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NEW YORK: New York wants to introduce car-loving America’s first congestion charge, but the move faces fierce opposition – including from the city’s famous yellow taxis.
The plan, similar to pricing long in place in London and Singapore, aims to improve air quality in the Big Apple by easing Manhattan’s traffic-choked streets.
It also seeks to raise much-needed revenue to upgrade a creaking subway system that is used by around four million New Yorkers every day.
The scheme, slated to start next year, is being challenged in court, highlighting the difficulty of levying drivers in a country where the car is king.
Officials insist the toll will help the environment by reducing pollution, and make the city that never sleeps more efficient by speeding up travel times.
“Congestion pricing is a generational opportunity,” said John McCarthy, a spokesman for New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA).
The plan would charge drivers for venturing below 60th Street in Manhattan, an area that encompasses the business districts of Midtown and Wall Street.
The MTA has not yet set rates, but is considering charging US$23 during rush hour and US$17 for off-peak times.
Taxi driver Wein Chin worries that the charge, which cabbies would pass on to customers, will mean fewer fares.
He earns around US$300 to US$400 a week and is already struggling to pay off a US$170,000 loan he owes for his taxi permit.
“I don’t know that I could survive, paying the mortgage, supporting a family,” the 55-year-old, who moved to the United States from Myanmar in 1987, told AFP.
The New York Taxi Workers Alliance, a union representing 21,000 cabbies, estimates the levy could see drivers lose US$8,000 a year in income.
Members have taken to the streets in recent weeks to demand they be exempted from the toll.
The union’s president, Bhairavi Desai, said the charge could sound the death knell for some drivers already hammered in recent years by a surge of Uber drivers and the pandemic.
“There are only so many ashes that the phoenix can rise out of,” she told AFP.
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