Teacher's Union Sues to Stop New York Congestion Pricing Plan
The United Federation of Teachers argues that the near-5,000 page environmental report on New York's congestion pricing plan isn't thorough enough.
When the New York Legislature first approved a plan to toll drivers entering congested lower Manhattan in 2019, interest groups scrambled to get their own special exemptions to the forthcoming tolls.
Now, with all the exemptions handed out, the toll schedules set, and final implementation just around the corner, everyone who didn't get their requested carve-out is suing to halt the whole congestion pricing scheme.
On Thursday, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), which represents teachers in New York City's public school system, along with Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella and individual teachers filed a federal lawsuit accusing federal and New York transportation officials of failing to conduct an adequate environmental review of its congestion pricing program. Their lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
"Federal, state and city transportation authorities conducted a rushed and hurried approval process for the congestion pricing plan," said the union on X (formerly Twitter). "The current plan would not eliminate air and noise pollution or traffic, but would simply shift that pollution and traffic to the surrounding areas."
The teachers' lawsuit follows New Jersey's earlier environmental lawsuit challenging congestion pricing filed last summer. Both argue that federal highway officials greenlit New York's tolling program without conducting a thorough enough environmental analysis, as required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
NEPA requires that federal officials study the environmental effects of decisions they make—whether those are big decisions (like funding a new highway) or small ones (like approving a new vape device).
In New York's case, federal sign-off of congestion pricing was required before the state could impose tolls on federally funded highways entering Manhattan.
Because NEPA allows third parties to sue over allegedly inadequate environmental studies, it's become a favorite tool of environmentalists, slow growth activists, and garden variety NIMBY (not in my backyard) trying to stop or delay infrastructure projects.
To head off these legal challenges, federal agencies and their state partners will produce voluminous "litigation-proof" documents that attempt to leave no impact unexamined.
The final environmental assessment and related appendices produced by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA)—the New York state agency that would run New York City's congestion pricing scheme—is close to 5,000 pages long. The agency also collected another 28,000 pages of public comments during the years-long study and consultation process.
According to the teachers' union lawsuit, this all fails to adequately capture the impacts of congestion pricing.
Their lawsuit takes particular issue with the fact that the actual congestion toll schedule—which would be $15 for most drivers and $36 for larger vehicles—wasn't finalized until after the MTA's environmental assessment was completed.
Those final toll levels will be "most consequential" in changing "driver behavior and the resultant environmental impact," reads the lawsuit. Any study that purports to examine congestion pricing's environmental impact without those final tolls is therefore inadequate.
The federally blessed MTA Environmental Assessment did look at several different base tolling schedules, ranging from $9 to $23. It found that all proposed toll rates would reduce congestion on net, but could increase congestion in some local areas as drivers change their routes to avoid tolls.
The teacher's union lawsuit also attacks the MTA's "blind drive" to acquire more money for the public transit services it operates.
Putting aside the irony of a teacher's union accusing someone else of a self-interested cash grab, there is some merit to this particular complaint.
Congestion pricing has been used successfully in London, Singapore, and other international cities to reduce traffic and improve trip times. That benefits drivers with places to be, who can now pay a toll to avoid being struck in traffic. The revenue generated by congestion tolls is the icing on the cake.
But in New York, congestion pricing has been primarily pitched as a way of raising money for the terminally in-the-red MTA. That's arguably cost the policy some support from motorists who don't ride transit but will benefit from less congested roadways.
Politicians and union officials have since responded to motorists' anger by filing NEPA lawsuits to bring congestion pricing down.
The UFT lawsuit asks the federal district court to halt the implementation of congestion pricing, throw out the Environmental Assessment that's been performed on the program, and require an even more rigorous Environmental Impact Statement.
Rent Free is a weekly newsletter from Christian Britschgi on urbanism and the fight for less regulation, more housing, more property rights, and more freedom in America's cities.
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Fucking teachers.
Teacher Derangement Syndrome (TDS)
Only the government school teachers.
Hey, some of the nuns I had were pretty deranged.
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What would you expect if you chose to become a nun because you believed it was to serve God and the needy, then later you find out you’re a slave to the Church, don’t enjoy Social Security when you get too old to work, and you’re supporting high living priests, cardinals and others living the high life in the Vatican and elsewhere? Later you learn about the priests having sex with each other and underage children, and you must defend them.
Those deranged nuns were doing you a favor in your future when you avoided contributing to the Church as a result.
Stop taxpayer coerced funding of the public education system.
Yes to that, but why in the fuck is the taxpayer paying for the government arguing with itself over how much more it’s going to fuck over the taxpayer? Fucking ridiculous
I can only offer you this: New York
Can both sides lose?
