[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: Welcome to Uptown Chats, a podcast where we share stories about environmental justice by and for everyday people. I'm your co host, Lonnie.
[00:00:25] Speaker C: And I'm your other co host, Jaron.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: And today we're talking about a hot topic, one that you may have forgotten about and that is congestion pricing.
[00:00:34] Speaker C: And to help us dig into what's going on with congestion pricing, we'll be joined by New York State Senator Liz Krueger.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: But before we get to that, Jaron, can you share we act's mission?
[00:00:45] Speaker C: I sure can. We act's mission is to build healthy communities by ensuring that people of color and or low income residents participate meaningfully in the creation of sound and fair environmental health and protection policies and practices.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: Thank you for that. So got it. I'm ready to dive in. So what is congestion pricing, Jaron? Like what is this supposed to do? I want to hear all the things. I want to know all the things.
[00:01:06] Speaker C: That is a great question. And while we have some information, luckily we actually have a bonus guest, our very own Brianna Carbajal, who is WEAC's state legislative manager. She's here to help us cover some of the basics about congestion pricing before we hear from Senator Krueger. Hi, Brianna.
[00:01:24] Speaker D: Hi, Lonnie. Hi, Jaron. Great to be here.
[00:01:27] Speaker C: So where should we start, Lonnie? I know that there's a lot of things to unpack with congestion pricing. Some people might be thinking like, wasn't this supposed to happen like a year ago? Why are we talking about it now? And that's, that's a great point because there's there's some, some things to unpack there. What really is congestion pricing in a nutshell? Like what's it supposed to do?
[00:01:45] Speaker B: Yeah, we can kind of, we can just kind of go over the brief high level ideas of what this is. So vehicles entering what's called the congestion relief zone. So those are local streets and avenues at or below 60th street, they're going to be charged a toll, which is right now $9 is the base for most people are playing. But there's different prices based on trucks and there's obviously some carve outs for some folks as well. And then drivers who stay exclusively on FDR Drive West Side highway, also known as Route 9A or the QL carry tunnel connections to the west street, they won't be charged a toll. You'll be toll if you exit from any excluded roadway onto a local street or avenue within the congestion relief zone.
[00:02:31] Speaker C: Thanks, Lonnie. I know there are a lot of misconceptions about congestion pricing out there. So I thought it would be good to do some quick myth busting, if you will. Luckily, the Natural Resources Defense Council or NRDC published a great article that does exactly that, so maybe we can just cover the highlights really quick.
[00:02:51] Speaker B: Perfect. So we'll just start off with the first myth is that congestion pricing is regressive and will hurt the poor and working class. The truth is that congestion pricing will be broadly beneficial to persons at all incomes levels and will particularly helpful to low income commuters.
[00:03:08] Speaker C: Yeah. Myth number two is that congestion pricing is bad for business. Congestion pricing will actually help New York City businesses by reducing commuting time for business travelers and for good shipments and deliveries. And by improving transit services, which is how most people travel to and from the central business district.
[00:03:30] Speaker B: Absolutely. And then the third myth is congestion pricing doesn't help those who have to drive into congestion zone. However, congestion pricing will benefit drivers directly by cutting traffic congestion and saving them from hours stuck in traffic. And it will aid them directly by generating funds to help rebuild the region's transit system, keeping millions of daily commuters on subways, buses and commuter rails and out of private mower vehicles that would otherwise be competing for limited highway and street space.
[00:03:58] Speaker C: Exactly. Our last myth is that congestion pricing won't help New Jersey residents. And the truth is that the overwhelming majority of New Jersey commuters to Manhattan arrive via public transit, not private automobiles. So they won't pay the congestion fee and will actually benefit from the transit investments the program will fund.
[00:04:21] Speaker B: So yeah, we wanted to lay out a few of those myths. And for folks who want to read the full article or get more into the weeds on congestion pricing, make sure to check out the show notes for links to some extra resources.
