17 yrs, $700 mn wasted: The stunning collapse of New York’s traffic moonshot
NEW YORK—Patrons at the Comfort Diner in Midtown Manhattan recently encountered an unexpected person working the tables: Gov. Kathy Hochul. Rather than take orders, she went booth to booth seeking opinions about the city’s first-in-the-nation plans for congestion pricing—a $15 toll on vehicles entering the core of Manhattan.
Nobody realized at the time that the Democratic governor was heading toward a blockbuster announcement: she was about to scrap the program after years of planning and hundreds of millions of dollars spent. In one of the most consequential decisions in decades for America’s most prominent city, Hochul soon said she was indefinitely pausing congestion pricing—less than a month before it was set to take effect on Sunday, June 30. The abrupt reversal, which some attribute to Hochul’s reluctance to impose a new fee in an election year, leaves metro New York grappling with a historic missed opportunity and fiscal mess.
There is no relief in sight for the city’s traffic congestion, which is the worst in the world, according to data published last week. The epic collapse in New York shows how a fear of dramatic change can give the status quo stubborn power over those trying to solve some of America’s most intractable challenges. That leaves policymakers nibbling at the edges of deeply rooted problems, even after investing huge sums of money and political capital.
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