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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. For our last 15 minutes today, the rules for congestion pricing are set. How will they change your behavior? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Maybe it's too early to know, but maybe you've been anticipating this moment when the MTA and their related advisory boards on congestion pricing actually set down the final rules. I'm going to go over some of them. Yes, this is still in court, so it's possible that a lawsuit could derail it. What are supposed to be the rules for congestion pricing have now been announced, and they're supposed to take effect in June.
Assuming that happens, how will it affect you? Will it change anything that you do in terms of your own driving or other modes of transit? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Some of the basics. Most passenger vehicles will be charged $15 a day, from 5:00 AM to 9:00 PM on weekdays and from 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM on weekends. It starts four hours later, nine o'clock instead of five o'clock, on the weekends. Of course, that's below 60th Street, which most of you know, not including through traffic on the FDR Drive in the West Side Highway. Those will not be tolled if you don't actually pull off onto the city streets, so you could go into Manhattan to get from Brooklyn to New Jersey, say, and not pay that toll.
Those are some of the basics. Everyone was waiting for the exemptions. Here are some of the exemptions. This is coming from Crain's New York Business. They're detailing the details yesterday. They note that Mayor Adams had called on the MTA to exempt yellow cabs, but the industry will instead see steeply reduced fees, but still some fees, tacked on to trips. For cabbies, the MTA will add a $1.25 surcharge to the fares of yellow and green cabs. That's per ride, not each time they go in and out, while a charge of $2.50, twice the amount for yellow cabs, will be added to trips through rideshare services, Uber and Lyft, et cetera.
Of course, all those fees will be passed on to passengers. Low-income drivers who earn less than $50,000 a year can apply for half-price daytime tolls, but the half-price fees will only kick in after motorists take 10 trips into the congestion zone each month. Half off if you make under $50,000 a year but only after 10 trips a month, according to Crain's New York Business. The MTA ultimately added a few more exemptions. Yellow school buses, privately-operated commuter buses, Greyhound, Megabus, Hampton Jitney even and the expanded exemptions for city vehicles on official businesses.
On that, the city says it anticipates that roughly half of the 8,000 non-essential vehicles in the city's fleet of 30,000 vehicles will not need to pay congestion fees. That includes garbage trucks, street sweepers, water, sewer and street repair vehicles, parks, forestry trucks and other things like that. Additionally, building inspector, child-service investigator and social service outreach team vehicles will be exempt according to the city. There are the basics, what the toll is, when it'll be in effect, who some of the exemptions are for. Listeners, here it comes, apparently, unless it gets derailed by one of the lawsuits.
How are you going to change your behavior? Will it affect your behavior? Call and give us the upside, the downside. 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. Call or text to give everybody a preview of the impact this will actually have on people's lives. We'll take your calls right after this.
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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We're about to take your calls and texts on how congestion pricing has now finalized and supposed to take effect in June, will affect your driving behavior? At least one more exemption that I didn't mention before the break. Apparently, there will be exemptions for drivers with disabilities. I will look up exactly how they're stating who qualifies for those disability exemptions. Let's go to the phones. Josh in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Josh.
Josh: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking the call. First, I just want to say there are a lot of reasons that I'm in favor of this. As a parent of three schoolchildren who go to public school, I commute from Brooklyn to the East Village. I teach in schools, and then I drive to my school back in Brooklyn. It's a lot of commuting. We love the school. We love the community. We might have to rethink where we send our kids to school. In such a [unintelligible 00:05:41] that school in particular and other schools in that District 1 area, take kids from all over from Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx. I know a lot of parents are talking about this, and they're pretty unhappy.
Brian Lehrer: That's really interesting. It's not one that I heard before. I guess a lot of parents are talking about it. If you have to cross in and out of the zone every day for your kids' school, will it change where your kids go to school? Thank you for revealing that. Lydia in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hello, Lydia.
Lydia: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. I heard you just said that there is an exemption for disabled drivers. I look forward to it because that's why I'm calling. I just started driving to my office. I live in East Harlem. I work on 54th Street. I drive just down Park Avenue.
Brian Lehrer: Just past the zone barrier.
Lydia: Just past it. I know it's so frustrating. I don't know how I will get to work otherwise.
Brian Lehrer: I'm now being told that if you have a handicapped parking permit per se, that you will be exempt.
