NYC NOW - December 8, 2023: Midday News

Episode Date: December 8, 2023

A working group charged with figuring out how to implement a new law requiring smaller class sizes in New York City is struggling to reach an agreement. Meanwhile, DoorDash and Uber Eats are changing how they ask customers to tip delivery workers in the wake of boosts to those workers' wages. Finally, it's time for an edition of WNYC’s weekly transit segment On the Way featuring reporter Stephen Nessen and editor Clayton Guse. This week they react to the new congestion pricing tolls.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Friday, December 8th. Here's the midday news from David First. A new working group charged with figuring out how to implement a new law requiring smaller class sizes in New York City is struggling to reach an agreement. Members say the group has been delayed by division between those trying to make the law work and those who say it's deeply flawed. Deborah Alexander, a parent member from Queens, says she's worried about the impact on students at overcrowded schools. The school is going to have to cap itself, and you think, well, where are these kids going to go? She says she worries there's not enough money for the additional teachers and space needed to reduce class sizes. The law is being phased in over five years.

The Adams administration says it's in compliance with the first phase, but argues it will be too expensive to fully implement. Two major food delivery companies are changing how they ask customers to tip delivery workers in the wake of boosts to those workers' wages. DoorDash and Uber Eats are both removing the prompt asking customers to tip before checkout. DoorDash says the move will help it, quote, balance the impact of bad policies, unquote, in the city. Both companies say customers will still be able to tip after the delivery is complete. Food delivery workers in New York City now must make at least $18 an hour. The pay bump went into effect earlier this week.

It's 49 degrees right now, mostly cloudy, a steady temperature this afternoon tonight, partly cloudy with the low of 42. Mostly cloudy tomorrow, a high of 52 degrees, up to 61 on Sunday with rain expected. I'm Sean Carlson for WNYC. It is time for On the Way, our weekly segment on all things considered, where we break down the week in transit news with WNIC's transit reporter, Stephen Nesson, and editor Clayton Guse. This week, the MTA board signed off on the long-awaited congestion pricing tolls.

A historic decision. It comes after more than a half century of officials in New York, trying and failing to tax drivers in the busiest parts of Manhattan. Stephen covered the board vote this week. He's also been collecting reactions from folks. I'm very excited to hear those reactions. Hello to you both. Hey, Sean.

Hey. So let's start with the vote this week. Was it a surprise? And is this final decision on congestion pricing pretty much set in stone? Well, pretty much we were expecting they would sign off on it. But it wasn't entirely clear. The board is free to vote it down. But as it turned out, it was a nine-to-one vote.

Only one member voted against it. There was some grumbling, some complaints, some concerns about some of the costs and, you know, impositions on taxi drivers. but generally there was a lot of support at the MTA board for this plan. And actually, you know, this is pretty much it. Not a lot can change at this point. The fee structure, the way it's set up, I called it something like a Jenga puzzle. And once you pull out one piece, you know, it could really cause havoc and problems. So they don't want to change it too much at this point.

There could be slight tweaks, I believe. But the fee structure, $15 for cars to enter the zone is what we got. Yeah. And it's important to remember. after years of waiting for this and more than four years after they passed the law, the MTA board signs off. Now there's still another technical 60-day public comment review period before the MTA comes back, votes on it again. They expect that the tolls will launch in late spring, but that's kind of a pro forma thing, as Stephen points out, if they change it too much, not only they have to re-tabulate all the calculations,

but they might have to send it back to the federal government for another round of review, which already lasted years and years and years before we got to even this point. But we should say there is still a lawsuit pending from the state of New Jersey. We talked about that last week. That could really delay things. And in fact, after the vote this week, State Senator James Scoofus has threatened to join the suit. He represents Rockland and Orange counties, and he wants a discount for people from his region that drive into the city. One of the MTA board members, Randy Gluckman, who's a non-voting member, but represents more

less the same area, had a similar complaint. And he also noted that a lot of the money from congestion pricing is not really going to go into improving Metro North service. Maybe 10% of the money would. The majority of it goes for fixing subways and buses. So we learned last week the tolls would be set at 15 bucks with a 75% discount on weekends. There's a $5 toll credit for drivers crossing the tunnels into Manhattan. What more did you learn during yesterday's board meeting? The MTA voted and approved that they can raise the toll price, 25% on so-called gridlock alert days.

