MTA Approves Congestion Pricing Plan

Long Island Morning Edition

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The MTA Board voted 11-1 on final approval for its first-in-the-nation congestion pricing plan yesterday. Most vehicles with E-ZPass will be charged $15 during peak hours weekdays and weekends; $22.50 for drivers without E-ZPass. Off-peak rates will be reduced 75%. Alfonso A. Castillo and Nicholas Spangler report on Newsday.com that the MTA Board’s new Suffolk representative, Marc Herbst, in his first board meeting, said he felt obligated to vote in favor of the plan because without it, the MTA would be deprived of the same capital funding that paid for critical infrastructure investments on Long Island, including the LIRR’s new $2.5 billion Third Track.

Herbst said he believes the congestion pricing proposal was “vetted wholeheartedly.”

Exemptions for the new congestion pricing system include east end bus and tour operator Hampton Jitney.

As quoted on 27east.com, Hampton Jitney President Geoffrey Lynch said, “We are extremely pleased to hear that Hampton Jitney, along with other commuter operations in and out of Manhattan, have been included in the Central Business District’s Congestion Toll Program Exemption List. We are grateful to all of our passengers who supported our exemption request, and pleased to see that the MTA recognized that commuter operations like Hampton Jitney will help the congestion mitigation the toll program is trying to accomplish.”

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Members of the Shinnecock Nation Council of Trustees, including Chairman Bryan Polite, made a trip to Brooklyn this past Friday to be on hand for oral arguments that were finally scheduled, after a long wait, in the dispute between the Nation and the State of New York over the tribe’s construction of two 61-foot-tall electronic billboard monuments on both sides of Sunrise Highway on their Westwoods land in Hampton Bays.

Cailin Riley reports on 27east.com that in 2019, the State Department of Transportation and the State of New York sued the nation’s seven tribal trustees individually, as well as the company the tribe contracted with to build the digital billboards, saying they violated state law by constructing and operating the billboards along a Sunrise Highway right-of-way without DOT work permits.

The timetable for a ruling is wide — the court could make a determination in less than two weeks, or as far out as June, when the current session ends.

The ruling, whenever it is handed down, will be of keen interest to both the Shinnecock and the general public.

The tribe is in the early stages of clearing and preparing 10 acres of land on its Westwoods property — very close to the monument on the westbound side of Sunrise Highway — for construction of a gas station and travel plaza, which would provide another economic boost to the tribe.

Both Shinnecock and Southampton Town officials are keenly interested in seeing the tribe and state work together to allow for ingress and egress points to the travel plaza from Sunrise Highway, rather than Newtown Road in Hampton Bays. Access points to the gas station off Newtown Road would create numerous traffic and logistical challenges, and would not be as economically viable as access points directly from the highway.

But the DOT has not as of yet engaged in meaningful discussions with the tribe on that possibility, citing the ongoing litigation over the monuments.