Editorial Board: Congestion Pricing

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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. We begin today with the debut of a new occasional series that we're calling the Brian Lehrer show editorial board. The idea is to bring together a few thoughtful people with different perspectives on an important issue of the day and not just debate, not just disagree with each other, which is so mind-numbing and so much of the media but try to take different people's interests into account and look for points of consensus around which we might build a broad-based editorial position that defines as many people as possible as us and as few as possible as them.

This first edition of the editorial board is about congestion pricing in New York City. A major environmental impact study was released by the MTA this summer of seven potential pricing scenarios for congestion pricing to drive into Manhattan below 60th street. That's been followed by a series of public hearings in the last week, which show to nobody's surprise, just how strong the passion still are for and against the idea. Here are two of the many opponents who spoke at some of the hearings.

Participant: I just don't feel that this is equitable. I don't feel it's been given the proper amount of consideration. I think that it is a money grab. How do we know that 100% of these tolls are going to go to CapEx? Likely not.

Participant: It's not good. Already we have so many taxes and the inflation after the COVID and what is going on is too much.

Brian Lehrer: Yesterday, Governor Phil Murphy made news on this when he rescinded what had been his support for governor Kathy Hochul's effort next door because the mass transit alternatives aren't well enough developed yet, he said. Here is Murphy on WNYC last night on our monthly Ask Governor Murphy Call In with Nancy Solomon.

Phil Murphy: Someday, I'm not sure when, but someday not crazy far in the future, we will have two new rail tunnels that'll double capacity. We'll take the platforms in Penn station from 24 to 48. We'll have a brand spanking new port authority bus terminal. You got a lot more latitude. You still have the issue of not double-taxing New Jersey commuters, but at least you've got degrees of freedom that thanks to prior decisions in an action we don't have today.

Brian Lehrer: Well, none of this opposition is probably coming as a surprise to MTA chief Janno Lieber, who said this on this program earlier this month.

Janno Lieber: We're hearing from a lot of politicians about this issue. Who we're not hearing from is kids with asthma that are absorbing the air quality impact. We're not hearing from elderly people who can't cross the street because of congestion. We're not hearing from the people who will benefit from the fact that all this congestion pricing revenue is going to be used to improve the mass transit system. Remember, 90% of the people who come to the Central Business District don't drive. They take mass transit or walk to work or get there through some non-driving option. It is meant to benefit everybody in terms of reducing congestion, improving air quality, and also rebuilding the transit system.

Brian Lehrer: The CEO of the MTA, Janno Lieber here on August 17th. What's the best congestion pricing plan for the most people all over our area? Let's convene the editorial board. With us now are three guests who have immersed themselves in this issue and have developed their own opinions. Nicole Gelinas, one of the few New York policy wonks who can be a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor to their publication City Journal, and a columnist at the New York Post and get published on the left-leaning website StreetBlog, as she did on this issue this month.

Also, Rachel Weinberger, transportation chair for the Regional Plan Association, the think tank devoted to the wellbeing of our entire metropolitan area, which they define as the five boroughs plus the 26 nearest counties in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, and Emerita Torres, vice president of Policy Research and Advocacy at the Community Service Society of New York. The think tank that studies and advocates on behalf of poor people in New York City.

She has an article on the Community Service Society website called What Does Congestion Pricing Do for Outer-Borough New Yorkers in Poverty? That article came out in March before the latest environmental review raised new questions especially about the Bronx. We'll see what she thinks now. Nicole, Emerita, and Rachel, thank you all so much for coming together for this editorial board experiment. Welcome or welcome back as the case may be to WNYC.

Emerita Torres: Thank you so much, Brian. It's great to be here.

Nicole Gelinas: Good morning, Brian. Thank you.

Rachel Weinberger: Likewise.

Brian Lehrer: I want to try to center the goal of equity in this conversation because I think that's what a lot of the debate is about. Who is this fair to, and who is this unfair to, who does it help, and who does it hurt if they really place tolls of $9 anywhere up to $23 to drive into the Central Business District? Emerita, let me start with you and your take on how it does affect people in poverty in the Outer Boroughs, where do you start?

Emerita Torres: Sure. Thank you so much, Brian. It's great to be here with colleagues also interested in working on this issue. Our analysis at the Community Service Society, we did our first analysis in 2017 and again, in 2022. The reason why we did it was to debunk the idea that a congestion fee would be burdensome for large numbers of low-income New Yorkers. We looked at census data again once in 2017 and again, in 2022 in March.

What we saw was consistent with our 2017 analysis, not only 4% of Outer Boroughs residents, those living, for example, in Brooklyn, in the Bronx, in Queens, in Staten Island would regularly pay the congestion charge, meaning the majority of, and this is what this tells us, the majority of Outer Borough residents depend on public transportation to get to work and they stand to benefit from congestion pricing.

What we also saw was of the city's Outer Borough working residents in poverty, only 2%, about 5,000 residents will be asked to pay possibly if they enter the zone, pay a congestion fee as part of their daily commute. When I say in poverty, I mean those out or below the federal property line. For example, that's a two-child family that's earning around $26,000. Something else I'll also share, and it's not cited widely is that census data also shows that most New Yorkers living in the Outer Boroughs who own a vehicle tend to be generally well off.

Outer Boroughs hospitals, for example, with a car, have a median income of about $94,000. That's more than twice as high as that of car-free households, which tends to be those of lower incomes around $42,000. Something else we also saw was the majority of low-income essential workers, which kept our city going throughout the pandemic, who are living in the Outer Boroughs. Again, the majority of those do live out in the Outer Boroughs, depend on public transportation to reach their jobs. We saw that no more than 3% of them would be asked to pay a congestion fee as part of their daily commute. Overall, okay, please.

