Residents in Staten Island, eastern Queens, and the Bronx who lack reliable subway access are now paying tolls just to reach jobs south of 60th Street. Is this progressive transit policy or regressive taxation?
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Add your commentBorn and raised in Throggs Neck. My commute to my job in midtown just went up $9 a day. That's $180 a month on top of the Triborough toll I already pay. I'm a union electrician, I don't exactly have the option to 'just take the subway' when I'm hauling tools and equipment. Can someone explain to me how this is progressive again? Because from where I'm sitting it looks like Albany and the MTA telling working people to go pound sand.
Nobody who actually lives in Bayside or Flushing and works a trade job asked for this. We've been paying taxes into the MTA for years while watching subway service we barely even use deteriorate. And now on top of that we pay a toll. At what point do outer borough residents get to say enough? Serious question.
I want to challenge everyone defending this on here: name me ONE subway line with frequent, reliable service that connects eastern Queens — like Rosedale, Laurelton, Springfield Gardens — to lower Manhattan. I'll wait. Those neighborhoods are transit deserts and the people who live there aren't choosing cars as some kind of lifestyle preference. They have no other option. Defending the policy without acknowledging this is intellectually dishonest.
Regressive taxation. Full stop. A $9 toll hits a $40,000/year home health aide much harder than it hits a $200,000/year attorney. This is Economics 101. I don't understand why people who claim to care about inequality are tying themselves in knots defending this.
Fun fact most people don't know: London's congestion charge, which everyone cites as the gold standard, had robust low-income exemptions AND invested heavily in bus service in underserved areas BEFORE the charge went live. NYC did neither. We just slapped on the toll and called it a day. That's not transit policy, that's revenue generation with a green paint job.
The MTA has been mismanaging money for literally decades. Billions in debt, constant fare hikes, service that gets worse every year. And now we're supposed to trust THEM with congestion pricing revenue to finally fix things? No thank you. Show me the results first, then maybe we can talk about new tolls.
my dad worked as a home health aide in Staten Island his whole life, drove a beat up honda to his patients because there was no other way to reach half of them. people acting like everyone driving is some rich guy in an escalade have clearly never spent a week on the north shore of staten island trying to figure out how to get anywhere without a car lmao
The $15 figure is wrong, the current rate for most passenger vehicles during peak hours is $9. But that's beside the point — the pause-and-restart situation was a complete embarrassment and it completely undermined public trust in the whole program. You can't build a serious transit policy on that kind of political whiplash. The people who need certainty most are the commuters trying to plan their budgets.
the whole 'outer borough working class' framing is a little misleading tho. plenty of people driving into the central business district are not exactly struggling. who do you think is sitting in those cars in midtown traffic at 9am? a lot of them are making very comfortable salaries and chose to drive because its convenient. the toll just makes them pay for that convenience.
Actually the congestion pricing revenue is specifically earmarked for capital improvements to the subway and buses, it literally CANNOT be redirected to the general fund. So the argument that the MTA will waste it doesn't really hold up legally. And better subway service disproportionately helps lower-income New Yorkers who rely on transit. The math works if you zoom out.
Honestly? Good. The congestion in midtown was absolutely unbearable and something had to give. I lived in Park Slope for 12 years before moving to Jersey and even I could see that the car culture in this city was strangling it. The revenue goes to the subway, which benefits everyone including outer borough residents who take the train.
I remember when you could drive down Fifth Avenue in the 90s and it was actually manageable. Now it's a parking lot from 34th to 59th basically all day. Something had to change, I just wish the city had been more thoughtful about who gets hit hardest. A sliding scale based on income would have been fair. What we got isn't.
Moved here from Austin two years ago and honestly the amount of cars in this city still shocks me. New York has more transit infrastructure than almost any American city and people still insist on driving everywhere. The toll is fine. Europe has had this forever.
Wait I thought the toll was $15 not $9? Either way its too much and governor Hochul already paused it once which proves even she knew it wasnt ready. If your own governor pumps the brakes on your signature policy thats not exactly a ringing endorsement of the planning that went into it
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