A federal court has dismissed a crucial argument in a series of lawsuits challenging New York’s congestion pricing scheme, restoring hope to advocates of the tolling program Gov. Kathy Hochul chose to halt earlier this month.
In three cases filed in U.S. District Court in Lower Manhattan, the plaintiffs were Vito J. Fossella, the borough president of Staten Island, Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, and two distinct groups of New York City citizens.
The plaintiffs alleged that federal transportation officials had approved the congestion pricing program without conducting a thorough environmental review or providing sufficient mitigation for any potential negative effects. This was particularly the case in poor and minority communities, where a large number of people suffer from asthma and other health issues that are made worse by air pollution.
However, Judge Lewis J. Liman determined on Thursday that the review procedure, which lasted four years and produced an administrative record that was more than 45,000 pages long, was indeed sufficient. According to the 113-page long decision, federal transportation experts “carefully considered” congestion pricing after conducting a “painstaking examination” of its effects on the environment.
Congestion pricing is still up in the air even if the judge’s ruling offers a substantial, if limited, legal success for the tolling program’s proponents. Few weeks remained before the plan was supposed to go into effect when Ms. Hochul decided to stop it because she was afraid that the tolls would discourage travelers and commuters from coming back to the city, which would hinder its post-pandemic recovery.