[00:04:32] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:04:33] Speaker B: So what's kind of the purpose of this is probably the next question.
[00:04:38] Speaker C: Yeah. So Brianna, what are your thoughts? Help enlighten us here. You're more of the expert than we are.
[00:04:44] Speaker D: I would not call myself an expert, but thank you guys. Congestion pricing is not new. It is actually a decades old idea for how we can change urban roads from being what it sounds like, really congested with traffic and have people move away from living in their cars, driving constantly on roads and increasing which results in increasing negative air quality. And in other cities like London, Stockholm, Milan, they have been implementing congestion pricing for decades. Of course, Singapore was the first country to introduce congestion pricing in 1975. So this is a model that we do know has worked in other major cities and it's one that New York City has taken the lead here in the nation to begin putting this program on our roads. Particularly for us here at we act, we represent northern Manhattan residents and low income drivers.
Here in Upper Manhattan, the proportion of households that do not have access to a car is substantially higher. An estimated 79% of low income populations who work work in the Manhattan central business district to use transit to make their commute. Only about 9% rely on cars for their commute to work in Manhattan. So that is an overwhelming majority of people who are here, are residents that we represent here in northern Manhattan do use public transit. And congestion pricing is just going to be a huge way for us to improve the experience for ridership, get our numbers even more increasing for people to use the buses, to use the subways.
And that way, whenever you are in the central business district or below 60th street and you're constantly seeing these emergency vehicles like a firefighter or an ambulance trying to get somewhere and being stuck in traffic for the next five to 10 minutes because there is absolutely nowhere for these cars to move, that is something that I'm hoping is going to be of the past. And as we get more data on the numbers of drivers that are in that are participating in this program as it goes on, we should be seeing improvements in those regions. And overall congestion pricing is going to be a net positive for our community. Here in Northern Manhattan, communities that are looking at congestion pricing and maybe wondering if it is the best possible way for us to bring health benefits to the communities. There is some validity in addressing some concerns.
There are trucks, the potential possibility that trucks and other heavy duty vehicles might avoid paying the fee by finding new routes through the South Bronx, potentially East Harlem, which are both communities that are already overburdened with air pollution. There were a couple of scenarios that were looked at in terms of how many more additional vehicles might be passing through these communities as a result of the implementation of congestion pricing. However, our communities in Harlem and in the South Bronx did anticipate that this program would be coming online and have had a plan in place to make sure that we are monitoring the air quality of both of our communities. We applied for and received an EPA grant about two years ago, I want to say, and since then we have had some amazing staff here, both in the South Bronx and in Harlem, working around the clock on trying to set up a really great system of air quality monitors so that we can know before and after what are the air quality implications as a result of the congestion pricing toll polling program and if there are Any negative implications, we will have the data to bring to agencies to make sure that air monitoring in our communities is a top concern and a top priority for those agencies and for the revenue to continue to flow into EJ communities to address mitigation concerns.
[00:09:32] Speaker B: Perfect. I'm glad you are on it and you are monitoring all of this for us. This is part one. We want to follow up again about congestion pricing maybe later on in the year or more towards the end of the year, just to see kind of how everything has gone with congestion pricing so far.
[00:09:51] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly, Lonnie. So this is a good introduction. So if you weren't paying attention to congestion pricing before now, you have a reason to be paying attention and know that later, later on in this year will provide you with an update both on where things are at policy wise and once it's being implemented, but also how the numbers are shaking out with the monitoring that we doing on air quality. So make sure to stay tuned. But in the meantime, we do still have our interview with Senator Krueger. So before we jump into that, I want to say thank you, Brianna, for helping us cover those points. Lonnie and I could not have covered that alone. There's so many points to talk about with congestion pricing and we know that you're, you're paying attention to it really closely. So thank you so much for joining us to talk about that. So with that, let's go ahead and jump into our interview with Senator Krueger.
[00:10:39] Speaker B: Let's do it.