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead. You want to finish? You were going to say, so overall.

Emerita Torres: Yes. Overall, I'll discuss some of the environmental impacts because I think they're important to discuss later. Enacting congestion pricing is a key part of an equitable economic recovery. It's not going to be a regressive surcharge on New Yorkers living at property.

Brian Lehrer: I hear you on how few lower-income New Yorkers in the Outer Boroughs drive into the Manhattan business district for work or even own cars. Here's a clip of Congressman Richie Torres from the Bronx whose district is often called the poorest by income in the whole United States, as you know, on the finding of the MTAs new environmental review that some of the congestion pricing scenarios would cause more trucks to drive on the crossbar expressway, where people who live nearby have such high rates of asthma.

Richie Torres: Cruel irony of congestion pricing is that it would lead to some more congestion in the Bronx. That was the opposite of what we were promised.

Brian Lehrer: What's your reaction, Emerita, to Richie Torres's concern since your constituency is poor people in the Outer Boroughs?

Emerita Torres: Thanks for that. I live in the Bronx, [unintelligible 00:09:09] Bronx myself. I will say that it is a fair and it is a just concern. It's something that we didn't see when we released our analysis, which is largely based on income. What I will say is that the cross Bronx and the Bronx, in general, has been the victim of the congestion of traffic, of pollution, of poor air quality of the highest rates of asthma amongst children in the south Bronx.

We need to mitigate that. We need to think creatively about ways to get trucks out of the Bronx. There's a great proposal. I know Richie Torres supports it. I know Senator Chuck Schumer supports it, capping the south Bronx. That's a solution that's on the table. We need to think about that. I think we need to think overall about how we mitigate some of these effects that are now known thanks to the environmental study.

Brian Lehrer: Capping the Cross Bronx Expressway [unintelligible 00:10:01] and closing it so that those emissions don't get out as much. Well, Nicole Gelinas from the Manhattan Institute and New York Post, let me go next to you. Your article on StreetsBlog is called, What Congestion Pricing Accomplishes and What It Doesn't.

For the record, you are in favor of some kind of congestion pricing. I want to give you some running room here to lay out some of the good and the bad as you see it. What does congestion pricing accomplish, in your opinion, to start out if it's done well?

Nicole Gelinas: Thank you, Brian. I completely agree with Emerita that the issue here is not the impact on drivers. I do think the release of the environmental impacts documents, they highlight why we need an environmental assessment process. Ezra Klein wrote in The New York Times, "The environmental process is holding all this up." Well, that's not what's holding it up. We need to actually see after two decades of ideas of different proposals by advocacy groups, many of them very good, but never detailed to this degree.

The MTA has now presented hundreds of pages of documents put together by engineers, by consultants and so forth. These are actually what is going to happen if we do this and I agree, the biggest shock in these formal documents is the impact on the Bronx. If you think about how traffic goes from west to east and vice versa, Manhattan is kind of in the way. This was something that we dealt with in the 20th century not very well.

If you remember, the original post-World War II proposals were you build an expressway across Lower Manhattan, you build an expressway across Midtown Manhattan and you build an expressway across the Bronx. Well, we only built the one across the Bronx and then, of course, Jane Jacobs and other advocates managed to kill the Lower Manhattan Expressway. Midtown one also never got off the ground. Now we have one expressway across the Bronx taking all of this traffic east to west and the other direction.

We're back to the age old problem of if you have less traffic going across Manhattan, you have more traffic going across the Bronx. That's exactly what the document says that the Cross Bronx in particular would have anywhere from 170 to 704 more trucks every day going across this highway. What's bad about that is not only that it's a highway, but it is dug in an open cut below the building, so the pollution rises up and harms 200,000 people within the corridor. That is a big surprise and that has to be dealt with and it has to be dealt with in the plan. In other words, it can't be, "Well, we'll go ahead with this, but we'll deal with that later." The mitigation has to be a formal legal [crosstalk] plan.

Brian Lehrer: You're agreeing with Emerita on this point. They have to do something about the Cross Bronx and whether that's capping it, which might be very expensive and take a long time and hard to do or some other plan. They can't go forward with the plan, you're saying and then dealing with the effects on the poor people of the Bronx later.

Nicole Gelinas: Exactly. There are two other bundles of, I guess you would call them losers that I don't think we should lose sight of, even though the Bronx has rightly got the most attention. Staten Island would also see more vehicle miles traveled under this plan. That is some of the traffic not going through Manhattan, it goes through Staten Island instead. When you think about Congresswoman Malliotakis' remarks, Staten Island actually has a point here in that you would have to ask what are they getting out of this. There is no direct rapid transit from Staten Island into Midtown Manhattan.

If you think back to the original Sam Schwartz congestion plan, a little less than a decade ago, that plan acknowledged this issue by giving the Staten Islanders an additional credit on the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge. In other words, we want you to take transit. That's why we're doing congestion pricing, but we know you don't really have a one seat ride to Midtown Manhattan. That toll credit has completely gone away from this plan.

It is true that Staten Island is not getting anything out of this plan, but an additional toll as well as more traffic in Staten Island. The third group of losers, although to a lesser extent, is Bergen County because the plan also says traffic will rise in Bergen County. Whether that is by itself a deal breaker, probably not, but it does point up the fact that this is not an everyone wins proposal. There are real losers in this group and the plan must be much better thought out to mitigate the losses.

