Everyone Who Claims Congestion Pricing Is Elitist Or Bad For The Working Poor Is Lying To You

Congestion relief pricing works. It works in other countries, and despite just being implemented in Manhattan, it's already working there, too. So, of course, a lot of people are mad about it. Can you believe the most densely populated county in the U.S. would do something that improves air quality? Those kids struggling to breathe aren't my kids! Still, one point that opponents of a cleaner, quieter, safer Manhattan raise has definitely resonated with several people. Basically, the argument is that charging people to drive into the city is elitist and hurts the working poor who can't afford an extra $9. It's also a straight-up lie, as Vox recently pointed out.

If you live basically anywhere else in the U.S., the only practical way to get anywhere is to drive (or ride a motorcycle, which is infinitely cooler). So if you had to pay a $9 toll to get to work, that would add up quickly, and of course the people earning the least money would be hit the hardest. After all, federal minimum wage is still $7.25 an hour even though it would be up to about $11 if Republicans had at least been willing to peg it to inflation. The thing is, Manhattan and, more specifically, the congestion zone is not like most other places in the States. There, public transportation actually mostly works and is as fast or faster than driving.

One thing a lot of people forget is that owning a car is incredibly expensive. If you own a classic car, you absolutely understand that, but even safe, modern, reliable cars require gas, insurance, maintenance and repairs, all while the resale value drops over time. Using a fairly conservative estimate of $0.55 per mile, driving a normal-enough 15,000 miles per year means you're looking at a little more than $8,000 a year to own a car. You could argue that low-income workers probably don't have to worry as much about depreciation as much since their cars are probably already heavily depreciated, and insurance should be less expensive, but as depreciation slows down, repair frequency goes up, so it probably all comes out in the wash. 

If low-income workers could live without a car, that would put a whole lot of money back in their pockets, and that's exactly what congestion pricing does. The people willing to pay extra to drive into the city help fund improvements to public transportation, which makes life better for the folks already struggling to make ends meet. Not only does congestion pricing make it easier for people to get rid of their cars, but it also makes life better for the people who already can't afford a car. You may also be surprised by how many low-income folks don't currently own a car. Nationwide, Vox reports about 30 percent of low-income households don't currently own or lease a car. For households making more than $245,000 — or roughly the top 10 percent of income-earners in the U.S. — that figure is about three percent.

Let's say for the sake of the argument that there are plenty of people who work in the congestion zone but live outside the city because they can't afford Manhattan's absurd rents. Let's also say they have a good reason to drive instead of taking the train. Even without the congestion relief charges, those hypothetical workers making less than $20 an hour still have to park their cars once they get there. That isn't as much of a problem for high-income New Yorkers, and it is possible to find some free street parking, but people driving into the city have to compete for it with the locals, and it isn't guaranteed. Plus, if you're driving in for work, your boss probably isn't going to be happy if you show up 30 minutes late for your shift because you had to drive around until you found free parking. 

If you have to pay for parking in the congestion zone, at a minimum, you're probably looking at several lost hours every single day. That's also post-tax money you have to spend, too, and that $16.50 minimum wage likely looks a lot more like $10 or $11 an hour once taxes are taken out. If parking for the day costs $30, that's a big chunk of your paycheck that the vast majority of low-income workers would much rather spend on literally anything other than paying for parking. Heck, your waiter would probably agree to commit multiple felonies to put an extra $150 a week in their pocket. And while unlimited monthly passes aren't free, $132 a month sure is a heck of a lot cheaper than owning and parking a car in the congestion relief zone.

Now, it's entirely possible you just don't want to ride a train, and you're allowed to have that preference, but that also doesn't mean policymakers should listen to you. After all, just based on raw numbers, odds are, you don't even live in New York. And the simple truth is, better services make for better cities. Having people who choose the option to drive into the city pay a little more to help fund services for everyone else, and fewer cars in the city means faster, more reliable bus routes in addition to cleaner, nicer train service. Quality of life also improves across the board thanks to cleaner air and less noise pollution. As they say, cities aren't loud. Cars are loud. 

And while there are plenty of people who choose not to live in cities, if that's you, when you do visit for whatever reason, wouldn't you prefer it to be nice, clean, quiet and convenient to get wherever you want to go? Of course you would. So now imagine how much more enjoyable that would be for people who are there five days a week, and even more, how much better that would be for the people who live there. Just because someone doesn't make $250,000 a year doesn't mean their life should be nonstop noise, interruptions, delays and frustrations on top of the stress of trying to make ends meet.

Plus, as Vox points out, congestion relief pricing wasn't exactly popular before it went into effect. In fact, most New Yorkers reportedly opposed it. Since January, though, those numbers have flipped, with about 60 percent of New Yorkers saying they want it to stay. If the people who actually live there have changed their minds, there's a good chance they're onto something.

Of course, if something is unequivocally good, Musk and Trump can't resist breaking it, and less than a month after taking office, they sent in former Real World castmember Sean Duffy to kill it. Because of course they did. And wouldn't you know it, when Duffy declared takesey-backsies, he relied on the same disingenuous "this will hurt the working poor" argument that's already been debunked. "the toll program leaves drivers without any free highway alternative, and instead, takes more money from working people to pay for a transit system and not highways. It's backwards and unfair," Duffy said in his statement. 

As the Secretary of Transportation, Duffy knows congestion relief pricing works. It isn't like we're talking about anything particularly new or complicated here. It's worked in other cities, and it's working in New York. Then again, he's a Republican, and undermining good things until they start to break so they can justify getting rid of them later is their default setting. 

Unlike national Democratic leadership, however, congestion pricing supporters aren't giving up and hoping Trump goes away. Just yesterday, Earthjustice, a pro-environmental legal group, announced that the Riders Alliance and the Sierra Club had filed to join the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in a lawsuit against Musk and Trump's Department of Transportation. While the MTA's initial lawsuit claims the administration illegally reneged on the congestion pricing authorization agreement, the new suit adds two claims that focus on the flawed arguments in Duffy's statement on the program's termination. Despite Duffy's claim that he discovered a secret loophole in the law that meant congestion pricing had never actually been approved, the new lawsuit alleges Duffy made a series of legal errors in his rush to find any excuse that might allow the Trump administration to kill it. 

"In its rush to end congestion pricing, the Trump administration is selling a flimsy excuse to try and make an end run around what the laws require," Dror Ladin, Senior Attorney at Earthjustice, said in a statement. "But the administration's explanations don't add up, and we're confident that the courts are going to see through them just as easily as most New Yorkers do."