Hochul Is Pressed to Resurrect Congestion Pricing With Lower Toll
The New York Times
In conversations, New York legislators have suggested a way to bring back the program, possibly with a toll below $15.
Weeks after Gov. Kathy Hochul abruptly pulled the plug on New York City’s congestion pricing program, state lawmakers have privately begun an informal campaign to persuade her to move ahead with the tolls, but make them less expensive.
In a series of recent conversations, the legislators suggested to Ms. Hochul that she could bring back a modified form of the initiative, which would have been the nation’s first central business district tolling program.
If the governor agreed to reduce the yearly amount of money that the law requires to be collected from the tolls, she would have some cushion to alter the program — potentially lowering the proposed $15 charge to enter Manhattan below 60th Street.
“I’ve personally urged the governor to mend it, not end it,” said Brad Hoylman-Sigal, a state senator representing a Manhattan district much of which is within the proposed congestion zone. “I think there could be an appetite among my colleagues to adjust the toll and other features of congestion pricing while approving additional revenue to make up the shortfall to the M.T.A., but only if the program is allowed to proceed.”
The ambitious but contentious program had the twin goals of generating billions of dollars for the region’s transit system and cutting congestion in Manhattan.
But on June 5, less than four weeks before it was to go into effect, Ms. Hochul indefinitely paused it, seeming to consign the plan to New York’s trash heap of ambitious, abandoned projects.
