(The Center Square) — New Jersey is “punching back” at New York over its congestion pricing plan with a new legal challenge to block the new tolling system.
A lawsuit filed by New Jersey against the U.S. Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration alleges that the federal agencies violated the National Environmental Protection Act, which requires a full environmental impact review for major projects, and the Clean Air Act, by giving a green light to the congestion pricing plan.
The lawsuit asks the court to block the plan by New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority to begin charging some motorists a fee ranging from $9 to $23 to drive into Manhattan’s central business district until a more thorough environmental review can be conducted.
“There is no excuse for the FHWA’s fundamentally flawed and improperly truncated decision-making process that failed to consider critical issues requiring a full environmental review,” New Jersey’s lawyers wrote in the 68 page complaint.
Gov. Phil Murphy alleges the federal agencies “unlawfully fast-tracked the agency’s attempt to line its own coffers at the expense of New Jersey families” and said the state is “taking a stand” to “combat the unjust taxation of our hardworking residents by other states.”
“The costs of standing idly by while the MTA uses New Jersey residents to help balance its budget sheets are more than economic,” he said in a statement. “At the MTA’s own admission, its tolling program would divert traffic and shift pollution to many vulnerable New Jersey communities, impacting air quality while offering nothing to mitigate such considerable harm.”
New York officials say the new fee will bring in about $1 billion annually that the agency will use as leverage to borrow more money for its $51 billion multi-year capital plan.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul have defended the new pricing plan, which was approved by the state Legislature in 2019. They claim it will help reduce the region’s traffic congestion and blunt the impact of climate change by reducing tailpipe pollution.
But New Jersey officials say the new tolling system is a “cash grab” intended to bail out the MTA, facing record deficits, at the expense of New Jersey motorists.
The state’s business leaders praise the Murphy administration for filing the legal challenge to block the new pricing plan, saying the higher costs for New Jersey motorists come at a time of high inflation and other rising costs.
“Congestion pricing also unfairly hurts New Jersey’s economy, especially small businesses, by taking money out of the hands of our hardworking residents that could otherwise be spent on goods and services here in the Garden State,” said Tom Bracken, president and CEO of the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-NJ, praised Murphy for “punching back” at New York over its plans to “use Jersey as their piggy bank to solve their years of criminal mismanagement at the MTA.”
“If the MTA gets its way, trucks will be backed up here in North Jersey, billowing cancer-causing pollution into the lungs of our children,” he said. “We just don’t take a punch in Jersey, we punch back.”
