Defiant New Jersey officials hoping to at least stall New York’s congestion pricing plan rallied Thursday in Fort Lee to insist they do still have a legal case to make, despite a Monday court ruling that rejected most of their arguments. The judge’s decision appeared to green-light the $9-per-car toll the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is scheduled to launch on Sunday for vehicles crossing into Manhattan south of 60th Street. But that’s not how gubernatorial candidate and U.S. Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-5th) sees it.
“This new lung tax will cost children and families more money to breathe more polluted air,” Gottheimer said. “And I hate to burst New York’s bubble, but they can’t just rush this one through. It will take time and studies we’ve been calling for, for years, and the judge has recognized that in his ruling. New York has just flipped the bird at the federal judge and said, ‘We’re going ahead, anyway.'”
Opponents of congestion pricing say federal Judge Leo Gordon found real flaws in the congestion pricing plan, noting it offered $155 million to curb increased air pollution in the Bronx, where traffic will divert to avoid paying the toll. But there’s nothing for towns in New Jersey like Fort Lee. Gordon called that “arbitrary and capricious” and sent the issue back to the Federal Highway Administration, ordering “further explanation” and legal briefs by Feb. 11.
New Jersey lawyers on Friday are set to ask Gordon to delay congestion pricing, arguing, “Without enforceable mitigation measures to alleviate significant environmental impacts in New Jersey, traffic increases and attendant air quality impacts will surely result from the congestion pricing scheme.”
“We’ve asked the judge to reconfirm and clarify that by sending the plan back to the federal government and by ruling that it’s defective and flawed, that the plan is not going ahead on Sunday,” said attorney Bruce Nagel, who represents Fort Lee and several other towns.
Attorney Jonathan Reichman predicted that request is unlikely to succeed, “because the court recognized that the tolling program was about to begin on Sunday. If the court had intended to stop the program from proceeding, it would have said so… The opinion did not do that. That’s why the governor has now made an 11th hour Hail Mary attempt to get the court to order an injunction.”
Reichman represents dozens of environmental groups that back congestion pricing. He wants to know how much New Jersey lost when it rejected New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s offer to settle the case, reportedly with hundreds of millions in funding for mitigation and for New Jersey Transit.
The MTA in a statement called New Jersey’s continued litigation “the height of hypocrisy… Nobody in their right mind should take transportation advice from the New Jersey politicians who have woefully failed to manage transit in their state.”
President-elect Donald Trump vowed to kill congestion pricing his first week in office, something that would be harder to do if tolls are already being collected.
