Today, Explained - Taxing traffic

Episode Date: September 20, 2023

New York City wants to be the first in the nation to implement congestion pricing to charge people for driving during peak hours. New Jersey says fuhgeddaboudit. This episode was produced by Amanda Lewellyn, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Tien Nguyen, engineered by Rob Byers with help from Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

London's doing it. I mean, we didn't go first because we thought it'd be good fun and get lots of kudos. We moved because we had to. Stockholm's doing it. If you want to do great things, don't tell people how to adapt. Just nudge them away from the bad options. Singapore's doing it. The important thing is that the alternatives must be there.

For example, affordable, efficient public transport system. But not a single city in these United States has yet dared to charge people a fee to drive during peak hours. But New York wants to. They passed a law. They've got a plan. It could be implemented as soon as this coming spring.

There's only one thing standing in the way. New Jersey. Forget about it. That's ahead on Today Explained. You woke up this morning and got yourself a gift. This NFL season, get in on all the hard-hitting action with FanDuel, North America's number one sportsbook. You can bet on anything from money lines to spreads and player props, or combine your bets in a same-game parlay for a shot at an even bigger payout. Plus, with super-simple live betting, lightning-fast bet settlement,

and instant withdrawals, FanDuel makes betting on the NFL easier than ever before. So make the most of this football season and download FanDuel today. 19-plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Stand clear of the open doors, please. The next stop will be Today Explained. Today Explained will be next. Stand clear. I am Stephen Nessen, transit reporter at New York Public Radio, WNYC, and my stories appear on the website Gothamist.

Stephen's here to tell us about congestion pricing in New York City. This is such a big deal. This is massive. Because New York City will be the first city in America to charge drivers to drive to enter a crowded part of a city. We are setting the standard right here in real time for how we can achieve cleaner air, safer streets, and better transit. It was very, very difficult for New York City to do this. This day was coming for a long time, but it was a thoughtful, methodical process. People have tried it for years and they failed, but now we are closer than we've ever been to implementing congestion pricing.

Tell me about the challenges in the past. How has this gone for New York City, for New York State previously? Well, you know, Mayor Bloomberg tried something like this. So as long as we're at the Museum of Natural History, let us talk about the elephant in the room. Congestion pricing. He even wanted to toll the East River bridges that funnel vehicles into downtown.

And those bridges are completely free, which is crazy to any urban planner. But nobody has the political will. We should say the guts to charge drivers. It would just be, you know, political suicide to do this. So at the city level, no city politician is going to pull this off. It was up to the state, Governor Andrew Cuomo, to get it done. A time where Andrew Cuomo could get something done in Albany, how did he do it? You know, arguably probably at the height of his power, he was a fearsome political creature, and he got things done with some serious, you know, painful backroom, you know, arm twisting, arm breaking.

Here are the options. God is going to send down $33 billion. That's not going to happen. There is only one way it happens that is congestion-free. It was a somewhat maybe easier sell because the reason they claimed that they really wanted to do it was because they needed money for the subways. The subways were just in abysmal shape at that time. People could not get to work on time. A college student graduating on a subway car, hugging his family and friends alongside complete strangers. Because instead of walking the stage at Hunter College with his classmates, Jarek Alcantara was stuck here on a stalled E train deep under Queens. If you want a copy of my diploma, turn on your eardrum. For politicians, it was just totally unacceptable.

You can't expect people to get out of their car if they're going to get into a train that never leaves the platform. So they were like, look, we need money to fix this. You know, the environment was also a major concern. All this concentrated activity, the vehicles sitting there idling because they cannot move and our buses that are not moving. It's also creating all this exhaust and emissions that our people are breathing. Can you just tell us what even is this plan? Sure. So when the state passed it, they sort of put some parameters in place. First of all,

the key thing to know is where is the tolling zone? So it's going to start just south of Central Park and it's going going to go all the way down, basically to the bottom of Manhattan. Other than that, there really weren't a lot of guidelines put in for how to run it. People who live in the zone that make less than $60,000 a year will receive a credit so they don't get told every time they drive around out of their house. And vehicles that transport wheelchair-accessible vehicles that are transporting people will not be charged either. How much are the fees? Like how much would this cost? That's the million dollar question. A million dollars?