Hey, a mass surveillance state with license plate scanners, chip readers and your every move tracked, all with highly secure borders around a public place inside your own country, and fees charged if you cross that social construct, fees set by a cabal of unelected bureaucrats? Honestly, I can’t think of anything more libertarian than that… I mean, other than a system of taxation which allows the government to peer into your bank account and make you account for every dollar in there… but other than that, this is peak libertarianism.
“… said the union on X (formerly Twitter).
Kinda off topic, but why do liberals continue to use X ( formerly Twitter) when it’s run by (so they say) a raving Nazi like Elon Musk?
Not to mention they are actually deadnaming X !
The unforgivable sin.
Because Mastodon turned out to be like a vegan meatloaf.
It is a bizarre reflex at this point. No one says ‘Apple (formerly known as macintosh)’ because it would be absurd.
Apple was never called Macintosh as a company. That was one type of computer Apple made. You do hear the former names for other things all the time: Sears Tower, Tappan Zee Bridge, etc.
Real New Yorkers say Sixth Avenue .
I think everyone (liberals and conservatives alike) is still saying that because “X” is a stupid and ambiguous name.
Like “google” or “yahoo”?
Those may be stupid, but they aren’t ambiguous.
On the other hand, there’s is a long tradition, derived from its use as a variable in mathematics, of using “X” as a generic placeholder for an arbitrary example of a given class. The result is that the phrase “social media site X” now can be construed as either a reference to “one of the class of social media sites, like Facebook or TikTok or Twitter, doesn’t matter which one” or to “that specific social media site that still uses the twitter.com domain”.
Musk would have been much better served, if he had to rename something to “X”, to rename the company “X” while leaving the name of the product “Twitter” (mirroring the relationship between Meta/Facebook or Alphabet/Google). And this is particularly true as long as the actual site remains located at twitter.com.
Looks like another leaked call has been released from the Reason offices. Nick Gillespie and Suderman arguing over Liz Wolfe.
Awesome! Thread winner of the week.
That’s fucking hilarious.
LOL!
Dark Brandon is on the tube celebrating the anniversary of J6. It’s like 1938 all over again.
Already? It’s only the 5th…
We all know libertarians love toll roads. My only problem is that I fear food trucks will have to raise the price of chalupas making them unable to compete with brick and mortar restaurants in Manhattan leading to fewer illegal immigrants entering the market and depriving the nation of the wealth they would otherwise have brought.
Think outside the tax zone.
The residents of Manhattan go to the trucks, not the other way around.
MTA gets less revenue, illegals get more customers.
Win – win.
But if Manhattanites leave the tax zone they’ll have to pay the toll or take MTA to get home. Or am I missing something? All I know for sure is that government bureaucrats in charge of tracking devices are the libertarian way.
Once they see life outside, why would they go back?
This is why the tracking devices will have to be implanted. I’m confident that the Reason Institute will publish a scholarly paper making that case shortly. It’ll be chock full of compelling statistics and quotes really smart people.
Congestion pricing has been used successfully in London, Singapore, and other international cities to reduce traffic and improve trip times. That benefits drivers with places to be, who can now pay a toll to avoid being struck in traffic. The revenue generated by congestion tolls is the icing on the cake.
But in New York, congestion pricing has been primarily pitched as a way of raising money for the terminally in-the-red MTA.
This is a rare case where New York was actually more honest about their goals than ‘other places’.
The goal in all those cases is to generate revenue, but a lot of places need to hide behind politically approved reasons to get there.
What in the world does this have to do with the weather? Where’s the racist report to go along with it?
I live in the congestion zone. Some other points.
1. Teachers also have reserved street parking. For downtown Manhattan that can run over $600/month.
2. There is just ONE friggin school that is pretty far from the subway in the toll zone. (PS 97).
3. Teachers are lumping their burdens along with emts/cops/firefighters. And when have to respond to a double homicide at 3AM on Saturday, it’s hard to get a subway. Didn’t realize 3rd period history was at that time, too.
4. Whatever burdens NYC teachers who work in toll zone have to commute, for millions of taxpayers in NYC it get way way worse.
If only there were SOME way taxpayers could avoid having to pay the costs of vexatious litigation and delaying tactics! Oh, wait … we could require the teachers unions and the other parties to pay the court costs of all the parties if they lose. And oh by the way … stop putting “right to sue” clauses in the idiotic regulatory laws Congress passes; or even (call me crazy!) STOP passing idiotic environmental protection laws and regulations!
I bet if the government teachers had gotten an exemption from having to pay the toll, the plan would have been just hunky-dory.
$15 a work day adds up to about a yearly cost of $3900 in after tax income, in what is already one of the most expensive areas of the country to live in. Why would the people getting fleeced by this artificial, government imposed cost not fight it tooth and nail?