‘No more car for me’: will a $23 toll finally rid Manhattan of gridlock?

theguardian.com:

Could a moonshot policy finally rid the nation’s most congested city of its incessant, noisy, polluting traffic? Soon, over a million drivers a day could be forced to cough up as much as $23 to enter midtown and lower Manhattan – a toll that planners say will raise $15bn to fund New York public transit while cutting vehicles in the area by as much as one-fifth.

Among the cars that would be leaving the streets of Manhattan is a white Honda Accord that was parked on East Broadway in the Lower East Side on Wednesday.

“If they add even more fees, then that’s it,” said Felicita Mercado as she stepped into the vehicle. “No more car for me.”

Instead, the 77-year-old lifelong New Yorker said, she will start taking the bus.

The plan is called congestion pricing, and New York City is poised to become the first city in the United States to implement it. Similar policies have long been in place in cities including Singapore, which has had congestion pricing since 1975, and London, where a congestion charge has been in place since 2003. But in New York, a city synonymous with gridlock, the policy struggled to overcome opposition for decades before it was finally signed into law in 2019.

On Wednesday, transportation authorities released a much-awaited environmental assessment for the policy, a major milestone that explains how the plan will affect the city. “Bottom line: congestion pricing is good for the environment, good for public transit and good for New York and the region,” said the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s (MTA) chair and CEO, Janno Lieber, in a statement.

Public transportation advocates are calling it a long-awaited victory. “This is a massive deal for all New Yorkers,” said Danny Harris, the head of Transportation