That feels like too much. It's actually not enough. It's a very interesting arrangement. We don't know how much it's going to cost. There's a group that's still deciding that. But we do know how much they need to make every year. That was baked into the plan. So the original idea of it, remember, was to make money for the subways and buses to fix

public transit. So they decided on this number $1 billion. They need to make $1 billion a year off congestion pricing. So the high end is $23 to enter the zone, but it could be much less than that. It could be, you know, $12. It could be $10. It could be as low as $5, although that really doesn't seem likely. There's a group that's trying to figure this out. And the way it's going to work is, you know, it's like making or playing with a giant spreadsheet. You know, all these people want to get exemptions from the charge. People from New Jersey don't want to pay it. But for every group that you exclude, that means the price gets higher for everyone else. How are we going to survive? This is ridiculous. Charging just to go home and go to work.

Okay, so some drivers are understandably mad that they're going to have to start paying money for something they've been getting for free for the entirety of the history of driving in New York City. But why is New Jersey mad, Stephen? Well, New Jersey is very mad about this because they already pay a toll to enter the city. So they're feeling, to use the words of New Jersey Congressman Josh Gottheimer, they feel like they're getting whacked by New York. This is just a cash grab for the MTA. They're desperate for dollars. So who are they looking to? Hardworking commuters here from Jersey to pay, like as their piggy bank, to pay their bills for their mismanagement. And as a matter of fact, the governor of New Jersey, Phil Murphy, is suing over this.

So today I am here to announce, I don't do this every day, I have to say, that we are suing to block New York's ill-conceived congestion pricing plan. He doesn't even know whether his drivers are going to actually be whacked or pay twice, but he's preemptively suing to sort of stop this process, saying that they didn't do enough research, basically. That's the most applause I've gotten in two and a half years. The federal government said they need to do what's called an environmental assessment of their project. The result of that was a more than 4,000-page document

looking at counties surrounding New York City, in New Jersey, Connecticut, New York, of how this program will impact them, how it's going to impact traffic, how it's going to impact pollution, how it's going to impact the poorest people that live in these areas. And basically, New Jersey saying, we don't think you did enough research. Maybe you should do a more detailed analysis. That's why we're here today, to make sure the Department of Transportation hears the voices of the hardworking middle class commuters who will be forced to pay this absurd $23 a day, $5,000 a year congestion tax, and to listen to those voices of young children whose health will be harmed directly by the increased air pollution the congestion tax will cause.

So New Jersey does claim that some parts of the state might see higher emissions. I took a little peek into the environmental document that the MTA put out, and they do note that traffic elsewhere could change. I don't think New Jersey was necessarily flagged as being the most problematic, quite frankly. Some experts who've studied this far longer than I have believe that it's going to be a negligible effect, basically. Well, presumably New Jersey's governor wouldn't go after New York willy-nilly because, you know, they have something of a relationship. What does New Jersey say is missing from this 4,000-page document? It's a good question.

They're very, very, very skimpy on the details of what they want. For example, the MTA's environmental assessment found that 85% of the trips that people make into the central business district, the tolling area, are made by public transit. The MTA's environmental assessment also found that during the morning commute, like the busiest time when the most people are traveling, people from New Jersey, by and large, something like 90% of them get into Manhattan on public transit. They're not driving into the city. If it goes through, how big a deal for New York City? It's going to be massive. You know, I believe the city is estimating that, you know,

if everything works out, if the, you know, if everything works out, if the, you know, if their spreadsheets are right and the traffic planners are correct, traffic could go down by as much as maybe 19%, 20%. And I'm told that is like an epic sea change on the streets. That's like going from bumper to bumper-bumper traffic to free-flowing traffic. And the whole country is watching. Seattle, you know, Chicago, Philadelphia. They all want to see, is this going to work? Should we try this here? Or is it going to be a complete failure? The number one biggest obstacle to the Empire State's congestion pricing plan is that lawsuit the Garden State

filed. We're going to hear if they've got a case when we're back on Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great way to keep up with family, and Aura says it's never been easier thanks to their digital picture frames. They were named the number one digital photo frame by Wirecutter. Aura frames make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an Aura frame as a gift,

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Today explained, Ramas firm. Here's what we've got. New York wants to implement congestion pricing. It wants to be the first in the nation to do it. They put out a 4,000-page document about all the impacts. And New Jersey said, to heck with your plan, and sued. And they're suing on environmental grounds, which is weird because, like, New Jersey isn't the cleanest place in the world. The Garden State. But no, not the cleanest place in the world.