Brian Lehrer: Another critique that you bring up that I want to ask you about is that for all the tolling and all the inconvenience to some people that this would cause, it actually wouldn't reduce traffic in the Central Business District by very much based on the MTA's own numbers. That might be shocking to people. What are the numbers you're seeing?

Nicole Gelinas: If you look out, and I'm sure Rachel will give the pitch on the near-term numbers, but if you look out to the 20-year picture that the MTA put together, traffic within the entire city would actually rise. It would go from 47 million miles every day to close to 49. Even the traffic impact within the Manhattan core would be basically flat. It would be down just 3.1%. Now you can say, "Well, who cares what happens in 20 years. This is probably all wrong."

It is true that this is not the 10 Commandments, that we cannot predict traffic perfectly 20 years out, but combined with the real world 20-year impact in London, where they saw deep traffic reductions in their Central Business District core in the first couple of years, but then traffic gradually went back up, so that if you read in The Guardian, if you read in Bloomberg News a few months ago, by 2016, 2018, traffic both in the core and in London in total was back up to pre-congestion pricing levels by 2016, by 2018 right before the pandemic.

It is a real concern that if we do not get some of these details right, as London did not get some of the details right, particularly around cabs, Ubers and delivery vans, that you don't even get to the goal you want to get to which is reduce traffic. The problem with this plan is we have no idea how it is going to treat cabs and Ubers. We range from total exemptions for cabs to charging Ubers and Lyfts multiple times to enter the zone. There's a real risk that the Uber and Lyfts in particular just stay within the zone and ferry people within the zone and move congestion back right up to where it was. That's something not addressed at all in the plan.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. We will get later in the segment to what some people consider the most interesting part of the conversation which is exemptions. Who should be exempt? There's a whole list of people claiming that they should be exempt and we'll get to that and get all three of your takes on that. Listeners, if you're just joining us, this is the inaugural edition of The Brian Lehrer Show Editorial Board featuring three thinkers on an issue of intense public interest.

Today, it's congestion pricing in New York City now that the MTA has released seven different tolling scenarios for Manhattan below 60th Street and an environmental impact review for each. Our three thinkers for this episode are Nicole Gelinas from the Manhattan Institute, the conservative think tank, who was just speaking, Emerita Torres from the Community Service Society, which advocates on behalf of poor people and Rachel Weinberger from the Regional Plan Association, which studies the tri-state area as a whole.

Let's bring in Rachel Weinberger right now. She's transportation chair for the RPA. Rachel, would you give people a 30-second primer first on the RPA. You tried to study the needs of the region as a whole, New York City and all the surrounding areas in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. You can do that?

Rachel Weinberger: I think you just did it, Brian, but I will add this. This is our centennial year. We're 100-year-old civic organization. We do planning. We have evolved at different points in history. We were champions of some of the freeways that Nicole was talking about. Today, we are not. Essentially, exactly that. We are concerned with the region. Our work covers Connecticut, New Jersey, New York City. We look at housing issues, we look at climate change issues, we look at transportation.

We're very supportive of some of the big transit infrastructure projects and we're very supportive of many of the smaller transit projects. We've been big advocates for congestion pricing for a number of years and that's about the 30 seconds on RPA.

Brian Lehrer: Good. Congestion pricing must be an interesting challenge for you to develop a position on because we see people dividing up geographically on who's for it and who's against it. We've heard some of that already from our other two guests, Nicole and Emerita. Where do you begin to develop a region-wide unified public interest view?

Rachel Weinberger: Well, because our concern is the region and not so much trying to appease the contituent portions, congestion pricing is actually a no brainer. It wasn't hard for us to develop a position on it. It should reduce congestion if it's done right. The current MTA modeling does show, as Nicole mentioned, small congestion relief. Again, models give us insights, they don't give us particular answers which is something that Nicole also hit on.

I think the issues for us that we're really concerned about is doing it right, getting the right transit substituteS in place ahead, during, and after, and also handling the mitigations that Emerita talked about as being so critical. We are all in on congestion pricing, we think it's a big win for the community. I think to the point Nicole made about people who suffer the impact of it, one of the problems is it's clearly a diffused and large benefit to everybody in the region, and then for a small and vocal constituency there are tremendous disbenefits and also perception of disbenefit which may not in fact be realized.

Brian Lehrer: Now, I want to read the first two items from your own report on congestion pricing from the key recommendations section. The first is to implement transit and bicycle improvement prior to starting congestion pricing. The second is to adapt specific metrics to meet traffic environmental and health goals and ensure the benefits are equitably shared.

Let me replay Governor Murphy's main objection as he made news this week by rescinding his support for congestion pricing at this time. This is from our Ask Governor Murphy Show with Nancy Solomon last night, because he would say your number one recommendation, "Implement transit and bicycle improvements prior to starting the pricing," has not been met. Listen.

Governor Murphy: Some day, I'm not sure when, but someday not crazy far in the future, we will have two new rail tunnels that'll double capacity. We'll take the platforms in Penn Station from 24 to 48, we'll have a brand spanking new port 30 bus terminal, then you got a lot more latitude. You still have the issue of not double taxing New Jersey commuters but at least you've got the grazer freedom, that thanks to prior decisions in an action we don't have today.

Brian Lehrer: Rachel, does Governor Murphy have a point?

