2023-08-07 14:06:53
Megacity of millions of inhabitants with dantesque car traffic, New York wants to introduce an urban toll like London, but this tax project in 2024 provokes the anger of the famous yellow taxis and the neighboring state of New Jersey.
The objective of this tax, which would be levied at the entrance to the center of Manhattan, one of the five New York boroughs, is threefold: to unclog the main avenues which irrigate the island from north to south, to improve the quality of the air of the Big Apple and financially bail out the ailing metro system.
Establishing “a tax against traffic jams is a historic opportunity”, rejoices John McCarthy, spokesperson for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), the public operator of the New York subway and trains in the greater suburbs.
Nearly nine million souls populate the city of New York, to which must be added the millions of inhabitants of the counties of the suburbs to the north and east and of New Jersey, on the other side of the Hudson river.
– About $20 a day –
This urban toll of 17 to 23 dollars per day, at the entrance to 60th street in Manhattan – knowing that there are already some on all the highways that surround the megalopolis – must come into force in the spring of 2024 but it is hotly contested.
Some 21,000 New York taxi drivers – whose yellow cars have made the city’s legend – are up against the measure: the president of their union, Bhairavi Desai, believes that the tax will sign the death warrant of some taxis already brought to their knees by the pandemic and competition from VTCs like Uber.
Like Wein Chin, 55, who came from Burma in 1987 and who, with his 300 or 400 dollars a week, confides to AFP that he fears not “surviving with a loan to pay and a family to feed” .
Faced with the discontent, official officials have proposed tariffs arranged for the lowest incomes, in a city already hit by galloping inflation.
The urban toll would affect 700,000 cars, vans and heavy goods vehicles per day and, according to its promoters, would reduce traffic by 10% daily and therefore CO2 emissions.
New York officials cite environmental studies made in London, which has long had a congestion charge: polluting emissions there have fallen by 20%.
“We know that automobile pollution is a major factor in the climate crisis which is damaging the planet and our health”, summarizes Tim Donaghy of Greenpeace for whom abandoning the car for public transport goes in the direction of History.
– All winners –
“Everyone is a winner, traffic and the environment”, also insists Danny Pearlstein, from a group of public transport users, the Riders Alliance.
Especially since the MTA, which manages the metro, with its sprawling network but with infrastructure in poor condition, has estimated the windfall it could draw from the urban toll at one billion dollars a year.
The project dates back to 2007 when billionaire Michael Bloomberg was mayor of New York.
But the municipality and its legislature did not come to an agreement until 2019 under the mandate of the very left-wing mayor at the time, Bill de Blasio, predecessor of the current city councilor Eric Adams, a former police captain in grip.
The federal government gave the green light in June for implementation next spring in a city classified as rather left-wing and with social and environmental concerns.
But New Jersey, a popular border state and dormitory suburb of Manhattan, is challenging this future new urban toll in court, believing that it will weigh on professionals who use the already paying bridges and tunnels every day to cross the Hudson River.
Still, New York State Governor Kathy Hochul has pledged to make the congestion and pollution tax a reality in the spring.
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