Tuesday’s Headlines: The Toll of Lies Edition

There’s an old joke among my people: Two elderly women are at a Catskills resort. One says to the other, “The food here is terrible!” And the other complains, “Yeah, and such small portions!”

And now we have the congestion pricing version: Two Lower Manhattan business owners are talking. “Congestion pricing has killed all my business because no one will drive here anymore.” And the other says, “Yeah, and it takes me longer to get to work!”

That, more or less, summarizes my reaction to a new report put out by the anti-congestion pricing group, “Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side,” which is claiming that the $9 toll to drive into the neighborhood is killing business.

In the impossible-to-believe survey, 71.4 percent of local business owners claimed that the toll had hurt customer traffic while 52.7 percent said the toll had ruined employee commute times.

So which one is it?! If there’s less traffic, perhaps there are fewer customers, but it can’t also be harder to get to work, right? (Never mind that MTA figures show that rising numbers of subway riders into the congestion relief zone more than make up for any loss of people in cars.)

Of course, it’s not the first time that demagogues have tried to blame congestion pricing for everything. This false narrative even made it into (however implausibly) the recent bankruptcy filing of the late great chicken finger joint, Sticky’s. According to the website W42St, the owners claimed that the impact of the Jan. 5 start of congestion pricing was “as swift as it was severe,” costing the company hundreds of thousands in revenue.

Scratch that claim a bit and you realize it’s a deep-fried lie; first of all, Sticky’s initially filed for bankruptcy protection last year, well before congestion pricing had begun. And, more important, the company had told the court it had debts of more than $1.4 million, including nearly $450,000 owed to a food service supply company and the burden of substantial lease obligations.

Most important, just like with Chinatown, you can’t possibly argue that people are driving from the suburbs for chicken fingers, no matter how excellent they may be. Occam’s Razor suggests that congestion pricing is not the reason that Sticky’s went belly up.

After all, the evidence shows that businesses are doing better downtown, as the New Republic reported — the latest site to draw that conclusion from the relevant data. And our friend Julie Tighe told us on X about a conversation she had with a bus driver: “I heard they are trying to take away congestion pricing and I sure hope not. It’s a real big help — especially on 42nd St.”

Meanwhile, every honest driver we speak to admits he or she doesn’t like paying the toll, but also admits that commutes have been faster. So let’s put this absurd myth to rest.

In other news:

• The city Department of Transportation announced a new public service campaign to get drivers to stop hitting us, but the press release reminded our own Kevin Duggan of a story he once wrote about a similar campaign.
• In related carnage news, a hit-and-run truck driver killed a man who tried to retrieve something he’d dropped. (NYDN, Gothamist)
• Subway crime continues to go down (NYDN), part of a larger trend all over the city (NY Post).
• Gothamist covered an effort by our friends at Open Plans to get more automated enforcement of double-parking.
• The Times finally got around to covering the U.S. Department of Transportation’s anti-congestion pricing, taxpayer-financed propaganda video that we covered last week.
• The Gray Lady’s second-by-second coverage of last year’s police shooting of Derell Mickles was welcome but similarly tardy.
• Also tardy: The Brooklyn Paper’s coverage of the sentencing of the killer of Katie Harris, which we reported on last week.