De Blasio Backs Congestion Pricing In New MTA Overhaul Plan

NEW YORK — Add congestion pricing to the short list of things Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo agree on. The long-debated tolling scheme is part of a 10-point plan the mayor and governor unveiled Tuesday to reform and fund the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

The joint proposal would also restructure the beleaguered agency and put revenue from internet sales and marijuana taxes generated in New York City toward the MTA.

Congestion pricing and the two new cash streams would together generate more than $1.4 billion in annual revenue and raise $22 billion toward the MTA's next five-year capital plan, according to a Cuomo spokesman.

In a prepared statement, de Blasio said the plan addressed his concerns about congestion pricing, which would toll drivers to enter Manhattan's core below 61st Street.

The mayor had worried about the tolls harming New Yorkers such as those who need to drive from the outer boroughs to get medical care. But the new proposal will provide exemptions and discounts for people with such difficulties. Emergency vehicles will also be exempt from tolls.

The Democratic mayor still thinks his proposed millionaires tax "provides the best, most sustainable revenue source for the transit improvements our city needs," he said. "But the time to act is running out, and among all alternatives, congestion pricing has the greatest prospects for immediate success."

The plan is a landmark agreement between two frequent political rivals on how to address one of the New York City's most urgent and persistent crises.

The proposal was released a day before the MTA Board's planned vote on planned fare and toll hikes. The board postponed the vote last month after Cuomo — who effectively controls the MTA — questioned whether the increases were necessary.

It also comes about nine months after New York City Transit President Andy Byford unveiled his Fast Forward plan to modernize the city's subway and bus systems, which has a hefty price tag of about $40 billion over 10 years.

The plan won praise from Acting MTA Chairman Fernando Ferrer, a Cuomo appointee, who said it will spare straphangers a 30 percent fare hike if the state Legislature adopts it.

"This proposal is a holistic cure for much of what ails the MTA, and I hope to see it enacted swiftly for the benefit of our 8.5 million daily customers," Ferrer said in a statement.

Cuomo has embraced a congestion pricing plan that would charge drivers to enter the busiest section of Manhattan while keeping the East River bridges and the FDR Drive free. The tolls will be set by December 2020, city and state officials said.

While the state Legislature has taken some initial steps toward congestion pricing, the full plan still requires approval. A form of congestion pricing that would have tolled the bridges died in Albany in 2008.

De Blasio has pushed for an income tax hike on the richest New Yorkers as an alternate MTA funding stream, but his opposition to congestion pricing has softened in recent months. Tuesday's plan tackled two of his major concerns by ensuring the toll and tax revenue goes into a "lockbox" for the MTA and that drivers with hardships would get a break.

The plan would also significantly restructure the MTA by bringing parts of its six sub-agencies — the New York City Transit Authority, the Long Island Rail Road, the Metro-North Railroad, the Staten Island Railway, MTA Capital Construction and MTA bus — under one roof.

The proposal would centralize the entities' "common functions" such as human resources, engineering and advertising to cut costs and improve efficiency, officials said. The reorganization plan will be finished by June and does not require legislative approval, officials said.

Reforming the management is just as important as bringing in new funding, Cuomo said Tuesday. The governor has slammed the MTA's bureaucracy for weeks, arguing the agency's structure is so diffuse that no elected official is solely accountable for it.

"It's a 1960s-style holding company with a 1960s-sytle mentality," Cuomo said on WNYC. "We have to consolidate the functions at the MTA, bring in a different culture, make the board functional and operational so we know that we're getting efficiency from the riders' fare."

The plan also calls for:

• Limiting fare hikes to 2 percent per year, similar to the MTA's commitment to net 4 percent increases every two years.
• Ensuring MTA Board members' terms end when the elected official who appointed them leaves office.
• A crackdown on fare evasion through a partnership between the city, state, MTA and local district attorneys. Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr. has declined to prosecute most fare evasion cases for about a year.
• An independent audit of the MTA and an outside review of its capital plan. The latter task would be performed by a new Regional Transit Committee comprising experts without a financial relationship to the MTA, officials said.
• Using a design-build approach to all major construction projects, meaning the same company would handle both the design and construction of each project.
• Finishing the MTA's $836 million Subway Action Plan.

Transit advocates have pushed for congestion pricing for months as the best way to address the subway's festering woes. With Cuomo and de Blasio finally on the same side, it's time for state lawmakers to step up and make it happen, said John Raskin, the executive director of Riders Alliance.

"The agreement reflects a growing recognition that congestion pricing alone won't solve the transit crisis, but that it is the single largest source of revenue on the table and should be the cornerstone of a bigger funding package," Raskin said in a statement. "The transit crisis is urgent and it won't go away without billions of dollars to upgrade equipment and modernize the transit system."