Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Winnie Hu

One battle over congestion pricing is over. But now that the plan is officially coming to New York City, the next fight has begun: Who will pay, how much will it cost and who might get a break?

The outcry began almost immediately after Cuomo and state lawmakers reached a deal last weekend to make New York the first city in the country to enact congestion pricing. Starting in 2021, drivers entering the heart of Manhattan could pay $11 to $25, money that will be used to pay for improvements to the city’s troubled subway.

State leaders were careful to avoid including too many details in the legislation, in part over concerns it would be harder to pass. Instead, they left many of the difficult decisions to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and a yet-to-be-appointed six-member “traffic mobility review” board.

But that has opened the way for various groups to try to influence the outcome in the months ahead and to make their case for exemptions and discounts.

“We will be having discussions with the panel to educate them on the trucking industry and the challenges they have when it comes to delivering in the zone,” said Kendra Hems, president of the Trucking Association of New York. “We feel very strongly that the industry should be exempt from paying.”

But state officials and transit advocates say allowing too many loopholes could prevent the city from achieving its two major goals: reducing congestion and raising $15 billion for public transit.

“The intent is not to have a whole list of exemptions,” said Robert Mujica, the state budget director. “You’re trying to discourage people from driving into the zone — that’s the only way to reduce traffic.”

But that will not deter people from trying.

“Every constituency in town is going to ask for a special exemption and carve out, but part of what makes congestion pricing work is that it’s fair and applies broadly,” said John Raskin, executive director of the Riders Alliance, an advocacy group.

The stakes are high to get it right. New York could serve as an example for other cities, such as Los Angeles and Philadelphia, that are also considering the idea. If it is a debacle, other cities might abandon their plans.

In London, where congestion pricing began in 2003, the toll has risen to about $15 per day, from about $8. Residents who live in the zone get a discount, as do owners of low-emission vehicles. Taxis and other ride-hailing cars are exempt.

The New York legislation included only a broad framework: The congestion zone is below 60th Street in Manhattan, except for the West Side Highway and FDR Drive, two busy roadways on each side of the island. Emergency vehicles and those carrying disabled people are exempt. People who live in the zone and earn less than $60,000 a year can receive a tax credit.

The framework has left ample room for complaints.

Leaders in New Jersey say its drivers could get gouged. Gov. Philip Murphy asked Cuomo for a discount for those who use the George Washington Bridge, the world’s busiest bridge.

Steven Fulop, the mayor of Jersey City, said on Twitter that New Jersey should seek revenge by tolling New York drivers to pay for upgrades for New Jersey Transit, the state’s sputtering commuter rail and bus network. If some bridges and tunnels are discounted and not others, he said, that could lead to major traffic jams at certain crossings.

“If you selectively exempt people based on politics, that’s a big issue for us,” Fulop said.

The backlash in the region has been swift. About 54 percent of New York City voters oppose congestion pricing and more than half believe it would not reduce traffic, according to a Quinnipiac University Poll released on Tuesday.

Drivers will likely pay $12 to $14 for cars and around $25 for trucks entering the city during peak business hours, and less at night and on weekends, said Samuel I. Schwartz, a traffic expert known as Gridlock Sam who was one of the architects of the congestion pricing plan. But if the authority starts handing out exemptions, that would likely push up tolls for everyone else to $15 or more.

“I think there should be just about no exemptions,” he said. “People using their cars contribute to congestion. It doesn’t matter what group they belong to.”

But even Schwartz has not been able to escape the calls for exemptions from friends and neighbors in northern Manhattan. “People are calling me asking for their own personal exemptions — even neighbors of mine,” he said. “I’m not terribly popular at the moment.”

Sean Hughes, a spokesman for Coach USA, which operates hundreds of buses in Manhattan daily, said he has been calling, emailing and meeting with state lawmakers to make a case for exempting buses. Hughes said buses reduce congestion by carrying people who would otherwise be driving.

“Busing is a form of mass transit that is a solution to congestion,” he said. “We should be exempt.”

Several motorcycle clubs have also pressed state lawmakers for an exemption or discount, with their members saying that they should not have to pay the same fees as drivers since their two-wheelers contribute less to congestion than cars.

“One car can take the space of six bikes,” said Joseph Notovitz, 64, a branding specialist from Long Island who regularly rides his motorcycle to and from Manhattan and weaves around cars trapped in gridlock.

