In a surprising setback, three weeks before its entry into force, New York Governor Kathy Hochul has slammed the brakes on so-called traffic “congestion pricing,” a plan to impose road access tolls. central area of Manhattan. Hochul has not only put the pedal to the metal, he has also indefinitely postponed the idea, which pursued two objectives: the tax collection, about a billion dollars a year that would be used to finance the improvement of transportation infrastructure, and the environmental one, to stop the use of the private car in a city, one of the few in the United States, where it is more or less easy to get around by public transportation.
Democrat Hochul’s explanation has been the economic impact that the toll plan would have on New Yorkers – or residents of neighboring states – who enter the center of Manhattan every day to work, shop or have fun. But it seems that political concerns have also included the opposition of Manhattan’s business and commercial fabric, which has not yet recovered from the impact of the pandemic, as demonstrated by the reclassification of entire office buildings in the district for residential use. financial. Putting doors on Manhattan, the economic lung of New York, represents for the affected sectors, from the ubiquitous delivery vans to the last of the taxi drivers, a loss of movement, of influx; of dollars, in sum.
The MTA board had voted overwhelmingly in favor of congestion pricing in December, hoping that revenue from charging drivers a toll for entering the congestion central almond of Manhattan would contribute to renewing the ancient transportation system, in which, day after day, the subway lines suffer detours or skip stops while a filthy station is shored up (on weekends, the operation of the subway borders on the pure chance). Nobody doubted that the plan, which was ratified by a majority in March, was going to be applied as of June 30, not even the appeals presented by individuals or entities such as the State of New Jersey, where tens of thousands of people who work—and commute—in Manhattan, and who had staunchly opposed the measure.
As of June 30, cars would have had to pay $15 to enter Manhattan from 61st Street down, while trucks and delivery vans would have cost between $24 and $36, depending on the size (the trucks that supply food to supermarkets are of large tonnage). There is no scheduled date, or even plans, that pricing can be reactivated, but there are numerous public pressures and initiatives, including some street demonstrations, to revive it. New York City Comptroller Brad Lander and a broad coalition of legal experts and paratransit activists have announced that they are exploring all legal avenues, including judicial avenues, to revive it.
For the comptroller, it is unacceptable to lose that money so necessary for the deficit MTA, which has not raised its head since the pandemic, to improve the public transportation system. If the dysfunctional operation of the subway, which always reserves a surprise for the long-suffering users – delays, random and often unexpected jumping of stations – is proverbial, there are no words to define the limping operation of the city’s public buses, the most slow ones in the United States, with an average speed of 13 kilometers per hour; the lowest of the 17 largest cities in the country. And, furthermore, for the residents of the most disadvantaged peripheral neighborhoods they are the only existing transportation alternative. The direct relationship between transportation inaccessibility and social inequality has a clear exponent in New York.
Governor Hochul’s slowdown leaves New York, a city that daily reissues the book of records almost as if it were an Olympic competition, on the verge of being the first in the United States to impose a toll system. But it would not have been a pioneer in the world: since Singapore, which applied it in 1975, pricing is already the norm in European cities such as London, Milan, Gothenburg or Stockholm.
According to experts, it is an effective management model, “a tool that makes the real monetary price paid by drivers more broadly reflect the social and public costs of their actions” when driving a private vehicle, according to a study by the Center Kent A. Clark for Global Markets at Chicago Booth School of Business. “This is exactly the kind of thing that economists tend to support. An article published in 2006 went so far as to call London’s congestion charge a ‘triumph for the economy,’ recalls the university study, emphasizing that the long-term benefits outweigh the costs for a group of immediate victims. The problem, in a country that considers public spending little less than a waste, is that many people—and voters—prefer to avoid the cost of their actions “when that entails an immediate economic cost,” even though the common benefits are greater and More importantly, sustainable over time.
The US infrastructure deficit is measured in tens of billions. The urban and suburban transportation networks of a city like New York offer a paradoxical image of what is, or claims to be, a superpower: ancient, if not dilapidated—and very dirty—facilities, despite the pumping of federal funds (for example, aid to renew traffic bypass that links Manhattan with the twin state of New Jersey, approved a year ago by President Joe Biden’s Administration and its ambitious infrastructure plan). But Governor Hochul’s political calculation seems to have prevailed over the common interest: projects to improve subway signals in Manhattan and Brooklyn, the addition of elevators to subway stations (subway accessibility is science fiction), the replacement of old cars, the extension of the Second Avenue subway line and even routine repair projects have now been left on the sidelines, deprived of that additional source of income that the unexpectedly aborted plan intended.
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