In 2019, the New York League of Conservation Voters successfully worked with dozens of transit, environmental, labor, and business organizations to pass congestion pricing as part of the State budget. Congestion pricing, which charges private vehicles a fee for driving into New York City’s central business district, will raise approximately $15 billion for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (MTA) Capital Plan, funding projects including signal modernization so that trains can run more frequently, purchase of electric transit buses, and upgrades across the subway, bus, and commuter rail system to make public transit faster and more reliable. It will also reduce both greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution in the city, helping to reduce asthma and other respiratory and cardiac illnesses.
Before it can take effect, congestion pricing must be approved by the Federal Highway Administration. New York State, and the advocates who support congestion pricing, assumed that this approval would happen quickly because the plan will decrease traffic and air pollution and boost mass transit. However, the Highway Administration has instead held up approval indefinitely, refusing to approve the plan, request further review or information, or indeed raise any substantive concerns. Most observers assume that congestion pricing is being blocked by President Trump’s political appointees as part of his feud with New York’s elected leaders. Regardless of why the Highway Administration is holding up congestion pricing, the delay is doing real harm to the MTA and New York’s environment. The program, which was originally slated to launch in January 2021, will now struggle to launch before 2022 and the MTA says it could possibly be delayed until 2023.
When President-elect Biden takes office in January, advocates, the MTA, and the State are hopeful that his administration will move to quickly approve congestion pricing. The President-elect is famously pro-transit, often called “Amtrak Joe” by transit aficionados, raising hopes under his administration the federal government will move forward with a number of important transit priorities. In addition to congestion pricing, the federal government has also held up the Gateway Project to build new rail tunnels connecting New York and New Jersey as well as other improvements to relieve one of the worst bottlenecks in the entire Northeast rail corridor. The MTA and other public transit agencies are also reeling from financial losses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and are in desperate need of federal aid.
NYLCV is working with other advocates to reach out to New York’s Congressional delegation and President-elect Biden’s transition team to emphasize the need to support all of these priorities, and we are hopeful that we will see positive action on congestion pricing early in 2021.