The transportation authority, the sprawling agency that oversees the subway, buses and commuter railroads, will determine the tolls and exemptions based on recommendations by a “traffic mobility review” board. The authority’s board, which has representatives from across the region, must also approve the tolls.

The authority will appoint the mobility board, which must include one member recommended by New York City’s mayor. One member must live in the area served by the Metro-North Railroad and another must live along the Long Island Rail Road. Its findings are due around November 2020.

Mujica said the mobility board will review a traffic study analysis of bridges and tunnels and consider public input before deciding whether to credit drivers who already pay tolls. The board, which will likely have members with experience in public transportation and finance, will also come up with a plan for taxis and ride-hail vehicles, including Uber.

Uber, the popular ride-hail app, has been a key booster for congestion pricing. The company says it has spent more than $2 million to support the proposal. Uber has paid lobbyists more than $1 million in New York since 2017 and spent nearly $200,000 on television ads and phone calls to support congestion pricing last year, according to state records.

Uber officials say congestion pricing is the best way to relieve traffic in the city, instead of blaming Uber for congested streets and imposing a cap on new ride-hail vehicles. Josh Gold, a spokesman for Uber, declined to comment on whether Uber might seek an exemption from the congestion toll.

State Sen. Todd Kaminsky, a Democrat from Long Island, said he is pushing for a credit for Long Island commuters who use the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge on the way into Manhattan. “These people should not get double tolled,” he said.

The authority’s bridges and tunnels division will technically oversee the tolling program. Its acting president, Daniel DeCrescenzo, along with the new MTA chairman, Patrick Foye, will have considerable power over the plan. So will Cuomo, who appointed Foye and has taken near total control over the transit agency.

Taxi leaders are writing a letter to Cuomo and Foye asking for an exemption for an industry that has already been decimated by the rise of Uber. Nicolae Hent, a Queens taxi driver, said the new tolls in Manhattan could add up to hundreds of dollars a month.

“It’s another nail in the coffin,” he said. “Of course, I’m going to fight.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/nyregion/congestion-pricing-trucks-new-jersey.html" id="0ef46400-3c1b-36b5-a863-8b55a1c508a8">The New York Times</a>.

A bus company has called lawmakers in New York asking for an exemption. A mayor in New Jersey warned drivers they might be tolled twice when they leave the state. Truckers are putting together a lobbying strategy. And taxi drivers have written a letter to Gov. Andrew Cuomo seeking a reprieve.

Congestion Pricing Is Coming. Now Everyone Wants a Break.

<h1>NEW YORK — Four days after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s surprise decision to call off the L train shutdown, his plan faced growing skepticism over whether it is the best way to repair the subway tunnel.</h1>

The plan has been criticized as being a temporary fix and a risky solution since it has not been tried in New York before. Seeking to address the critics, officials from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority sat down with reporters Monday to defend the decision and to explain their new approach to fixing the tunnel between Manhattan and Brooklyn.

The subway’s leader, Andy Byford, said he supported Cuomo’s plan, adding that he would make sure the work was safe and he believed it was the best option for riders whose lives would have been upended by a full shutdown that would have lasted more than a year.

“We had a robust plan,” Byford said in an interview at the authority’s headquarters in lower Manhattan. “This is a better plan.”

The solution, developed by a team of engineers from Columbia and Cornell universities over the last month, relies on a “racking system” to house the tunnel’s cables on the wall, instead of encasing them inside a separate structure, known as a bench wall.

Still, elected officials and MTA board members have criticized the secrecy over the announcement and raised questions about whether the plan for the tunnel, which was built in 1924, was a permanent solution. Weak parts of the bench wall would be secured rather than replaced.

Michael Horodniceanu, the authority’s former president of capital construction, said the new solution might only last 15 to 20 years while the earlier proposal, calling for a full rehabilitation, could last more than 80 years.

“A repair cannot last as long as a total rebuild,” said Horodniceanu, who is now an engineering professor at New York University.

But Byford said he believed the substance that will be used to “entomb” the bench walls, known as fiber reinforced polymer, could last 40 years.

“This is certainly a long-term fix,” Byford said. “If it were as some have suggested — if we were having a Band Aid offered to us — I for one would have rejected that.”

Under the revised plan, starting in late April, repair work would happen on nights and weekends, when one of the tunnel’s two tubes would close. But closing one tube would still be significantly disruptive for New Yorkers who rely on the L train.

