Almost exactly one year ago, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul cast her state’s first-in-the-nation plan to make the drivers clogging Manhattan’s streets to help pay to fix the subways and buses that most New Yorkers depend on as a commonsense solution.. When a child falls ill, prescribing a decongestant “opens up spaces in the body” she said, “helping people get well and live a healthier life.”“That’s exactly what we’re doing here in the City of New York,” Hochul said.
Pedestrians and cars move along First Avenue in the Manhattan borough of New York, in the pouring rain, on Feb. 27.As lieutenant governor in 2019, she oversaw the passage of New York’s landmark climate law. As governor in 2023, shechanging the statute’s method for calculating methane emissions in a way that would downplay the gas’ most dangerous effects on warming. Amid backlash, she
“Sometimes you get rumors things like this are in the works, but not this time,” said Kate Slevin, executive director of the Regional Plan Association, a nonprofit advocating for modernizing the New York transit system. “It was a shock.”“To go from that, to this, is just absolutely head-spinning. One hates to use the word betrayal or perfidy.
Opponents depicted the toll as a shakedown of outer-borough and suburban drivers from less ritzy parts of New York with few good options but cars to get anywhere on time, and complained that seniors and the working class would face the worst impacts.