Rachel Weinberger: Governor Murphy is talking about some very large projects. Let me talk about London for a minute. In London, they put in 300 new bus routes and bike lanes prior to launching. Some of these projects can be done much more quickly. Some of the street improvements that New York City DOT has made over the years, closing the Bowtie in Times Square, adding more select bus service, these kinds of improvements can be made immediately, if not sooner.

I think that certainly in terms of gateway which we all support and fingers crossed that that continues to move forward smoothly, that'll be a big deal, but in the meanwhile, there are many microprojects that can be implemented, that do satisfy our recommendation.

Brian Lehrer: Your key recommendations also include introducing two-way tolling in the congestion zone, does that mean charging people to leave as well as to enter the Manhattan Central Business District?

Rachel Weinberger: What it means is coming up with one charge for the day that is two component parts. It depends on how the MTA runs it. There's one way that they're looking at it now which is they just have what they call the high peak charging time from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM or 6:00 AM to 8:00 PM, sorry, I can't remember the exact detail. That would be one way to charge. Some of the RPA alternatives looked at, one was to look at a flat fee throughout the day and then increasingly peaked pricing as the traffic peaks. This sort of represents the difference in how it's done in Stockholm versus how it's done in London.

Assuming that you have differential pricing, somebody could come in, say at 5:00 or 6:00 AM and then leave at the highest priced time of day, and so they are contributing not so much to the congestion on their trip in but very much so on their trip out. Our suggestion is that the charge should be based on both parts of their trip and if they are using the road system in the most congested period or the least congested period, they should be charged according to how they are using the system. That would be the thinking there.

Brian Lehrer: Nicole, your article also said that the current menu of plans is lacking a really dynamic congestion pricing system, like it could be varying the cost of the toll more depending on the time of day, I think Rachel was just talking about that, or depending on the weather, or the air quality that day, or even when it's Martin L day on Broadway. How are they proposing to do it and what kind of more dynamic pricing do you have in mind?

Nicole Gelinas: I think we're missing an opportunity to give equal weight to the goal of reducing congestion as we are to the goal of raising money. As Rachel said, in London, the congestion charge is £15 daily charge, it's only in effect from 7:00 AM to 6:00 PM and then on the weekend from noon to six so it's not very dynamic but it does acknowledge the fact that there's really no traffic overnight, you don't have to pay the congestion charge to drive into Central London overnight, whereas our charge would have a 14-hour peak where if you want to drive into Central Manhattan during the 14-hour peak, you pay anywhere from $9 to $23 depending on whatever they decide will be the peak fee.

Then there is an off peak fee, it's a little lower but there is also an overnight fee. There is no free time to drive into Manhattan. Whenever you drive in you would end up paying a fee, that kind of violates the spirit of congestion pricing. If I want me to drive into Manhattan at 2:00 AM, there's no real commuter rail transit options from the north at that time. Yes, the Subway's running but you probably don't want to get on Subway at 2:00 AM, although I know many people do. If I'm forced to drive in at that time, it's not because it's congestion, it's just to pay this fee to the MTA.

I think that should be rethought. We really should not have an overnight hours fee. A 14-hour peak doesn't give you room to manage the traffic. We should have a three or four- hour peak on the worst hours for traffic entrances and traffic accumulation and then help people model their driving time around those peaks. Obviously, you don't change it minute to minute. You give people a text warning the day before, "Tomorrow's the Saturday before Christmas so the fee is going to be 20% higher, maybe you want to think about taking the train in." But a 14-hour peak is not congestion pricing, that's just a very blunt flat fee.

Brian Lehrer: Emerita-

Rachel Weinberger: Brian, can I just clarify, just on this? I'm sorry, can I just say that--

Brian Lehrer: Rachel, go ahead.

Rachel Weinberger: the details are not set yet. MTA has modeled eight different ways of doing it to try to understand, but what they ultimately implement, we don't know, that's still up for grabs. They may well do something more similar to what Nicole's suggesting or do a more peaked. These decisions aren't made, it's just a question of whether the program goes forward or not. Sorry for the interruption.

Brian Lehrer: Emerita, I wonder if you have a reaction to what Nicole was just laying out because I'm thinking of the people you were talking about before, lower income essential workers, a lot of them have to come in to wherever they're working, in the off hours, compared to the more privileged 9:00 to 5:00 office workers.

Emerita Torres: Thank you, Brian. I'll say it again, most essential workers take public transportation, so they're not driving into the city to go to work. They are traveling in the middle of the night and that's why going back to why congestion pricing and the revenue that will get from congestion pricing is so important, because it's going to improve the public transit system, the mass transit across the board.

It's going to make it a more reliable system from signals improvement to the-- What we saw from Hurricane Sandy and the destruction there what we're seeing around climate change and how mass transit is affected by that. There's going to be so many improvements thanks to the revenue and that's going to affect all of New York City but especially those who regularly use public transit which tends to be lower-income New Yorkers and essential workers.

Brian Lehrer: We're going to take a break, we're going to come back and get to that contentious issue of who should be exempt from the congestion pricing tolls. Then we will get to what I hope will be the most interesting part of this Brian Lehrer Show Editorial Board Experiment, synthesizing some of the thoughtful points that each of our three guests are making and seeing if we can come up with some kind of coherent editorial position that's fair to as many people in the region and the climate as possible. Stay with us, it's the Brian Lehrer Show Editorial Board Experiment Edition 1 on congestion pricing in New York City. [music]

Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Again, if you're just joining us, this is the inaugural edition of the Brian Lehrer Show editorial board, featuring three thinkers on an issue of intense public interest. Today, it's congestion pricing in New York City. Now that the MTA has released seven different tolling scenarios, or maybe it's eight. One of our guests said eight.

