NYC Congestion Relief Study Tour - Alpha Cohort - Transportation for Massachusetts

The numbers are in... Congestion pricing in NYC is a huge success!

From January 20 to 22nd, forming the first cohort – the entire T4MA Team joined by other advocates and allies – Caitlin Allen-Connelly (TransitMatters), Dwaign Tyndal (Alternatives for Community and Environment (ACE)), Giovanny Zuñiga Piamba (GreenRoots), Lisa Jacobson (Barr Foundation), Maha Aslam (LivableStreets Alliance), Noemi Ramos (New England Community Project), Seth Gadbois (Conservation Law Foundation) and Tristan Thomas (ACE) visited New York City to learn about congestion pricing up close – from conception to advocacy to implementation.

Here's what we learned:

1️⃣ Study congestion pricing now. Yesterday, we mean. Based on NY’s experience, a series of studies from multiple stakeholders on congestion relief set the policy wheels and community engagement in motion;

2️⃣ Lead with values. If we value time, and traffic congestion continues to negatively impact our daily lives, it’s time to take a hard look at how we can use roads in a way that relieves congestion. Pretty straightforward;

3️⃣ Be clear with where you are headed. Giving people a clear opportunity to set goals, determine where funding goes, and which projects will be prioritized with congestion pricing revenues convenes everyone around a shared vision;

4️⃣ Focus on immediate benefits. There are positive impacts seen on day 1: traffic reduction, less pollution and on-time bus service for example; and

5️⃣ A broad coalition of stakeholders is critical. Relying on the usual suspects won’t be enough to carry this policy proposition through. We need champions on the side of government, advocacy, community, business, private sector, etc.

T4MA wants people to learn more about Congestion Relief... stay tuned for more study tours in the pipeline!

Here's who we met and what our custom-made study curriculum looked like

Led by the amazing Midori Valdivia (now NYC Taxi Commish!), our MA delegation met with the forces behind MTA’s Congestion Pricing. To learn about implementation intricacies, we had the MTA’s Chief of Staff and Strategic Planning Juliette Michaelson, and Community Engagement Manager Charlie Zhen take us through the historical background, legal and operational framework of the program.

To understand the campaign better, we heard from lead advocates who pushed the program forward, we heard from Tiffany Ann Taylor (Regional Plan Association), Betsy Plum (Riders Alliance) and Renae Reynolds (Tri-State Transportation Campaign). To learn about the broad coalition critical to get the program running, we were hosted by the Women of Color in Transportation and Infrastructure: Danna Dennis (Rider’s Alliance), Bianca Lopez (Westchester County), Kathy Park Price (New Yorkers for Parks), and Lauren Tsuyobama (BerlinRosen).

Of course, we took the opportunity to do a site visit to the actual gantries and cameras in Downtown Manhattan. With MTA’s VP for Tolling Operation Sergio Reis, we saw firsthand how the EZ Pass system is used in entering the zone, how vehicles are detected, and how the complex camera system works to implement pricing while protecting data privacy.

We even took a guided tour of the MTA Transportation Museum!