There was a time when I was so obsessed with Congestion Pricing that I couldn’t engage in a social activity without thoroughly going down the rabbit hole on it. My obsession reached such a point that my ex-wife instinctively elbowed me in the ribs before I could say “con..” One time her father brought it up and she shot a look that could have turned Medusa to stone.

Like most men, I have a strange obsession with traffic and my intrigue with Congestion Pricing started when I spent a term abroad in London, just as it was about to be adopted in 2003. I witnessed all of the initial controversy & hysterics over its impacts and stayed keenly in touch once it was implemented to great success.

Fundamentally, the concept of Congestion Pricing in dense urban areas holds significant economic appeal. More people want to be in central business districts than there is supply of adequate road space — without destroying them — that mass transit infrastructure is necessary. But even with mass transit options, the convenience, marginal cost and comfort of driving is enticing. The result is terrible congestion that impacts big cities most acutely. Congestion Pricing fixes this problem by putting a value on both congestion and the lack thereof. There is a huge loss in economic benefit when people are stuck in traffic. It’s harder to get to appointments, fewer deliveries can be made, fewer fares are taken by for-hire vehicles and more importantly, the appeal of road grade mass transit options like buses degraded, further stressing the system. By tolling access to central business districts and making it much more expensive to drive, the monetary cost, lack of convenience & comfort of taking mass transit becomes more appealing, or people will reconsider their plans.

Upon returning to the NY Metro area and starting my career at Accenture in 2004, as a young analyst, looking to make a name for myself, I drafted a memo to the head of the Government business suggesting that the company had unique capabilities to deliver on a Congestion Pricing solution in New York City. He laughed off my suggestion indicating that it was a political third rail and would never happen here. The opinion was well informed and based upon the complicated nature of the access roads to Manhattan. Because the bridges & tunnels across the Hudson River connect to New Jersey, they are tolled and maintained by the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. Most of the other bridges are tolled & maintained by the MTA. However, the bridges over the East River are all maintained by the City’s Department of Transportation and are not tolled for the benefit of certain City residents. But it also leads to terrible traffic in Lower Manhattan, Long Island City, Downtown Brooklyn & the South Bronx, where cars and trucks bypass more convenient tolled routes to take “Free options.”

Nonetheless, I had my Jack Ryan in The Hunt for Red October moment when Mike Bloomberg surpringly proposed Congestion Pricing on Earth Day 2007. Though I was only a junior consultant, I was also the most foremost expert in the entire company, so was put in charge of a crash team to pursue the opportunity. After spending six months and nearly $1MM of Accenture’s money to develop capabilities and respond to a City RFI, including hiring a graphic artist to render cartoons of the customer experience, the head of the practice was right: it had significant political opposition and didn’t pass the state legislature, despite receiving majority support in the City Council. In time, we all moved on. I got bored with transportation and moved on to Economic Development. The head of Accenture’s local government business moved on too: he’s been the CEO of Accenture’s Federal Government practice for the last 11 years. We’re both fine.

Fast forward about 10 years and Governor Andrew Cuomo took up the idea, largely because as a representative for the interests of rich suburban types, he wanted to ride in on his white horse to fix the subways, was tired of funding the MTA through state support and wanted a new revenue stream that wouldn’t come from suburban taxpayers (my opinion only) while also undercutting Mayor DiBlasio’s plan to fund the subways through higher taxes on the rich. This time, with more democratic support in the state legislature, the plan swiftly passed and was signed into law, but got stalled in Federal review under the Trump administration. The Biden administration unstuck the project and now it’s planned for launch before the end of the year.

For those infrastructure wonks, it’s being built & administered by the MTA, ostensibly with the same technology & infrastructure as the recently deployed cashless tolling gantries at MTA bridges & tunnels and by TransCore, its legacy EZ Pass vendor. In the end, I doubt if I’d stayed at Accenture it would have played any role in it. By placing Congestion Pricing under the MTA (and state control) however, the program became fatally flawed from the start. There are two reasons for this:

1. The MTA’s diffused board structure puts a majority of control outside the interests of New York City

2. It completely ignores the impact & interests of surrounding states

Though the institutional shortcomings are problematic, there have been other problems. When I was working at Accenture, I did some research and found that a colleague from my time in the British Parliament had moved into communications for Transport for London (TfL), the agency that oversees congestion pricing there. He was perfect to seek out for advice and gave great advice in 3 principles to ensure success:

1. Treat everyone the same - No one is going to like the charge, but as long as it’s perceived to be fair it saves a lot of headaches. Don’t exempt anyone, even though repeat users like for-hire vehicles and delivery vehicles (who have the most use for urban roads & benefit the most from a lack of congestion) only have to pay once

2. Link it to capital benefits - If you use congestion pricing to fund existing operations, it’ll just be perceived as a money grab. By investing in infrastructure that particularly benefits those impacted the most, people will understand what they’re getting for it

3. Charge what’s necessary to achieve a target average traffic flow - though London’s congestion charge isn’t dynamic, it’s regularly reviewed and was raised soon after implementation because it wasn’t effective enough. By doing so, it creates the impression again that the charge is not a tax so much as a financial measure tool to increase traffic flow

In its conception in NY, we’ve done everything wrong:

It’s not fair. The congestion charge is unfair to New Jersey and certain out of borough residents who already pay tolls. The MTA should have considered the total commuting costs to the Central Business District and credit back existing tolls. As a result, the same traffic inefficiencies that tie up access roads to the East River bridges won’t be fixed. The Supreme Court may in the end resolve this issue if New Jersey’s pending lawsuit against New York receives a favorable hearing.

It doesn’t dedicate its revenues. Though the MTA has laid out a formula to use 80% of proceeds to NYC subways, 10% to Metro North & 10% to Long Island Rail Road, how this will be ensured and which projects will be funded have yet been defined. In effect, it seems Congestion Pricing will be used to fund an existing capital plan that already stood on tenuous ground, rather than any specific new initiatives that would benefit people and more importantly, link Congestion Pricing to improved transportation that commuters can get behind. I’m not saying these projects aren’t worthwhile but it leads to the impression that these things would have happened anyway and Congestion Pricing is just a money grab that won’t demonstratively improve mass transit here.

It doesn’t have a speed target. I’ve heard yet to hear of anything about what goals they have. They have laid out a $23 charge, but how they got to the figure is opaque, but frustrates everyone and doesn’t provide appropriate discretion to raise or lower it based upon success or failure toward average transit speed.

Maybe I’m wrong, maybe this is just a communications problem and as we get closer to roll-out the PR machine will put a positive spin on the benefits of Congestion Pricing here. But I’m not optimistic.