Congestion Pricing Plans in Other U.S. Cities Threatened by New York’s Eleventh-Hour Pause
Portland, Ore., Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles have all explored charging car commuters to fund public transportation and reduce traffic
CLIMATEWIRE | New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s last-minute decision to halt congestion pricing in Manhattan will likely hurt similar efforts across the country.
The Democratic governor announced last week in a surprise video that she would indefinitely pause a years-in-the-making congestion pricing plan because it would have “too many unintended consequences.” By then, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority had already begun to hang signs explaining the effort, which would charge drivers $15 to travel into Manhattan below 60th Street on weekdays.
The sudden reversal means MTA can no longer count on more than $1 billion in essential funding. But the greatest impact may be to efforts in other cities, which were waiting to see how the major piece of municipal climate policy played out in the nation’s largest city.
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Hochul’s decision “absolutely has national implications in that it had been a great motivating factor” in driving other cities to study the issue and figure out a similar plan, said Stuart Cohen, co-founder and senior adviser for TransForm, a California-based public transportation advocacy group. Cohen has consulted for similar efforts in San Francisco and Seattle.
“It was always this sense of well, we’ll get to see how New York’s going and we’ll learn from that as we…
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