The state of New Jersey sued the Biden administration on Friday to block New York City’s congestion pricing plan.
Last month, the plan cleared a major hurdle when the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) said the city had adequately assessed how congestion charging would help protect the environment.
Starting next year, the city plans to implement a daily toll of up to $23 for vehicles entering or staying in the central business district.
The state sued FHWA, saying it failed to conduct a proper environmental study and also “ignored the significant financial burden on New Jerseyans and New Jersey’s transportation system as a result of this congestion pricing system.”
The FHWA did not immediately comment.
New York wants to impose a variable daily toll on vehicles entering or remaining in the central business district, which is between 60th Street in midtown Manhattan and Battery Park at the southern end of Manhattan.
New York, which has the most congested traffic of any US city, would become the first major US city to follow the lead of London, which implemented a similar toll in 2003.
New York lawmakers approved the plan in 2019 to fund public transit improvements by using tolls to manage traffic in midtown Manhattan. The plan was originally supposed to start in 2021, but the federal government under President Donald Trump failed to act.
A 2022 environmental assessment in New York found that the toll would reduce traffic, improve air quality, make buses more reliable and increase public transport use by 1% to 2%. The toll would generate between 1 and 1.5 billion dollars per year and would make it possible to finance up to 15 billion dollars of the debt intended for the improvement of public transport.
2023-07-21 02:11:46
#Stuck #Jersey #Jersey #Files #Lawsuit #Block #York #Citys #Congestion #Management #Plan
