Good morning. It's Monday. Today we'll look at New York's congestion pricing plan — what it's expected to mean for drivers, and whether it goes far enough.
Karsten Moran for The New York Times
Will New York's congestion pricing plan go far enough?
In New Jersey, officials complain that it is inherently unfair to drivers on their side of the Hudson River. On the New York side, some transit experts told me that it was at best a first step — though a good one — as a source of funding for the subways and buses and as a way to make Midtown Manhattan's streets less choked with traffic.
First, a recap. Congestion pricing is expected to generate $1 billion a year in revenue for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Here's what the latest proposal would mean for drivers, according to recommendations released last week by an advisory panel to the M.T.A.
Cars would pay $15 once a day to enter Manhattan below 60th Street, and commercial trucks would be charged as much as $36. Taxis would add $1.25 to fares on rides below 60th Street. Ride-hail services like Uber and Lyft would add $2.50.
The plan calls for discounts for drivers with household incomes of less than $50,000 a year. The discounts would probably not cut deeply into the revenue for the M.T.A.: A 2022 study by the nonprofit Community Service Society of New York found that a vast majority of commuters who drive into Manhattan have moderate or high incomes. The study said that only 4 percent of commuters from Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens and Staten Island would regularly pay congestion-pricing fees.
Congestion pricing offers an opportunity to change the car culture in the city. Some think it's not ambitious enough.
"You have to start somewhere, and this is a great start," said Howard Yaruss, a member of the transportation committee of Community Board 7 on the Upper West Side.
He went on to say that, ideally, congestion pricing should be expanded gradually until it covers all five boroughs.
In the past Yaruss and the Community Board 7 transportation committee have called for almost unthinkable changes for cars and the streetscape: In 2019 the panel floated a plan to eliminate free on-street parking. He also said that the board, which is just north of where congestion pricing will begin, had adopted a resolution in favor of it.
"If I take my two tons of steel that pollute the environment and go downtown," he said, referring to his car, "I pay nothing. If I take mass transit, I pay $2.90 That's terrible public policy."
Heather Thompson, the chief executive of the nonprofit Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, echoed the idea that congestion pricing was the right approach, at least for now. "One step at a time," Thompson said. "We need to deal with climate change emissions from cars and air quality issues and road safety issues, which we've only seen get worse and worse in Manhattan and in the boroughs. It all comes from too many cars."
Samuel Schwartz, a transportation consultant who was the city's traffic commissioner in the 1980s, said that the $15 price point was "probably the right charge for cars."
But he added that "they went too low on the Ubers and Lyfts at $2.50." He blamed ride-share vehicles for caterpillar-speed traffic, given that traffic volume had dropped from 2010 to 2019 — a sign, he said, that Uber and Lyft vehicles (and delivery trucks) were clogging streets.
Over the years, as congestion pricing was debated, concerns were raised about undesirable side effects, including increased truck traffic in the Bronx, as drivers would try to avoid Manhattan. Schwartz predicted another: a surge in bogus license plates.
He noted that the plan called for exempting any vehicle from any state with a license plate for someone with a disability. He said he had seen one such plate for sale on eBay for $7.
Cameras have already been installed to read license plates once congestion pricing begins. Whether they can spot an invalid plate is unclear. Schwartz said that congestion pricing could provide fresh incentives for people to tamper with their plates. "A 3 becomes an 8, a letter is missing, the paint is scraped off or they put plastic on the plate, making it unreadable," he said.
Schwartz said that "unreadables" soared to 17 percent in Toronto after speed cameras were introduced there a few years ago. He fretted that the rate in New York could climb to 20 percent, which would be $300 million a year of the expected annual revenue. "I absolutely predict that one year after this program goes in, the city or state comptroller will have a report out saying $200 million to $300 million was never collected," he said.
"You can write that story now," he told me. I said I would wait for the report.
WEATHER
It's a partly sunny day in the low 50s. A mostly cloudy evening will turn mostly clear, with temperatures dropping to the high 30s.
The cost of a clean shirt: The humble cotton button-down helps power New York City, through its presence in practically every office in town. But few people understand its transformation from dirty to clean, which at Kingbridge Cleaners & Tailors will run you $6, giving Kingbridge a profit of about 13 cents.
Oysters that will save New York: Not all oysters are for holiday parties. A Times reporter, Hilary Howard, checked in on a local effort to build oyster reefs on a river floor. Here's what she learned.
In the late 1980s I was the manager of a high-end bakery in the West Village. It was one of those places that had a new manager every year or so, and I was nine months in.
The front of the house was a typical cafe setup: a half-dozen tables, some glass display cases, and every type of coffee and pastry imaginable, mostly served to go.
The back of the house, four times as large, was where the real money was made, with wedding cakes that often ran into the many thousands of dollars.
One positive aspect of the job was that I got a long lunch break each day. After making myself a turkey and Brie sandwich on a baguette with sun-dried tomatoes and garlic aioli, I would grab a bottled iced tea and a bag of chips and rush to my nearby apartment.
Once there, I would sit and eat while watching the theater that was Christopher Street from my second-story window and playing the Pixies' recently released cassette "Doolittle" loud. Really loud. After listening to both sides of the tape, I would return to the cafe.
One day, the owner asked why I had been gone so long. I apologized and said I had been in a hurry to get out of there.
He told me never to be in a hurry to get out of there. Then he said he wanted me to start taking my lunch breaks at the cafe so I could keep an eye on things.
I nodded in agreement, but I quit a week later without telling him the real reason.
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