Well, we'll go ahead and get started. Thanks again for joining us. New York State Senator Liz Krueger is here to talk to us about congestion pricing. Before we get into some of those questions, though, Senator Krueger, do you want to introduce yourself and what district you represent?
[00:11:07] Speaker A: Hi, I'm Liz Krueger, state senator for the 28th district. And my district runs from around 90th street on the east side from 5th Avenue over to the river down to around 38th, 37th Street. It varies by block. Then I go across town. I have Central Park, I have Midtown, I've got Penn Station area, Times Square area Grammar, Sheep Park, Flatiron. And I also have Roosevelt island between Manhattan and Queens. So it's a really great district.
[00:11:43] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah, you got a lot going on in your, in your district as far as every day.
[00:11:47] Speaker A: Every day.
[00:11:48] Speaker B: That's awesome. So again, we are, we're happy to have you here and talk about something that is very popular. It's in the news right now. Everyone's talking about it. New Yorkers, those from New Jersey, Connecticut, Long island, everyone's kind of talking about congestion pricing since it just recently started finally and we're on the way. And so we wanted to kind of open up the year with a conversation about congestion pricing. And I know that you are a champion of this cause as we act, but we wanted to kind of start with just, can you kind of share like a brief history of kind of how we got here, you know, what work has gone into making congestion pricing a reality.
[00:12:27] Speaker A: So people have been talking about congestion pricing for New York City, I'm going to say, for around 15 years. And there have been multiple efforts and multiple different designs that move forward, all with the same basic concept that we need to decrease car and truck congestion in the most congested area of New York City, which is the bottom half of Manhattan, and that we need that both for environmental purposes and for decreasing congestion on our roads, which means you go slower by bus than walking in much of this area.
You are at risk of not being able to cross streets because there's so much gridlock and noise from the gridlock and honk, honking cars and trucks sometimes 24,7 in these areas that we need to try to change people's behavior so that they understand it is not in their best interest to drive cars into the bottom half of Manhattan unless absolutely necessary. And that while trucks obviously need to come through to pick up and deliver, the bottom of Manhattan has also become, for at least 20 years, simply a pass through roadway for trucks that don't even intend to pick up or deliver in Manhattan. It's just the straightest line from New Jersey to Long island and the other boroughs, when in fact there are other options that don't involve clogging up the streets during the busiest times of day. And then of course, congestion pricing has already been used in other cities around the world. And we know that to address the congestion, the environmental concerns, and as a source of revenue to support and expand mass transit, because they go hand in hand. We need better mass transit in order to ensure that people don't think the only options are for them are to get into private cars or even hired cars. And we need an expanded, improved mass transit system to assure the future economic security of the city of New York, because we are the breadbasket of this region for New Jersey, for Connecticut, even for Pennsylvania, and certainly for New York. And we're the breadbasket for jobs and economic activity and entrepreneurs and new ideas here in New York City because we have a great mass transit system. But frankly, we need to make it better and more expanded in the 21st century. And we have to confront, and it's very expensive the fact that some of our subway System is over 100 years old and is functioning on technology going back to the 1930s. So we have all of these realities that in fact congestion pricing isn't the only solution at all. And it's not a silver bullet, but is a really solid, well thought through, discussed and proposed and gone back and forth on for 15 years where we are finally at that moment that we just started and now we all get to see how's it going.
[00:16:12] Speaker B: Yeah, I definitely appreciate that. I think know doing policy work, I rarely hear of something taking 15 years to go from conception to, to to implement implementation. Can you talk a little bit about why it took so long and kind of your role as a state legislator when it comes to congestion pricing?
[00:16:31] Speaker A: So I have been a state senator for 23 years, so I'm one of the people who've been around long enough to remember all the different fights around us. I would say that the earlier, bigger efforts to try to get this done was when Michael Bloomberg was the mayor of New York City and he was very committed to the congestion pricing model at that time and I supported it.
