![]() ![]() Schaller said the MTA would still need to figure out how to handle, for instance, how a driver is charged for passing 60th Street if he or she doesn't have a customer in the back. "Taxis and for-hire vehicles just don't operate like a personal vehicle, so until those are spelled out it's hard to say this is good, bad or otherwise." and how and who will ultimately pay and how is calculated and collected," said Bruce Schaller, a former DOT official and expert on the taxi industry. Taxi riders currently pay a $2.50 surcharge for every trip taken into or below 96th Street in Manhattan, and Uber/Lyft customers pay a $2.75 fee on every trip in the five boroughs, both of which go towards the MTA's capital fund, a policy put in place when congestion pricing was first passed and pitched as a first step in the program.ĭrivers don't want to charge more, but one expert said that it's too early to see what the final EA's taxi policy will mean because it's unclear how it will all work. The question of how often, if ever, taxi and high-volume app-based drivers would have to pay the toll has been one of the big issues facing the MTA and has even at times driven Uber to turn its fire on the policy which its executives swear they support. In addition to the low-income driver discount, the final EA also said that taxis, including Uber and Lyft, will be charged at most once a day. This one is both more targeted and more generous, since after all, if we advocates believe the numbers we've been trumpeting showing relatively few low-income regular drivers to lower Manhattan, then we have to also believe that the revenue loss and congestion-mitigation loss from the discount will be slight. "I like it more than my once-a-month freebie idea, which I wrote about in part simply to stimulate discussion. "The low-income discount is excellent in my opinion," said congestion pricing scholar and traffic analyst Charles Komanoff. One longtime congestion pricing advocate said that the discount plan was a reasonable idea, especially since there are ultimately so few low-income drivers headed into Manhattan's central living area. Josh Gottheimer (D-Cars), who in February mentioned that an ironworker son-in-law of a constituent drives to Manhattan every morning because he supposedly works too early to take public transit. The hard-working laborer who "has" to drive into lower Manhattan for work has been a favorite example of congestion pricing opponents like Rep. The final EA also says that the toll during overnight hours will be at least half of whatever the peak hour toll rate is set as - and the lower-income volume discount will not apply to that. Under state law, congestion pricing has two goals: To raise $1 billion per year for public transit and to reduce congestion (and its attendant harms) in central Manhattan. The MTA tested several scenarios, with peak hour fees ranging from $9 to $23 per day, depending on the number of credits and exemptions the MTA offered. As such, the MTA said it has to do something to avoid "a disproportionately high and adverse effect" on those drivers. ![]() But the final EA offers the 25-percent discount because some low-income drivers have no "reasonable alternative," as the agency terms it, to drive into Manhattan frequently. 79 percent of lower-income commuters who use transit, the MTA said in its draft environmental assessment. Only about 9 percent of car commuters into Manhattan below 60th Street have incomes that meet the discount threshold vs. The MTA will reduce congestion pricing tolls on low-income drivers who travel frequently into the Manhattan congestion zone, Streetsblog has learned - one of a handful of new mitigation efforts that are revealed in the final environmental assessment that was approved by the federal government on Friday.įor the first five years of congestion pricing, drivers using E-ZPass who have a household income of under $50,000 per year, or are enrolled in an income-based assistance program such as SNAP, will get a 25-percent discount on each trip into the congestion pricing zone after they've taken 10 trips in a calendar month. Congestion pricing - now with bulk discounts! ![]()
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