward 125th Street.
Hochul issued a statement during the board meeting that argued that the M.T.A. could rein in its costs to supplement its budget. She said that “temporary adjustments” to the transit system’s plans did not signal the end of those projects.
“There is no reason for New Yorkers to be concerned that any planned projects will not be delivered,” Hochul said in the statement.
Reinvent Albany set out to analyze the broader cost to the economy. It concluded that without congestion pricing more than 100,000 high-paying jobs across the state could be lost over the next few years.
The reason that would be the case is that the M.T.A., the state agency that runs the subways and buses in New York City, is “an economic development engine for the entire region,” said Rachael Fauss, a senior policy adviser with Reinvent Albany. She said that the M.T.A. does not just carry passengers from one stop to another, but creates jobs “through all the infrastructure” it builds, maintains and repairs — more jobs than are on the M.T.A.’s own payroll.
Most of the jobs in question are with companies the agency hires to build new trains and buses and install new systems to make them run better. Fauss said that the workers earn more than $100,000 a year on average.
They are scattered across the region. Reinvent Albany prepared maps that broke down where more than $30 billion in M.T.A. contracts was spent between 2014 and 2023.
The maps show that every congressional district in New York has at least one company paid by the M.T.A. So does every State Senate district and 147 of the 150 State Assembly districts.
A significant portion of the money over the last decade — $281 million, according to Reinvent Albany — went to Alstom, the French-owned industrial giant that has built about half of the subway cars in New York City. It has factories in small towns and cities upstate.
But M.T.A. spending was not confined to New York. Reinvent Albany said that the M.T.A. pays at least one company in every congressional district in Connecticut and New Jersey. And some economists say that congestion pricing would have given the construction industry a boost at a time when commercial real estate projects have slowed.
Reinvent Albany, which has been a longtime supporter of the congestion pricing program and critical of Hochul’s last-minute decision to “indefinitely pause” it, said its data dive “makes it clear that congestion pricing is essential to the economy of New York State and the metropolitan region.”
Hochul, in calling off congestion pricing, said that it would create “another burden for working- and middle-class New Yorkers.” She also said that congestion pricing could prove to be “another obstacle to continued recovery” from the Covid pandemic, which slashed transit ridership and the revenue that passengers provide.
Her decision left transit officials scrambling to cover the $1 billion that congestion pricing was expected to have brought in every year. On Tuesday, the state comptroller’s office released a report that said that there were “no good options” for the M.T.A. to eliminate that gap in its budget.
The comptroller’s report said that the transit agency would probably need to kill $17 billion worth of projects in its current capital improvement plan. But the report warned that delaying long-planned projects would have “cost implications, as much of the capital construction work will become more costly over time.”
For its part, the M.T.A. has not completely given up on congestion pricing. Its board passed a resolution on Wednesday to be ready to put congestion pricing in effect when Albany gives its approval. Hochul, who has promised to find other sources of funding for the agency, has not indicated when that might be.
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How Democrats’ divisions played out in Tuesday’s primaries
When Jamaal Bowman won the Democratic primary in a House district in Westchester County and the Bronx in 2020, progressives said it was a sign that the left was ascendant.
On Tuesday, Bowman lost to George Latimer, the Westchester County executive, who was the more moderate candidate.
The contest highlighted Democrats’ divisions over the Israel-Hamas war, race and ideology — and the outcome suggested that moderates were meeting the moment for voters.
Bowman’s loss made him the first member of the left-leaning “squad” in the House to lose a re-election bid. Cori Bush, a Missouri congresswoman who is also a “squad” member, is in danger of losing a primary in August. Many of the same forces that contributed to Bowman’s defeat are swirling in her race.
By contrast, incumbency, not the divisions between moderates and progressives, appeared to be the deciding factor in contested State Assembly primaries on Tuesday. My colleague Jeffery C. Mays writes that only one Assembly member lost on Tuesday. That was Juan Ardila, who was running for a second term from a district in western Queens and who resisted calls to resign amid accusations of sexual misconduct. He finished a distant third.
The nomination went to Claire Valdez, a union organizer who had the backing of the Democratic Socialists of America and the Working Families Party.
The contest between Bowman and Latimer was perhaps the most closely watched House primary in the state. Other Democratic moderates who won on Tuesday included John Avlon, — a former CNN political analyst who helped found the centrist group No Labels — who prevailed in a district on eastern Long Island.
My colleagues Jesse McKinley and Nicholas Fandos write that Bowman had made little effort to expand his base of support during the campaign, betting that he could galvanize the Black and brown voters, young people and committed progressives who had sent him to Washington twice before. Latimer benefited from an advertising blitz from pro-Israel groups. The outcome left progressives on the defensive, with longtime allies at odds over who was to blame and whether to modulate their message.
METROPOLITAN diary
Blondie was playing
Dear Diary:
I was in Central Park on a New Year’s Eve in the 1970s. Blondie was playing, and it was crowded.
A Santa Claus stumbled by.
“Ralph!” he shouted. “Ralph!”
A man to the right of me turned.
“My name’s Ralph,” he said.
Santa, who appeared to be a bit tipsy, threw his arms around the man.
“Any Ralph in a storm,” he said.
— Lynn Novotnak
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.