We badly need congestion pricing

I believe congestion pricing is an absolute necessity, for several reasons. First of all, traffic in the metropolitan area is an absolute nightmare. You can’t get into New York City in a reasonable amount of time unless you leave at 5 a.m. or after 9 p.m. most days from any direction — Long Island, Westchester, Connecticut or New Jersey.
Once you get to Manhattan, traffic is so bad that you can walk faster than you can drive. I know, because I work on the Upper East Side and often walk to appointments and meetings. It’s faster than waiting endlessly in a taxi or Uber.

The rafts of Citi Bikes, bike lanes, bus-only lanes and outdoor restaurants built during and after the coronavirus pandemic make Manhattan more intolerable for driving than ever before. According to a TomTom report, New York tops the list of cities with the worst traffic in America. The average commuter spent just under 25 minutes driving about six miles in 2023.

Secondly, our mass transit system has been allowed to deteriorate over the decades, because politicians have always kicked the can down the road. The Second Avenue subway was originally proposed over 100 years ago. Today, three stations have been built, and the extension to Harlem has been put off, because congestion pricing, which was supposed to help pay for it, has been halted.
The 7 Subway line was to have had a stop in Hell’s Kitchen, the “10th Avenue station,” to alleviate passenger congestion on the West Side and serve the growing neighborhood, but that, too, was killed for lack of funds and political will.

Much of the current subway system is antiquated, some of it was damaged by saltwater intrusion during Superstorm Sandy, and the signal system is a hazard unto itself, slowing the system down and causing accidents.

So how do we resolve our urban traffic nightmare? There is no doubt that rail lines into Manhattan should be the No. 1 priority. They move the most people at the fastest speeds into and out of the city. Congestion pricing would be of enormous benefit in funding better regional train service and rehabilitating the century-old subway system. The more comfortable and convenient the train system, the more people will use it, and the more drivers will opt out of the maddening rush to get to the city.

Now, there are valid reasons why congestion pricing is unfair. If I’m a millionaire, I don’t care about paying $15 to drive below 60th Street, but if I make $50,000 a year, it’s putting a huge dent in my wallet. Box trucks or moving vans would pay $24, large trucks $36, which would make goods and services cost more for New Yorkers.

It’s unfortunate that we can’t devise a methodology that could charge people based on their net worth. If a license tag could be connected to an IRS filing, we could charge wealthy people a different rate than those of more modest means.

Beyond a system like that, we must resurrect the congestion pricing program to start to reduce traffic into Manhattan, and use those funds to upgrade MTA trains, subways and buses. If we do nothing, we will have wasted $500 million installing the apparatus to track vehicular traffic into the city, while doing nothing to reduce traffic and pollution and build a city for the future.

It is also unconscionable that fare evasion cost the MTA an estimated $690 million in 2022, including $315 million from buses and $285 million from subways — 10 percent of the MTA’s annual budget.

And beyond the dollars and cents, New York City now ranks as one of the most ozone-polluted cities in the world thanks to the millions of cars, trucks and buses in stop-and-go gridlock traffic, with drivers endlessly circling for parking spaces and taxis, Ubers and Lyfts driving nonstop, looking for their next fare.

So how to move the massive number of people in the metropolitan area from destination to destination? Make the best use of the advanced train system that enlightened people built 120 years ago, and that provided 2 billion rides in 2023, on over hundreds of miles of track, picking up and dropping off people at 472 stations. But you can’t build out and upgrade the system without money, and congestion pricing is the ticket.

Jim Paymar is a veteran New York television anchor and reporter who has worked at CNBC, WNBC and WABC. He anchors a podcast, “The Big Shift with Jim Paymar.”