[music]

Governor Murphy: I am here to announce I don't do this every day, I have to say, that we are suing to block New York's ill-conceived congestion pricing plan.

[applause]

That's the most applause I've gotten in two and a half years.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Governor Murphy there announcing New Jersey's lawsuit to block at least for now the state of New York's congestion pricing plan for driving into Manhattan's business district below 60th Street. Looks like Staten Island may also sue or join that suit. Maybe Staten Island will decide to join New Jersey period. There's always an act of secession movement there because many Staten Islanders feel culturally and politically different from the rest of the city. Why doesn't the subway go there anyway? The New Jersey suit, and what Murphy just called his biggest-ever applause line comes as the congestion pricing policymakers are moving closer to the final rules for who's exempt, what the prices will be for different vehicles at different times of day, and more.

All this comes as the MTA just announced fare and toll hikes. The basic bus and subway single-ride fare will go from 275 to 290. As you probably heard, most of the bridges and tunnels within the city go from 655 to 694. Those of the E-ZPass rates. Some of the bridges are a little less. Let's talk about all of this and take calls from you with Clayton Guseis, associate editor on the WNYC and Gothamist Accountability desk and a former transportation reporter with The Daily News. Hi, Clayton. Welcome back to the show.

Clayton Guseis: Hi, Brian. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Let's start with Governor Murphy's big applause line. I guess he didn't get the most applause of his career for promoting affordable housing or civil rights or anything like that. It's to avoid a new charge for driving into Manhattan's central business district. Maybe that says more about the people than it does about the politician. What's the legal objection in the suit? New Jerseyans may not like congestion pricing, its a policy difference. Totally understandable. It hurts them. How are they claiming a court should block it under the law?

Clayton Guseis: Right. The key thing here is that they're suing the federal government. They're not suing New York State. It's two different jurisdictions there. They're suing the federal highway administration which just completed this year a years-long review of the MTA's environmental assessment of congestion pricing to charge drivers south of 60th Street Manhattan. They claim that it was a rubber stamp environmental assessment. They claim that New York should have done a more robust environmental review called Environmental Impact Statement which requires a little bit more extensive of a review process.

They're claiming that the federal government rubber stamps these tolls that the MTA in New York will charge and there's also some language in the complaint or the petition saying New Jersey Transit doesn't get any of this money from the drivers like the MTA is going to use for the subways and the railroads and the buses. They're claiming it's an unfair impact on New Jersey motorists coming into the city.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, audio of the governor, courtesy of northjersey.com. Here's a little more of what Governor Murphy had to say.

Governor Murphy: Unfortunately, New York's proposal will prompt toll shopping where more drivers seek circuitous routes to avoid paying the highest tolls resulting in more traffic and more pollution in certain areas. I think Mark, unfortunately, Fort Lee being one of them. We're particularly disappointed by the lack of a thorough environmental impact review and the lack of mitigation measures for impacted communities like Fort Lee in New Jersey.

Brian Lehrer: Clayton, I don't know if you reported on this to this extent, but did they do a real environmental review as the EPA sees it that includes New Jersey? We know they looked at effects of potential extra truck traffic on the Cross Bronx Expressway, for example. A lot of people talked about that. We talked about that on the show but what about New Jersey?

Clayton Guseis: Well, to answer the first part of the question, the MTA, I think advocates who were watching this were very upset at the length of the environmental review that they did go through. They published a-- I think it's an almost 900-page report with almost 2000 pages of appendixes laying out the potential impacts on transit ridership and driver behavior and environmental impacts. It's a doozy and the MTA, I think last year or a year before it came out and said, "We can't put this out yet because the Feds still have more than 100 questions for us on it as they're working on this environmental review document. They're suing before New York and the MTA has set the toll prices, has set who gets exemptions, but under some of these scenarios, the impact on Jersey drivers is pretty minimal, so to speak, but it's still to the tune of tens of thousands of people.

You're looking at less than 1% increase in traffic overall in New Jersey, some parts hit harder than others. The Cross Bronx Expressway where they're expecting more trucks to go through and travel through under any tolling circumstance is going to take a hit in terms of more drivers. The overall impact on Jersey drivers I think the MTA's data shows there's about 82% of New Jerseyans coming in. Commuters coming into the central business district take transit, the remainder are in cars and other modes. The remaining people in cars is about 38,000 people a day, commuters that is. There's other trucks to the tune of about 100,000 vehicles entering the CBD from New Jersey, but about 38,000 of them are your daily commuter.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners in New Jersey or on Staten Island, I don't even have to give the phone number. This is one of those topics where before I even get out the phone number all our lines are full. Sorry about that, those of you who don't keep us on speed dial. You will have to wait till people finish up. You can always text us. We'll watch our texts go by as well. Call or text 212-433 WNYC, 212-433-9692. Do you object to congestion pricing? If so what's your plan for our region to do its part to limit climate change or to fund mass transit which is also a central reason or anything else you want to say about congestion pricing or MTA pricing, fare and toll hikes or anything else? 212-433 WNYC, 212-433-9692 for our Clayton Guseis. Before we go to some calls and texts, where does Staten Island come in?