And he tried to get the legislature and the governor because you have to do this in Albany, even if it's the impact is in New York City and the rest of the MTA zone, because New Yorkers might not all know MTA region is 12 counties, not just the five counties of New York City. So it's Long island and both counties there and Westchester going up the Hudson Valley above that. So you have to go through Albany to get this done. And Albany is people from all of New York State, some of whom never have even been to New York City and don't know what we're talking about when we say congestion or environmental pollution in densely populated areas, or buses going slower than people can walk.
So you have to convince all of them. And so there are real challenges and there, there were real challenges to get this done. When Michael Bloomberg was the mayor, he tried to do it as legislation to have to go through both houses and he was not successful for a variety of reasons, which is even more complicated because it was some politics of how he had funded Republicans to keep the Senate majority. Then he was turning to the Democrats to get our votes when they were many of the Democrats in the Senate were like, why would we do anything for you? You just tried to kill us in the election 10 minutes ago. The Senate Republicans, despite taking enormous amounts of money from him and keeping the majority, refused to even entertain a vote. So they weren't interested in doing what he asked. Despite his enormous contributions to their campaigns. The Assembly I don't think even entertained it. So ultimately the mayor gave up and did not go forward with. He could not go forward. Then it sort of sat dormant for any number of years and then it finally got put into a budget by Governor Cuomo. And so he pushed it, supported it, and basically negotiated with both houses of the legislature to support and approve congestion pricing. And by then the Democrats had taken the majority in the Senate. And so we did support it, as did the assembly, as did the then governor. It got passed 2019, I believe. But then there's multiple steps to go through with the federal government, with the design, with MTA process, with public hearings. I have to say, when people say to me sometimes this came out of nowhere. We had no role in this. It was like, oh my goodness, if you've been alive in New York State state for the last 15 years, you have had endless opportunities to insert yourself into this discussion, to testify at hearings, to listen to endless meetings at the community level, all the way up to the state capitol.
So I sort of want to say, oh, you just weren't paying attention because it was out there all this time going through all kinds of different versions. And the fact is there were people out there outspoken against it and there were a lot of people in support of it. And interestingly, the people in support of it are not always the obvious best friends. So you had the large business community of New York saying we need this, as well as community based environmental advocates like we act saying we need this.
And so it was really fascinating when there would be starts and stops and fights along the way to see that this really came about because somehow we successfully built a coalition that was so large and so diverse in sort of areas of expertise, areas of concern that we could actually finally get it done. And then of course, we thought it was going to start in June and the governor had cold feet about it and put a pause on. And then we had to fight some additional fights between June 2024 and the very end of 2024 to finally get the sign off on a smaller version, a less costly version of congestion pricing with a commitment to see increase in prices over X number of years. But it just got started about two weeks ago. And now we are walking into a brand new presidential administration where apparently the incoming president has said he wants to kill congestion pricing. So I feel like this is a, I don't know, what do you call this? It's definitely not a sitcom, it's more a drama. But if it's a TV series, it's a long playing TV series.
[00:22:13] Speaker B: As to what will happen next, I love that analogy.
It does feel like it's been a long running series with multiple seasons, different players that are involved. And I often hear too as well from community members that echo the same sentiment that you mentioned with just people saying this, this kind of came out of nowhere. And I remember kind of, I've lived in New York City for a little bit over, I think over 15 years, 15, 16 years now. And I do remember moving here and congestion pricing being talked about as a thing. Right. And kind of being in the news. But for me, it also just kind of fell off because I was a commuter with trains and buses and emta. And so I never really thought about congestion pricing because I wasn't a car owner. And I felt like that was kind of the target audience who was really tuned into this concept in truck drivers and other groups. And then it wasn't until I got more into the environmental space and environmental justice space and talking about climate that I was kind of a little bit more aware of it and obviously now deeply a part of the implementation process.
