New Jersey Governor Urges Trump to Rescind Federal Approval of Congestion Pricing
A new challenge to the recently launched congestion pricing program that tolls drivers entering local streets from the FDR Drive or West Street/Route 9A south of 60th Street emerged on Monday, when New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy wrote to President Donald Trump, asking that he reconsider federal approval for the initiative.
Governor Murphy’s letter reminds the new President that, “During your campaign, you called congestion pricing ‘a disaster for NYC’ and a ‘massive business killer and tax on New Yorkers, and anyone going into Manhattan’ that had been ‘railroaded … through’ by federal officials. So you promised to ‘TERMINATE Congestion Pricing in my FIRST WEEK back in Office!!!’ And after your election, you were quoted calling New York’s latest tolling plan ‘the worst plan in the history of womankind.’”
Mr. Murphy closes with a request: “that New York’s congestion pricing scheme receive the close look it deserved but did not receive from the federal government last year.”
These arguments are contested by long-time Tribeca resident Charles Komanoff (right), a mathematician and transit advocate, who curated the traffic spreadsheet model that New York State officials used to craft the State’s 2019 congestion pricing law. Mr. Komanoff says, “New Jersey Governor Murphy evidently is so blinded by the glare on his windshield that he cannot see the enormous time-savings that congestion pricing will confer on his constituents. I’ve calculated that by 2031, when the tolls have reached their eventual $15 peak level and the transit improvements that the tolls will pay for have borne fruit, New Jersey residents will be paying $180 million a year in congestion tolls and surcharges but saving 24 million hours a year on the roads – most of them on New Jersey highways that will be less congested because fewer cars are being driven into Manhattan. Their savings compute to a mere $7.60 for each hour of saved time – half of the State’s minimum wage, making congestion pricing a bargain for the Garden State.”
The consent of the federal government to continue with congestion pricing (even though it is a state and local program) is legally necessary to satisfy a broad range of of statutory and regulatory requirements. These include the restriction that tolls cannot be placed on roads that are part of the interstate highway system without Washington’s approval, along with a similar caveat for local roads that were built or are maintained with federal funds.
These hurdles nearly killed the proposal during Mr. Trump’s first term in the White House. In 2020, his Department of Transportation (DOT) delayed in granting the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which oversees congestion pricing, permission to apply for federal approval based only on an abbreviated environmental assessment (EA), rather than a much more elaborate environmental impact statement (EIS). While the MTA eventually completed an EA in a period of months, with the encouragement of DOT officials in the Biden administration (who were much more supportive of the plan), an EIS was deemed at the time likely to take several years. If the federal DOT retroactively decides that a full EIS is required, it could theoretically have the effect of stopping congestion pricing indefinitely.
While Governor Murphy has become the de facto spokesman for resistance to congestion pricing, the issue has become an acute concern for many Lower Manhattan residents, some of whom contend (in several lawsuits filed by individuals and community groups) that it treats them unfairly, because similar programs elsewhere in New York give steep discounts to drivers who reside within (and are effectively “trapped” by) a toll zone.
These concerns are disputed by Mr. Komanoff, who observes, “appeals for exemptions or steep discounts for Lower Manhattan residents invariably cite London’s 90-percent residential exemption. Left unsaid, however, is that London’s charging zone has just 136,000 inhabitants, whereas New York City below 60th Street has 612,000 residents – four and a half times the number in London, with a correspondingly greater revenue loss to pay for desired transit improvements.”
He adds, “moreover, Downtown residents here will be the region’s biggest congestion-pricing winners. Car and truck volumes into Lower Manhattan via the three East River bridges will fall by 13 to 15 percent at the outset; that drop will grow to 35 percent in six years. Giving residents here such huge quality-of-life benefits at little or no cost would wreck the fragile consensus that barely managed to push congestion pricing over the finish line.”
The NJ Governor is quite the cry baby!
I still say that the congestion pricing program should exempt Lower Manhattan residents like me who don’t own a vehicle but who rent cars and upon returning home from a weekend trip upstate or from points in NJ, PA and upstate New York, I will be paying the $9.00 toll once I enter Manhattan below 60th Street and exit to Lower Manhattan, in addition to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey toll paid to enter Manhattan from New Jersey and Westchester.
Congestion pricing is a money grab, New Yorkers will not see the benefits for several years since the MTA has to pay off their debt and they have to pay for this program. If this was really about congestion why is the toll 24/7, it should be based on peak commuting times Mon-Fri. Certain neighborhoods downtown (ex. Battery Park) and anything along the West Side Hwy should be excluded these are not in the city grid. Residents who live within the zone should be exempt from the toll if you own a car. The current discounts they offer are a joke. Why isn’t there a senior citizen discount (they are on fixed incomes). We already pay a lot to live in NYC – rent/mortgage, common charges, real estate taxes, insurance, and parking garages. Also, 2 weeks into the program and businesses downtown are suffering due to the lack of local visitor traffic and delivery prices have gone up, this will decimate NYC.