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Tolls ahead: MTA advances congestion pricing with breaks for taxis, low-income drivers

By

Stephen Nessen

Published May 12, 2023

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Traffic in Manhattan

Alexander Spatari/Getty Images

By

Stephen Nessen

Published May 12, 2023

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The MTA’s congestion pricing plan to toll motorists who drive in Manhattan south of 60th Street has made it through the federal government’s gauntlet of approvals — but new requirements for the program published Friday offer a more clear sense of how it will work.

The Federal Highway Administration issued a letter last week giving the MTA near final approval of the tolls. The MTA said the FHWA now requires a break on the tolls for taxis, for-hire vehicles and low-income drivers.

The requirements were published in the MTA’s final version of the environmental assessment for the program, which came nine months after the agency published a draft of the document for public comment. Friday’s release comes more than four years after lawmakers in Albany first approved the program.

The exact cost of the tolls is not yet set — the prices must first be recommended by a group called the Traffic Mobility Review Board and approved by the MTA board — but the MTA is considering seven different scenarios that charge $5 to $23 to drive into the congestion zone. The charges would vary depending on the time of the day and type of vehicle, and state law requires the West Side Highway and FDR Drive be exempt from the tolls.

It will take the MTA at least 310 days before launching the tolls, and a contractor hired by the agency must install tolling infrastructure and E-ZPass readers across Manhattan. The agency will allow the final environmental assessment to be reviewed by the public for 30 days, but officials plan no further public hearings.

This rendering published in 2019 documents obtained by Gothamist shows what some of the infrastructure used to collect congestion pricing tolls could look like. In this example, an arm with toll readers would be hung on a historic lampost on Central Park West.

Obtained by Gothamist

The documents published Friday require the price of the overnight tolls to be at least 50% less than the cost to enter the zone during peak hours.

And federal officials mandate that taxis, Ubers and Lyfts can only be charged a toll once per day, no matter how many times they cross in and out of the zone.

The FHWA also requires that drivers who make $50,000 per year or less must get a 25% discount if they cross into the zone more than 10 times in a calendar month. The MTA estimates 16,000 drivers would be eligible for the low-income discount.

Yellow taxi riders have since 2019 already paid a $2.50 surcharge for trips that start or end in Manhattan’s central business district. And trips that enter the area in Ubers or Lyfts are already hit with a $2.75 surcharge, or 75 cents if the ride is pooled.

The state law passed in 2019 also requires those who live in the zone and earn less than $60,000 a year receive a tax credit for any congestion pricing toll they pay.

Whatever the tolls cost, state law requires them to raise $1 billion a year. That money must be used to take out $15 billion in bonds to pay for mass transit upgrades in New York.

And the new federal requirements mandate the tolls are pricey enough to significantly reduce traffic below 60th Street.

What is congestion pricing?

In a nod to complaints from Bronx residents last year about an increase in truck traffic in the borough, the new environmental assessment also requires the MTA to use $207.5 million in congestion pricing revenue for a host of programs to reduce pollution, many of which impact the Bronx.

Those projects include spending $15 million to replace the diesel burning refrigeration trucks at the Hunts Point produce market with electric models, spending $10 million to install air filters in schools near highways and $25 million to renovate parks in low-income neighborhoods that could be impacted by congestion pricing.

New Jersey Congress member Josh Gottheimer has for years vehemently opposed congestion pricing, and formed a four-member caucus to oppose the tolls. This week he announced he will send a formal complaint to federal officials during the MTA’s 30-day review period.

“Let me be clear, both over the next 30 days and beyond, we plan to fight, and fight hard. Governor Murphy has already indicated that the state is looking at the legal options,” Gottheimer said at a press conference on Tuesday.

MTA Chair Janno Lieber said Thursday that he believed the environmental assessment could withstand any legal challenges.

“There probably will be some lawsuits, but this has been the most extensive review process maybe in history, certainly for a project of this kind,” Lieber told reporters at a briefing Thursday. “We studied the intersections all the way down almost to Philadelphia. We studied the air quality impacts. We studied all the social justice impacts, I'm confident that this 4,000 page document will stand up to scrutiny.”

The MTA’s financial planning documents released in February anticipate the tolling to begin in the summer of 2024.

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Stephen Nessen

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Stephen Nessen covers transportation. Since 2008 he has reported on everything from Occupy Wall Street, the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site, Hurricane Sandy, to Trump’s campaign for president. His transportation reporting has taken him everywhere from the MTA’s secret Rail Control Center to the gleaming subways of Seoul. Got a tip? Email [email protected].

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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations

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