Wednesday’s Headlines: RIP Congestion Pricing Edition

Well, it’s pretty obvious that Gov. Hochul’s so-called “pause” of congestion pricing is going to be fatal.

Yesterday, an otherwise exciting Siena poll rang the death knell: According to the beancounters, there’s not a single constituency — Democrats, the rich, the poor, Blacks, union households, women, young people — that supports congestion pricing. Overall, 59 percent of voters said they want Hochul to permanently stop congestion pricing while only 22 percent said they want it immediately started.

That’s a gap of 37 points.

The news wasn’t even good inside the five boroughs, where, yes, more people support congestion pricing (29 percent), but more people also oppose it (62 percent), albeit closing the gap to 33 points.

The most support for came from people who identify as “liberal,” with 37 percent support — still 10 points behind liberals who oppose the tolling plan.

Such poll numbers are to be expected for many reasons: First, there’s the well-known congestion pricing phenomenon known as “the Valley of Political Death,” wherein residents of cities lose faith in congestion pricing just as it’s about to launch — only to see the poll numbers rebound once the policy is put into effect.

Before Hochul killed congestion pricing, she alluded to the valley, saying that she had the “courage” to “fight for” this “transformative” policy. (Well, that was then.)

Second, what else can you expect from voters after being inundated these last few weeks with a drumbeat of negativity about the transit-boosting toll? Activists saw that coming.

“It makes sense that New Yorkers think congestion pricing is bad because for months now they’ve been fed the message, from Hochul and others with cold feet, that it needs to be reconsidered,” said Sara Lind of Open Plans, a sister organization of Streetsblog. “They’re reading the room and assuming there must be a logical reason for such a sudden reversal. For better or worse, people take cues from elected leaders, which is why we need every supporter of congestion pricing to be clear and vocal about that. We need to be hearing from politicians who believe congestion pricing is the right, and necessary, move for the city.”

Politicians run for the hills, however. As Hell Gate reported yesterday, Hochul has twisted herself into such a pretzel over congestion pricing that now she’s claiming she killed the toll because it would affect pizza delivery (presumably because trucking companies would pay a toll to deliver tomato sauce, flour and mozzarella to pizzerias — though the passed-along cost would amount to pennies).

So it’s no surprise that Hochul and her equally craven legislature are currently negotiating a way to save face by “massaging” their failed effort from June to fund transit (yet do nothing else that congestion pricing was designed to fix), as amNY and Christopher Robbins reported:

The best part of the poll, of course, is that Hochul’s approval rating remains in the basement, as the Post reported. So she did the wrong thing and it didn’t even help her!

Speaking of the Post — that paper never should have let Nolan Hicks go, given his eloquence earlier this week in Curbed, where he called Hochul’s contention that congestion pricing would hurt Manhattan’s recovery one of “the great paradox of Manhattan in the post-pandemic era.” Hicks continued:

There’s no shortage of traffic. There’s a shortage of people. The streets are full and maybe never have been fuller — backups to the tunnels and bridges are commonplace well after rush hour ends, and buses and ambulances have never been slower. There’s no space left for cars. Yet, entire office towers sit empty and Broadway theaters struggle to sell out. Manhattan, after all, is smaller than Dallas–Fort Worth International Airport. Even if every car were smaller than a Mini Cooper, say 10 feet long and five feet wide, that still adds up to one person per 50 square feet. That space on a subway train can move two dozen people at a time.

The shift from trains to cars has itself become a major drag on Manhattan’s recovery, and the sooner we get back to the business of bringing people into Manhattan instead of traffic, the sooner we get Manhattan back in business.

If Congestion Kathy had listened to such reason, maybe her poll numbers wouldn’t be so low.

In other news from an otherwise slow day on the local scene:

• Like Streetsblog, other outlets covered a City Council committee’s vote to put the needs of car drivers over the need to build more housing. (amNY)
• Whaddya know? Mayor Adams, no friend of the press, says that NYPD Deputy Chief Kaz Daughtry might have over-reacted in threatening straight-shooting Daily News police bureau chief Rocco Parascandola (NYDN). Hell Gate blamed the NYPD, while amNY played it straight.
• New would-be vice president Tim Walz once sped! (NY Post)
• Check out the greenest blocks in Brooklyn. (Gothamist)