A nurse boarded the Bx18A bus, whose route circles between
the Morris Heights and Highbridge neighborhoods of the Bronx. Having an anxious
moment most New Yorkers will find relatable, she began hunting through her
purse to look for her MetroCard to pay for her ride. When the driver pointed to
a sign indicating that this was a “fare free” bus—part of an experiment in free
public transit created by the state legislature last year—the nurse started
dancing.
I’d like to have what she’s having, please. I think we all
would. “She cha-cha’d down the bus,” said Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani Thursday,
telling the story in a speech on the New York Assembly floor. Mamdani was
introducing his “Get Congestion Pricing Right” bill, which he said would “expand
that feeling—of joy, of relief” by making 15 more bus routes free, across
the city, as well as increasing bus frequency. Over the next couple weeks, the
bill will be part of the always-harrowing negotiations with Governor Kathy
Hochul and among the state legislators.
Mamdani called his bill “Get Congestion Pricing Right” in
part because, right now, New York risks getting it wrong: Few good ideas have
been resisted as loudly as New York’s plan to charge a toll to drivers entering
Manhattan ($15 for most) and use the money to improve public transit. The
policy, set to take effect June 15, has been mocked, attacked, and misrepresented
for years. Now that it’s finally happening, it’s crucial that it work well for
the majority of New Yorkers. Otherwise, backlash could quickly sink the policy
and discourage similar efforts in the future—in New York and elsewhere. For
congestion pricing to work, as Mamdani clearly understands, public transit
needs to be good enough to present a viable alternative to the $15 toll.
Having fewer cars on the roads is demonstrably fantastic for
the environment, public health, and quality of life. In Stockholm,
congestion pricing has reduced carbon emissions by 20 percent. In London, it has reduced the nitrogen oxides and
particulates in the air by 12 percent. Cleaner air will in turn improve
health of New Yorkers: In Stockholm, congestion
pricing cut the number of asthma-related hospital visits in half. Reducing
traffic—the MTA estimates the plan will cut traffic by 17 percent—will also
ease the stress of driving for anyone who has to do so, and make much of the
city more pleasant for pedestrians, especially crucial since New Yorkers walk
more than any other group of Americans. Reducing traffic will also save lives:
Since emergency vehicles are among the few exempted from the toll, they will
presumably be able to move more quickly to put out fires and get people to the
hospital.
Congestion pricing will also raise $1 billion a year for
the public transit system, allowing the MTA to make the kinds of improvements
that will save New Yorkers money, time, and irritation. These improvements will
also boost ridership; this will make the subway safer, which will, in turn, boost
ridership further.
Yet congestion pricing has received a great deal of pseudo-populist
mockery and resistance. The New York Post has run negative articles on
the topic on an almost daily basis (“Congestion
Pricing Will Leave NYC in a Jam” and “Time
for Congestion Pricing to Hit the Road” are just two recent headlines). The policy has
faced lawsuits from city workers’ unions, the governor of New Jersey, the mayor
of Fort Lee, New Jersey, the Staten Island borough president, and a range of
other injured parties. The gist of all the criticism is that the policy will
hurt ordinary hardworking New Yorkers.
Although New York’s policy does still have flaws that must
be fixed—insufficient exemptions for low-income drivers, for instance—the populist
argument against congestion pricing is mostly disingenuous. Only 4 percent of outer-borough New Yorkers drive to Manhattan to work; 57 percent
take public transit. And only 2 percent of low-income outer-borough New
Yorkers, specifically, would be asked to pay a congestion fee as part of their
commute; 61 percent take public transit.
As we’ve seen in France with the “gilet jaune”
movement, in which motorists wore yellow vests and blocked highways to protest an
unpopular gas tax in 2018, and the more recent farmer protests against the European Union’s
effort to limit harmful pesticides, this kind of populist anti-environmental
argument resonates when large numbers of ordinary people don’t feel their
material needs have been considered by the elites in charge.
Congestion pricing carries precisely this kind of baggage,
even though it will improve our lives in many ways. That means the big question
politically, the one that will determine congestion pricing’s longevity as a
policy, is whether the vast majority of New Yorkers will experience its
benefits and how quickly.
We must see the positive results of congestion pricing in
our own lives to balance out the rage induced by what behavioral economists
call “the pain of paying” (research shows that we are far more bothered about small
expenses that we pay frequently and can see, like milk or gas, than about bigger
expenses we don’t pay often or that are simply deducted from our paychecks, like our
health insurance premiums). Unfortunately, we can’t see or feel reductions in
carbon emissions. Clean air is more ambiguous. We do notice pollution. We freak
out about bad air quality warnings in the summer. And last year when the smoke
from the Canadian wildfires turned New York City’s skies red and smoky, I saw children
running out of school buildings to gape at it in terror. Some of us will
undoubtedly feel, over time, that our asthma or headaches have improved, or
that we are breathing more easily. But it’s possible that for many people, the
clean air might be an invisible benefit, the kind that is politically troublesome
because it doesn’t reward its architects.
By contrast, New Yorkers have in recent years been
complaining about the subway a lot and will notice if it gets better. Public
transit is one of the least abstract political issues for New Yorkers,
affecting where we can work, whether we can get there in time, and whether we
can pick up our kids on time at the end of the day. Ridership has suffered
since the pandemic. Sensationally reported crimes on the subway have
contributed to anxiety about the system, which New York’s governor has
idiotically played into by sending in the National Guard. Less dramatic but
perhaps far more frustrating to most people, the service has deteriorated
recently, with more
delays and disruptions, and even derailments, which are quite scary. The
political reception of congestion pricing, then, will be mostly determined by
how tangibly it improves our transit system.
Of course, there’s no evading the biggest problem with
congestion pricing, which is that people hate being forced to change cherished
habits. New York City is a great place to implement this policy, since it’s
already a terrible city for motorists, the transit system goes almost
everywhere, and many New Yorkers already avoid driving. But those who are
attached to their cars will be vocal in their objections. Such gripes will
resonate and spread like a contagion if people don’t see the positive effects
of congestion pricing right away.
That’s why immediate measures like Assemblyman Mamdani’s
“Get Congestion Pricing Right” proposal—making more bus routes free and more
frequent, before the revenue from congestion pricing even kicks in—are so
crucial. Good environmental policy prods us to change our behavior while making our lives better at the same time. Congestion pricing will do this: It will obligate driving less by forcing cost-benefit analysis of our car trips, while
also rewarding us by transforming urban life for the better—not just with cleaner
air and better health, but by ensuring that we all waste less of our lives
sitting in traffic. But the biggest benefit for most people will be the
investments in our transit system, making a safer, more convenient, and joyful
experience. If more of us start feeling anything close to the happiness that
nurse felt on the Bx18A that day, congestion pricing will be a lasting
political success.
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