Clayton Guseis: Vito Fossella, Staten Island Borough president has threatened to sue over the tolls. Nothing by way of an actual legal action yet as far as nothing's in my desk. The elected representative of Staten Island, Nicole Malliotakis included, the Congresswoman, have raised objections about this since the start, since this was passed in 2019. Staten Island, how it comes in as a legal mechanism, that's soon to be seen. I think on Staten Island, whatever the result of any legal action would be, it's a popular position to hold as a politician on the borough, on the island.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Eugene in Weehawken, you're on WNYC. Hi, Eugene.

Eugene: Hi, how are you?

Brian Lehrer: Good. What's up?

Eugene: Hi. [unintelligible 00:08:24]

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead. Don't listen to the radio. Listen to your phone. You'll get confused because you'll hear the radio on delay. Oh, Eugene, hung up. Let's see. Somebody else was going to make a similar point, I think and I think it's a legitimate point to get on. Here's that person. I think it's Tim in Mount Tabor. Tim, you're on WNYC. You hear us?

Tim: Yes. Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, I can. You're on the air.

Tim: Yes. I'm Tim Cavener from Mount Tabor, and I'm a member of the New Jersey Association of real passengers. We support congestion pricing. We've been pushing for that for years because that makes sense for the region. The problem is that instead of being against congestion pricing for the MTA, they need New Jersey Transit to be asking for part of the revenue so they can run more trains. On the Morris line where I live and where, by the way, Nancy Solomon also lives in Maplewood I believe-

Brian Lehrer: Our New Jersey correspondent--

Tim: We've lost 10 trains in each direction since 2008. 10 trains in each direction that have never been restored in 15 years. We need to run those trains. Those trains go to Hoboken. I don't know why New Jersey Transit decides that Hoboken is no good because actually, I used to be able to take an express training to Hoboken from Mount Tabor, 52 minutes. Then you take the path and you're on a 33rd Street path. If you're going downtown, it's even quicker. You make the same time as the Midtown Direct, but they shuttled everybody onto the Midtown Direct and cut our Hoboken service by 30%, which also cuts our access to New Jersey points, which is not just Hoboken. It makes no sense. I get the New Jersey transit alerts and there's frequent alerts for problems with the Midtown Service because there's too many trains going through the tunnels. It has problems.

Brian Lehrer: Right. That's one of the reasons that it's good that the Gateway tunnel project has finally been approved and thankfully funded with the latest contributions from Washington. There are going to be more tunnels between New York and New Jersey. That's going to help that part of it. Tim, thank you for putting that issue on the table. I guess, Clayton, we could take a big step back from this and say, yes, on one level, on the simplest level, I think Tim is right. I think reporting indicates that New Jersey Transit is in even worse financial shape than the MTA, but the next step back says, "Well, maybe we should have a unified, Greater New York transportation system instead of one that's on the New York side, the MTA that runs the mass transit here, the commuter rails and the buses and the subways, and one on the New Jersey side, NJ TRANSIT that has its own finances because we are one unified metro area."

It makes the point that if congestion pricing is going to apply to people who come from New Jersey, as well as people who come from Queens of Brooklyn, Staten Island, and et cetera, maybe there should be one regional transportation authority that does all of this in an integrated and sensible way.

Clayton Guseis: Right. That's part of what the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was designed to solve, so to speak, to split the baby, to split the revenues from a lot of these crossings. Obviously, they only run one transit service path, but they also run the tunnels and that's governed between the two states, but it does beg the question of, "How does a larger region work?" Any talk of combining the two states' transportation agency agencies has never really moved it past the table because of all the political difficulties therein. You still have Penn Station as a lot of people call, for through-running, where Long Island Railroad trains stop at Penn, New Jersey Transit trains stop at Penn, turn back around when they have the facilities to run from New Jersey out to Long Island. It's a constant refrain of the fight over the region's transportation infrastructure and how the two states don't have a unified agency and the problems that causes.

Brian Lehrer: We are a New York and New Jersey Public Radio and talking about the conflict between the New Jersey side and the New York side right now over the issue of congestion pricing with Associate Editor from WNYC and Gothamist Clayton Guseis, who's also a former transit reporter for the Daily News. Michelle in Orange County, you're on WNYC. Hello, Michelle.

