NY Congestion Pricing Plan Survives Challenges as More Loom

(Bloomberg) — New York’s controversial congestion pricing project cleared a pair of hurdles as two federal judges declined to put the traffic plan on hold just weeks before it is scheduled to begin.

US District Judge Lewis Liman in Manhattan on Monday rejected a request from a handful of groups to pause the program while their lawsuits proceed, which would have stopped the tolls from going into effect next month. Hours later, US District Judge Cathy Seibel in White Plains declined to grant injunctions sought by suburban Rockland and Orange counties.

The plan isn’t completely in the clear for a Jan. 5 launch. A federal judge in New Jersey may decide at any time to send the plan back for additional environmental review following a challenge from the Garden State. There is also a lawsuit by the Long Island town of Hempstead pending in state court.

But the rulings in Manhattan and White Plains are a boon for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Governor Kathy Hochul. She recently reinstated a revised version of the plan, which would give the MTA revenue to modernize a transit system that is more than 100 years old and has been neglected for years.

Liman issued his decision after hearing arguments against the plan from a variety of groups on Friday, including the Trucking Association of New York, residents of Battery Park, the United Federation of Teachers, and New Yorkers Against Congestion Pricing Tax, which describes itself as a community-based organization representing area residents concerned with the costs and environmental impacts of the program.

In his opinion, Liman said that granting the injunction “would negatively harm the public interest as it would delay the environmental and economic benefits” the program was designed to provide and force the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority to “bear a sizeable financial burden.”

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“Numerous studies have established that the congestion addressed by the tolling program itself, if unchecked by that program, will also continue to impose tremendous costs on individuals and businesses throughout the New York metropolitan region,” the judge wrote. “Those costs are economic and environmental.”

At a hearing in White Plains Monday, Seibel said that she recognized that the program “is going to be more costly to some groups than to others,” and that while the decision to implement congestion pricing may be “unfair or unwise,” that is “not the same as unconstitutional.”

Rockland County had alleged the tolls unfairly force residents to take mass transit despite limited options for commuters.

“There are pros and cons of living in Rockland and Orange counties,” she said. “This is one of the cons.”

Liman said delaying the program would result in $12 million in additional costs per month for the city and state transportation agencies and lost revenue of about $40 million a month.

Delaying the revenues “would additionally prevent the MTA from undertaking beneficial capital programs such as investments in the region’s subways, buses, and commuter railroad, measures to make numerous subway stations more accessible to individuals with disabilities, improving outdated signaling, improving safety and customer service, and extending public transit to underserved areas,” the judge wrote.

The first of the suits before Liman was filed in November 2023 by Families for a Better Plan for Congestion, a group of Battery Park residents who claimed the plan fails to consider the effects of an expected surge in traffic into the parts of their neighborhood exempted from the toll. 

They were followed by the United Federation of Teachers, which contends congestion pricing unfairly burdens city teachers who live in places without access to mass transit. The union was joined by Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella, who argues his constituents will face higher commuting costs, more traffic and worse air quality.

Among the concerned residents in the suit by New Yorkers Against Congestion Pricing Tax are the owner of a funeral home in the East Village, a New York City teacher who serves as a caretaker for his life partner, a blind New Jersey resident confined to a wheelchair and the owner of a Chinatown ice cream parlor.

The groups argued that federal and state agencies failed to take advantage of the governor’s pause to further study the plan’s potential disparate impacts, in violation of the State Administrative Procedure Act. 

Liman in June rejected arguments by some of the opponents that the environmental review process was flawed. 

Separately, Judge Leo Gordon hasn’t set a date to rule on a suit by the Garden State suit since a two-day hearing held in April, before Hochul paused congestion pricing in June just as it was set to start. She then announced the revised plan last month. Lawyers for New Jersey have urged Gordon to issue his decision as soon as possible.

(Updates with White Plains judge’s ruling in second paragraph.)

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