The Donald Trump administration has revoked on Wednesday the federal approval of the ambitious toll plan of New York, honoring its electoral promise to end the rates that, since January 5, of Manhattan. Motorists since then pay nine dollars to enter the area, south of 60th Street, and the collection was planned to be destined, among other purposes, to the improvement of the outdated urban transport system.
The US Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, today sent a letter to the state governor, Kathy Hochul. “I share the president’s concern for repercussions [de los peajes] For working -class Americans, who now have an additional financial burden on their daily lives, ”says Duffy in La Letter, whose content has been advanced by the populist newspaper New York Postin the Trumpist orbit. The application of the tariff plan, a pioneer in the US, was possible thanks to a pilot program of the Federal Road Agency, hence the federal authorization is now revoked.
In a publication in his social network, Trump has given a rein to triumphalism with the following message: “The tarification of the congestion is dead. Manhattan, and all New York, have been saved. Long life to the king! ”, With the last sentence in his emphatic and usual capital letters.
It is foreseeable that the Washington Order will trigger a legal battle – as the already numerous judicial blockages of orders and presidential decrees – on the federal authority of the Republican Administration and the state law of 2019 that gave rise to the tarification plan. If justice fails to stop the order of the White House, the end of tolls will deprive the city of 15,000 million dollars that the Urban Transport Authority (MTA, in its English acronym) planned to use for crucial improvements in the systems of city transit, in need of good renewal.
“The income generated by this pilot program is destined for the transport system and not to the highways, and I do not think that is fair,” Duffy writes in the letter to Hochul. Therefore, the head of Transportation recognizes that the completion of the program “can deprive the financing traffic system, but any dependence on that financing flow was not reasonable since the FHWA [Administración Federal de Carreteras] He only approved a pilot project ”, not the plan developed and implemented by New York.
Less traffic in the central almond
The MTA data shows that traffic in Manhattan has decreased since the implementation of the toll system, while increasing the fluidity of the traffic and the speed of the displacements, especially through the bridges and tunnels that They connect Manhattan with New Jersey, used daily by millions of motorists. According to the group, which advocates sustainable forms of transport, under the new program they have entered the congestion zone 1.2 million less vehicles.
“It is an attack on common sense and autonomy of New York,” says Ben Furnas, executive director of the group, who has described the current “most successful transport policy in a generation.” “The congestion tarification is already reducing traffic and improving the displacements of millions of New Yorkers. Donald Trump wants to bring the jams, noisy streets and the longest waiting to take the train, ”he emphasizes, who remembers that the US president does not control the streets of New York or his destination.” MTA officials have also shown their stupor to the Order of Washington.
Hochul, a Democrat, opposed his vehicle in his day for considering it too expensive and unpopular on the eve of elections, which until the beginning of 2025. The TA group ensures that the program enjoys the general support of New Yorkers: “66% of The usual drivers of the area support the program, and 6 out of 10 New Yorkers want to be maintained. ”
Republicans, meanwhile, have converted the tarification plan into a political weapon against the Democrats, by defining it as an “unfair tax” to drivers. Trump has come to say that it is a harmful measure for Manhattan’s economy, something that Ta rejects, ensuring that, “despite the lower number of vehicles, the commercial improvement districts in the area have registered 1.5 million more than Visitors this year ”. Some Democratic representatives have also criticized the plan, such as the New Jersey governor, Phil Murphy, who has urged Trump to stop tolls.