They probably know better than me this summer for Manhattan below 60th street and an environmental impact review for each.

Doing this with Nicole Gelinas, from the Manhattan Institute, the conservative think tank, Emerita Torres from The Community Service Society, which advocates on behalf of poor people in New York, and Rachel Weinberger from the Regional Plan Association, which as its name indicates studies the tri-state area as a whole. Can we talk about the contentious issue of who should be exempt from the congestion pricing tolls?

Everyone from taxi and Uber drivers to truckers making deliveries to people who already pay the Hudson River tolls from New Jersey to people who live and own cars inside the district argue they should be exempt. On this show a few weeks ago, MTA Chief Janno Lieber said the exemptions will determine the size of the toll.

Janno Lieber: A lot of people are arguing for exemptions with the desire to keep the toll as low as possible. That's why there is right now in the study so far a range between 9 and $23 in the projected toll because it will depend on how many exemptions are given out for special circumstances.

Brian Lehrer: Can we go around the horn here briefly and hear from each of you on who, if anyone, should be exempt? Emerita from Community Service Society, will you start?

Emerita Torres: Sure. Well, I think first we should understand who's already exempt per the state legislation. Trips that use the FDR drive, the west side highway, won't be charged. Those that fall under one of these three categories, emergency vehicles, vehicles transporting people with disabilities, and any vehicle that belongs to a family living in the congestion zone, which earns less than 60,000 a year already exempt. Those are the exemptions-

Brian Lehrer: Wait, when you say anybody using the FDR drive or the west side highway, does that mean if I come in the Holland tunnel or if I come over the 59th street bridge? No. Well, which one has a toll? The Triboro bridge? You're not going to be tolled?

Emerita Torres: When you bypass the charging zones, you won't be charged. If you use the FDR drive, let's say you're coming from the Bronx and you get off on the battery or you get off before the 61st street, you won't be charged. If you're in the congestion zone--

Brian Lehrer: I see. If you're only on the highways in Manhattan below 60th street. Okay, so continue.

Emerita Torres: Yes, I think and per the scenarios that were explained, and also what we already see from the MTA, that the more exemptions we have, the less we're going to win in terms of both the revenue and also the level of congestion that we're going to achieve. I also am sympathetic and empathetic to drivers, for hire drivers but I do think that the more exemptions that we have, the harder it's going to be to get anywhere on congestion pricing, the harder it's going to be to reduce pollution, car traffic, and the like so I'm for minimal exemptions. We say this at CSS. I'm sorry.

Brian Lehrer: No, no, go ahead. Continue.

Emerita Torres: Yes. I think we should move forward with minimal exemptions to the extent that we can. I am sympathetic for hire drivers. I think we need to think of creative solutions around that and picking a scenario that is equitable somewhere perhaps in the middle but I do think that we have to reduce the amount of exemptions across the board.

Brian Lehrer: Let me read to you before we go around a tweet from a listener who says, "Congestion pricing, I will have to pay even more just to get home, just put tolls on all the bridges. I feel discriminated against for living in the west village." What do you say to that guy?

Emerita Torres: I would say there's public transportation options across the village, east and west. There are opportunities to take public transportation. It is among the neighborhood that has, I want to say, amongst, I haven't done the studies on this, but there's lots of public transportation options in the west village so I would say take public transit.

Brian Lehrer: Nicole, exemptions?

Nicole Gelinas: I think the biggest issue is going to be, do we get a last-minute exemption for New York City government workers driving their own private cars to work in Manhattan? If you go by any police station, any courthouse, any civilian government building, there are cars parked all over the sidewalks, cars double parked, cars in bus lanes, bike lanes, although to their credit, less of the cars parked in bike lanes over the past couple of years.

Many cars illegally parked because they've got a fake placard in the windows as, "I work for NYPD. I work for the MPTA. I work for the mayor's office." You have people driving to work and parking for free in Manhattan, something the city has never dealt with. Interestingly, the MTA environmental review says, even if you didn't do congestion pricing at all, you did nothing but reduce government placard permits. You could just do that and you could meet the reduction goals of congestion pricing. Of course, you wouldn't raise any money, but just getting rid of most of the government permits would get you to your congestion goal.

If we go through this whole process, and then at the last minute, the governor and the mayor say, if you work for the city of New York, you are exempt from the congestion fee, you undo a good deal of the congestion pricing congestion benefits. It just becomes a tax on people who work in the private sector. I completely respect and agree with the fact that Rachel says, this is just a process. We don't know the final plan, but this is something we really need to know now. This can't be a bait and switch. Either everyone pays including government workers or nobody pays.

Brian Lehrer: Rachel, exemptions?

Rachel Weinberger: I agree with Emerita on the exemption question, there are a few exemptions written into the legislation, and those are the ones that she enumerated. I think that those make sense and should be respected. I will actually say to your west village listener who sent you that tweet, 80% of Manhattan households do not own a car. 80% of people in Manhattan will benefit from better air quality and people throughout the region will also have these benefits and from a Tamer traffic environment, fewer crashes, fewer fatalities.

Again, also that person has a lot of transit options. That question of I have to pay just to get home, I'm sympathetic to the plight, but also understanding what the larger benefits are. A very related question to the exemption one, although I don't understand it as an exemption, but we've talked a lot about toll credits and you alluded to this Brian. What we really think as a principle should be adopted for this program is to eliminate any incentive for toll shopping. I'll tell you how that plays out. This is a true story.

