Staten Island police and union leaders argued Friday that imposing a $15 toll on some of Manhattan’s busiest streets will negatively impact minority communities. , welcomed local chapters of the NAACP to oppose congestion pricing.
A bipartisan panel of elected officials and local leaders argues that the resulting changing air pollution patterns will disproportionately impact Staten Island’s low-income minority neighborhoods, and the state’s congestion charge. They voiced their opposition to the levy plan.
“If someone wanted to intentionally create a plan with the goal of making wealthy white residents breathe cleaner air while low-income minority residents breathe more harmful air pollution, The pricing program will achieve those goals,” President Vito Fossella said.
At Staten Island Borough Hall, Teachers Union President Michael Mulgrew and other officials joined Fossella to praise the Staten Island chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for lending its voice to the fight.
“Simply put, if the MTA’s congestion pricing program were implemented, more Staten Islanders would get sick and more people would die from the resulting increase in harmful air pollution,” Fossella said. insisted.
“Such illnesses and deaths will occur among residents of Staten Island’s most diverse and low-income neighborhoods.”
New York City’s controversial congestion pricing plan, which has been held up for years due to repeated delays and lawsuits, is expected to go into effect as early as mid-June.
The plan would impose a $15 toll on cars entering Midtown Manhattan below 60th Street. The MTA claims the new surcharges will raise $1 billion a year to help fund upgrades to the city’s public transit system.
Transportation officials have long argued that the new toll system would ease traffic on the Big Apple’s busiest roads and reduce pollution in Manhattan.
Mulgrew, president of the American Federation of Teachers, which is suing over the congestion plan, called on the transit agency to pursue its claims, which he said ignore reality.
“The research is out there. What they’re doing is wrong. Plain and simple, it’s wrong,” Mulgrew said, adding that the MTA “will not say, promise or do anything, no matter the consequences.” He accused him of “intentionally”. [their] 1 billion dollars. ”
Minority City Council Leader Joseph Borelli (R-Staten Island) derided MTA Chairman and CEO Jano Lieber as a “snob” and “elitist.”
“Look for working-class people who live in some of the poorest postcodes in our borough and tell us, John Lever, how this is benefiting our lives.” Borrelli challenged the MTA chief at a press conference Friday.
Congestion pricing hits close to home for Jasmine Robinson, acting president of the Staten Island branch of the NAACP.
“What does congested mean?” It means to block, to congest, and this plan would block and congest so much traffic that it would be detrimental to our community. ,” she said Friday.
“We always talked about people who are in these areas. This is me. This is where I live.”
She implored the MTA to reconsider what she called an “unfairness” to hard-working people who have no choice but to commute by car from Staten Island, which she calls a “traffic desert.”
Neighborhoods on Staten Island’s North Shore, from St. George to Mariners Harbor, have already been designated as “Environmental Justice Areas” by the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice.
These areas suffer from poor air quality and high rates of asthma and asthma-related hospitalizations.
The agency’s latest analysis shows that the disparities in health outcomes that already exist between Manhattan and Staten Island’s North Shore will worsen if congestion pricing plans are implemented.
Demetrius Crichlow, director of MTA subway operations who previously operated the Staten Island Railroad, defended the agency’s impending introduction of congestion pricing.
“Staten Islanders want good transportation and support transportation. They want great bus service and they want the Staten Island Rail Road to run as often as possible.” he told reporters Friday.
“Congestion pricing is a way to get there. We all know that infrastructure needs to be replaced, we need new trains, we need new signaling systems. knows we need them and we know we need the funding.”
Additional reporting by Nolan Hicks
