Gov. Murphy’s congestion pricing vendetta harms New Jerseyans | Opinion

By Charles Komanoff
A week after New York Gov. Kathy Hochul exhumed the nation’s first congestion pricing program, opposition to the toll plan from the suburbs continues unabated. A lawsuit in federal court by Phil Murphy, one of nine court cases seeking to block the program, is considered opponents’ best shot at holding up the tolls before president-elect Donald Trump takes office in January.
Murphy advanced a new claim after Trump’s election, arguing that congestion pricing typifies Democrats’ tone-deaf policies that hurt ordinary Americans, and that New Jersey drivers shouldn’t be forced to pay tolls that provide no benefits to them.
I believe Gov. Murphy is wrong on both counts. The toll will make getting into and out of Manhattan more manageable for the vast majority of Tri-State area families. And while New Jersey may feel it is getting the shorter end of the stick in some respects, congestion pricing promises to be so beneficial throughout the region that Garden State residents will gain more than they’ll lose.
The state’s biggest gain can be summed up in a single word: time.
Starting in 2031, when the congestion toll will ramp up to $15, NJ residents will save 24 million hours a year they now waste in needlessly slow travel — most of it on roads and bridges west of the Hudson.
True, they will be coughing up $180 million a year in congestion tolls and surcharges — a figure covering not just regular commuters from New Jersey but also weekenders, Broadway patrons, doctor visitors and the like. But dividing their dollar payments ($180 million) by hours saved (24 million) yields an average price tag of just $7.60 for each hour of saved time. That equates to just half of the state’s minimum wage, making congestion pricing a bargain for New Jersey’s legions of frustrated drivers and bus commuters.
There’s been some skepticism about whether congestion pricing will truly ease traffic, but as a congestion pricing savant who has thoroughly analyzed the data, I can assure you it will.
One example is the faster trips in and out of Manhattan for the nearly 150,000 New Jersey residents who travel on weekdays into the congestion zone on a NJ Transit bus, mostly via the Lincoln Tunnel. Once congestion pricing is at full strength, their average 45-minute commute will shorten by several minutes each way as the toll reduces the number of vehicles jamming the torturous tunnel approaches. Even accounting for lower weekend volumes, the collective time saving for NJ Transit bus riders adds up to 5.3 million hours a year, and as the saying goes, time is money, down to the minute.
But the biggest time savings from congestion pricing for New Jerseyans will come on the spaghetti network of highways and arterials that cars and trucks rely on to reach Manhattan. Weeding out even a modest share of those vehicles, as the congestion toll will do, will speed commutes not just for motorists paying the toll, but for the higher volume of drivers who use the same roads without ever entering Manhattan.
It is true that the time savings will be smaller from the $9 toll starting in January. But Murphy can blame himself for that. His drumbeat of criticism and litigation helped to weaken Hochul’s resolve and to back her into the six-year toll ramp-up. But even the phased-in toll promises lower emissions, fewer crashes, improved city transit as a shared amenity, and a healthier New York economy that, history shows, will also strengthen New Jersey’s.
The plan adopted by Gov. Hochul and being readied by the MTA isn’t perfect, but Murphy’s windshield perspective has led him to overlook the many ways in which the toll plan will make daily travel for his constituents faster and more predictable. Even if it never contributes a dime to west-of-Hudson transit enhancements, New York’s congestion pricing program will, before long, be benefitting a large majority of New Jersey residents for a reasonable cost.
With an avowed foe of congestion pricing set to resume the presidency in less than two months, there is no time for Plan B. Gov. Murphy should take this win for his state and get out of the way.
Charles Komanoff, a mathematician and transit advocate based in lower Manhattan, curated the traffic spreadsheet model used by New York officials to craft the state’s 2019 congestion pricing law. To view his calculations of toll costs and time savings for New Jersey drivers, click here.
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