New York Governor Kathy Hochul has called off a controversial congestion tolling plan for New York City’s Manhattan borough, only two weeks before it was due to go into force.
The program was initially slated to start on June 30, with charges of as much as $15 once a day for passenger vehicles entering the tolling zone in Manhattan’s business district, and either $24 or $36 per entry for commercial trucks, depending on size and time of day. On June 5, Governor Hochul announced that she was indefinitely pausing the program, stating that the plan risked “too many unintended consequences,” The New York Times reported.
The tolls were designed to cut down on traffic in the oft-gridlocked city, but were met with outrage in the run-up to their summer launch. A lawsuit from the Trucking Association of New York filed on May 30 claimed the plan was unfairly targeting delivery trucks with the highest rates.
Mark Ang, co-founder & CEO of GoBolt, which characterizes itself as a sustainable 3PL, said congestion charges for trucks in dense urban areas such as New York City also create “the wrong competition profile.” Speaking at the 2024 Home Delivery World conference in Philadelphia on June 6, he argued that it would simply encourage companies shipping to the city to take one big truck in once a day, then split up the cargo into multiple smaller vehicles already within the city limits, doing nothing to solve congestion.
“It’s not smart policy,” he said.
Instead, he suggested that state and federal agencies focus on other traffic-related issues, such as the fact that different EVs need different chargers, exacerbating the lack of available charging stations.