A few months ago, I was driving. I do own a car, love it or hate it. I was driving from Long Island to drop my mother at her apartment in Chelsea. We're on the Long Island expressway coming toward the Midtown tunnel, which makes perfect sense to me. It's a straight shot across Manhattan to drop her home. She says, "We usually get off here and take the Williamsburg bridge." My mother's toll shopping.

She is going to spend an extra 10 minutes and drive two more miles. I check this on Google the other day, in order to save $6 and 55 cents, that actually is paying herself $39 an hour at that rate. That makes perfect sense. People all over New York City do that, they do it constantly. One of the things in other research that we found is that 25% of the traffic, the AMP traffic on the BQE cantilever, which is falling apart, another crisis for New York City are bypassing the battery tunnel to take a free bridge into Manhattan.

If you could get 25% of the traffic off that segment, it would be a very different highway situation, but because people are driving out of their way, they're imposing additional delay, not only on themselves, which in my mother's case, she's paying herself for by saving that but she's imposing that delay on others. Drivers cannot take that situation into account because it's invisible to them.

As far as it's not quite an exemption, but toll credits should be applied in a systematic way so that there are no differentials in terms of what it costs to cross into the zone so you have no incentives to drive out of your way to add extra VMT, to add extra delay to the system but other than that one I'm in total agreement with Emerita, the fewer exemptions we have the better. I'm sorry, let me just add one other thing.

Taxes for hire vehicles have been paying a congestion surcharge for trips below 96th street. It's not that they're getting a free ride and it's not that they're looking for an exemption, but that does have to be handled delicately. That's a question that is absolutely going to require additional attention.

Brian Lehrer: Rachel, another listener tweeting, "Right. Wow, this congestion conversation. Now just looks like another way Manhattan gets all the good things, all the traffic will just be dispersed to the areas around it. This is terrible. It's just a repeat of the same old patterns, Classic Elite move." Your response.

Rachel Weinberger: Well, my response to that is, I don't believe it plays out that way. Certainly in the MTA modeling, we are seeing some trip diversion, but if I'm driving into Manhattan every day to go to work, and now there's a congestion charge, my most likely move is to switch to transit, I'm not going to instead decide to drive to another part of the city or the region, because I'm actually going somewhere.

In fact, there should be additional congestion and health benefits to areas, particularly closest to the congestion zone. My trip through Brooklyn, over the bridge, and into Manhattan is eliminated so the entire segment that would be in Brooklyn, or in the Bronx, or in Queens is also eliminated and I will say the money that should be raised will be spent by the MTA on improvements to the transportation system throughout the city. I don't think it plays out that way, although there's reason to be suspicious, because we do have a long history that shouldn't be ignored, but I don't think that's what this program is going forward.

Brian Lehrer: This may not surprise any of you but so many tweets coming in on the topic of exemptions. Here's another one. Listerner writes, "Startedd listening late, are very low income people receiving public assistance and SSI and similar benefits exempt or a much-reduced rate? I assume your CSS, Community Service Society panelist may have addressed this." Emerita from the Community Service Society, are you calling for an exemption based on income?

Emerita Torres: What I'll say is on exemptions for low-income folks, again. Most low-income New Yorkers do not commute by car into the city. Most of them, a majority of them take public transportation. Only 2% of those in the outer boroughs who are living in poverty, that's about 5,000 residents as I said before would be asked to pay a congestion fee. Again, as Nicole mentioned, the point of this is to change behavior so that folks do not use their cars to drive in the city, but they make another choice, which is to use public transportation.

Brian Lehrer: You don't endorse an exemption for those 5,000 people?

Emerita Torres: What I will say is that on exemptions, and I also want to talk about fair fares, because there is for low-income folks at or below the federal poverty line, there is a program that CSS supports, we fought for it called Fair Fares, which is half price Metro parts. That's another option for those who are low income to get into the city through public transportation. Again, I don't think we should have any more exemptions than the ones that are already in the 2019 legislation.

Brian Lehrer: Another one, Nicole. Listener writes, "Congestion pricing is a big fat money grab sticking it to "wealthy New Yorkers" who live in the district and own cars. Most of us who do, however, use our cars to leave the district on the weekends, we aren't adding to the problem, yet, we'll be paying heavily to fix it." That goes with another tweet that's already disappeared from my screen because the tweets are coming in so fast, that also saw this as a way to soak the rich in order to fund mass transit for everybody else, and they didn't like it. Do you see it that way?

Nicole Gelinas: Clearly, the people who pay the fee will be in the middle to upper middle to upper upper income bracket and like anything, the super-rich are not going to notice this. It is perfectly fair to say that if you are a middle or upper-income driver, you will notice it. On the cash grab issue, that's another thing where if we get rid of the 14-hour peak hour, I think that would be a good sign that this is not primarily a way to raise money, that it is primarily a way to reduce congestion.

I hope we talk about the issue of what do we get for this billion dollars a year? I don't mean to spoil the answer, but it's probably not very much unless we do deep-cost reforms. People do have a real point in wondering, who does this money come from, but more importantly, where is it going to end up?

Brian Lehrer: One more tweet, I'll throw this to you Emerita, it's basically, what about disabled people who can't use mass transit very easily?

Emerita Torres: That's a really important point. I think we have to fix our public transit so is accessible for all. That's a problem that we've had before congestion pricing. We've been talking about congestion pricing for over a decade. I think that's something that I know the MTA is working on, we need to do a better job of that. I know that part of the exemptions include those vehicles transporting people with disabilities. That's part of the exemption, but I do think the listener is absolutely right, the MTA needs to do a better job of making train stations, buses, bus stops accessible for all.

