Real Estate

Late-Night Cheering as Congestion Pricing Begins

Photo: Christopher Bonanos

The group at the corner of 60th and Lex started to form a little after 11:30 p.m. on Saturday . It was 28 degrees (“feels like 15,” my phone said, accurately), and there were, at that point, maybe 15 guys milling around in cold-weather gear when I arrived. They were here to mark, at long last, the switching-on of the congestion-pricing cameras at midnight, a potentially city-changing event that had been crawling toward reality for more than a decade. Nearly everyone who drives in Manhattan below 60th will, as of this morning, pay a toll (variable, but often $9) for the privilege. The cameras overhead have been in place since the spring, when Governor Kathy Hochul abruptly pulled the plug on the plan; she replugged it last month, and tonight’s the night it all kicks in.

The mood was light, playful, chatty that of a victory rally. A couple of people carried signs: a friendly NYC ♥ MTA and THANK YOU FOR PAYING THE TOLL and a more assertive THANK YOU FOR PAYING A TINY SHARE OF THE DAMAGE YOUR CAR CAUSES. A couple of reporters were collecting quotes, a NY1 cameraman was shooting, and Streetsblog’s Gersh Kuntzman, who’d announced the event late last week, was happily chatting with people. It was cold enough that my camera batteries sputtered out after one photograph. Still, people kept arriving. A few minutes before midnight, the crowd had grown to perhaps 150.

Among the celebrants. Christopher Bonanos.

Among the celebrants. Christopher Bonanos.

And then: conflict! Three or four men roared in, eager for an argument, getting in people’s faces. “You’re fuckin’ scumbags,” one of them shouted, the cords in his neck standing out. He wore a black knit MAGA hat and held a laminated sign saying BRAD LANDER WILL NEVER BE MAYOR. (Lander supports the program.) One of his companions held a sign of his own reading CONGESTION PRICING IS A CRIME. A few people from the approached this small group, trying to engage them with reason, but they were having none of it. They instead tried to start a chant, something about a money grab—the MAGA guy had brought a cowbell and banged it—but he and the other antis were outnumbered by maybe 40 to 1, and the bigger crowd quickly drowned them out with a much louder refrain: “Pay that toll! Pay that toll!

A few anti-toll protesters showed up angry. Christopher Bonanos.

A few anti-toll protesters showed up angry. Christopher Bonanos.

As Saturday turned over into Sunday and activation of the cameras neared, the participants started a countdown for the final ten seconds, tooting a couple of horns that were likely left over from New Year’s Eve. They waved and hooted as the stoplight turned and the first car passed under the cameras. It was a black four-door sedan whose license plate began with T: an Uber, of course. A few seconds later, a ground-hugging black sports car with a deliberately growly exhaust system roared through, then slowed down so its its passenger could capture a brief video of the crowd. Then its driver revved the engine, as if to snort, and peeled out down Lexington Avenue.

It did feel as though a small impossible thing had finally come to pass. After two decades of of watching London and other cities reap benefits from their congestion-pricing policy as New York stewed in its own exhaust, the city had seen Kathy Hochul tiptoe up to embracing it, then cancel it, then reinstate it. And who knows whether it’ll last: A judge this weekend rejected New Jersey’s legal attempt to stop the toll, but that fight may linger, and the next president and his congressional supporters want it gone. But as of 12:01 a.m. today, the cameras were indeed (apparently) on, and the money began flowing in. Most political observers say that a program like this is harder to stop once it’s started, and now this one has.

So, yes, it was at least a moment for cautious celebration. People discreetly popped corks and poured a little prosecco out into paper cups, offering them to the faithful. Another chant got going, this time referring to the intended recipient of the tolls: Take the subway! Take the subway! Which I soon did, because the chill was beginning to make its way through my coat, and it was late. Down on the 59th Street platform, I could just faintly hear the party continuing above. The trains were running with 15-minute headways, and my car, when I finally boarded as 1 a.m. approached, was maybe two-thirds full.


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