“When you have only one tube in service, you may have three to four trains maximum an hour,” Horodniceanu said. “You’re going to have people who are going to wait on the platform for 20 minutes.”

The old plan, which would have closed the entire tunnel for 15 months to repair damage from Hurricane Sandy, prompted outrage in Williamsburg and other neighborhoods in Brooklyn along the L line. Some people moved away and others began to plot intricate plans to reach Manhattan.

Elected officials held a news conference Sunday to complain about how the new plan was foisted on them without many details. State Sen. Brad Hoylman, who represents a slice of Manhattan along the L line, compared the process to marrying someone you had never met.

“I kind of feel like we were planning a wedding for the last three years,” said Hoylman, a Democrat. “We get to the altar and not only does the groom run off, but you look at the guy next to you, and you’ve never seen him before.”

At the same time, New Yorkers have asked why subway officials had not thought of the solution sooner. Cuomo, a Democrat in his third term, complained to reporters last week of a “transportation industrial complex,” made up of consultants and contractors, that benefit from the MTA doing things the way they always have.

Byford, who has led the subway for a year and pledged to turn around terrible service, said the agency had considered a racking system for the L train project before his arrival, but there were concerns about “slinging the cables off what is a very old tunnel.” He said the panel of experts had found a way to make it feasible.

Byford said he had started a “due diligence exercise” to get answers to some of his “outstanding questions” about the new repair plan, like whether removing unstable parts of the bench wall could create silica dust that would be hazardous to riders.

“Dust mitigation is one of the main questions I need to have answered,” Byford said.

Subway officials said they had also started discussions with the Federal Transit Administration about whether the agency would need certain federal approvals for the project — another potential roadblock.

Subway officials are also deciding on the best time to close the L train each night. The work is expected to take 15 to 20 months. More than 6,000 riders use the tunnel traveling to Brooklyn each weekday between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m., but the number drops off after that, Byford said.

Byford said he planned to meet this week with Polly Trottenberg, the city’s transportation commissioner, to discuss which travel options to offer to displaced riders on nights and weekends, including buses.

As for the racking system, Byford said it was already being used on the No. 7 line extension to Hudson Yards on the Far West Side of Manhattan.

When he introduced the plan, Cuomo said the technology was innovative and was used in other cities, like London and Hong Kong.

In fact, in London, the subway has hung power and signal cables on its tunnel walls using brackets, shelves and other fixtures since the system was founded in 1863, often because there was no choice. Most of its tunnels are too narrow to accommodate bench walls. The cables, which are hung on the sides of walls and also overhead, run along parts of the deepest and most narrow tunnels, including the Northern, Central and Bakerloo lines.

Officials at Transport for London, the operator of the London Underground, said it was easier to repair and maintain the cables when they are not built in the walls. Although the cables can be vulnerable to leaks and track fires, officials said that it is not a major problem because the cables can easily be inspected and repaired.

In New York, bench walls serve a second purpose: to evacuate passengers during an emergency. In London, riders exit the front or back of the train, once the power to the tracks is shut off, and walk directly on the tracks.

The main complaint about hanging cables is that some riders view the jumble to be an eyesore. In some prominent locations, workers put covers over the cables to hide them.

Amtrak said it will now consider using hanging cables, instead of bench walls, for repairs to its tunnel under the East River that was also damaged by Hurricane Sandy. Those repairs could happen in the next six years.

But Amtrak officials said they are not currently considering hanging cables in its tunnel under the Hudson River. The design plan for repairing that tunnel and building a new tunnel under the Hudson River, known as the Gateway project, calls for using bench walls.

Veronique Hakim, the authority’s managing director, called the new plan a “game changer” and said it showed that the agency was willing to try new things.

“This is a new approach,” she said. “We’re embracing it, and we’re excited about it.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="6ac7c02d-1af9-4ac7-af06-5feab2ad799b" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/07/nyregion/l-train-shutdown.html">The New York Times</a>.

Is the new fix for the L Train apocalypse too good to be true?

The plan has been criticized as being a temporary fix and a risky solution since it has not been tried in New York before.

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Pulse Kenya is the most followed news and entertainment platform in Kenya. It informs and engages young Kenyans around the clock and provides updates by the hour.

Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Winnie Hu

Articles written by the author

Congestion Pricing Is Coming. Now Everyone Wants a Break.

Is the new fix for the L Train apocalypse too good to be true?