congestion pricing
New Yorkers Can’t Afford for Gov Hochul to Keep Delaying Climate Action
As we gear up for another summer of extreme weather events, we need our elected leaders to understand the urgency for action.
This past weekend, the New York State Assembly finally got its act together and passed an urgent piece of climate legislation, the Climate Change Superfund Act. Designed to make fossil fuel corporations pay for the damage they have done to the environment, the bill, initially passed by the Senate earlier this spring, now heads to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s desk. It is imperative that the governor, after consistently backing down on climate this year, signs this bill into law.
Gov. Hochul’s reticence to pursue climate action is, at this point, well-established. Just last week, she made headlines for slamming the brakes on a congestion pricing initiative that was supposed to take effect later this month. The impending tolls would have reduced traffic in downtown Manhattan, improved air quality, and funded much-needed upgrades to public transit. Combined with the Inflation Reduction Act’s groundbreaking federal investments in clean energy nationwide, congestion pricing would have moved our state one step closer to a sustainable future. Instead, Gov. Hochul chose to play petty politics with the livability of our city.
Last month, as I prepared for another summer of extreme weather events in New York City, I joined hundreds of climate activists in Albany to demand that the state legislature pass the Superfund Act and another climate-related bill—the HEAT Act. I marched through the halls of the State Capitol, linking arms with climate activists of all faiths, holding banners, chanting songs, and demanding climate action from the New York State Assembly and Gov. Hochul.
Should Gov. Hochul fail to act, here’s what we can expect more of: a hotter New York City, plagued by more frequent and more severe storms, flooding, and air pollution.
Gov. Hochul’s behavior is forcing us to take action. Not even two months ago, she chose to exclude the NY HEAT and Climate Superfund Acts from the annual state budget. Then she backed down on congestion pricing. As the days heat up, it’s more important than ever that our elected officials deliver on their promise to ensure a liveable future for our communities here in New York City.
Last summer, extreme weather wreaked havoc across our city. Between smoky skies and flooded streets, city life was consistently derailed by out-of-control weather conditions. September 2023 was the wettest September in New York City in over a century. And, a year later, we seem headed into another stormy summer. In late May, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warned that 2024 will see above-normal hurricane activity.
These extreme weather events and others are a direct result of climate change. Canadian wildfires are getting more intense as a hotter and drier fire season becomes the norm. Warmer ocean temperatures are fueling stronger tropical storms, and climate change is making heatwaves more frequent and more extreme. These are ramifications of climate change that our governor needs to take seriously: Inaction simply isn’t an option.
This August will mark two years since President Joe Biden signed the most significant piece of climate legislation in American history into law. The Inflation Reduction Act devoted $370 billion to lowering energy costs for American households, building out clean energy, and other climate solutions. In New York State, IRA capital is already starting to flow to consumers. Since 2023, New Yorkers have been eligible for tax credits that make buying an electric vehicle, upgrading home heating and cooling systems, and replacing inefficient refrigerators more affordable. A few weeks ago, New York became the first state to offer rebates to low- and middle-income New Yorkers who want to make clean-energy upgrades to their homes. Passing the Superfund and HEAT Acts, and reversing her ill-advised decision on congestion pricing, is simply the most sensible thing for Gov. Hochul to do.
New York City is already suffering from a bad case of the heat island effect, a phenomenon where dense urban areas experience higher temperatures than surrounding rural areas, largely due to vehicular traffic. We cannot afford to let unregulated vehicle traffic continue to overheat our city. Should Gov. Hochul fail to act, here’s what we can expect more of: a hotter New York City, plagued by more frequent and more severe storms, flooding, and air pollution.
My worries about the risks of inaction are exactly why I made the trip to Albany earlier this spring. As we gear up for another summer of extreme weather events, we need our elected leaders to understand the urgency for action. Gov. Hochul can’t continue to ignore the climate crisis. She must reverse her position on congestion pricing, sign the Superfund Act, and steer the HEAT Act into law. We simply can’t afford to play politics or wait any longer.
"Et Tu, Hochul?" Betrayal!
With her flip-flop on congestion pricing, New York Governor Kathy Hochul, not the youth-led Sunrise Movement, is the real climate traitor.