Brian Lehrer: We're going to take a break, and then we'll come back and conclude with what I hope will be a really interesting part of this editorial board experiment, synthesizing some of the thoughtful points you've each made into a coherent editorial position. We'll see if we can actually do that. Stay with us, Brian Lehrer on WNYC.

[music]

Brian Lehrer, on WNYC with the inaugural edition of the Brian Lehrer Show Editorial Board this hour, featuring three thinkers on an issue of intense public interest. Today, it's congestion pricing in New York City now that the MTA has released a number of different tolling scenarios for Manhattan below 60th Street, and an environmental impact review for each with Nicole Gelinas from the Manhattan Institute, the conservative think tank, Emerita Torres from the Community Service Society, which advocates on behalf of poor people, and Rachel Weinberger, Chair of transportation from the Regional Plan Association, which studies the tri-state area as a whole.

Now as I said before the break, we get to what I hope will be the most interesting part of this editorial board experiment, synthesizing some of the thoughtful points that you've each made into a coherent editorial position, that's fair to as many people in our region as possible. We will probably fail, but let's see what we can do. Let me go down a series of points based on the conversation so far, and see how much consensus we have. Number one, congestion pricing, if done well, is better than no congestion pricing. Everybody agree with that? Nicole, you agree with that?

Nicole Gelinas: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Rachel and Emerita, I'm sure you agree with that.

Emerita Torres: Absolutely.

Nicole Gelinas: Absolutely.

Brian Lehrer: Number two, may be more difficult. Congestion pricing cannot be good for everyone. There will inevitably be winners and losers. Emerita, you agree with that?

Emerita Torres: I think there will be winners and losers. The majority will be I think winners, and overall, the city as a whole will benefit.

Brian Lehrer: Rachel?

Rachel Weinberger: That's such a nuanced question. I think there will definitely be people who feel like they are losers, but I think in the end, everybody actually wins with this program.

Brian Lehrer: Nicole.

Nicole Gelinas: There are definitely people who are losers according to the seven scenarios, the Bronx, Staten Island among them, and we need to clearly acknowledge that and mitigate the impact as part of the plan.

Brian Lehrer: Congestion pricing will be good for pedestrian safety. Everybody agree? I've seen some studies that say pedestrian safety in places where they've instituted congestion pricing other cities around the world has really been boosted. Do we think that will be the case in New York. Nicole, do you?

Nicole Gelinas: No, I don't think we should assume that. I know people say traffic deaths went down 30% in London, but they also went down tremendously here over the same period. If we speed up traffic, we need far more speed cameras, far more red light cameras, far more traffic calming projects within Manhattan to make sure that speeded-up traffic doesn't mean more traffic crashes, which is exactly what we saw during the pandemic years.

Brian Lehrer: Rachel?

Rachel Weinberger: Agreeing with Nicole, if done right, it's better for pedestrians. Depends on what complementary infrastructure gets implemented.

Brian Lehrer: Emerita?

Emerita Torres: I agree. It's not going to happen automatically. I think there needs to be changes and policy improvements and improvements in infrastructure, but overall, yes, with those improvements.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, that's a really interesting finding I think from this editorial board experiment. Don't assume that pedestrian safety improvements come automatically with congestion pricing. All right, another one. congestion pricing can be done without exacerbating asthma, or other environmental disparities in poor neighborhoods of the city. Emerita, agree or disagree?

Emerita Torres: As we saw in the environmental impact there will be effects. There will be negative effects. We need to mitigate those. I think we can. We saw the beginnings, we can see the environmental impact, I think we can mitigate those if we're creative. Think about ways to decrease truck traffic going into the Bronx, going to Staten Island. I think we can but we need to be cognizant, we need to have a plan for that.

Brian Lehrer: Rachel, briefly.

Rachel Weinberger: Agreeing with Emerita, and I think that traffic needs to be rationalized. If truck trips have been gone across Manhattan, that's probably not the best use of Manhattan. If they're going across the Bronx, that may or may not be the best use of the Bronx. If we decide we need that truck traffic, we need to mitigate it in other ways. We need to prioritize low-emission buses, perhaps removing a bus depot from the Bronx, other ways to mitigate, but those concerns need to be mitigated.

Brian Lehrer: Nicole, I assume you agree environmental justice is not automatic with congestion pricing.

Nicole Gelinas: Right. Doing all of these transit projects depends on cost reform. I think we shouldn't forget that this raises only a billion dollars a year. Absence cost reform on both the upgrading into construction site at the MTA, this just disappears down the hole of MTA budget deficits. Remember, as you said, we already have a congested fee on cabs and Ubers in core Manhattan, that raises $400 million a year and it just disappears. I don't think anyone has even noticed that we implemented that part of congestion pricing four years ago.

Brian Lehrer: Did we get to a consensus I wonder on exemptions? I think you all believe they should be limited, but not necessarily zero. Rachel, do you want to restate yours very briefly?

Rachel Weinberger: I am in support of the exemptions that are written into the legislation, emergency vehicles, vehicles carrying passengers with disabilities, and people earning under $60,000 in the congestion zone, also people just traveling on the boundary and not entering the congestion zone. I don't think we need more exemptions than those.

Brian Lehrer: Consensus on that, Emerita?

Emerita Torres: Yes, consensus.

Brian Lehrer: Nicole?

Nicole Gelinas: Yes. No government exemption. They should say that today.

Brian Lehrer: No exemption for government workers.

