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Congestion pricing is effectively dead, struck down by Gov. Kathy Hochul on Wednesday in a move that ends the decadeslong dream of reining in Manhattan’s gridlock by tolling drivers who enter the borough via Midtown and areas below it.
Hochul’s decision makes her the latest powerful New York politician to balk at imposing the toll on drivers.
Sam Schwartz, the prominent traffic analyst better known as “Gridlock Sam,” has had a front row seat to multiple administrations bowing to pressure over congestion pricing. He was involved in the first failed plan in the 1970s and also played a key role in the plan Hochul just abandoned.
“I’m feeling betrayed,” said Schwartz, 76. “She turns a 180 and really screws the public. This is certainly no profile in courage.”
Early incarnations of congestion pricing get trashed
Back in 1971, Mayor John Lindsay weighed the idea of banning cars entirely from a stretch of Manhattan dubbed “the red zone.” Only taxis and buses would have been allowed in. Signs were even manufactured and posted on the streets, though they were covered, Schwartz recalled in a recent interview with NY1 reporter Errol Louis. The unveiling of the red zone was to coincide with Earth Day, but two weeks prior Lindsay got cold feet amid intense pressure from unions representing hotel workers and drivers, Schwartz said. But Lindsay wasn’t ignoring traffic altogether. He launched a study of a plan to force drivers to pay to cross the East and Harlem River bridges into Manhattan.
He said the measure was necessary to comply with the Clean Air Act passed by Congress in 1970.
When Mayor Abe Beame took office three years later, he sought to stop the tolling plan. Environmental groups filed a federal lawsuit over Beame’s decision — and won. “It was the law of the land, nothing could stop it,” Schwartz said, recalling a familiar sense of hope that New York might actually do something to address traffic.
But then Congress passed an amendment to the Clean Air Act in 1980, which was pushed by New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman. The change allowed for the city to comply with the law without having to reduce traffic through the planned tolls. With that, the city dropped the push altogether.
Bloomberg falls short
Manhattan gridlock grew worse over the following decades. Meanwhile, the MTA kept accumulating debt to pay for subway projects. So then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg resurrected the idea of congestion pricing and gathered political support for the program in 2008. The idea, which should sound familiar, was to toll motorists in Manhattan’s central business district and send the money to the MTA.
But then-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who wielded immense power in Albany, said it “did not have anywhere near a majority of the Democratic conference.” Silver never brought the measure to a vote in Albany.
“I think the mayor didn’t play ball…with Shelly Silver,” explained Schwartz. “And so he never kissed the ring.”
Hochul follows suit
On Wednesday, Hochul once again put the idea on the shelf, saying implementing congestion pricing “risks too many unintended consequences.” That sounded familiar to Schwartz.
“For 50 years I’ve been hearing, ‘Now is not the right time,’” said Schwartz. “Well, now is the time — and it may be now or never.”
Curious Commuter
Question from Cali in Brooklyn
Why isn’t there a subway connecting the Bronx to Queens?
Answer
The Bronx and Queens are visible from each other’s shores, but there’s no good way to travel directly between them without driving. And while there’s no subway connecting Queens the the Bronx, there is a train that rolls between them — it just doesn’t stop in either of the boroughs. Amtrak trains heading in or out of Penn Station roll right past Queens en route to the Hell Gate Bridge before heading through the Bronx and into New England.
In the late 1990s, the MTA planned to solve that problem. The agency’s East Side Access program initially called for a station in Sunnyside where trains would stop en route to what is now Grand Central Madison. But the Sunnyside plan was cut from the long-delayed, over budget project as a cost-saving measure. That station was intended to also serve Metro-North trains on the MTA’s Penn Access project, which is currently in the works and seeks to bring four new commuter railroad stations to the Bronx. The project will bring Metro-North service to Penn Station — and trains on the route will stop in the Bronx, but will roll right through Queens without stopping.
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