Why the Congestion Pricing Fight in NYC Matters Nationally

New York Needs to be a national progressive policy leader again- and the failure on congestion pricing highlights how its local party leadership is hurting the nation.

New York’s Governor, Kathleen Hochul, stuck a knife in one of the most important, path-breaking innovations in the nation to fight climate change when she “paused” congestion pricing.

The policy designed to restrict traffic in lower Manhattan, reduce climate change pollution, and fund the mass transit system was borrowing a successful model used in major cities around the world from Singapore to London, but Hochul at this eleventh hour caved to political pressure from suburban drivers to kill the measure.

Electric Cars Are Not Enough to Stop Climate Change

One reason the death - or at least “pause” - on congestion pricing is such a blow is that the United States is fixated on electric cars as the solution to transportation-based climate emissions, when the most dramatic impacts on climate change occur when we eliminate or at least reduce car-based travel miles altogether.

EV vehicles are an improvement on combustion engine-based cars, but their electricity is still often based on energy generation that taxes the environment and their production involves climate-destroying processes often worse than those that produce traditional cars. Given the toxic metals that go into EV production, building an EV requires about 80% more emissions than a comparable gas-powered car.

While over the life of an EV, its climate impact is eventually less than that of a traditional car. As this video below reflects, EVs are based on global exploitation of low-wage labor to extract the rare earth metals required to produce EVs.

Analysts are already describing the “lithium wars” emerging as countries and corporations maneuver for control of EV-related metals, a new version of the international conflicts over control of oil in the last century.

Reducing Driving is the Gold Medal Solution to Climate Change Threats

New York has demonstrated that less driving is the best solution to climate change. New Yorkers’ extraordinarily high use of public transit means its residents produce far fewer greenhouse gases per capita than the rest of the nation- and it’s not close. On average, New Yorkers produce one-third of the emissions of the average American. To put it another way, while New Yorkers make up 2.7% of the U.S. population, they produce only 1% of climate change emissions.

Along with San Francisco, NYC is the only major US city with comparable emission levels to major transit-oriented European nations.

While almost 92% of trips in the US are made by automobile, it’s estimated that only one-third of trips in New York City are by car - and those are concentrated in the outer boroughs. Less than 30% of travelers to lower Manhattan- the zone where congestion pricing was to be required - come by car. This percentage is actually higher than pre-Covid numbers, since car use has largely rebounded but mass transit commutes are still down significantly. Congestion pricing would have been a key tool for shifting more people back onto the subways and buses to both reduce environmental damage and strengthen the overall economic health of the MTA system.

New York Needs to be a National Leader in Promoting Mass Transit - but the Cuomo-Hochul Era has Been a Disaster for Public Transit

If New York can’t make mass transit work, other cities struggling with fewer historic advantages and legacy infrastructure won’t have a chance politically.

Hochul’s U-turn on congestion pricing is just part of a decade plus of underfunding of the MTA, as Cuomo and Hochul have treated it as a piggy bank to raid for other priorities. Andrew Cuomo made noises about fixing the subway, even bringing in London’s Andy Byford, who had overseen the rejuvenation of the London Tube system, to run the transit system. But when Byford actually tried to shake up the system, Cuomo forced him out. Cuomo preferred building fancy new buildings, not actually fixing boring things like train signals to speed up trains, and the result is chronic delays in both subways and buses. And Hochul has just continued that tradition.

Buses are running slower today than they were in 2015, according to the data." Buses run by the MTA go an average of just 8.18 miles per hour- people jogging can go faster than the average NYC bus. As to the subway, 16% of NYC subway trains are late every day- and many (like my trains on the A & C lines) are late 25% of the time or more. People can’t plan their lives around transit that breaks down randomly and is chronically late.

Why is London (with 93% on-time rate) so much better than NYC? For one thing, London, not its central govt, runs its own transit system, so it doesn’t have the problem NYC has of an Albany raiding its coffers for other purposes.

But London also has congestion pricing in place, which encourages greater funding of its system & higher transit use by the population, while clearing the streets of congestion, thereby speeding up buses on the streets of London.

Instead, we are staring at Hochul's NYC, a future of decaying infrastructure that will kill people with increased pollution and then kill them through accelerating climate change disasters. When lower Manhattan is underwater in coming decades, a lot of people will wish they could pay a small fee and still drive there at all. Hochul has accelerated the City towards Kim Stanley Robinson’s dystopia of a flooded lower Manhattan.

Why Can’t New York Dream Big Any More?

New York was once the birthplace of major progressive innovation, but it increasingly lags the rest of the nation, rather than being a leader. New York’s minimum wage is now less than Washington State and Washington D.C.- and California just raised its minimum wage to $20 per hour for fast food workers. Despite talk of needed housing reforms to build hundreds of thousands of needed housing units, Albany could only agree on an anemic package of tax credits and incentives that will produce only a tiny fraction of needed housing.

