Manhattan Congestion Pricing

The MTA on April 26 announced that Central Business District Tolling, which the agency calls “the country’s first congestion pricing program,” will begin in Manhattan ‘s designated Congestion Relief Zone early on Sunday, June 30, at 12:00:01 a.m. (details below). Is the MTA jumping the gun, or is at the very least over-confident? When we most recently reported to you…

At this writing, there are court cases about congestion pricing pending in federal courts on both sides of the Hudson River, or as longtime New Jersey advocate Albert L. Papp calls it: the “Hudson Ocean.” If Papp’s characterization were ever accurate, it is now. Federal highway officials have issued a Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) and an Environmental Assessment…

As we wait for Judge Leo Gordon to decide the case filed by the State of New Jersey in federal court in that state, and as we also wait for a group of cases filed in the Southern District of New York to proceed, New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has been moving forward in its own way: preparing for…

In parts 4, 5 and 6 of this series, we examined a “border dispute” between New Jersey and New York. Gov. Phil Murphy of the Garden State initiated an action in federal court for the District of New Jersey against federal highway officials, seeking to invalidate the Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) and the Environmental Assessment (EA) that had…

A lot happened last year in the court case concerning the proposal for congestion pricing, charging a toll for vehicles entering the Central Business District of Manhattan, defined as the area south of 60th Street, but excluding the highways along the perimeter of that part of the island. The action to invalidate and set aside the Environmental Assessment (EA) and…

New Jersey is slugging it out with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and New York State and City transportation officials over a proposal to charge tolls for vehicles that enter Manhattan’s Central Business District, the Central Business District Tolling Program (CBDTP), a plan the New York MTA Board approved March 27. On March 28, MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber…

Border disputes between states of the United States are often fought over issues like one state complaining that another state, located upstream from it, is taking too much water from the river that runs through them, and not leaving enough for the states further downstream. We are now looking at a “border dispute” of a different sort. New Jersey is…

The theory behind congestion pricing is that city streets are clogged with vehicles, and something should be done about it. Transit systems everywhere are in trouble, too. They need money to keep operating, an acute problem, about which we plan to report in a major series soon. At the same time, there is a chronic need for capital funds to…

The idea of charging motorists and truckers for the space that their vehicles occupy on city streets has been discussed for some time, but it could be implemented in New York City soon. That would make Manhattan the first place in the United States to carry out such a plan. Many city leaders in the United States and elsewhere around…

A new border dispute is erupting in the United States, and it’s nowhere near the Southern Border with Mexico. The combatants are New York and New Jersey, and the dispute has reached the courts on both sides of their border. For decades, longtime New Jersey passenger rail advocate Albert L. Papp has referred to the boundary line between the two…