Less than a week before the $9 toll to drive through 60th Street in Manhattan goes into effect, former New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo, the father of the first form of congestion pricing in 2019, spoke out about Kathy Hochul’s green light; and he opposed it.
“It is undeniable that New York is in a dramatically different place today than it was in 2019, and without a study forecasting [the toll’s] consequences based on facts, not politics, it could do more harm than good to New York City’s recovery,” his spokesman Rich Azzopardi told the New York Post.
For Cuomo, it is a matter of timing: “Congestion pricing is ultimately the right policy,” but it is not the right time “to implement it.” Azzopardi added, “Congestion pricing is premised on a safe and reliable subway system, and given the obvious lack of confidence the public currently has in the subway system—combined with the tenuous state of New York City post-COVID—the Governor called for a data-driven study on the impact of congestion pricing to inform the timing of such a major policy change and to ensure New York was not creating additional obstacles to its comeback”.
From Hochul’s entourage, which worked for months to lower the toll from the originally planned $15 to the $9 set as of Sunday, Jan. 5, came an immediate piqued response, accusing Cuomo of starting congestion pricing but failing to manage it. “Drivers upset about paying a $9 toll when entering Manhattan should remember two things: Andrew Cuomo is the reason they’re paying a toll, and Kathy Hochul is the reason it’s 40% lower than originally envisioned. Governor Hochul took office in 2021—two years after congestion pricing became law—and got to work fixing the mess she inherited at the MTA following a decade of gubernatorial mismanagement,” said Avi Small, spokesman for the current administration and Cuomo’s lieutenant governor.
In agreement with then-New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, in 2019 Cuomo succeeded in including a form of congestion pricing similar to the current one in New York State’s budget to implement public transportation, after years of negotiations based on Michael Bloomberg’s first 2007 proposal. At the federal level, the green light did not come until June 2023, relaunching the project to Hochul, who preferred to put it on hold until last month when she announced the activation of cameras on 60th Street starting Jan. 5.