Nicole Gelinas: Right, exactly.

Brian Lehrer: Finally, how about this proposition? Congestion pricing won't actually reduce congestion in Manhattan that much, but it's worth doing anyway for the likely improvements to pedestrian safety, ground-level pollution, climate emission reduction, and revenue to improve mass transit in the region maybe most importantly. Would you agree with that, Nicole as an overall conclusion sort of?

Nicole Gelinas: No. If we end up with a plan that doesn't reduce congestion in 20 years like what happened in London, then this is just a pointless exercise. We need a plan that gets us to long-term congestion reductions, not just in Manhattan, but throughout the city.

Brian Lehrer: Why? Let me follow up on that briefly. Why is congestion itself a goal as opposed to all these other benefits?

Nicole Gelinas: Yes. I think that's a great question, actually. No one ever talks about that. The answer used to be pollution. As we go more toward electric cars, I think we'll need a different answer, because at least they'll be polluting less within the direct impact area. I think trying to cross the street is difficult when you've got vehicles backed up through an intersection.

There is supposed to be a benefit to drivers here. This was pitched for years as this will make it easier for you to drive across Manhattan. If that turns out not to be the case, it's really not a benefit to drivers.

Brian Lehrer: Which is weird, because it's a benefit to drivers' plan on the one hand, as you just described, on the other hand, it's supposed to discourage almost everybody from driving into Manhattan.

Nicole Gelinas: Right. This gets you into interesting socio-economic philosophy.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Because it's a benefit for wealthy drivers, right?

Nicole Gelinas: Yes. This is your whole carbon tax issue. You have interesting opinions on this from AOC and others. Should people be able to buy their way out of something that everyone else has to deal with? I don't have the answer to that, but that's what we're talking about here.

Brian Lehrer: Rachel worth it for funding improvements for mass transit, and the other benefits, even if it doesn't reduce congestion all that much?

Rachel Weinberger: Well, I would be surprised if it doesn't reduce congestion more than the MTA has suggested. I think that they've taken a very conservative approach, which I think is appropriate for their organization, but at the moment, 88% of the people who drive into the zone from the New York side, do not pay. Now, when you ask those people to pay a fee to come in, they're going to reexamine the choices that they've made.

Now, in terms of what you said, Brian about it's designed to make almost nobody drive, it's actually designed to try to get about a 10% reduction of drivers. I think that it would be wise public policy to keep the contract with the public that this does reduce congestion that's why it's congesting pricing, and agree with Nicole, that really the way to do that is to design it so that it's priced when congestion is worst, most heavily.

Brian Lehrer: Monique in Weehawken wants to bring up something that nobody's mentioned. Monique, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Monique: Yes. I've just been thinking that people really haven't been thinking out of the box and that this is something we can all use, and that is to say, make the subways free, it's part of our taxes. I'm a commuter from New Jersey, I pay a commuter tax. Just do it that way. It simplifies everything. I love the transit system. It works well occasionally, and sometimes better than usual. I think that people should start thinking of it that way and not try to do something like congestion pricing, which will be hard to figure out and implement.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much, Monique. Yes, Rachel, we used to have a commuter tax into New York City, and then it went away. Is that a simpler way to do the same thing?

Rachel Weinberger: I think MTA certainly would be wise to find new revenue models for supporting transit, but it's not just on them. I think it would be wonderful to have a free subway. I don't see the path to that in the near term.

Brian Lehrer: Craig in Riverdale, you're on WNYC. Hey, Craig.

Craig: How are you doing guys? I think you guys are all sounding like Robert Moses in reverse. Manhattan is the destination. Nobody in their right mind is driving through Manhattan. I don't know if you guys have walked around the Bronx lately, but if you think the average income is 60,000 or $94,000, have you seen the cars these people are driving? There's no way they're going to be able to afford it. The comment that one of your staff there said that essential workers don't drive to work, I think you guys are on another planet. You guys are not looking at this the right way.

There's so many other issues involved. How about collecting the money that people don't want to pay if you have this in? You're going to have accounts receivables like they do with E‑ZPass? It's just not going to be there. Then guess what? All the money you think that's going to be saving or that you're going to put into the transit authority, what makes how long is that going to take for that money to gather? Then you have to decide with your politicians how the money is going to be used in the MTA.

That's going to take at least three to four years. You guys really are not looking at this the right way. You guys are looking at this feasibility study like you think it's a fact. There was way more than 2% of the people driving into Manhattan. I think you guys got that figure way off. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Of the lower-income people, that was the figure that was given. Well, Emerita, I'm going to give you the last word in response to Craig in Riverdale and Monique in Weehawken.

Emerita Torres: Thank you. I appreciate the caller's concern and his passion. Look, these are the numbers that we have from the census. I stand by our analysis. Look, this is why we have all of the public hearings that are taking place to hear from folks across the city about the impact and what we can do to improve it. I'm thankful for the caller but I stand by our analysis and the fact that overall, it's going to impact low-income New Yorkers very very low, very very low.

Brian Lehrer: Well, with our caller board exemplified by those two callers indicating that certainly, not everybody is satisfied. Maybe this hour has given us some thoughtful and unified editorial position that listeners can learn from and develop their own opinions from. In any case, Rachel, Emerita, and Nicole, thanks so much for engaging in this experiment with us this first edition of the Brian Lehrer Show Editorial Board. Thank you very, very much.

Nicole Gelinas: Thank you, Brian.

Rachel Weinberger: Thank you, Brian.

Emerita Torres: A pleasure to be here.

 

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