New York’s Congestion Pricing Could Worsen Traffic in Poor Neighborhoods
Inside Climate News
By: Nicholas Kusnetz
On a frigid, gray morning this month, a half-dozen community advocates stood on a street corner in the South Bronx, struggling to be heard over the roar of heavy trucks. New York had recently begun charging vehicles to enter the city’s central business district, becoming the first in the nation to try to reduce traffic with a congestion pricing program.
Yet while the tolls are expected to speed commutes and help improve air quality in the region, they are also projected to worsen traffic and pollution in a handful of neighborhoods, including the South Bronx, one of the city’s poorest. “We are inundated with traffic,” said Mychal Johnson, co-founder of South Bronx Unite, a community advocacy group that was part of the environmental justice advisory group for the congestion pricing program.
One block south of where Johnson stood is a waste transfer facility, the destination of many of the trucks driving behind him. One block north is the six-lane Major Deegan Expressway, while Bruckner Boulevard, a heavily traveled route into Manhattan, lay in between. Nestled around these are a public housing project, several new residential high-rises and a charter high school built to serve 1,300 students.
