The legal battle over New York's congestion pricing is not over yet, thanks to neighboring New Jersey.
Federal Judge Leo Gordon has set a Friday 3 p.m. hearing in Newark — just 33 hours before congestion pricing is presently scheduled to begin — to consider a Temporary Restraining Order filed by the state of New Jersey.
Garden State officials and attorneys who’ve argued that Bergen County and other areas west of the Hudson will suffer environmentally from new traffic patterns declined comment. But a spokesman for Governor Kathy Hochul indicated the nation’s first congestion toll will begin as scheduled.
“Congestion pricing is still going to take effect on Sunday January 5th,” said Avi Small, the New York governor’s press secretary.
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Hochul had paused congestion pricing back in June, but unpaused it in November at a lower fee.
Years in the making, the congestion pricing program tolls drivers entering Manhattan south of 61st Street. The peak price for cars with EZ-Pass is $9. Off peak rates drop to $2.25. The MTA has touted the toll as a way to generate billions to modernize mass transit.
New Yorkers who rely on the subway say the new fee mirrors what several international cities have implemented.
“I lived in London a little bit and I know it’s helped a lot there,” said Claire O’Donnell-McCarthy, who lives just north of the Manhattan zone on the west side.
She scoffed at New Jersey’s 11th-hour request for an injunction: “it’s not their place to say what we do in Manhattan.”
But City Council member Bob Holden of Queens, who has also sued the MTA on the grounds the new toll hurts outer borough residents disproportionately, predicts even if the congestion cameras get switched on this weekend, another court hearing in a case brought by Hempstead looms in just two weeks.
“It’ll start but then it’ll stop. That’s my guess,” Holden told NBC New York.
The MTA declined to comment on all the last minute legal maneuvers.
