While New York state, especially Suffolk County, continues to be one of the highest-taxed places in the United States, New York City intends to shoulder some of the economic burden from its own poor fiscal policy onto those who live in, work in, or frequent the nation’s largest city.
The concept of congestion pricing is not a new idea. The city-nation-state of Singapore was the first to implement the tax in 1975. Known as the Area Licensing Scheme (ALS), the policy taxed drivers entering the central business district during peak morning hours an equivalent of $1 USD. Carpools of three or more and trucks were exempt from the fee. Fines were costly to discourage violations and impounds were also prevalent. However, encouraging the city to be more walkable, or at least mass-transit friendly, addressed some of the highest-in-the-world automobile import tariffs.
The United States unveiled its own form of congestion pricing in San Diego in 1998, but instead of using the method to decrease traffic density, the high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane ran along the main highway network and drivers could pay a regular fee to use the lane to bypass the gridlock. Residents pejoratively referred to these lanes as “Lexus Lanes,” as they argued only the more well-off drivers could afford the maximum $8 fee to use the lane, while the more fiscally strapped drivers had to wait out the gridlock.
However, New York is not Singapore, nor is it San Diego. Singapore, with a population of about 5.5 million and San Diego with one of just 1.4 million both pale in comparison to New York’s 8.5 million regular residents, the highest in the nation.
The solution, it appears, to cut down on congestion in, again, the nation’s most populous city, is to tax certain drivers who use some of the city’s roads.
Proposals for NYC congestion pricing dates back to 1952, with a pay-by-distance concept for subway usage. In 2009, the New York State Legislature rejected a congestion pricing plan, only to approve one in the 2019 budget.
Just this past June, Governor Kathy Hochul (D) announced that New York City is cleared to implement a congestion pricing system, with a tentative start date of spring 2024. The idea is to tax drivers who enter the area below 60th Street in Manhattan a $9 to $23 fee during peak hours. If implemented, it would be the first actual congestion pricing scheme in the country.
The fiscal side of the equation doesn’t balance out either. Congressman Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ-05) has recently slammed the idea of the pricing model, stating that a $23-per-day fee will price nearly 20% of commuters out of driving into Manhattan. Furthermore, the decrease in traffic would reduce the Port Authority’s capital project budget by $1.25 billion over the next decade.
Governor Phil Murphy (D-NJ) said the state of New Jersey will file charges against the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) in hopes of stopping the pricing.
On paper, disincentivizing the use of roadways to ease congestion sounds like a halfway decent plan, fiscal problems aside. However, the overarching problem with this plan is the current state of the city.
Only a few short years ago, the subways were not crime-ridden tunnels of delinquent unpredictability, the streets were not adorned with violent criminals who act against innocent passersby almost arbitrarily, and the city’s resources were not being taxed by an influx of migrants whom the city welcomed by declaring itself a sanctuary city.
So, all the viable alternatives to driving in the city – which is already a bear, in and of itself – are mass transit and walking. Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley) made the point of visiting each subway platform on which an innocent bystander was either stabbed or pushed onto the tracks, which amounted to nearly one press conference per day. Who in their right mind would sacrifice the relative safety of a private vehicle to risk their lives on trying to take the train of any letter home?
NYC has always prided itself on being a walkable city, and in many ways, it still is. The problem is that when shootings occur on a somewhat regular basis in Times Square, it’s not a huge stretch of the imagination that residents and tourists might balk at the idea of taking to the sidewalks. The recent riots in Central Park over an online personality’s apparent “scam” giveaway don’t exactly play into the welcoming culture of a nation’s cultural touchstone. On paper, NYC is a walkable city. In reality, it gets less walkable with each headline.
Fiscal irresponsibility has been NYC’s modus operandi for decades, requesting the burden of their poor planning be shouldered by Long Island and Upstate. Unfortunately, NYC insists on doubling down on their fiscal irresponsibility, the conjoined twin of whom appears to be third-world city behavior.
Who would want to walk – or even drive – into New York City these days? New York State overall led the nation in population loss according to the Census data from 2021. With how the city and the state have been mismanaged, it’s amazing officials even have to find ways to convince more people to leave.
