Strange Bedfellows: NJ Gov. Murphy, Trump Intersect on Congestion Pricing
NEW YORK—Following the failed attempts in federal courts by New Jersey to stop New York’s congestion pricing program, Gov. Phil Murphy is now appealing to the White House to kill the plan.
In an open letter to President Trump on Inauguration Day Monday, he wrote that one of the areas where he believes the priorities of New Jersey and the new Trump administration intersect is over congestion pricing.
Following years of environmental study and reviews by the federal government—along with multiple legal challenges brought by a dozen opposing factions, including the Murphy Administration—drivers are now being charged to enter Manhattan’s congestion relief zone at 60th Street and below since Jan. 5. Gov. Murphy reminded Trump, who is a former New York resident, of his outspoken criticism of the plan. He noted that in May on his social media platform candidate Trump said he would “TERMINATE” the toll during his first week in office.
Among the arguments made in Gov. Murphy, he wrote that the congestion pricing plan “is a disaster for working- and middle-class New Jersey commuters and residents who need or want to visit lower Manhattan and now need to pay a big fee on top of the bridge and tunnel tolls they already pay.”
He also wrote that “New Jersey communities are not being fully compensated for the additional traffic and attendant pollution that will be re-routed to them because of congestion pricing.”
Attorneys for the MTA stated in court that $9.8 million has been earmarked for New Jersey communities for pollution mitigation due to changing traffic patterns. It was also noted that a federal judge in Newark knocked down New Jersey’s effort to pause the plan earlier this month, ruling that a 4,000-page environmental assessment of the plan was sufficient to proceed, and the feds had been within their right to approve it.