The Democratic governor of NY, Kathy Hochul announced this Wednesday that she was backing down and canceled “indefinitely” a toll that was intended to alleviate traffic in Manhattan and whose price was going to rise to 15 dollars each time it was crossed.
How was the new toll in New York going to work?
The plan – known as ‘congestion tolling’ – aimed to give a break to the intense traffic within the well-known island of Manhattan and, after having been debated for decades, It was to begin operating this June 30 with a price of up to $15.
Those drivers who would like to access the southern part of the island from the outskirts, specifically from street number 60 to the south, They had to pay this amount each time they entered Manhattan.
The decision (…) also comes after confirming the persistent effects of the pandemic on working classes in New York who must travel daily to Manhattan for their jobs.
However, New York also seeks to restore its levels of in-person work and tourism lost with covid-19 and, according to Hochul, new tolls could “hinder this recovery.”
This change of course now worries local New York politics, which wonders how the MTA will recover the $1 billion budgeted to enter thanks to the ‘compensation toll’, and that they were partially going to be allocated to improvements in public transport, as well as to environmental activists who considered the measure as a great advance.
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Streets in Manhattan.
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Some 700,000 vehicles enter that part of the city every day and traffic jams cause cars to travel at an average speed of 11 km/h.
The New York Taxi Workers Alliance, a union that represents about 21,000 taxi drivers, had estimated that drivers would lose about $8,000 a year in income.
The plan provided for different exemptions, as well as a discount for low-income drivers and for those who circulate in the area more than ten times a month.
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