Michelle: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. One question I had was, I drive a Mini Cooper, which is a small car that gets really great gas mileage, so I get like 37, 38 miles to the gallon. I'm wondering why a component of the congestion pricing wouldn't incorporate how efficient your car is, how some of them contribute a huge amount to the climate crisis with their carbon emissions. Other cars are way more efficient, so why shouldn't that be part of the component of determining what you pay?

Brian Lehrer: The Mini Coopers look cool too, but I guess that shouldn't be taken into consideration with congestion pricing, but is that part of it at all? If they're talking about exemptions of various kinds, is there any talk at any point in this process, has there been for either exemptions or sliding scales for people with really good gas mileage cars or electric cars?

Clayton Guseis: Well, trucks will get hit. The bigger the truck, the more you can expect to pay many times more than your regular driver, but for regular automobiles, there isn't an exemption. One interesting example across the pond is that London, which has had a congestion pricing scheme for quite some time, did a pilot period of where in their congestion zone if you had an electric car, you could get a discount or not pay the toll. It was a pilot program that sunsetted. It was an initiative to try and get more people into electric vehicles. The precedents there in examples across the world, trucks will pay more, but as of right now, the MTA hasn't indicated that they're looking to carve out any exemptions based on fuel efficiency.

Brian Lehrer: It really goes to the purpose of it too. I feel like the congestion pricing-- It might be a fair criticism to say that the congestion pricing plan's reason for being has changed over the years, that back in the Bloomberg era it was actually to fight congestion because traffic was starting to move slower and slower and slower in the city of New York, and there was ground level pollution that was getting worse and worse from that as well. Then it changed a bit to be more climate change-focused because everybody should be doing their part to reduce climate change. Then it changed again to be more MTA funding-focused, mass transit funding-focused to raise money for the alternative to driving in our region at all.

I don't know if you think that's an accurate take on the history. It's just a casual impression by me over the years, seeing how the arguments have changed, but then you get people like maybe the last caller, maybe Governor Murphy, some of the other people who object, who say, "Oh, this is all a fundraising scheme for the MTA." Part of the answer is, "Well, yes, it's a fundraising scheme for mass transit. That's right." What better way than to charge people who are driving cars who don't have to be driving in cars, and then people come back and say, "Well, some of us have to be driving. We don't have mass transit options for certain circumstances. That's where a lot of this lives, but do you think the reason for congestion pricing has changed, or let's say the balance between the various reasons for congestion pricing and that it's more mass transit funding oriented than it ever was?

Clayton Guseis: Maybe a little bit. I'll do you one up. 1971 John Lindsay proposes tolling the East River bridges to prevent raising the subway fare from 30 cents. It had, in 1970 gone from 20 to 30 cents. He wanted to say, "Hey, we'll keep the fare, we'll start towing the bridges." It moved forward in earnest before the financial crisis in the early '70s to meet mandates of the Clean Air Act. It was very much environmentally focused, but then Congressman Liz Holtzman, Moynihan fight against it. Senator Moynihan at the time fought against it.

Passed an amendment to the Clean Air Act in 1977 that says, "Oh, you don't need to reduce traffic pollution that much in New York. You can just improve your transit facilities." By the time it came back to the table in the state legislature in 2007, 2008 when Bloomberg was really pushing for it, it was kind of this using London as a model, using Stockholm as a model, saying, "This overall goal is we want to reduce the gridlock and traffic in Manhattan and we'll toll people and we'll use those revenues to finance upgrades to our transit system." It's the same way now, but you got to remember in 2017, the city's transit plan fell into crisis. You remember six years ago, the summer of heck, as they called it in so many words when people were backed up and lined up on subway platforms, the Penn Station was a mess.

Everything was falling apart, and they needed a lot of money to fix it. What's interesting about this plan at this moment is you've had some stabilization of ridership, you've had some upgrades to the infrastructure and equipment since the pandemic and since 2019 when the legislature first approved congestion pricing, but the upgrades that you're looking at, sure, there are some new subway cars. Eventually, this will help pay for the extension of the Second Avenue subway in East Harlem, but most of the upgrades here are invisible to the rider. They're signals that keep trains from crashing and allow them to go faster. There's track repair, track upgrades. There's general infrastructure improvements that the MTA needs and wants money for to keep the subways running, that maybe weren't as in bad shape in 2008 that really came to a head in 2017 that brought us here.

They need the money, of course. Also, David Patterson was saying yesterday, I think in the post, how gridlock isn't as much of a problem in Manhattan. There is that perception where if you don't have as much gridlock in Manhattan, quite as you did before the pandemic. The justification for reduction of traffic has taken a hit in the aftermath of changing travel patterns.

