BLUNDER ROAD: Garden State has Spent $1M in Failed Bid to Block Congestion Pricing

He fought the law … and it was very expensive!

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy’s quixotic bid to stop the Big Apple’s congestion pricing program in federal court has cost Garden State taxpayers more than $1 million so far, according to records obtained by Streetsblog.

The payments, which date from October 2023 through November 2024, were detailed on a ledger of approved attorney invoices that was obtained from Murphy’s office under New Jersey’s open records law. (The overall cost is likely to climb higher as there was a string of court hearings in December.)

But Murphy’s million-dollar gambit has had about as much success in court as a Dr. Evil scheme, despite spending big to put Randy Mastro, one of the region’s highest profile attorneys, on the case.

Federal judges in both Manhattan and Newark largely rejected Mastro’s arguments and allowed the $9 toll to begin on Jan. 5.

The early results have been astonishing.

The amount of traffic in Midtown and Lower Manhattan plunged in the immediate aftermath, with MTA stats showing the number of cars entering the Central Business District dropped by 7 percent.

Roughly 1-in-14 cars being left at home might sound like it would only make small dent in New York’s notorious traffic, but it has had an outsized effect.  

For example, Canal Street, one of the most congested crosstown parking lots, which links the Manhattan Bridge to the Holland Tunnel, experienced a 34-percent decrease in trip times during rush hour after the charge took effect.

Drivers from New Jersey and the outer boroughs reported that commutes into Manhattan were sometimes a half-hour shorter.

One bus operator told The Bergen Record that the de-congested Manhattan streets were like running buses in Wichita, a Kansas city with a population of about 400,000.

Photos of streets that were once parking lots-but-transformed into open passageways after the toll repeatedly went viral on social media sites.

Murphy and other Jersey politicians — most notably, gubernatorial candidate Rep. Josh Gottheimer — have bashed and attempted to block the toll, which was passed to help modernize New York’s subways, buses and railroads.

The program’s early success in slashing traffic and speeding commutes hasn’t reversed their position though.

Gottheimer — who was recently busted photoshopping a year-end Spotify feature to fake enthusiasm for Bruce Springsteen — announced on Thursday that he would renew his bid to pass federal legislation that would nix the toll.

In a statement, which was joined Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-Staten Island) and Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Atlantic City), he argued that “New York’s crushing Congestion Tax” is “whacking hardworking commuters,” despite shortened commutes.

“I’m not going to sit around and let the MTA balance their woefully mismanaged, out-of-control budget by picking the pockets of Jersey and New York families,” he added.

Despite the claims of mismanagement, stats show the MTA is doing a far better job of running its trains than New Jersey. Metro-North’s trains are averaging nearly 350,000 miles between breakdowns, which is seven times better than NJ Transit’s average.

The NJ Transit reliability breakdown has been exacerbated by Amtrak’s power grid woes. Despite the flailing service, Murphy forced NJT to hike fares 18 percent last year in a bid to cover its post-pandemic budget shortfalls.  

New York politicians told the MTA to design and implement the toll in 2019. By law, it must fund $15 billion in repairs, upgrades and expansion projects across the MTA’s network of buses, subways and commuter railroads.

Most of the money, $12 billion, is flowing to projects for the MTA’s city transit systems.

Major expenditures already earmarked for the money include: a recent order of new trains, two major projects to computerize the signals on key parts of the A/C line in Brooklyn and the B/D/F/M lines in Manhattan and construction of the long-awaited expansion of the Second Avenue Subway into East Harlem.

Another $3 billion is set aside for the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North.

Sources told Gothamist amid the legal back and forth that New York offered New Jersey a “nine-figure” settlement to drop the case. Murphy did not take the deal.

“Turning down a nine-figure settlement to spend seven-figures on legal fees is an egregious misjudgment by Phil Murphy and it will stain his legacy,” said Danny Pearlstein, the top spokesman for pro-straphanger group, the Riders Alliance. “While he will be paying for even more courtroom antics in the New Year, he needs to look at himself in the mirror and ask why he’s committed himself to this folly.”

Murphy’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The MTA declined to comment.