Individuals didn’t want a motive to really feel extra cynical about politics. However Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York has delivered one.
Simply weeks earlier than New York was scheduled to lastly start a landmark program, many years within the making, to enhance the nation’s largest transit system by charging drivers a premium to enter the busiest a part of Manhattan, Hochul, bowing to purely political considerations in regards to the plan, introduced on Wednesday that she would indefinitely delay it.
She mentioned she had change into involved that this system might harm Manhattan’s financial restoration from the pandemic. However Hochul is the one who has been issuing glowing information releases about how New York State has already achieved “full financial restoration,” together with Manhattan, and any financial results of the pricing plan are nothing new, having been hashed out for years.
The extra seemingly motive, as Politico reported, is that Democratic officers, together with the Home minority chief, Hakeem Jeffries, are anxious that beginning this system now might harm Democratic probabilities in aggressive Home races this November.
Congestion pricing has at all times confronted opposition, and now, in an election 12 months, Hochul has apparently misplaced her political spine. As an alternative of knuckling below to the same old critics, she and different Democrats ought to forcefully defend the idea.
This system was scheduled to enter impact on June 30 and was anticipated to offer a vital $1 billion income stream for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Beneath the plan, drivers of passenger vehicles could be charged $15 for getting into Manhattan at or south of sixtieth Avenue; industrial vehicles could be charged extra.
That was at all times going to carry some sticker shock for commuters used to driving into town from New Jersey or New York Metropolis’s suburbs. However it’s sound public coverage in New York, a area with a robust public transit system in want of regular funding and utilized by roughly 5.5 million folks each day.
It’s additionally seemingly to enhance the standard of life within the metropolis, the place considerations about air high quality, visitors congestion, pedestrian security and noise have change into paramount. Cities all over the world, from London to Singapore, adopted related plans years in the past.
To exchange the misplaced income stream, Hochul is reportedly contemplating elevating taxes on companies in New York Metropolis as a substitute. That’s a regressive tax that may really harm town’s economic system and will threat $15 billion in capital enchancment bonds for the transit system.
Hochul and the State Legislature ought to have discovered the political braveness to stay with what they promised, since this delay (if it’s actually a delay and never an finish to this system) is a horrible growth for New York. They may additionally recall that congestion pricing was enacted into legislation in 2019 after it grew to become clear that permitting town’s getting older subway system to break down was unacceptable to voters and would grind the area’s economic system to a halt.
The legislature doesn’t should associate with this weak-kneed reversal. Congestion pricing ought to start directly.