The Garden State with more Superfund sites than any other state in the world. The Garden State, but no, not the cleanest place in the world. The Garden State with more Superfund sites than any other state in the country. So there's a bit of a tension there. Professor Michael Hertz specializes in environmental law over at Cardozo Law in New York. He'll also be paying to drive in and out of the city if congestion pricing is implemented in spring 2024. We asked the good professor, what's up with New Jersey? I think that New Jersey, like many others, is very nervous about how this plan will hit it. And they're hardly alone in that. about this plan, and frankly, complicated about almost any environmental regulation, is that the burdens and the benefits don't always fall on exactly the same people.

And that's what makes environmental law so politically, leads to so many political battles. So a lot of people want to find a way around congestion pricing in New York City, but not a lot of people are suing. New Jersey, however, is. Can you tell us about the law they're suing under? Yeah. So what they're suing under is something called the National Environmental Protection Act, called NEPA. NEPA was passed by Congress at the very end of 1969, signed into law by President Richard Nixon, Republican President Richard Nixon. Environmentalist.

Environmentalist, at least for a couple of years. Clean air and clean water, the wise use of our land, the protection of wildlife and natural beauty, parks for all to enjoy. These are part of the birthright of every American. And so on January 1st, 1970, he signs this law. It's very different than most other environmental laws, however, because it does not directly regulate polluters. It doesn't tell anybody what they have to do to protect the environment. It's got a bunch of different provisions,

some of them very impressive and aspirational and poetic. The time has come for man to make his peace with nature. But what has turned out to be the most important provision of NEPA, and what's relevant to this lawsuit, is the requirement that before a federal agency take an action, a quote, major federal action, close quote, that may significantly affect the quality of the environment, it has to stop and consider the environmental impacts. And the whole theory of the law is that once agencies confront the environmental destructiveness of their actions, they will behave in a more environmentally responsible way. passed, the legislators who wrote it did not predict that this one clause would become the source of countless lawsuits? You're a superb guesser.

All right. And for two reasons. One, the few words that require a, quote, detailed statement about the environmental impact before action is taken, were added very late in the legislative process. The folks who sort of had the original idea and were pushing NEPA didn't think this was the critical part of the legislation, and it got no real attention by the members of Congress who were enacting it. It was a little kind of throwaway line that was added late. And the second reason that no one would have anticipated what happened was that it's pretty fair to say that all the folks enacting this legislation did not anticipate there would be lawsuits.

The way a lawyer would phrase that is they didn't include a, quote, private right of action. But it was passed at a time when the federal courts were happy to imply such a right. And very early on in the 1970s, the courts of appeals and then the Supreme Court accepted that, yes, individuals, which includes individuals, it includes companies, and it includes states, can sue a federal agency for failing to comply with NEPA. So I want to ask you more about how this law applies in New Jersey, but could you tell me a little bit about maybe like NEPA's greatest hits? Surely there are some well-known NEPA challenges out there? Well, locally, here in New York City, I think the top of the list was Westway. Westway was this huge public works project along the west side of Manhattan, planned in the 1970s and 1980s.

Every financial interest you can think of was behind Westway. Billions, billions of dollars at stake. A lot of it already committed. Originally, it was going to be a giant park all along the west side of Manhattan with a lot of fill into the Hudson River to create the space for this and a highway going for most of the length of it underground. And it was a very controversial, extraordinarily expensive project. Mayor Koch wants assurances that they're going to have the funds

before he okays Westway. Now, we want assurances that we're not going to be inundated. And I think it's been very reasonable. All that we asked for, that the Army Corps of Engineers open up their public hearings. There was an environmental impact statement. There was a challenge to the adequacy of the EIS. The federal court said, yeah, this EIS, it's long and it's got a lot in it.