I had another piece planned for today, and I will get back to it soon—it will deliver a certain amount of good news. But events intervened. I try not to write out of anger, but on occasion it overtakes me, and Wednesday’s actions by the governor of New York were so shockingly cynical that—fair warning—I’m indulging some of that fury.
But as I begin, a plea not to be angry with the youth. There was a mild kerfluffle on the climate interwebs Wednesday, when the Sunrise Movement—the youthful progenitors of the Green New Deal—announced that they weren’t yet ready to endorse Joe Biden for president. The keyboard gladiators of the status quo—led as usual in their chivalrous charge by the reliable down-puncher Matt Yglesias—crackled with indignation at the young folks.
lmao—I hope everyone who gassed this institution up with money and coverage is proud of themselves
I am an unrepentant supporter of Sunrise, so let me explain. I knew many of their first generation of leaders, who had cut their teeth on the fossil fuel divestment campaign; wanting to fight on after college, they’d formed Sunrise, ginned up the Green New Deal, and used a sit-in at Nancy Pelosi’s office, with AOC in attendance, to give it oxygen. Their tactics worked—they were a big reason that by the 2020 Democratic primaries “climate change” was the number one issue for huge numbers of voters. They were obvious Bernie Sanders supporters, but when he lost they swallowed hard, and took part in the negotiations that produced a united Democratic front for Biden: Indeed, Sunrise’s director, Varshini Prakash, was on the team that sat with a couple of key Biden aides to work out the essentials of Build Back Better. They didn’t endorse Biden, but they did work hard, and effectively, against Trump, as the youth vote in 2020 eventually demonstrated. And then they worked hard, and effectively, to pass Build Back Better, even as Joe Manchin cut it down into the Inflation Reduction Act—again they swallowed hard and backed a seriously imperfect bill. It was a rare display of political maturity and effectiveness among any progressives, let alone young ones.
Now a new generation of Sunrise volunteers is saying they can’t, yet, endorse Biden—but they’re also promising to fight hard against Donald Trump. Look, I’m fighting hard for Biden. I understand deep in my soul the existential risk Trump poses. But I also get why young people are having a hard time joining fully in—it’s because of Gaza, above all. And we do not want a world where young people would not be hideously upset by Israel’s endless bombing campaign, a campaign of immiseration clearly designed, as Biden said this week, to protect Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political future. Though the media has seized on every example of left obtuseness they can find (usually from middle-aged college professors), the young people I’ve watched have been clear in their condemnation both of Hamas’ repulsive violence, and of antisemitism. And in part because of their hard work, Biden has shown more willingness to stand up to the repugnant Netanyahu and try to end the fighting even as he works to head off a regional war. The invaluable Kate Aronoff has a fine account of the Sunrise news in The New Republic yesterday, and she even bothered to call up the head of the thing and ask what it meant.
“Do we want to be fighting for a Green New Deal under a Trump presidency or a Biden presidency? To me, the answer is pretty clear,” Stevie O’Hanlon told me earlier today. “Donald Trump winning a second term is an existential threat to our climate and our democracy and will set back the fight for a Green New Deal.”
So yes, Gaza is complicated and nuanced. But a society needs people for whom complication and nuance are not central, and these are usually young people. They offer useful clarity. And if Biden eventually loses, it will be less because young people don’t support him than because old people don’t: There are far more of us, and we are not reliably voting in defense of the values we grew up with (like, respect, decency, kindness, and not getting convicted of felonies). That’s why we at Third Act are backing Biden with all that we’ve got—we don’t like what’s happening in Gaza, but a job of older people is to bring to bear the somewhat wearying but valuable experience that simply living longer allows you to accumulate. We admire Biden for the good things he’s done, and we know that Trump can and will make the bad parts worse, beginning with his promise to radically accelerate the climate crisis. But I’m glad, for one, that the young are making the witness that they are.
This week did offer a real betrayal, though, and it came from Democratic elders—most particularly New York Governor Kathy Hochul. She—out of the clear blue—announced she would block New York City’s congestion pricing plan, due to go into effect January 30.
You don’t wait until the last possible moment to jerk around the advocates who have spent years working with you to craft an agreement.
