It’s now only a fortnight until the $9 fee for vehicles to drive south of 60th St. begins (the tolling starts on Jan. 5, a Sunday, so the Monday traffic will be the first real test). However, whether that happens is now before a handful of judges.
The judges should not block the program, which has been studied and reviewed and examined and evaluated. It is legal under federal and state law and it makes sense. It has always made sense.
We have supported congestion pricing for decades, back when its creator, Columbia economics Prof. Bill Vickrey, was pushing the concept of charging users for a scarce public resource: the roads. For all that time we have been urging politicians to enact it. Vickrey won the Nobel Prize in 1996, but died just a few days later.
Vickrey’s brainchild has already proven its effectiveness to reduce traffic (along with pollution and crashes) and generate revenue for transit in other cities around the world. It’s time to bring it home.
Mayor Mike Bloomberg tried, but was stopped by Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver, who would later die in federal prison as a convicted felon.
We pushed Gov. Andrew Cuomo for years and he finally agreed, as did Mayor Bill de Blasio and then the Legislature concurred, writing congestion pricing into state law in 2019.
The current governor and mayor, Kathy Hochul and Eric Adams, are supporters and Hochul is now trying to get it rolling before Donald Trump returns to the White House, as he’s pledged to kill congestion pricing.
Which brings us to the judges. Newark Federal Judge Leo Gordon has two cases against congestion pricing, one from New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and the other by Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich. Gordon could rule at any point.
Manhattan Federal Judge Lewis Liman had a court hearing on Friday on the four cases before him. One lawsuit is by a group called Families for a Better Plan for Congestion, another case is from New Yorkers Against Congestion Pricing Tax, the third case was filed by City Council members and the teachers union, while Liman’s fourth case is from the Trucking Association of New York.
They all want to stop the tolls, but Liman already ruled in June, in a decision that cited Vickrey’s pioneering idea, that the approvals from the feds were done properly.
Westchester Federal Judge Cathy Seibel will be ruling today at 1 p.m. on two other suits, one brought by Rockland County Executive Ed Day and the other one by Orange County Executive Steve Neuhaus. Seibel is reading and applying the same laws as Liman, so we trust she will come down the same way and let the tolls go forward.
The Town of Hempstead also filed a lawsuit before Long Island Federal Judge Joan Azrack, who on Thursday sent back to state court a separate Hempstead suit against Hochul, which had originally been filed in state court last month. The MTA’s lawyers had asked for it to be moved to federal court, but Azrack returned it to state court, where it awaits assignment to a judge.
Meanwhile, Judges Gordon and Liman and Seibel and Azrack hold the fate of the most important improvement in traffic and transit policy in decades. They should not interfere with New York’s desire to make life better for its people.