Lydia: I have one of those. That would be fantastic news for those of us who truly do require it. Like the last caller, I think this is a great initiative to reduce traffic overall. It does really come in handy for bringing my son to school as well and then being able to come to work five days a week.
Brian Lehrer: Lydia, thank you very much. I hope that was a little bit of good news for you. I'm also seeing, by the way, there are so many details that affect so many different kinds of drivers. Up to $36 for bigger trucks and $7.50 for motorcycles. $15 for cars. $7.50 for motorcycles, another category. Regina in East Chester, you're on WNYC. Hi, Regina.
Regina: Hi. First of all, I'd like to say I hate driving in Manhattan, and I only do it when it's necessary. These days, I only go in on Sundays where I find free parking, and only because the subway schedules are usually so terrible because of track working, whatever. Then I wind up having to take two or three subways, and it's just impossible. For me, I'm a senior, the Metro North fare and the subway fare pretty much equals the $15. Since I don't have to pay for parking, it doesn't affect me that much, so I don't think my behavior is going to change very much.
Brian Lehrer: Regina, thank you very much. Jesse in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jesse.
Jesse: Hey. Hey, Brian. I'm in a similar category of the previous caller. I'm a motorcyclist. I drive a Vespa. I drive it every day throughout the city. I work currently on Wall Street. Where I live in Brooklyn, in South Williamsburg, it's very hard to get to the subway, and on weekends, it's incredibly difficult. I rely heavily on commuting on my Vespa. As motorcyclists, we are included in the congestion fee, which in other cities like London that has the same congestion pricing, don't include motorcyclists, which I think should be considered.
I think we're often neglected in money grabs in this city for our motorcycles. Because it's only $7.50, which I think is still disproportionate for how much congestion we actually contribute, the cost of a subway going to and from is roughly around the same way. I will definitely, begrudgingly still be riding my Vespa across the bridges and probably, strategizing ways in which I can try to avoid it, which are probably, possibly illegal.
Brian Lehrer: Jesse, I won't ask you to get specific about that or give us your license plate number, but that's an interesting point for motorcyclists. It's in the same rough range as roundtrip subway fare. There's not much of a disincentive there if your alternative is the subway per se. Chris in Greenpoint, you're on WNYC. Hi, Chris.
Chris: Hi. I'm just calling I'm a film technician. We film crews use their vehicles, and it's not really a luxury since like the hours we do, the multiple locations per day and all over five boroughs and beyond. We'd be gradually have these cars, and historically, crews live downtown, and what they're calling this business district is really a residential district. East Trail is Lower Eastside, Greenwich Village, whatever. That's where a lot of the talent and technicians are. We're basically being told we have to pay $15 to come home every night, and we aren't really congestion.
We usually are on the road for like two blocks before we get out of our neighborhoods, two blocks. It's really going to impact us in a bad way. We calculated it would be about $4,000 this year in extra income going into this tax. We just came off this strike so a lot of us were out of work for six, eight months. We're freelance people at the end of the day, so the young paid lobbyists because this really benefits Uber and Lyft, they don't really see the variations in income that adults and families have and their different needs. They just think, "Everyone, get on a bike, and woohoo." I'm a bicyclist first and foremost. It's weird--
Brian Lehrer: Right. It's not always possible in the context of what you do. Yes, I hear you. Interesting. Apparently no exemption for residents, right? Can we confirm that producers? I haven't seen it. No exemption for residents, as some people who live below 60th Street blanket. Let's take one more in here. Tim in Manhattan. Yes, that's confirmed, no exemption for residents. Tim in Manhattan, we are 30 seconds for you. Hi.
Tim: Hi. Well, you answered my first question about the no exemption for residents because I'm in that same boat as our previous caller, and frankly, in the same industry, so it's really going to hit us harder than they think.
Brian Lehrer: Do you have the means to drive less?
Tim: Yes. I'm going to take a bike and the train more often, but sometimes you have stuff in your car, and you need to get it to your studio.
Brian Lehrer: Yes. Tim, thank you very much. All right, a little preview a smattering of examples of how people are or aren't going to change their behavior with congestion pricing details announced and starting in June unless one of these lawsuits that are still out there delays it. Thanks for calling. Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Stay tuned for All Of It.
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