Congestion Pricing

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This is almost like doing a local issue, except the issue is in New York City where issues can become national. Even if they don’t become national, at least nine million people are affected by it. Honestly, I wasn’t aware of this subject when my editor sent me an email Thursday night assigning it. I was excited to do it because I already knew that if it was an NYC issue, then it had to be good and as it turns out, extremely important.

NYC has been trying to figure out how to reduce congestion and pollution for years. Congestion pricing is a plan to charge $15 to enter certain parts of Manhattan. The plan’s ultimate goals were to get cars off the road, reduce carbon emissions, and improve public transit, including the New York subway and regional rail. 

After many political battles, the plan was to go into effect later this month but last week, Governor Kathy Hochul pulled the plug citing economic concerns. It’s really about political concerns.

New York City has the best public transit system in the nation. Cities like Boston, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC have all explored the concept but if it’s going to work anywhere in this nation, it’s NYC.

If the plan had gone into effect, drivers would have had to pay $15 to enter parts of Manhattan during peak hours. There are higher rates for trucks with the price depending on weight. That is expensive and if you go to the office five days a week, it would be $75 a week. So you either eat it, carpool and split the cost, or take the trains.

One of my readers who commutes into Manhattan from New Jersey says she’s glad the plan was canceled because she likes to take her own car into the city and she doesn’t like to wait at Penn Station for the NJ Transit which only comes every hour in the evening. Different strokes for different boats, or something like that, but I don’t get it. I understand you will have to adjust your schedule and routine for something like this, but that’s life.

I like the trains and I HATE being stuck in city traffic. I don’t understand why more people don’t use the trains. If I lived in a large city with trains, I’d never own a car. When I flew to Atlanta and San Francisco last year, I took the trains because downtown in both cities are far from their airports and the train is faster, easier, and cheaper. Last October during the convention of my cartoonist association, one of my colleagues was looking for someone to share a cab from the airport to San Francisco and my only thought was, “WHY?”. My thought at the time is that he felt he was too good for the train. I took the train which took about 30 minutes or so, walked up a hill, and ta-da…there was my hotel, and all for $10. How much did that cab cost? And I only got stabbed twice on the train.

Just kidding. Trains are safer than the media often makes them out to be. I’ve seen lots of single moms with their kids on the New York subway.

Congestion pricing has been a hard pill to swallow after being introduced in cities outside the United States, but then it becomes popular. Congestion in London has been reduced by 30 percent and in Stockholm, 20 percent after just two years.

In London, Nitrogen oxide emissions dropped by over 13 percent, and particulate matter in the air diminished by over 15 percent. Research estimates this has added nearly 1,900 years to the lives of residents over the course of the program. In Stockholm, childhood asthma dropped by nearly 50 percent.

It was short-sighted of Gov. Hochul to scrap the plan indefinitely. She is looking at short-term gains instead of the long-term. It’s eventually going to happen and when it does, New Yorkers will get over it. If the city can get over al-Qaida, Donald Trump, the Naked Cowboy, and the Mets, then they can deal with congestion pricing. Plus, using the trains more often will give commuters more opportunities to meet Pizza Rat.

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