This is stupid policy—it’s the most aggressively anti-environmental stand I can recall a major Democratic governor taking, beating even Gavin Newsom’s recent demolition of rooftop and community solar in California. Congestion pricing meant that people who wanted to drive into the clogged streets of lower Manhattan would pay a $15 toll; the revenue would go to support the beleaguered transit system that actually allows New York to operate. This kind of system has been a huge success in the European cities that have tried it, like London and Milan; Manhattan (as advocates back to Jimmy Breslin and Norman Mailer have noted) would be an incredibly sweet place with many fewer cars. This is, as Robinson Meyer noted yesterday “tier one climate policy,” which with a success in Manhattan could quickly spread to other cities. And so there’s been a tremendous effort over decades to build out support for congestion pricing. An earlier version came close to passing years ago—lore has it that the opposition of parking garage owners carried the day in Albany. This time, though, everything was lined up: Governor Hochul had given a rousing defense of the plan in a speech just two weeks ago. I’m going to quote from it at some length, because I think it’s possible that no politician in American history has ever flip-flopped quite so thoroughly or so fast:
Walk around many major cities and it won’t take long to encounter frustrated drivers caught in traffic jams, cars spewing exhaust on overpacked streets. We determined that the average New York City driver spends 102 hours a year stuck in traffic. Those hours add up to more than four days of your life—every year.
That’s four days sitting behind the wheel of a car instead of sitting by your kid’s bedside, reading them a book, sitting around the dinner table or reconnecting with a friend.
There has to be a better way. So, starting next month, New York City will become the first city in the U.S. to implement congestion pricing. We’ll charge people $15 every time they drive into New York’s Central Business District.
London, Milan, Stockholm, and Singapore have all implemented similar plans with great success. In New York City, the idea stalled for 60 years until we got it done earlier this year.
It took a long time because people feared backlash from drivers set in their ways. But, much like with housing, if we’re serious about making cities more livable, we must get over that.
We estimate congestion pricing will reduce the volume of vehicles in Manhattan’s central business district by 17%. Fewer cars mean less gridlock, traffic, and pollution. Fewer cars means safer streets, cleaner air, and more room to maneuver for pedestrians and bicyclists.
Congestion pricing will generate $1 billion every year, which will then fund large-scale projects that make public transit faster and more accessible. That’s key because we’ll never change people’s habits if we don’t offer safe, reliable alternatives to driving that work for everyone.
In her remarks blocking the plan yesterday, Hochul said something something pandemic—when work on the plan began in 2019, “workers were in the office five days a week, crime was at record lows, and tourism was at record highs. Circumstances have changed, and we must respond to the facts on the ground.”
But clearly none of those circumstances changed in the past two weeks. Who knows what caused this unreal shift. Speculation ranges from (the now fashionable) brain worm to lots of Hochul fundraising by local autodealers to the notion that House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries was worried that congestion pricing would hurt the prospects for regaining his majority in the fall elections. (A bad showing by New York Democrats in the suburbs cost him the speakership last time around; the same people are still in charge of the Empire State campaign this time around). If it’s really electoral fear that drove Hochul’s stab in the back, then this is political malpractice: You don’t wait until the last possible moment to jerk around the advocates who have spent years working with you to craft an agreement.
People on the outside underestimate, I think, the degree to which significant change comes from a long and controlled dance between activists and politicians—and one of the rules of that, on both sides, is that you don’t pull out the rug at the last minute. People like Charles Komanoff have spent most of their lives working up to this deal, jumping through every hoop to demonstrate the needed support, and now it’s been trashed. And trashed with the support of other parts of the progressive coalition. It was so sad to see the United Federation of Teachers gloating at the downfall of congestion pricing—the larger left has engaged in a generational effort to raise teacher pay, understanding it to be both right and a core concern of a partner; the UFT ignored the core concern of environmentalists in order to help teachers who wanted to keep driving. Public school teachers should be supporters of public transit; this, not Sunrise, is real-world malarkey.
If any possible good could come from Hochul’s cold-blooded betrayal, it’s that she, and Albany Democrats in general, might feel the need to give environmentalists some kind of win. The NY Heat act, and the climate superfund bill, are both up for action in this final week of the legislative session. It would be scant comfort to see them passed in the wake of this shocking schism, but it would be something.
'A Real Betrayal': Hochul Condemned for NYC Congestion Pricing Flip-Flop
Climate advocate Bill McKibben called the reversal "the most aggressively anti-environmental stand I can recall a major Democratic governor taking."
