New Jersey officials filed a lawsuit Friday seeking to block the MTA’s congestion pricing plan to charge motorists entering Manhattan south of 60th street.
The tolls are expected to go into place as early as next year, after the Federal Highway Administration recently gave its go-ahead. The MTA and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul say it’s necessary to reduce traffic, improve air quality and fund improvements to public transit.
The new suit brought by the State of New Jersey argues the federal government gave a “rubber stamp” to a required environmental review for the congestion pricing program, ignoring effects on Garden State residents. The suit alleges the tolls will make traffic surge in New Jersey communities “already overburdened with pollution.”
Rep. Josh Gottheimer, at a press conference alongside New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and other members of the state’s federal delegation, said the lawsuit was “punching back at a state that decided to use Jersey as their piggy bank to solve their years of criminal mismanagement at the MTA, the worst-run mass transit system in the entire nation.”
The federal review of the plan is detailed in an 868-page analysis released in August 2022, though the suit argues a more comprehensive study with more feedback from New Jersey residents is required under federal law. The review found that pollution in Bergen County from additional traffic will increase under most tolling scenarios under consideration for congestion pricing through at least 2045. A similar expected increase in traffic on the Cross Bronx Expressway outraged elected officials representing the borough with notoriously high asthma rates.
The suit, filed in New Jersey federal court, notes the MTA has proposed $130 million in mitigation efforts for any increased congestion in the Bronx, but none for New Jersey.
Gottheimer said backed-up trucks would spew “plumes of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, particulate matter, and even formaldehyde, a known carcinogen,…
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