QUEENS, NY – Queens elected officials issued the following joint statement about the congestion pricing plan proposed by Move NY:

“The ‘Move NY Fair Plan’ is far from fair and lacks any promise of returns. It is fundamentally unfair to charge residents a fee to travel within one city. It is certainly unfair to the families who live in the transit desert of Queens as it would landlock our Borough.

“The ideas in the proposal for mass transit improvements are great. But without any direct connection between the revenues generated from the proposed tolls to those very improvements, there is simply no guarantee that this proposal will actually yield anything tangible or amount to anything more than just that: an interesting idea.

“Our city’s mobility and growth depends on more affordable, reliable and efficient mass transit. We recognize it is critical that we find more stable transit funding sources other than from the driving and riding commuters’ pockets to fill deep budget gaps.  But we reject the notion that there is only one way to generate additional monies for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and our region’s infrastructure. Moreover, this proposal is not unlike the many other unfulfilled promises introduced over the years.  This one does, however, have an equity deficit for many reasons, including but not limited to:

  1. The proposal tolls all routes from Queens to Manhattan;
  2. There is inherent unfairness in the different charges for different residents of different boroughs;
  3. The proposal doesn’t guarantee that any of the funds collected will be spent toward bettering transportation access for Queens’ residents.”

The above statement is jointly issued by the following: Queens Borough Melinda Katz; State Senators Joseph Addabbo, Jr., Tony Avella, Leroy Comrie, Toby Stavisky; Assemblymembers Jeffrion Aubry, Barbara Clark, Vivian Cook, Phillip Goldfeder, Ronald Kim, Michael Miller, Michael Simanowitz, Michele Titus, David Weprin; Councilmembers Karen Koslowitz, Rory Lancman, I. Daneek Miller, Paul Vallone and Ruben Wills.