More than two years have passed since the New York State Legislature approved congestion pricing for New York City, a policy to charge drivers enterin

The Perverse Reason It’s Easier to Build New Highways Than New Subways

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2021-08-21 18:30:11

More than two years have passed since the New York State Legislature approved congestion pricing for New York City, a policy to charge drivers entering the Manhattan core. Little has happened in the interim. Though many office workers have not returned, the streets are once again jammed with personal cars—flustering local businesses, slowing ambulances, and filling the streets with exhaust.

Earlier this week, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority—the agency that would run the congestion pricing program and direct its revenue toward mass transit—announced that the tolls would require another 16 months of environmental review. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio responded, “That’s ridiculous. If they want to know the environmental impact, I’ll tell them: It will reduce congestion, it will reduce pollution.”

The mayor’s logic will sound familiar to anyone who has followed the construction of an American mass transit project, where you practically have to pulp a California redwood just to print the environmental impact statement required by the National Environmental Policy Act. When Bay Area Rapid Transit General Manager Bob Powers said earlier this year that it would take a billion dollars to get through the environmental review to build a second subway tunnel beneath San Francisco Bay, that sounded sadly believable. BART board member Rebecca Saltzman clarified that figure includes all planning for the tunnel, but she said the point remains valid: “When [these laws] were written, the focus was on water quality and wildlife habitat, and now we need to look at everything through the lens of climate change.”