"Betrayal."
"A generational setback for climate policy."
"The kind of sabotage by a leader that warrants impeachment."
Those were just some of the ways New Yorkers and climate advocates described Gov. Kathy Hochul's decision to cancel a first-in-the-nation congestion pricing plan for New York City on Wednesday.
Although the move will directly impact a relatively small percentage of U.S. residents' daily lives, critics said the move will stymie progress that could ultimately have been seen across the country—instead dooming communities to continued reliance on vehicles and the planet-heating emissions they cause.
A year after signaling approval for the congestion pricing plan, which was years in the making, the Democratic governor stunned campaigners Wednesday when she released a pre-recorded message announcing that "circumstances have changed" and would not allow the policy to take effect on June 30 as planned.
Under the plan, drivers who entered certain parts of Manhattan would be charged $15, with the projected annual revenue of $1 billion accounting for 50% of the funds needed for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's (MTA) upgrades to its system.
The MTA's Capital Program is now on hold, according to6sqft, jeopardizing 23,000 jobs and imperiling the city's ability to improve reliability for working New Yorkers—56% of whom do not own a car—and make subway stations more accessible.
Local groups Riders Alliance and Transportation Alternatives announced plans for an emergency lobby day in Albany on Friday, where they said they would tell Hochul and state lawmakers to say "no to defunding our transit system."
Hochul said she was considering a new tax on businesses to fill in the $1 billion funding gap caused by her decision, but that would require approval by the New York Legislature, whose session ends this week.
The Tri-State Transportation Campaign (TSTC) found in a recent analysis that more than 97% of people who commute from suburbs in New York and New Jersey would not be impacted financially by the congestion pricing plan. Looking at 217 legislative districts across the New York City metropolitan area, the percentage of commuters who would have to pay the $15 toll did not exceed 4%, and was 0-1% in most districts.
"Our members don't ride Escalades to Broadway shows. They use transit," said grassroots civil society group New York Communities for Change.
The TSTC noted that the state Legislature promised the congestion pricing plan to working families who rely on public transportation nearly five years ago.
"We urge the governor to stick to her guns and implement this transformative policy," said the group. "This is the pivotal moment. Please, Gov. Hochul, don't turn your back on the families counting on you to provide cleaner air and faster commutes for everyone."
Third Act founder and author Bill McKibben said Hochul's decision—reportedly encouraged by U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) in an effort to win a Democratic majority in Congress this year—amounts to "a real betrayal."
"This is stupid policy—it's the most aggressively anti-environmental stand I can recall a major Democratic governor taking," wrote McKibben in his newsletter, The Crucial Years. "This kind of system has been a huge success in the European cities that have tried it, like London and Milan; Manhattan (as advocates back to Jimmy Breslin and Norman Mailer have noted) would be an incredibly sweet place with many fewer cars."
Sunrise Movement NYC suggested Hochul's decision was the result of $100,000 in donations to her campaigns from the auto industry, which is hosting a fundraiser for the governor next week with tickets costing $5,000 and up.
"Congestion pricing would save countless lives through reduced traffic across the city, cleaner air, and faster response times by first responders," said the group. "Gov. Hochul cannot usurp congestion pricing unilaterally... We call on the Legislature and the MTA to remain steadfast in the implementation of congestion pricing."
A Dutch study published last year found that although congestion pricing was unpopular when it was first implemented in cities including London, Stockholm, Singapore, and Edinburgh, support grew after the policies went into effect.
"In terms of what's best for the largest number of people, congestion pricing is it, because it brings air quality benefits, it brings lower traffic benefits, and it brings transit improvements to the entire city," Kate Slevin, executive director of the Regional Plan Association in New York, toldHuffPost.
Journalist Robinson Meyer said that in terms of the generational climate impact it will have, Hochul's reversal on congestion pricing would ultimately be "worse than the Mountain Valley pipeline, worse than Alaska's Willow project," because of the lost opportunity to bring similar policies to other U.S. cities.
"New York was bushwhacking a trail for everyone else to follow," wrote Meyer. "If congestion policy was a success there, then other American cities could experiment with it in some form... By shuttering the policy in New York, she has poisoned pro-climate urban policies everywhere."