Grid lock alert days are famously formed by Sam Schwartz. They normally happen around the UN General Assembly. There's when the City Department of Transportation comes in and says, hey, please don't drive in Manhattan or the busiest parts of Manhattan. It's normally just an advisory, but this gives it some teeth by saying not only don't drive in Manhattan, but hey, you have to pay 25% more on top of what these tolls already are. I think anyone who has an easy pass knows they pay less than people who don't have one. But drivers who don't have an easy pass will actually pay 50% more in congestion pricing. So that would tack on an extra $7.50 for passenger vehicles. And motorcycles, Sean, would pay an extra $1.25 cents.

This is an important issue for me, I will say. And I should also add, you know, one of the complaints that came up in the board meeting that hadn't been discussed before was about school buses. Mayor Adams was worried that school buses are going to have to pay the toll, and the MTA addressed it, noting that it's actually a little bit tricky because some school buses that transport children are also used for party buses, or you can rent them. So the MTA is not quite sure how to only charge them for the party usage and not the school bus, you know, taking kids to actual school usage of these buses. Wow, fascinating. Now, we've heard a lot from public officials, right? but Stephen, you went out and you talked to actual people on the streets about this. What did you hear?

Well, I went down to Lower Manhattan, actually bumped into several New Jersey drivers just coming in from the Holland Tunnel, and here's a sampling of the voices. I just don't get it. I don't understand. It's hard enough as it is to live in the city and to charge people an extra $15 per day for some people's rent, you know? They got to find money from somewhere. I don't know.

I can't say if it's reasonable, but they got to get the money from. somewhere. I feel that it's a way of dividing us. It's just money that the city wants, and that's it. The state? I mean, the state, excuse me. It's an awful thing. Do you drive to get here? I do. I drive from Jersey. I already pay 20 bucks a day to get here.

I got to leave at weird times. I can't just take public transportation. They're really f***ing the people that work here. Your company won't cover those costs? No. So perhaps that's not surprising. Drivers are generally not happy about having to pay more money. But what is

surprising is what I heard from people who don't drive and are taking mass transit. I think New York is trying to nickel and dime everybody. I'm not surprised they're doing this. And the money is going to be used to improve the subways and buses. That's what they say. You're skeptical. Yes. I've lived here all my life. So I can strongly say that I can be skeptical about such a thing. It seems like there's so much congestion, they need to do something. So it seems to me it would be a worthwhile measure to try and counteract some of the

I think the city is trying to get money from every possible corner they can. And this is just one of them, outside of it being right or wrong, it's just another way to push people to pay money because they don't know where to find it. This issue evokes a lot of passion for people on both sides. And I should say, you know, congestion pricing is generally favored by many New Yorkers in polls. We're going to shift gears here. Yuck, yuck, yuck, for a quick moment. Every week in the On the Way newsletter, we answer questions from curious commuters.

So this week, Tim from Park Slope asks, why do I have to pay to ride the JFK Air Train to the subway, but not to the airport's parking lots or car rental stations? What can you tell Tim about that? The main thing that people always complain about with the air train is that it costs 825 to ride if you're a family for really gives you incentive to take a gap to the airport instead. It's going up to 8.50 next year. you know, you reach out to the Port Authority people on this. They say, okay, well, we need to have free circulation within the airport. If you can ride between all the terminals for free, you don't pay until you get to Jamaica or Howard Beach, JFK Station on the other side. They're saying, oh, well, you know, people already pay the parking lot fees.

They pay a service charge at the car rental. And that goes in to the airport's operation. But because those are within the airport, we can't charge them. What's really interesting about the air train to me is that, one, there are no operators on it. That and like the Newark one is driven by robots. And they say, okay, so we need to have the fares from this, subsidize its operations to the tune of more than $75 million a year. You can split the math however you want. They're going to keep increasing the cost with inflation to this.

So I wouldn't expect, you know, I mean, it was $5 not too long ago. Now it's about to be $8.50. but why tax transit connection instead of taxing car rental drivers? It's simply in the way that the air train is structured and paid for and subsidized. And it really is on the backs of transit riders, as Tim calls it. He says, no matter what the explanation is, it still feels like a total rip-off. Well, if you have any transit questions you want answered, you can email Clayton and Stephen. They may answer them in next week's On the Way newsletter, which you can sign up for at gotthmus.com slash on the way.

See, Stephen Nesson, Clayton Goussa. Thanks so much. We'll see you next week. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WMYC. Catch us every weekday, three times a day for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives.

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