With the election passed, NY climate masochism continues apace
It was all an election-year head fake by New York Governor Kathy Hochul – and an all too obvious one.
Earlier this month the governor decided the nation’s first congestion tolls for motor vehicles will become a reality on January 5th for entering the lower half of Manhattan Island in New York City after she paused their implementation last summer during the heat of election season.
So much for this mendacious governor’s claim last June that she “cannot add another burden to working middle-class New Yorkers.”
In sum, congestion tolling is all about the money, combined with the pretension of reducing emissions to “fight climate change!” It was so from the very beginning of this more than five-year quest, as CFACT contended at the time.
Call it another nail in the Empire State’s climate coffin.
Congestion tolls were sold to the public to reduce vehicle traffic entering midtown and lower Manhattan to help cool the planet by some fraction of a quadrillionth degree – except they won’t. Rather, many of those vehicles will not disappear, but remain in motion to park in upper Manhattan and New Jersey, emitting carbon just the same. Reduced traffic in midtown and downtown neighborhoods, including Wall Street, will mostly shift to further jam the streets in Harlem, Washington Heights, the South Bronx and New Jersey.
Yet, impact studies on the congestion toll scheme downplay or ignore this traffic shift scenario, though it is a major concern of those in opposition.
New York State’s and New York City’s combined budgets exceed $350 billion annually, but it’s not enough for cash-greedy politicians who always want more. In this case, the new tolls on drivers of cars and trucks entering Manhattan will amount to nearly $1 billion in user taxes annually to finance billions more in debt for mass transit capital projects for subways, commuter railroads and buses.
The New York State Legislature in 2019 passed legislation that was signed by then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo to authorize this first-in-the-nation congestion toll system, which then took five years to implement, more than twice the time it took to erect the Empire State Building. The scheduled commencement of the tolls was last June, until politics intervened.
The Democratic leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries, who represents part of Brooklyn, successfully lobbied Governor Hochul to stop the new tolls from taking effect to boost the chances of his fellow Democrats to win in several contested seats in the New York metropolitan area. Democratic candidates ended up defeating two Republican incumbents, but Republicans gained seats elsewhere in the country and will remain the majority in the U.S. House. Oh, well.
With the elections over—surprise!—the pause in congestion tolls is over, and will take effect after all. With the early January start, Gov. Hochul hopes to preclude any effort by the incoming Trump administration to undo the toll project.
No one should be surprised at this transparent dishonestly to New York City metropolitan voters, who will pay congestion tolls six months after Gov. Hochul’s “pause”.
Toll rates formerly approved last week by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority include $9.00 for passenger cars entering Manhattan, which is lower than the $15.00 that was to go into effect last summer (but, of course, higher than the current zero dollars). Truck tolls will be more than double this amount. The nine-dollar fee will increase to $12.00 by 2028 and $15.00 by 2031. Considering Gov. Hochul’s flim-flam on this issue, expect those increases to hit much sooner, say, immediately following her expected re-election campaign in 2026.
Another punitive aspect of the city’s congestion tolls is they will be effective around the clock, albeit at lower rates during overnights and weekends when heavy commuter traffic dissipates. The congestion tolls in London and Stockholm, Sweden, for example, do not charge during these after-hours. There also is no exemption for non-emission electric vehicles, which further discredits the talking point that congestion tolls are about mitigating traffic or curtailing climate change. Rather, it’s another voracious cash grab.
New York’s congestion toll scheme is another example of the long-term dysfunction and decline of the Empire State, especially as it continues to pursue climate change-related fantasies from subsidizing off-shore wind turbines, banning gas- and coal-powered appliances, imposing electric-only building codes, blocking hydrofracturing and natural gas pipelines, to closing nuclear facilities.
Climate-change policies in New York, including congestion tolls, will continue to drive up the cost of living and employment. Absent repeal of such climate lunacy, thousands of New Yorkers will continue to pack-up and head for the exits to saner, more energy-efficient and affordable states.