But you know what? It's pretty clear that this is going to have an impact on the bass population in the Hudson River. And the court just didn't mention this. And therefore, it's got to go back and redo the EIS. And at that point, this was the mid-'80s. Everyone just said, oh, to hell with it. Really? Yeah, we just can't. It's too much.

Rather than revise the document and talk about the fishies, they were like, forget it, we're not going to build this huge project? Remember, this was, I don't know, a decade into. I mean, it's like congestion pricing, right? Congestion pricing has been around for a long time, and supporters have been pushing it. Now, it's come and gone. It's not been a sustained 10 or 15-year effort. And at some point, you know, it's one obstacle after another, and one is the straw that breaks the camel's back. And is the point of these lawsuits always, as you said, to break the camel's back, to kill a project, or are there genuine inquiries out there? Of course, it's both. And you have to look a little at who the plaintiff is. But I think there are three basic goals, not mutually exclusive in a NEPA lawsuit.

One is to kill the project. One is to delay the project, partly in the hope that delay will end up killing it, because if you can get a three- or four-year delay, circumstances may be such that it no longer makes economic sense after that three or four years. And the third is to alter the project, to get them to modify it in a way which you like better, which may or may not mean is environmentally more protective. And let me ask you, you seem more expert than most in this world of NEPA.

Which do you think New Jersey is trying to do? Kill the project, kill the project, or perhaps alter the project? I can't get in the heads of these guys, but let me say this. I think that if New York came along and said, okay, tell you what, certainly if they said we will totally exempt New Jersey drivers from the toll, they would abandon the lawsuit. So that's kind of an answer. Now that's not on the table, but what's on the table is to give New Jersey drivers credit for the tolls they pay to get into Manhattan so that the overall amount paid by New Jersey drivers to get to the Central Business

District would be the same as paid by, say, someone who lives on the Upper West Side. That would be a good outcome for New Jersey. I don't know that they're going to get it because I think the lawsuit is awfully weak. And I think the lawsuit is going nowhere. But one of the things about lawsuits is it can take a very long time to go nowhere. Do you think the country would be better off without NEPA, without this sort of unintended clause in a 1970 law that gives New Jersey a way to delay a plan that New York passed to improve the environmental health of its residents and to even potentially improve its subway system and improve its roads and the rest? Well, look, you know, one of the things that a number of your questions have revolved around is a concern that you have an environmental law being used for non-environmental ends.

And that has always been true. You know, one of the things about lawsuits is plaintiffs don't have to be pure of heart. You make the legal argument that's available to you, whatever your motivation for opposing the project. And this disconnect is common. Now, lots of, most NEPA lawsuits are brought by environmental groups. They are actually genuinely focused on environmental harms. You know, just to go back to the question you actually asked, which was, is this net-net? Are we better off with NEPA? I think we're better off with NEPA. Yes, I think that it has made a significant difference in the destructiveness of federal

agency projects and the culture within various agencies. And the Corps of Engineers and Highways have been just grotesquely environmentally destructive over the years. And then you say to them, wait, you've got to stop and think. You have to think about the environmental consequences of what you're doing. You have to hire someone who's in a position to evaluate those and participate in writing the EIS. It changes the culture a little bit. It changes the water cooler conversations. It forces them to confront what they're doing.

And that's not all nonsense. It's not all BS. It actually does have an impact. Whether it's worth all the effort, That's the tricky question, because NEPA does lead to massive delays, massive expenditure of time, effort, and expertise. And, you know, there are a couple dozen of these lawsuits, like New Jersey's every year, that are highly disruptive. And when people say, you know, how come China gets high-speed rail nationwide done in 10 years and we can't build anything in the United States? NEPA is one of the reasons. It's not the only reason, but it's one of the reasons.

And so it does come at a real cost. It comes down to NEPA and communism. Yeah. Yep. Those are the two evil forces in the world today. Yeah. Yep. Those are the two evil forces in the world today. Yeah. Thank you. Today, explain.