When congestion pricing arrived two weeks ago, it was a happy new year reminder that New York can still try big things.
It’s early, but the streets of Manhattan have felt notably less congested and choked. The travel time numbers are promising, as are the stories about little urban miracles like bus drivers pulled over because they’re running way ahead of schedule.
For how long, though, remains to be seen.
The program still needs to prove its worth here, that the money it’s bringing in is paying off in better trains and more riders and cleaner air.
There’s no time to waste given that Donald Trump keeps talking about killing the program. While it’s unclear how he could potentially do that now that it’s up and running, we may find out the hard way.
That’s the test for Gov. Hochul, who’s somehow less popular in New York than Trump.
She needs to protect congestion pricing and show that it’s working ahead of a reelection campaign next year where serious challengers are already looming in both the Democratic primary and the general election.
That’s a lot to ask, given what a fickle champion Hochul has been of what’s now her signature accomplishment.
In June, she derailed congestion pricing with an abrupt and indefinite “pause” announced just weeks before the decades-in-the-making program had been scheduled to start.
That was nominally about the need “to avoid added burdens to working- and middle-class families” that “create another obstacle to our economic recovery”:
“Let’s be real: A $15 charge may not seem like a lot to someone who has the means, but it can break the budget of a hard-working middle-class household,” she said, while attributing her reversal in part to a conversation with a Manhattan diner owner.
“I encourage you to go to the next diner with me,” Hochul was quoted telling a reporter later that day. “Sit with me and watch the people come over and thank me. That’s all I need to know. If they were saying, ‘We love the idea of paying more money to come into this diner because I live outside another borough, and I’m not taking the subway today,’ you know, I haven’t heard anyone say that,” the governor rambled on.
“I’ve not heard a single small business owner say, ‘I’m really looking forward to my New Jersey customers [paying].’ The hardware store… who says, ‘It’s going to increase the cost of deliveries, I’m going to have to pass it on to my customers. And my New Jersey customers are already saying they’re not going to come.’ That’s real stress and real pain, and that is all that matters to me.”
She sounded something like Trump, who the previous month had blasted a policy “where everyone has to pay a fortune for the ‘privilege’ of coming in the City.” He called the coming toll a “big incentive not to come,” adding that it could “work if a place were HOT, HOT, HOT, which New York City is not right now.”
Hochul shifted back after the election, while dropping the toll from $15 to $9 with the MTA borrowing more to make up the difference in projected revenue.
The governor framed the reduced toll, ridiculously, as her putting money back into New Yorkers’ pockets.
It’s true that $9 is 40% less than $15. It’s also infinitely more than zero.
The diner-loving gov should break bread with DJ, my breakfast sandwich guy in lower Manhattan who’s been hanging on since the pandemic hollowed out the five-day-a-week office culture.
He’s got some strong feelings about the couple of hundred dollars a month more he’s now paying to drive his cart in and do business.
I’ll pay a little more for my egg and cheese on a roll if that keeps the trains running smoothly, and if they do run smoothly that’ll help bring enough customers to Stone St. to help cover DJ’s new cost of driving in.
With the prospect of Trump pulling the plug, congestion pricing needs a strong defender — even before it starts paying off in ways New Yorkers would feel.
Ideally, that would be someone who hadn’t been talking months ago about congestion pricing as too much of a burden for hardworking New Yorkers to bear.
But politics is about alternatives, not ideals, and Hochul’s the governor at the moment.
Proving congestion pricing is a boon for New York would help her make the case to voters next year she’s worth keeping in the top job.
Siegel (harrysiegel@gmail.com) is an editor at The City, a host of the FAQ NYC podcast and a columnist for the Daily News.