Brian Lehrer: A listener texts in response to the Mini Cooper caller, even cars that get good gas mileage contribute to congestion. This listener texts. Another text says current proposed exemptions do not account for two-wheel vehicles like scooters and motorcycles. Only a moderate discount. Proponents of congestion pricing often point to cities like London as success stories. London exempts two-wheel vehicles, and like many other cities in the world, offers specific and exclusive parking for these vehicles.

I don't know if you know anything about the exemption proposals or lack thereof for two-wheelers in particular, but they did come out last week with the latest version of specifics including who would be exempt. I heard London use that as an example of a city where the congestion pricing plan hardly exempts anybody because once you start exempting people, well then, there's more cars coming in, there's more pollution, and you have to charge more per vehicle to make up for all those who are exempted out.

Clayton Guseis: Yes, that's the whole math here. They need to figure out how to raise a billion a year in this, and they're going to use that billion to finance 15 billion in bonds to upgrade their transit infrastructure for the capital program as they call it. In order to raise that billion that the state law mandates, the more people they exempt, the more everyone else pays. That's the whole tricky thing here. The board at the MTA is called Traffic Mobility Review Board who will issue its recommendations on prices and exemptions to the MTA board, but that's the whole concept here. That's true in London, that's true everywhere you do this, if you want to raise the amount of money, the more people you exempt, the more everyone else has to pay.

Brian Lehrer: Before we run outta time, I want to touch on the MTA fare and toll hikes. Some people without cars may not realize that the MTA is not just mass transit, it also runs the bridges and tunnels within the city. How did they come to the new fares and tolls?

Clayton Guseis: They hadn't raised the tolls since 2019. Before that, for about 10 or more years, they had raised the tolls every two years, about 2% or 2% a year. The match inflation. This year, they froze that toll hike in '21. Due to the pandemic, ridership was abysmally low. They decided to go with about a 5% this time, and they landed at 290 for the single ride. The tolls will go up a little bit more than that, but 290 up from 275 will be the single ride. I think they needed a calculus that gave them enough money to balance their budget. They're still facing, in the out years, for four or five years to come, budget deficits. They plugged that this year in the short term with a tax increase approved by Hochul. They also needed to raise the fares a bit in order to balance its books and keep running.

The history of not increasing the fares has always correlated with the subway falling into disrepair and a lack of service. At the same time, raising the fares is perennially a politically unpopular topic.

Brian Lehrer: Right, and a burden on people. Certainly people of regular incomes, but on the other hand, this is what makes it a conundrum, even with normal inflation, the basic fair hadn't gone up in I think eight years. You were just talking about the tolls, not since 2019. I think that 275 for the basic single-ride bus and subway fare had been since 2015. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Clayton Guseis: Yes, that's when they moved it to 275, and in 2019, they talked about moving the base fare to three. That generated a lot of pushback. You wonder if they should have just done the fare at 299 this time for the psychological trek that McDonald's pulls.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, pricing things at something-99. An old trick in business. It's not sustainable to not keep up with inflation unless they really overhaul their financing system and just get a lot of money from some ways other than they do now. There are always advocates who are saying, "No, mass transit should be free," and "Get money from other kinds of tax revenues and other streams." As long as they aren't doing that overhaul, I guess some rational inflation-linked fare hike has to be part of the system, or at least that's their position.

Clayton Guseis: Yes, that's their position. They just came to an agreement with TWU Local 100, represents a majority of its workforce. They're getting raises including some hazard pay bonuses. The costs are always going to go up to run the system. There's also lots of calls for cost-cutting measures that the MTA could take, but the overall thing here is that the money has to come from somewhere. What's interesting, in COVID from the three COVID relief bills, they got 15 billion for their operations from the federal government. The federal government usually only subsidizes the MTA's construction projects. COVID was the major exception to that, where they got money to run their operations and pay their staff because ridership was down so much.

There's a lot of calls for Washington to treat urban mass transit not just in New York like it treats highways or other kinds of services, and treat it more like a federal asset, which is the case in a lot of European and Asian countries where these cities' mass transit systems, the operations of them are federally subsidized.

Brian Lehrer: That's a whole other conversation that actually we've had on the show recently. We could have again at some other time. The national politics of mass transit is that it's an urban thing. A lot of red states or members of Congress from more rural districts that tend to be Republican don't like subsidizing mass transit. It also goes to this more conservative-leaning point of view about cars that they are part of American Freedom. Ronald Reagan once talked against funding local mass transit systems out of federal funds or subsidizing them out of federal funds because those are local concerns, whereas highways were not. All of that contributes to this country, less than some other countries having federal funding going into regional mass transit systems like ours.

There we leave it for now anyway, with Clayton Guseis, associate editor in the WNYC and Gothamist Accountability Desk. We'll see what happens with this New Jersey lawsuit against congestion pricing. We'll see if Staten Island joins, and on from there. Clayton, thanks a lot.

Clayton Guseis: Thanks, Brian.

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