[00:23:18] Speaker A: With that, I want to add to that point. So one of the reasons people were looking or not looking, the fact is that for people who commute into the zone on a daily basis for work or work day events, it's only 3 to 4% of the people who are coming and going. So 96% of the people coming and going, congestion pricing doesn't impact their life other than more money to help the capital plan of the MTA to improve the buses and subways they do get on every day. So it is a very small percentage of people whose lives are impacted by the new cost. And truthfully, a huge percentage of them are coming in from other states, not even, not even another section of the MTA region. So, you know, it's when people say, well, don't you understand that most people hate this, Liz? I go, no, actually most people don't hate it. They actually think it's a good idea or they don't even know it's happening because they don't get in cars to come into the zone.
[00:24:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I appreciate that. And I think that kind of leads into the next question here, is that there seems to be a lot of stakeholders involved, even though it's impacting only 3% of people everyone from all different walks of life seem to have a very strong opinion about this, whether it be for or against. And can you explain a little bit, especially in your role in all of this and being able to see it all play out, how are legislators like yourself and other decision makers, how are you balancing all the different concerns about congestion pricing? Because we hear a lot of that. For example, we hear about concerns about traffic shifting into outer boroughs, including the Bronx, and then you also hear complaints from drivers, but then you hear from advocates who talk about the benefits for not only just the MTA and public transit, but also air quality within the area as well. So how are you balancing all of these different stakeholders and their. Their concerns and their. Their praises for congestion pricing?
[00:25:25] Speaker A: So I think what is really important is to separate out perception of reality versus reality. And the one thing about exploring something for 15 years is there's an awful lot of research that that has been done about what is likely to happen and not happen. And that's based on, you know, literally quantitative analysis of who, what, where, why, and there's been an awful lot of it. And the MTA has it all up online, and everyone can take a look at it. They might agree or disagree, but there's information there. It's looking at other cities and what happened when they went down this path, and it's accepting the fact that, yes, there are some people who will see themselves as losers and some people who see themselves as winners, as in almost every other major public policy change. But as a legislator, I believe my job is to do what's in the best interests of the vast majority of the public. And when it comes to environmental issues, I get this every day. Not just on congestion pricing, but we'd have to change something, but we'll have to change behavior. We'll have to, you know, go to geothermal heating. We don't even understand what we would need to do. And now you're saying we're going to need to do it. And my answer is, yeah, we do need to do it, because we can't mess around. This is the planet, and the clock is ticking. And so to have the illusion that you can address major environmental crises without having behavior change is just not reality. And my job, I believe, as an elected official, is to speak about reality, to try to lead in the best way possible. People, of course, can fire me. Every two years, they get to fire me. But I try to be as honest as I can with them about the imperfection of all of these realities. And of course, the other truth about anything in democracy.
You know, if we discover three years from now it's not working as we hoped, we can make changes. If we discover three years ago it's working much better than we hoped and we should do more faster, we can make changes. So it's not that you make this decision and then you never revisit any of the questions, but I even within two weeks have people in my district, both who live just north of the zone and had reasons they didn't like it and who live in the zone and they had reasons they didn't like it. And what I'm hearing from people, even people who told me they were angry at me, they're going, oh, it's working better than we thought. There's less congestion on the streets. There's less gridlock. We don't hear honking under our bedroom windows all night. If we live in the Queensborough Bridge or the Midtown Tunnel area, we feel safer walking across the streets because there's not gridlock and no space for pedestrians as bikers, we actually feel safer with less vehicles on the road. Oh, the trucks aren't here as much during the day because they're coming at night to do deliveries, because the cost of congestion pricing on trucks can be $21 during peak hours, and I think $3 overnight or maybe $5, I'd have to double check. So the businesses and the trucks are changing their behavior. And so, again, even though it's way too early to have any quantitative bulk analysis, anecdotally, I hear far more positive things than I did before.
