The authorized battle over New York’s congestion pricing isn’t over but, due to neighboring New Jersey.
Federal Choose Leo Gordon has set a Friday 3 p.m. listening to in Newark — simply 33 hours earlier than congestion pricing is presently scheduled to start — to think about a Momentary Restraining Order filed by the state of New Jersey.
Backyard State officers and attorneys who’ve argued that Bergen County and different areas west of the Hudson will endure environmentally from new site visitors patterns declined remark. However a spokesman for Governor Kathy Hochul indicated the nation’s first congestion toll will start as scheduled.
“Congestion pricing is still going to take effect on Sunday January 5th,” stated Avi Small, the New York governor’s press secretary.
Hochul had paused congestion pricing again in June, however unpaused it in November at a decrease price.
Years within the making, the congestion pricing program tolls drivers getting into Manhattan south of 61st Road. The height worth for automobiles with EZ-Go is $9. Off peak charges drop to $2.25. The MTA has touted the toll as a option to generate billions to modernize mass transit.
New Yorkers who depend on the subway say the brand new price mirrors what a number of worldwide cities have carried out.
“I lived in London a little bit and I know it’s helped a lot there,” stated Claire O’Donnell-McCarthy, who lives simply north of the Manhattan zone on the west facet.
She scoffed at New Jersey’s Eleventh-hour request for an injunction: “it’s not their place to say what we do in Manhattan.”
However Metropolis Council member Bob Holden of Queens, who has additionally sued the MTA on the grounds the brand new toll hurts outer borough residents disproportionately, predicts even when the congestion cameras get switched on this weekend, one other court docket listening to in a case introduced by Hempstead looms in simply two weeks.
“It’ll start but then it’ll stop. That’s my guess,” Holden informed NBC New York.
The MTA declined to touch upon all of the final minute authorized maneuvers.
