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Cuomo questions viability of congestion pricing, throwing subway overhaul into doubt

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Cuomo questions viability of congestion pricing, throwing subway overhaul into doubt

The MTA had been hoping to start tolling drivers who enter Manhattan’s central business district starting in January 2021. The tolls to enter Manhattan south of 60th Street were supposed to support the MTA’s $51.5 billion overhaul plan, which, in turn, was supposed to include substantial subway signal improvements and improved station accessibility.

But the MTA needs federal approval for congestion pricing because some of the impacted roads are federally funded. To get that federal approval, the MTA needs to do an environmental review — either a lengthy, typically yearslong environmental impact statement, or a more abbreviated environmental assessment.

The MTA and City Hall have been asking the federal government which study it should pursue since April, as POLITICO reported. The federal government has yet to give them guidance. Some officials have quietly suggested the MTA should have just assumed the federal government would want the more in-depth assessment and begun work on it immediately.

But on Thursday, Cuomo said he assumed the federal approval would be “perfunctory.”

How Cars Divide America

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How Cars Divide America

Urbanists have long looked at cars as the scourge of great places. Jane Jacobs identified the automobile as the “chief destroyer of American communities.” Cars not only clog our roads and cost billions of dollars in time wasted commuting, they are a terrible killer. They caused more than 40,000 deaths in 2017, including of some 6,000 pedestrians and cyclists.

But in the United States, the car plays a fundamental role in structuring the economy, our daily lives, and the political and social differences that separate us.

New York skyscraper must remove top 20 floors, judge rules | The Independent

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New York skyscraper must remove top 20 floors, judge rules | The Independent

In an extraordinary ruling, a state supreme court judge has ordered the developers of a nearly completed 668-foot block of flats in New York to remove as many as 20 or more floors from the top of the building.

The decision is a major victory for community groups who opposed the project on the grounds that the developers used a zoning loophole to create the tallest building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. A lawyer representing the project said the developers would appeal the decision.