And if you look at what happened in other cities when they started congestion pricing, that's consistent. Before congestion pricing starts, it has the highest unpopularity in polls. The minute it starts or pretty quickly after it starts, the polls start to reverse with more people being positive about it and people who are upset about it being less and less upset about it. So even my family members who live in New Jersey, I grew up in New Jersey, and they were like, oh, it's going to cost more to drive into New York City. Were both one agreeing, New Jersey Transit has to do a lot better job with the trains so that they actually can count on trains that will get to New York City. And to admit, oh, look, the waiting time at the tunnels has already dropped pretty dramatically for much of the day.
Maybe this isn't such a bad thing. So, you know, even though the governor of New Jersey is still angry and saying, I guess there's still a lawsuit out there right now, and even though there are still plenty of people complaining and they will.
I actually think already in a very short period of time we have started to see a change and turnover in what the truth is and what people are concerned about, with the exception of the New York Post, who's apparently decided this is the worst action ever taken in the history of the world and isn't going to let go of that argument.
[00:30:49] Speaker B: Thank you for that. And I know we're getting close on time, so I'm going to. We always like to give space for folks on the podcast. Come on the podcast too. Is there anything that you want to say that you didn't get to say here in this space or plug, anything that's coming up for you or anything like that?
[00:31:06] Speaker A: Well, thank you. So I have a big environmental agenda for myself. I am really excited that literally the last bill signed by the governor at the end of 2024 was my polluters pay super fund bill, which will mean although there will be lawsuits, trust me that when we get through the lawsuits, the largest oil, gas and coal companies in the world will have to pay an assessment to New York state of $3 billion a year for 25 years. That's $75 billion that will be spent by New York to do remediation and alternative options in a sustainable society. So that it will. We are spending literally billions a year right now already dealing with the damage from climate change. And with this money, it still won't be enough, but it will mean you and I and every other citizen won't be paying 100% of the cost of pollution that we know was caused by oil, gas and coal companies. So I'm very excited about that. But we have to get that through the courts and we have to get that implemented. I'm also the lead sponsor in a bill called the New York Heat act, which I know we act has been very supportive of. Thank you. And I'm still convinced is a total win for the state. It will help with affordability for everyone in New York of their utility bills by changing the law that since we've already established new buildings can't operate under gas and oil, it will allow the state to not be building an expanded gas and oil pipe system to the buildings that won't be able to use it. And even when you just say it, you go, why would we have to pay to put in a gas oil pipe system to nowhere? What a waste of money. It is a waste of money. And that waste of money is being picked up by us as utility costs and we should just stop. So the New York would say you don't have to build unnecessary oil pipes and gas pipes. One, two, you can actually stop using them over X amount of time under circumstances where we know everybody's got alternatives in place for themselves. And three, require that no individual ratepayer is having to put more than 66% of their income into their utility bills. And if it gets that high, then there will be state programs to kick in to help make sure that their utility bills don't continue to be such an enormous drain on their personal budgets. So it's an affordability issue which the governor is very big on talking about right now. It's smart environmental policy, clearly. And I think it's another one of those bills that if people understand it, why would they disagree? But we also have some oil and gas companies, more upstate than down here, who have been putting out materials about this bill that are simply untrue and are convincing, particularly some of my upstate colleagues, that this would do terrible things when in fact it won't do any terrible things. It's a win win. So that's another bill that I'm not giving up on.
[00:34:29] Speaker B: Thank you so much for that. Yes, we appreciate you coming on the podcast talking about congestion pricing. This is a part one episode. We're going to come revisit this congestion pricing in about six months just to see where people are and how it's going. And we're going to be joined by some environmental health experts as well to talk a little bit about some data that might be that might come out as we evaluate this program.
[00:34:58] Speaker D: Thanks for listening. If you like this episode, make sure to rate and review the show on whatever platform you listen on. If you have thoughts about the show, we encourage you to reach out to us with your thoughts and
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[00:35:11] Speaker C: Out we act on Facebook at weact for EJ that's W E A C T F O R E J on Instagram X and YouTube @react4ej. That's W eact number 4ej. And check out our website weact.org for more information about environmental justice.
[00:35:31] Speaker B: Until next time.
