When the New York Legislature first approved a plan to toll drivers entering congested lower Manhattan in 2019, interest groups scrambled to get their own special exemptions to the forthcoming tolls.
Now, with all the exemptions handed out, the toll schedules set, and final implementation just around the corner, everyone who didn’t get their requested carve-out is suing to halt the whole congestion pricing scheme.
On Thursday, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), which represents teachers in New York City’s public school system, along with Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella and individual teachers filed a federal lawsuit accusing federal and New York transportation officials of failing to conduct an adequate environmental review of its congestion pricing program. Their lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
“Federal, state and city transportation authorities conducted a rushed and hurried approval process for the congestion pricing plan,” said the union on X (formerly Twitter). “The current plan would not eliminate air and noise pollution or traffic, but would simply shift that pollution and traffic to the surrounding areas.”
The teachers’ lawsuit follows New Jersey’s earlier environmental lawsuit challenging congestion pricing filed last summer. Both argue that federal highway officials greenlit New York’s tolling program without conducting a thorough enough environmental analysis, as required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
NEPA requires that federal officials study the environmental effects of decisions they make—whether those are big decisions (like funding a new highway) or small ones (like approving a new vape device).
In New York’s case, federal sign-off of congestion pricing was required before the state could impose tolls on federally funded highways entering Manhattan.
Because NEPA allows third parties to sue over allegedly inadequate environmental studies, it’s become a favorite tool of environmentalists, slow growth activists, and garden variety NIMBY (not in my backyard) trying to stop or delay infrastructure projects.
To head off these legal challenges, federal agencies and their state partners will produce voluminous “litigation-proof” documents that attempt to leave no impact unexamined.
Hellbound and Down 