New York (AP) – President Donald Trump’s administration instructed an enhance in traffic jam prices in New York City on Wednesday, which finance traffic and mass transfer by paying people to drive to the core of Manhattan.
The city of the city, introduced on January 5, uses the readers of number shells to occupy most of the vehicles that enter the districts of Manhattan south of Central Park. In the early days, transit officials said that the tribute had brought modest but measurable traffic reductions.
The Federal Government has lifted its approval of the program, announced the US Transport Minister Sean P. Duffy on Wednesday and described the financial burden on the toll as “a blow to the Americans of the working class and small business owner”.
According to the state, the Federal Highway Administration will work together with the state on an “orderly termination of the toll”.
Within a few minutes after the announcement, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, a state authority that leads the New York U -Bahn and another public transit, submitted a federal action to keep the congestion prices alive.
Governor Kathy Hochul, a democrat, said the toll program would continue while the lawsuit is taking place.
Trump takes a round of victory
The president, whose namesake Trump Tower Penthouse and other properties are in the overload zone, swore to kill the plan as soon as he took office. After the announcement of the transport department, the Republican explained truth of the truth on his social networking website.
“The congestion prices are dead. Manhattan and all of New York are saved. “Trump wrote and added:” Long live the king! ” The White House later published a picture of Trump, who was wearing a crown in front of the New York skyline.
Hochul fired back quickly.
“New York has not worked under a king for over 250 years,” she said at a press conference in the Grand Central Terminal, one of the city’s tensile nodes. “We will certainly not start now.”
A splitting plan for still stands
Similar to toll programs to put people into public transit by exists cost -intensive for drive for Drive in other global cities, including London, Stockholm, Milan and Singapore, but the system had never been tried in the USA
New York intends to exploit the money from toll fees to spend bonds that would finance the billions of dollars of improvements and repairs for the city’s creaking and bar -beaten transit system, which bears around 4 million drivers a day.
As in other cities, New York’s overload fee varies depending on the time and size of the vehicle. Trucks and other huge automobiles pay a higher price, and the fee for most cars falls back to $ 2.25 -less than the costs of a U -train ride during the quieter night hours.
The toll system was split.
Transit advocates and environmentalists announced it as an creative step to reduce air pollution and to accelerate traffic for vehicles that, like delivery vans, police cars and other first aiders, really have to be on the move.
“The blocking of this successful policy makes Trump directly for more traffic, more accidents, more dirty air, slower buses and fewer funds for our transit system,” said Senator Andrew Gounardes, a city democrat.
Some democratic leaders were uncomfortable to support the tribute
The toll plan was approved by the legislators in New York in 2019, but had been on a federal environmental examination in the first term in Trump for years before it was approved as part of the bidden administration.
The toll survived several complaints to stop them before the start. The democratic governor Phil Murphy from neighboring New Jersey fought on trial and wrote a letter to Trump on the day of tenure in which he asked him to kill the program.
Hochul also had concerns. In June in June she hired the planned start of the toll system abruptly and led concerns about the effects on the local economy. The Democrat then took the tribute in November after the election of Trump, but reduced the tribute for passenger vehicles from 15 to 9 US dollars.
Since then she has praised it as a victory for the city and has discussed the topic several times with the president.
The competitive mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, also a democrat, was once a supporter of traffic jam prices, but has recently stumbled on this topic and did not seem to be ready to wade in a brewing campaign between Trump and the state.
“If the federal government has the authority to do something in its powers, we cannot sit back and complain about it because we do things in our powers,” Adams told reporters last month when we were asked for Trump he may cancel the pricing of the congestion prices.
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Associated Press Writer Jennifer Peltz contributed to this report.
