I'd be interested in understanding the property rights of the roads they were taxing. Were they taxing highways that had some covenants or contract ensuring toll free passage? I'm unfamiliar with the contract made for federally matched roads but it wouldn't surprise me if there's an agreement you can't just turn it into a toll road by calling it a new tax.
“ In a letter to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that the federal government has jurisdiction over highways leading to Manhattan and that the additional tolls posed an unfair burden for motorists outside the city.”
However that seems like a dubious claim (Google results report the highways around Manhattan are operated by the state of NY, however New Jersey is adjacent).
I wonder if they could get around that by making the prices balance to zero? Like charge fees to people during congestion times and pay those fees outdistributed equally amongst those who enter during non congestion.
Then there would be no net revenue/toll. The optics would also be far better than green washing a net toll on people driving in from outside the city/state.
Charging people from outside the area so that they are less likely to come in a personal vehicle is one of the direct goals of congestion pricing. It isn't an environmental program, it's a traffic management program and isn't greenwashing anything.
You can call it whatever you like. I didn't say it was an environmental program, it is first and foremost a revenue generation program under a clever guise to dupe towards political leaning of new yorkers.
You can read their own description, they green wash advertising cleaner air, less emissions, etc.
They didn’t need to dupe anyone; the program is indisputably not popular and they implemented it anyway. The two goals of congestion pricing have always been to generate revenue for the MTA and reduce congestion/pollution in Manhattan. They never hid that. Most transit advocates support both of those goals, and the beauty of congestion pricing (as opposed to a revenue-only option like an extra tax on businesses in the congestion zone) is that it can accomplish both at once.
I’d also note that popularity has been going up as everyone sees the benefits immediately and the predictions of a business meltdown turned out not to be true. It feels very similar to the bans on indoor smoking where smokers predicted restaurants and bars would close and the opposite happened.
