Monday’s Headlines: Congestion Pricing Hysteria Edition

The first congestion relief tolls were charged after the clock struck midnight early Sunday — ushering a season of hysteria beyond anything we could have imagined.

The plutocratic populists at the New York Post outdid themselves to present the toll as an unfair tax on working people (when it actually is an ever-so-slight redistribution of funds from wealthy, subsidized drivers to far-poorer transit users, not that the Post cares about the facts).

The Post has always been critical of congestion pricing — everyone is entitled to an opinion as well as an asshole — but its coverage has become unhinged from reality:

• The front page at midnight on Sunday — seconds after the tolls began — was "IT'S TERRIBLE!" (with a picture featuring a driver holding what appeared to be a slice of pizza) then blasting the pollution-cutting toll as a "PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS" on Sunday morning, citing baseless claims by the firefighters union about how the toll will slow emergency response times, when the opposite is almost certainly the case, thanks to fewer cars on the road.
• The tabloid also mocked the MTA and other congestion pricing supporters for cheering on the toll's launch early on Sunday morning.
• The Post also rehashed the dubious claim that "the Bridge and Tunnel crowd" (their words) would choose to park just outside the zone rather than pay the $9 toll or take transit. (The one expert quoted in the story expressed skepticism, but why let mere things like facts get in the way?)
• Least surprisingly of all, The Post even crammed the toll into a story about the day's latest subway crime to imply the state was "forcing more commuters into dangerous system" — conveniently ignoring the more than four million commuters who ride that system every day without incident. (WNYC/Gothamist also ran with this toxic angle, at least twice.)
• To close out the day, the paper ran a running list of complaints from business owners, including CompuVOIP, whose plan to charge customers a congestion pricing surcharge Streetsblog covered on Friday.

The Post has a big megaphone — after all, Gov. Hochul often abandons any notion of public policy at the slightest 100-point headline, as we recently reported — but the paper is not alone in trumpeting lies, misinformation and manipulated emotions to condemn a public policy change that amounts to ... a toll.

• Council Member Joe Borelli — who as a politician can certainly advocate for better transit — posted a bizarre tweet about the three ways he could travel from his southern Staten Island home to pick up a dog (because so many Staten Island residents are confronted regularly with the prospect of needing to travel inside the congestion relief zone for canine adoption purposes). His tweet revealed that even with congestion pricing, the car was a completely serviceable option — especially compared to limited, and far more expensive, public transit between his home and the pet adoption place. If he's advocating for much cheaper and more-frequent transit service, we're with him, but the tweet read like a whiny car owner complaining that he now has to pay a few dollars more to pollute a wide swath of the metro-region.

• Next on the hysteria parade was none other than Council Member Vickie Paladino, who tweeted that angry New Yorkers would turn to Boston Tea Party-style vandalism — which she more or less encouraged — because congestion pricing won't work. Stop us if we're wrong, but should members of the Council be encouraging violence? Also, she's wrong: Congestion pricing does indeed work (and New York's toll is significantly lower than London's). She also tweeted instructions on how to disable cameras.

• And then there was this entitled Fifth Avenue real estate mogul who complained that because of certain one-way streets, he'll have to pay the toll when he drives 18 blocks to visit his children, who live outside the zone. Yes, he drives 18 blocks. And yes, he can afford the toll — which he wouldn't even have to pay if he didn't drive less than a mile.

Meanwhile, people who believe in data and good public policy were crowing on Sunday that congestion pricing will, in fact, work, as it does in Stockholm and other cities. Certainly, it is far too soon to know whether the tolls are reducing traffic, but people who were in Manhattan on Sunday said that first impressions were positive. Here's a typical take:

Observers spent Sunday trying to parse whether the tolls are "working," but a day of data doesn't offer much insight. Streetsblog contributor Charles Komanoff has warned it may take some time for driver behavior to adjust to the new toll and traffic to drop. The original $15 toll would have cut the number of cars in the Central Business District by 17 percent; the now-$9 toll will increase speeds about 5 to 6 percent, per Komanoff's forecast.

Once the toll hits $15 in 2031, those speed improvements will climb over 15 percent, Komanoff predicts.

But every little bit counts, and after decades of advocacy, New York City finally has a toll meant to reduce traffic in its central business district. From here, the possibilities are endless.

Here's a round-up of the weekend's congestion pricing coverage:

• Our own Dave Colon ran through everything you need to know about the new toll.
• Streetsblog Editor Gersh Kuntzman joined a substantial crowd transit advocates at a midnight Sunday rally to celebrate the honorary "first car" to pay the toll at the congestion relief zone's 60th Street border. (YouTube)
• Curbed and City & State were also on the scene and noted Kuntzman's excitement.
• Mayor Adams and Gov. Hochul said literally nothing about the congestion relief zone over the weekend. Hochul put out a press release announcing a "major investment" in Metro-North's Hudson Line on Sunday afternoon (which, as part of the 2025-29 MTA capital plan won't actually be funded by congestion pricing).
• Henry Grabar, writing in the Times, argued that once congestion pricing reveals itself to be a success, it will embolden Democrats to embrace it.
• "All eyes on the morning rush." — CBS New York.
• The Times highlighted the New York origins of the very concept of congestion pricing, which has been tried in global cities like London and Milan even as it evaded the city of its birth.
• The Times live-blogged congestion pricing after the sun came up on Sunday morning — with no less than 10 reporters covering the issue, quoting the usual suspects of congestion pricing supporters, congestion pricing opponents and people-on-the-street with varied thoughts on whether the new toll is a good idea or going to work. The paper also explored "how scammers could cheat" the toll and the impact on taxis and for-hire vehicles.
• But the main problem with the Times coverage, as Jarrett Walker pointed out on Bluesky, is that the editors there see congestion pricing solely through the lens of drivers rather than seeing the broader policy picture:

• The Daily News also jumped on the firefighters union's anti-congestion pricing publicity tour.
• NY1 spoke with New Yorkers with disabilities who "have a unique stake" in the toll revenue.
• AP: "Many motorists appeared unaware that the newly activated cameras."
• RPA's Tiffany-Ann Taylor: "New York City's public transit system is a critical investment for regional prosperity. If the easier ideas were available, we would have done them already." (NY1)
• Congestion pricing is national news and international news: NPR called the toll "a high stakes test for the model's U.S. viability." Axios focused on the Trump-of-it-all and called INRIX's latest estimate of the number of hours the average New York City driver loses to traffic jams (101) "stunning." The BBC said congestion pricing "has encountered plenty of opposition."

Here's that Gersh video again. And another one from Saturday from Streetfilms' Clarence Eckerson.