Earlier this month, the MTA Board voted to adopt a congestion pricing plan for drivers entering Manhattan south of 60th Street. Outer-borough commuters who drive – including those living in transit deserts and those who already face steep tolls to access the rest of the city – would pay $15 a pop or more to enter Manhattan’s “Central Business District”. Whether you commute via car from Staten Island or southeast Queens, this probably wasn’t the Christmas gift you had in mind.
Many moons ago, when New York State first embarked on creating a congestion pricing plan, the idea was worth exploring. Who doesn’t want to improve and expand subway service and make our buses faster and more reliable, all while reducing traffic and curbing carbon emissions? But that was before COVID and, needless to say, the world has changed in myriad ways. Indeed, every day another study shows that offices aren’t going back to the way they were before COVID, and therefore neither are the central business districts that housed them. Hell, I’ve been leading the charge to convert vacant Manhattan office space into affordable housing!
The shift to remote work has raised concerns about the future of central business districts altogether as Manhattan south of 60th Street is no longer the dominant center of the 9-to-5 urban work universe. Now, with 2024 right around the corner, I think we should ask ourselves: does it really make sense to implement a congestion pricing plan to enter the place people used to go?
Financially, New Yorkers are still struggling to fully get back to where they were before the pandemic. It doesn’t matter how you commute to work, everyone is feeling squeezed and after public safety, affordability is the number one concern for New Yorkers. With so many of us feeling the pinch, now is not the time to add to the burden of New Yorkers who still drive to work in Manhattan, especially not for those living in transit deserts in the outer-boroughs.
Before the MTA does anything, we should at the very least get our existing tolls sorted out. I’ve been calling out the inequities related to the Verrazzano Bridge for a long time (a decade before they put the second “z” back). Staten Island drivers have no choice but to pay an MTA toll just to access the rest of their city. At least they get a discount, but that’s not enough, especially if we’re going to throw congestion pricing on top of the tolls already paid by Staten Islanders who drive to work in Manhattan or elsewhere.
It still doesn’t make any sense that the resident discount has never been extended to Brooklynites who commute to Staten Island on a regular basis. A bridge has two sides and our boroughs have always been closely connected, especially the communities right across the bridge in southwest Brooklyn. If you have an E-ZPass registered to a Brooklyn zip code and you take three or more trips across the Verrazzano per month, you should be eligible for the same resident discount as Staten Islanders. And if the MTA is moving ahead with congestion pricing, Staten Island residents deserve an additional discount to address the cost of coming through Brooklyn on their way to any of the other three boroughs.
Our communities have been nickeled and dimed for decades without seeing any significant local return on the insanely high MTA tolls we’ve been paying. Let’s remember, that $20 Verrazzano toll has been a MTA cash cow for decades subsidizing Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road. And yet popular proposals for a protected bike and pedestrian path are tossed and we’re lucky if the bridge gets a fresh coat of paint every 30 years. So you’ll need to forgive Staten Island and southern Brooklyn commuters who drive for being skeptical that more MTA tolls will mean better New York City buses and subways. Yes, we need deep investment in our local public transit system, but we need it without having to pay more of our arms and legs for it. Maybe I’m crazy, but if we wanna keep cars out of Manhattan, maybe the MTA should focus on giving us better, more reliable ways to get there first!
In the years the MTA has taken to settle on a specific congestion pricing plan, New York City has changed and I’m not sure congestion pricing is the solution that meets this moment. At the very least, it seems we’ve skipped a few steps we should’ve taken before diving head first into it. We must deliver fairness to our existing tolls. We must undo the logistical knots of our existing system and ensure we’re not leaving money on the table. And when it comes to the congestion pricing plan itself, we must deliver relief to communities that lack good public transport options and have been paying inequitable tolls for decades.
The state is deep into its process, but there’s always time to get things right. That’s what we were elected to do and this is the time to do it.
Justin Brannan is a New York City Councilman representing southwest Brooklyn since 2018 and Chairman of the Council’s Finance Committee. Reports suggest that he is considering a run for the congressional seat representing Staten Island and southern Brooklyn.
All I want for Christmas is Verrazzano toll equity (opinion)
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23.12.2023
Earlier this month, the MTA Board voted to adopt a congestion pricing plan for drivers entering Manhattan south of 60th Street. Outer-borough commuters who drive – including those living in transit deserts and those who already face steep tolls to access the rest of the city – would pay $15 a pop or more to enter Manhattan’s “Central Business District”. Whether you commute via car from Staten Island or southeast Queens, this probably wasn’t the Christmas gift you had in mind.
Many moons ago, when New York State first embarked on creating a congestion pricing plan, the idea was worth exploring. Who doesn’t want to improve and expand subway service and make our buses faster and more reliable, all while reducing traffic and curbing carbon emissions? But that was before COVID and, needless to say, the world has changed in myriad ways. Indeed, every day another study shows that offices aren’t going back to the way they were before COVID, and therefore neither are the central business districts that housed them. Hell, I’ve been leading the charge to convert vacant Manhattan office space into affordable housing!
The shift to remote work has raised concerns about the future of central business districts altogether as Manhattan south of 60th Street is no longer the dominant........
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