Good afternoon! I’m Kara Gurl, Planning and Advocacy Manager at the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA (PCAC).
We’ve been saying it for months now: pausing congestion pricing was a reckless, illegal decision that effectively defunded transit for millions of riders and generations to come. There’s only one person to blame for the state of the MTA’s finances, and it’s Governor Hochul.
We already knew that the pause delayed $16.5 billion dollars in capital projects that will only grow in cost. But the State Comptroller’s report last week confirmed that pausing congestion pricing hurts every aspect of the MTA, including the operating budget.
Without congestion pricing, riders may have to face some of our worst-case scenarios: service cuts, major fare hikes, and layoffs of the essential transit workers who get us where we need to go. With millions of riders, tens of thousands of transit employees, hundreds of stations, and dozens of train and bus lines, it’s unconscionable that one person can single-handedly plunge this agency into a financial crisis.
Nobody in this room is a stranger to the MTA’s fiscal instability. Less than two years ago, we were cheering when the Governor and Legislature finally put transit on stable ground for the foreseeable future—or so we thought. But now, we’re facing a manufactured crisis that needlessly puts transit, and the millions of us who rely on it everyday, in peril.
Our message hasn’t changed: Governor Hochul needs to unpause the pause and start congestion pricing. It’s not just about funding the capital plan—it’s about cleaner air, better transit, and safer streets. It’s also about investing in riders and the future of the region.