Press Release
Statement by CSS President and CEO David R. Jones on Congestion Pricing
Congestion pricing, which was approved by New York State lawmakers in 2019, is designed to discourage the use of cars in one of the world’s most traffic-clogged urban centers, reduce dangerous carbon emissions and remove some 143,000 vehicles from midtown Manhattan.
Revenue generated by congestion pricing – estimated to be approximately $15 billion — will help finance crucial transit projects, including signal system upgrades, station renovations, investments in buses, commuter rail and subway lines such as extending the Second Avenue Subway to Harlem-125th Street and making stations more accessible to individuals experiencing disability. It will also create tens of thousands of local jobs throughout the state.
As a member of the MTA Board, I strongly support congestion pricing. Without it, New York City will eventually choke on its own traffic problems. Not to mention walk away from our best opportunity to generate the necessary funding to upgrade and bring the city’s mass transit system into a state of good repair.
Governor Hochul’s decision to temporarily pause the program is disappointing. The immediate concern it raises is how will New York replace the $15 billion in badly needed revenue congestion pricing would have generated to improve train and bus services for New Yorkers, particularly students, essential workers, the poor and low-income people who depend on the system.
Our public transit system is a lifeline for essential workers across the New York City’s service sector, most of them working-class Black and brown city residents. With congestion pricing, we had a potent remedy for what has been a persistent inequity at the heart of New York’s previous failures to invest in the MTA network. Those investments, which are long overdue, are now in jeopardy.