A group of Lower East Side residents and merchants announced they will file a lawsuit to halt the MTA's impending $15 congestion charge, saying it will crush local businesses and create a traffic nightmare.
The group is concerned that motorists will opt for the free FDR drive, putting an undue burden on its high street, but some local merchants have decided to take on the new charges and pass the cost on to customers. insists that it must be done.
Plaintiff Daniel Buzzetta, owner of Peter Jarema Funeral Home, said it is inevitable that hearses will be traveling in and out of the central business district, which includes the area below 60th Street.
“You can't use public transportation. You can't put a dead body on a bus,” Bazetta said. He is seeking exemptions and relief from having to travel to pick up bodies from hospitals and morgues and transport them to cemeteries and crematoriums.
Other plaintiffs in the lawsuit scheduled to be filed Thursday include New Yorkers opposed to congestion pricing taxes, former state judge Kathryn Fried, and Eastsiders who live near FDR Drive. Baruch Weiss, owner of East Side Glatt Kosher Butcher Shop. Two Bridges resident and Chinatown dessert maker Ricky Yang was in attendance, as well as elected officials such as Queens City Councilman Robert Holden and David Weprin.
They, like the plaintiffs in the other two lawsuits, allege that the federal government and state failed to conduct adequate environmental studies. The lawsuits were brought jointly by New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, the American Federation of Teachers, and Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella.
The new lawsuit alleges that rate planners failed to:
- Appropriately investigate the potential for increased pollution along FDR Drive.
- Study whether these increases in pollution will be exacerbated by the Eastside Resilience Project. The project will require a large number of trees to be taken down and eventually replaced.
- Appropriately assess the difficulties of people who are avoiding using public transportation due to the effects of the new coronavirus.
- Consider the impact on local businesses and the local business sector. Teachers who need to go to the Bronx. Some restaurants rely on delivery.
- Appropriately assess the difficulties of people maintaining their homes in both the upstate and the Lower East Side.
- Outer Queens lawmakers argue that the program places an undue burden on seniors by requiring them to travel with at least one (and likely more) transfers to get into the city. Think about what you're doing.
“This is simply a money grab that goes into a black hole called the MTA — and it is a black hole,” Fried, a former judge and Lower East Sider, told the Wednesday Post.
“There are winners and losers when it comes to congestion pricing. We on the Lower East Side are the losers. We're polluted to begin with,” she said, adding that increased traffic would suffocate residents adjacent to FDR Drive. He complained that he was deaf.
“It's not just going to hurt people who own cars; it's going to make our air even worse and we're going to lose out on benefits,” Freed added.
Former Governor Andrew Cuomo and the Democratic-run Assembly and Senate approved the MTA's congestion pricing program in 2019.
Gov. Cathy Hochul has announced a $1 billion annual grant to fund $15 billion worth of upgrades to the MTA's subway, commuter rail, and bus systems while aiming to curb peak-hour congestion in Manhattan's business district. It inherits and supports programs that are expected to raise dollars. .
Commission officials are recommending a $15 daytime toll, with significant discounts for nighttime hours and drivers coming through the already tolled East River and Hudson River tunnels. More than 150,000 cars will be removed from local roads and thoroughfares.
The MTA, which has begun installing license readers on highways as part of its congestion pricing program, dismissed the lawsuit as yet another heated criticism.
“This issue has been thoroughly studied in a more than 4,000-page environmental assessment, and the adopted toll structure will be re-evaluated before toll collection begins,” said MTA Policy and External Relations Officer. said John McCarthy.
“It's time to take action to tackle the congestion that clogs our roads, slows down emergency vehicles, buses and commercial traffic, and pollutes the air we breathe,” he said.
