Hochul takes heat from top NY brass over congestion pricing pause

MANHATTAN (CN) — New York City Comptroller Brad Lander and U.S. Congressman Jerry Nadler, as well as other transit rights groups, environmental organizations and Manhattan Transit Authority board members, all joined forces Monday to chastise Governor Kathy Hochul’s last-minute decision to indefinitely pause congestion pricing in Manhattan.

Hochul pulled the plug on the MTA’s congestion pricing plan just weeks before the program was set to kick off in June, claiming that the toll “risks too many unintended consequences for New Yorkers at this time.”

“By pausing that mandate, Governor Hochul deprives millions of residents of public health and safety and quality of life improvements to which they were entitled and risks high paying jobs across the region,” Lander, Nadler and the other amici curiae wrote in a 34-page brief filed Monday.

The brief supports a pair of New York lawsuits claiming Hochul’s pause on the toll violates state law. Lander, a vocal supporter of congestion pricing, helped organize the two cases over the summer. Overseeing both suits is New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, the same judge who handed down a massive civil fraud judgment against former President Donald Trump this year.

Under the congestion pricing plan, which was initially approved in 2019, passenger vehicles were to be charged $15 when entering Manhattan below 60th Street during peak hours on weekdays. The toll was slated to bring $1 billion per year to the MTA to fund upgrades to the system’s aging infrastructure, as well as alleviate traffic and pollution in downtown Manhattan.

But with the program now frozen, the MTA now needs to account for the $1 billion hole in its capital improvement plan. Hochul claimed she would explore alternatives to congestion pricing to account for the MTA’s budgetary shortfall, but as the amici point out in their brief, her efforts so far have come up largely empty.

“Despite talk of possible substitute funding mechanisms, not a single viable alternative to the … program has emerged in almost three months since the governor’s eleventh-hour announcement,” they wrote.

Hochul has also floated lowering the $15 toll, but there remains no concrete plan to get the program up and running. Prior to her surprise decision in June, the state spent several hundred million dollars developing infrastructure to prepare for the toll’s June 30 launch date.

“Governor Kathy Hochul’s June 5th decision to ‘indefinitely pause’ congestion pricing implementation has, however, upended this timetable and jeopardized all of the measure’s benefits,” the amici added. “Businesspeople, truck drivers, and first-responders … continue to waste countless hours stuck in traffic. Air quality improvements are on hold.”

The pause could have deadly effects, the amici claim. Citing research on the impact of urban air pollution, they say that Hochul’s announcement to ax congestion pricing will “likely result in premature deaths and hospitalizations that would not have occurred had the program been implemented.”

They added: “While the impacts of particulate pollution vary considerably across the city and are significantly correlated with neighborhood income level, short and long-term reductions of particulate emissions of the magnitudes expected from the program would have likely prolonged lives that might otherwise be cut short by exposure to higher particulate levels, kept some children out of hospitals, and helped protect others with heart and lung conditions."

Congestion pricing remains a controversial issue. A June poll from Siena College found that 45% of voters approved of Hochul’s decision to pause the toll, while just 23% opposed it.

“Like the majority of New Yorkers, Governor Hochul believes this is not the right time to implement congestion pricing,” a spokesperson for the governor told Courthouse News on Monday. “We can’t comment on litigation.”

Other elected officials in New York previously filed amicus briefs criticizing Hochul’s handling of congestion pricing — Lander and Nadler are the latest and highest-profile to do so. Several parties cosigned their Monday brief, including the Environmental Defense Fund, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, three MTA board members and government watchdog group Reinvent Albany.

Hochul was previously a staunch supporter of congestion pricing, which she called a “transformative” solution to traffic and pollution in Manhattan. She attributed her decision to ice the program to “financial pressures” on middle class New Yorkers, who she feared might stop patronizing Lower Manhattan businesses if the toll went ahead as planned.

But Hochul’s critics claim that the about-face was a shallow political move aimed at ensuring Republicans couldn’t weaponize congestion pricing to win close races in New York City suburbs.

As it stands, Hochul is battling lawsuits from both sides of the congestion pricing debate. In addition to the two complaints from the program’s supporters, she’s still facing action from plaintiffs who want her to drop congestion pricing altogether.

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