And on climate change policy, New York State is a complete also-ran, producing less renewable energy than not just Texas or California, which can claim advantages of sun and open space, but also lags behind states like Missouri, Georgia and Michigan without such obvious advantages. Note that with so little renewable energy in New York’s power grid, electric cars in the state are still mostly using fossil fuels for power.

But if New York is unlikely to become the solar leader in the nation, it could be the national leader in getting more people out of their cars and slashing energy use altogether.

That was the promise of congestion pricing, to significantly reduce the nearly one million car rides into lower Manhattan each day and replace them with mass transit journeys.

And for remaining cars and trucks that might need to be in the area, it would reduce their time idling in congestion, spewing pollution. In London, many delivery companies ended up strongly supporting congestion pricing because less congestion meant it cut their delivery times by up to 50 percent, saving them far more money than the congestion pricing charge.

That is the goal of congestion pricing- slashing greenhouse gas emissions, funding mass transit, and speeding travel for remaining vehicles on the road, whether buses, delivery trucks, EMTs or fire trucks rushing to accidents or fires.

And Hochul stopped it with little expressed concern for the climate emergency our nation and world faces.

National Progressives Should Worry About the Failures of New York Democratic Party Leadership

Hochul is almost unquestionably the worst Democratic Governor in the nation - and her failures are hurting not just New Yorkers but progressive politics as a whole.

She directly undercuts progressive messaging on climate change and taxing the wealthy, while aping the worst of Republican reverse class warfare language. Hochul has steadfastly opposed taxing the wealthy, yet has deployed faux-concern for working class drivers coming into the city, despite clear evidence that car-owners in lower Manhattan are disproportionately wealthier than the MTA riders her policy is hurting.

And when she was called out for the lost revenue for the MTA, her solution was a payroll tax on working people in New York City that would exempt the suburbanites driving into the City. As State Senator Liz Krueger, the Chair of the Finance Committee summarized Hochul’s messaging:

[Hochul] "wants to raise taxes on city residents to allow people from outside the city to use our roads for free and pollute the air we breathe."

Imitating reactionary Republican rhetoric has just helped Republicans politically in New York. Hochul led a state Democratic Party campaign in 2022 that, in a year when other Democratic states held their own, saw New York lose four easily winnable Democratic seats (including allowing George Santos to slip into office). This was due to both botching redistricting in epic ways that left New York with essentially a Republican-drawn map. And where Democratic leaders in other states touted taxing the wealthy or other progressive themes, Hochul and other state party leaders tried to ape the Republican pro-business and anti-crime message, leading to the November political slaughter that helped cost the Democrats control of the US Congress.

Hochul’s reactionary rhetoric on congestion pricing is part of the same kind of messaging that seeks to win by aping Republican messaging - a proven political failure in New York. Unfortunately, Hochul is not alone in New York in this kind of political approach that jettisons good policy in the mistaken belief that they can win that way. According to reports, US House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries played a critical role in advising Hochul to dump congestion pricing, so this failed brand of New York politics is going to impact House Democratic strategy if they win back the House and Jeffries becomes Speaker.

Many progressives love Jeffries speeches on the House floor - and he is without doubt an entertaining attack dog on MAGA Republicans in Congress - but they should also be aware of his backroom political betrayals in his home state. It’s worth remembering that Jeffries got into Dem leadership with the support of moderate Democrats who supported him to defeat Barbara Lee for the position of Caucus Chair back in 2018. So progressives need to understand and approach his leadership with the understanding of the politically compromised New York politics he comes out of.

Hope for the Future

All that said, Hochul’s actions are not the last word on congestion pricing. While Mayor Eric Adams unsurprisingly backed Hochul in her attack on congestion pricing, the issue instantly became a central issue in the Mayor's race next year- with one top challenger New York Senator Zellnor Myrie slamming Mayor Adams for endorsing Hochul's attempt to gut it.

Another potential contender, State Senator Jessica Ramos made clear her support for congestion pricing as well.

Both Myrie and Ramos were part of the crop of 2018 insurgents who toppled incumbent Democrats in the state Senate who had for years cut deals to keep the Republicans in power in that chamber.

And just today it was announced that Brad Lander, the elected City Comptroller and a strong leader among city progressives, was working with a coalition of organizations and scholars to bring a legal challenge to overturn Hochul’s attack on congestion pricing.

New York is one of the most Democratic states in the nation and should be a leader on issues like fighting climate change. The battle over congestion pricing will hopefully ignite a new insurgency within the state by progressive leaders to finally oust the Cuomo-Hochul legacy of failed, reactionary politics controlling the state Democratic Party, so that New York can once again be a pioneering national leader on progressive policy.