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New York City is months away from introducing the first zone-based tolling program in the U.S.
The project, which begins in the spring of 2024, will increase the tolls drivers pay to enter points of Manhattan south of 60th Street.
The final price of the toll is not yet determined. People close to the process believe it ultimately may cost between $9 and $23 to enter or exit the central business district by personal car. By law, passenger vehicles are taxed once a day. Commercial and ride-share vehicles will be tolled per trip.
“The strategies that we’re talking about are not anti-car,” said Janette Sadik-Khan, former commissioner of New York City’s Department of Transportation. “If you don’t have any other choice than to drive, that’s not a good outcome.”
The toll may produce up to $15 billion for investment within the aging MTA system. Much of the cash will go toward the MTA’s 2020-24 Capital Program. For example, some of the proceeds will finance four new Metro-North stations for communities in the Bronx.
“Expansion tends to be the sexy and fun thing, which we’ve done. But the kind of stuff that our customers don’t see is power upgrades, track upgrades and signal upgrades,” said Richard Davey, president of New York City’s Transit Authority.
The MTA is also speeding up investment in clean bus technology. The agency expects to begin experimenting with hydrogen fuel cell bus technology in 2025.
“The manufacturer that the hydrogen technology uses is zero emission. That’s a nascent technology,” said Davey to CNBC.
Regional planners expect to see environmental benefits with the new toll in place. For example, particulate matter emissions from stop-and-go traffic can stoke diseases such as asthma.
The MTA study of the toll cites the experiences in other global cities including Milan, London, Singapore and Stockholm. “In London, they’ve had a reduction of nearly 20% in particulate matter pollution,” said Julie Tighe, president of the New York League of Conservation Voters. “There’s a 15% reduction in particulate matter in Stockholm, which resulted in a 50% reduction in asthma.”
“In Stockholm, it was very unpopular,” said Mollie Cohen D’Agostino, a researcher at the University of California, Davis campus. “It just narrowly got enough support to get past that first trial period vote. Then it got significantly more support in the second vote … people actually liked it.”
Watch the video above to see how New York City is spending cash raised by its massive new toll.
More than 3 million workers would be eligible for overtime pay under a rule proposed on Wednesday by the Biden administration.
Issued by the Labor Department, the proposal updates Fair Labor Standards Act rules for executive, administrative and professional employees.
Workers who make about $55,000 a year or below would be eligible for overtime under the proposal, up from the current threshold of $35,568 a year. That level was set by the Trump administration in 2019, when it was raised from $23,660.
Also see: Unions are key to reversing stagnant wages and economic inequality, Treasury Department says in first-of-its-kind report
An extra 3.6 million workers would be eligible for overtime under the proposal, according to the Labor Department.
As the Associated Press noted, the new rule could face pushback from business groups that mounted a successful legal challenge against a similar regulation that President Joe Biden announced when he was vice president in the Obama administration. He had then sought to raise the threshold to more than $47,000.
Heidi Shierholz, president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said the proposal is “a crucial step in creating a stronger, fairer economy.”
“This proposal would ensure that employers have ‘skin in the game’ when they ask these workers to work long hours,” Shierholz said in a news release.
The public has 60 days to comment on the proposal.