We need a better way to resolve NY-NJ congestion pricing dispute

New York and New Jersey are locked in a congestion pricing dispute stemming from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's plan to toll vehicles entering the Manhattan business district south of 60th Street.

Because New Jersey vehicles will be subject to this charge, the state’s governor, Phil Murphy, claims that congestion pricing is flawed and unfair, because expected revenue will flow completely to the MTA, a New York State agency. This interstate dispute has now reached a fever pitch, as New Jersey has sued the MTA in federal court to block the plan.

A lawsuit pitting the Empire State against the Garden State is in no one’s best interests. There needs to be a means to settle this dispute in a professional and nonconfrontational setting. 

Looking back on my 50-year career in transportation planning and management in New York City and Long Island, I know there once was such a way. The Tri-State Regional Planning Commission was a professional, nonpartisan venue for interstate transportation planning and management. I was part of its professional staff from 1974 until its demise in 1982.

Tri-State was created in 1961 specifically to focus on preventing the collapse of financially strained commuter railroads. By 1971, it had morphed into a permanent agency that coordinated transportation planning and federal grant disbursement in a three-state domain stretching from Central New Jersey to southwestern Connecticut, including New York City, Long Island, and five Lower Hudson Valley counties.

Tri-State would have been a logical place for the current congestion pricing controversy to be discussed and resolved. I attended many Tri-State meetings and conferences where multistate issues were debated and solved professionally and amicably, behind closed doors.

Unfortunately, the interstate compact behind Tri-State collapsed in 1982. New Jersey and Connecticut both perceived Tri-State as more focused on New York issues than on their own two states. In 1981, Connecticut, and then New Jersey, balked at paying their contractual shares of Tri-State’s annual costs. The compact unraveled, and Connecticut and New Jersey created their own transportation planning agencies. Tri-State’s New York counties morphed into the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council.

Forty years later, the 1982 balkanization still exists. In 2023, there is no public agency that is a permanent venue for solving regional transportation issues. And now we are witnessing the unfortunate spectacle of New York and New Jersey fighting in court. 

I realize that the Tri-State agency’s rebirth is hardly likely in the current world, but the two states have too much in common to be fighting over congestion pricing. The MTA did create a six-member Traffic Mobility Review Board to recommend how the tolling program will work and determine the best way to grant discounts and credits to specific driver groups. But that panel is not equipped to solve the New York-New Jersey dispute.

Murphy and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul need to jointly appoint an ad hoc, impartial and professional panel to sit down and solve this interstate congestion pricing dispute without further acrimony or delay. This issue does not belong in the courts. Tri-State won’t be resurrected, but it could serve as the model. It saddens me, personally and professionally, to see this dispute play out in public, but I am confident that a new professional panel would let cooler heads prevail and produce an amicable settlement.

This guest essay reflects the views of Andrew J. Sparberg, a former staff member of the Tri-State Regional Planning Commission, who worked for 25 years as an operations planner and manager at the Long Island Rail Road and is an adjunct faculty member at CUNY's School of Labor and Urban Studies.