The plan to charge drivers to support improvements to public transit is nearing implementation. Congestion pricing is slated to generate $1 billion annually. The money will pay for much needed improvements to public transit, while reducing congestion on Manhattan streets, making them more pedestrian-friendly and safer.
Gone will be the days when only bus and subway users pay a fee to enter Manhattan, while many drivers cross for free. As blatantly unfair as this is, there are additional problems caused by the current system. The Battery and Queens-Midtown tunnels and the Triborough Bridge, which are directly connected to highways in the outer boroughs, are tolled. But the Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg and Queensboro bridges offer free crossings.
This encourages drivers to exit highways and maneuver through residential neighborhoods to access the free bridges, contributing nothing to the communities they drive through other than fumes, congestion, and honking horns.
In New York City’s inimitable way, it has taken decades to get to the point of implementing a better coordinated tolling system, with countless variants of plans, and hundreds of meetings along the way. I believe that what has finally got us to agreement is a broad consensus on the evolving role of the private automobile and the streets they drive on.
Nationally, in 1983, nearly half of 16-year-olds had drivers licenses. In 2017, that figure was about a quarter. Many young people no longer aspire to live in neighborhoods where driving is necessary. Places like New York are in such high demand because you can live, work, and play, with easy access to a range of cultural activities, restaurants, bars, and recreation, all in great, inclusive, walkable public space. The congestion pricing plan advances this vision, both in Lower Manhattan and throughout the city.
But against this backdrop, the plan still faces opposition from some quarters. The teachers’ union president, Michael Mulgrew, joined by Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella and a few teachers who mostly live in the borough, filed a suit in federal court to stop it.
They claim that congestion pricing leaves teachers with few options: either quit their jobs, move, or spend two hours traveling each way on public transit, since there is no convenient public transportation into Manhattan. They also claim that the effect on air quality was not seriously examined, and that, in fact (according to the union leadership) environmental damage, economic damage, worse traffic and worse air quality would ensue if the plan were to be implemented.
In this Orwellian world view, in which reducing traffic and pollution causes more traffic and pollution, we need to do yet another study, according to the suit. Apparently the four-year, 4,000-page study that looked at impacts to 28 counties is not enough. So, rather than build better public transportation and fix known problems, we should continue to encourage people to drive into Manhattan.
Given the existential threat of climate change, subways are far more environmentally sustainable than private cars. They reduce reliance on fossil fuels and are more energy-efficient. With fewer teachers already driving to schools, the dozens of schools that have already ripped out parking areas to build playgrounds and ball fields have had a transformative effect on the quality of life for so many people across the city.
What is so surprising about this case is how detached the plaintiffs’ argument is from the city’s needs. Teachers know that — their opinions were not solicited by the leadership. The union’s membership consists of people who are among the most dedicated to improving the city through their work, often sacrificing more lucrative opportunities for their mission-driven jobs.
My close family includes three generations of NYC teachers. There is no doubt that most teachers take public transit to work, like the students who need to travel to school, and the 5 million other daily commuters. All would benefit from more accessible and equitable, sustainable, quicker, safer, and more pleasant public transit.
The city, and its public space, is evolving. Strong local, walkable communities support better streets, shared more equitably between street traffic, pedestrians, landscape, and bike infrastructure. Public transit, which provides access for all to the assets of the city, from residential districts to schools and employment opportunities, and more, is inherently more equitable than private cars.
Why the UFT leadership has partnered with the city’s most conservative, entrenched, and out-of-touch political groups to construct yet another hurdle to improving public transit, the lifeblood of the city, is inexplicable.
City residents get it. Teachers get it. Kids get it. In this era of strange political bedfellows, only the union leadership and those who are still so attached to their own private cars, don’t get it.
Cohn is a transportation architect living and working in NYC.
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