with Tim McDonnell
Tim McDonnell: How big of a setback for climate-centric urban planning is New York Gov. Hochul’s decision to suspend traffic congestion pricing in Manhattan?
Gernot Wagner: This 11th-hour betrayal is a major setback for climate policy in more ways than one. And that begins with the framing. More cars in NYC does not help New York’s economy. The status quo means drivers themselves wasting umpteen hours stuck in traffic, to say nothing of the negative social costs each driver imposes on everyone else.
Gov. Hochul has framed her complete, last-minute reversal as somehow helping New York businesses. It does not. Ask business owners up and down the now pedestrianized Broadway. Change is hard, but there is a better way than letting the most compact, walkable, and transit-rich city in the US succumb to out-of-control traffic.
Source: One Good Text, Semafor‘s New Zero newsletter (7 June 2024).