We, the people of the New York Metropolitan Area, hereby petition Governor Hochul and the State Legislature to abandon the ill-conceived Congestion Pricing (CP) program, an unfair, regressive tax that places undue financial burden on families, the elderly, and the mobility impaired. Among the many reasons that this program should be scuttled include: 

• CP will increase costs for the movement of all goods and services through the Central Business District (CBD). These costs will be passed on to all residents. 
• CP will not reduce the use of cars overall in the tri-state area and will only reduce total traffic by 3% in the CBD. Traffic will increase, however, in areas outside the zone, resulting in increased noise, pollution, and congestion. The traffic will be displaced to largely residential areas.  
• Areas just outside the border will see an increase in “cruising” by for-hire vehicles avoiding the zone prior to a call, and increased demand for parking on the street and in garages will further escalate garage rates, the cost of taxis and for-hire vehicles, as well as food deliveries, will increase dramatically.  
• Midtown is still suffering from low office occupancy and lower tourism revenue. A financial barrier to entry will negatively impact return to office workers, the destination restaurant and theater industries. 
• The elderly and disabled and others, who might necessarily use their private automobiles or cars- for-hire to get to our hospital corridor and doctors’ offices, will be unfairly impacted, and seeking toll exemptions for these rides, which would require determining need thus resulting in a breach of privacy. 
• The MTA could raise the $1 Billion per year, they claim to need, by focusing on eliminating fare beating, toll evasion, and waste in all segments of the Authority. 
• The MTA has a history of waste and inefficiency.  There are numerous news reports addressing this issue. 
• There  has been no accounting, for how the $1 Billion that the MTA has already raised through taxi surcharges over the past three years has been allocated, and there is no lockbox proposed for keeping any funds collected to be designated solely to the MTA for infrastructure improvement. 
• This is not about pollution. If it were, hybrid or electric vehicles would have been given consideration, although increased use of these would negatively impact our already stressed electric grid. Pollution in NYC has already declined significantly as a result of the Clean Air Act and technological advancements.  The increased air pollution in the adjacent neighborhoods will necessarily spill into the congestion pricing zone and negate any claim of cleaner air. 
• Residents in areas surrounding the boundary will have decreased quiet enjoyment of their homes, and residents and businesses within the zone will be unduly taxed for doing daily errands that might take them in and out of the zone multiple times a day. Air Quality in border areas, i.e. the Lower East Side will be negatively impacted.
  Congestion Pricing was voted on as a concept, void of details as part of an 11th hour budget agreement in 2019.  All decision makers on the Commission have their roots in the MTA while border communities have no representation on the Commission.
• Additionally, there is no mention of the cost to implement this program or how long it would take to recoup those costs, and there is no mention of evaluating its success in meeting its goals, once the scheme is in effect. Everyone wants transportation that is clean, efficient, safe and accessible, but Congestion Pricing is not the way to achieve these goals.  

THIS PROJECT MUST BE REPEALED AND DEFEATED! 

-The Coalition in Opposition to Congestion Pricing (Founding Members: Michele Birnbaum, Andrew Fine, Edward Hartzog, Valerie Mason).