Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Announces First-in-Nation Congestion Pricing Will Move Forward, Improving Air Quality and Reducing Traffic

"Good afternoon, great to see everyone in this beautiful spot. How about that view? This is extraordinary So, for many New Yorkers in the City, poor air quality isn't a rare occurrence. It's already making people sick in our own City.

And I was thinking about this. As a mom, I've had to deal with sick kids a lot. And when a doctor sees a patient who's having trouble breathing, having trouble taking a breath, feeling sick because of health problem, they often prescribe a decongestant. Think about that. A decongestant - open up spaces in the body hoping people get well, helping people get well and live a healthier life. That's exactly what we're doing here in the City of New York. We're prescribing a decongestant.

And how are we doing that? We are going to be the very first State in the nation, the very first City in America to have a congestion pricing plan. We are setting the standard right here in real time for how we can achieve cleaner air, safer streets, and better transit. And you are all part of making history.

And this is how we help the body heal, get better, get healthier. And I'm alongside - here today so many leaders who truly understand the urgency behind this and some who are not with us. But I do want to give a special shout out to our President, President Joe Biden, who has authorized this process to move forward. We are grateful for that.

Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, all their agencies were very involved in helping us take the necessary steps to give us the green light to move ahead. Also, I want to say that, in addition, we have officially from the federal government, the announcement that the Federal Highway Administration has issued a finding of no significant impact caused by congestion pricing. That was long awaited, but it allows us to move forward here today.

And I want to thank other individuals. First of all, anyone here from the RPA? Alright, thank you. Tom? Now, I'm going to guess that Tom and others were not there in the 1960s first proposing this, but the RPA was one of the visionaries - the organizations that were studying this back in the 1960s as a way to alleviate congestion in this thriving metropolis, even back then. So, they've been pushing for it a long time. And you think about it, babies born back then when this idea was first conceived are almost retirement age. So, it's been a long time. It's been a long time.

But I also want to thank other partners who are helping turn that vision from 60-some years ago to reality today. And I want to start with our Members of Congress who've been fighting for this, Congressman Dan Goldman and Ritchie Torres. So, please let us give them a round of applause, let's recognize the two of them.

Someone else who is not afraid of leaning into sometimes controversial situations, often at my side. And that is you, Janno Lieber. Thank you. Thank you. Our leader of MTA. Citizens who've stepped up. Danna Dennis, where are you, Danna? Thank you. Senior Organizer at the Rider's Alliance. And her work doesn't finish today. Now, she's telling me how she's going to go out and take this on the road and help educate people about the power of what we're doing here today. So, I thank you and other citizens who stand up because you care. Let's give her one more round of applause.

And we have elected leaders at the State level, Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, I want to thank you for your incredible work on this. Tony Simone, Assemblymember for District 75. Jo Anne Simon has joined us. Thank you, Jo Anne, for being here, for support. Deborah Glick, Assemblymember from 66. Jessica González-Rojas, the Assemblymember. Please stand up. I believe Brad Lander, our City Comptroller is here as well. And Councilmember Gale Brewer has joined us. Let's give round applause.

Also, our leaders in transportation, Marie Therese Dominguez, she has done an incredible job as the leader of the New York State, DOT, and I thank you for all your work and your team's work on this as well. And Commissioner of the New York City Transportation Rodriguez as well, if he's here, let's give him a round of applause Ydanis Rodriguez.

So, because of the action we're taking today, millions of New Yorkers, millions of New Yorkers will lead happier, safer, less stressful lives. This day was coming for a long time, but it was a thoughtful, methodical process. And we had so many community stakeholders involved who really just lent their voices to make sure we got this right. We listened to them, we adapted, and now we're finally going to start seeing the fruits of that labor.

You know, I talked about how far we went back. John Lindsay thought this was going to get done a long time ago. And so, I want to thank all the people who stayed with us over this long, long journey. And this is a sign with all this traffic out here.

It's a sign New York is back, number one because I remember walking the streets of the City during the pandemic, and you could have had bowling down the streets and you wouldn't have hit anybody. And it was a different time. It was a frightening time. But now the converse is true. More vehicles have come back than we had even before the pandemic. Now that's a sign of life, but these vehicles have another alternative, an incredible alternative called public transportation. Not every City has that, and now we're starting to see the effects of all the congestion in our streets and with our traffic returning to such high levels. This project that's been talked about forever really has a sense of urgency around it.

I walk the streets of this City almost every day. You don't see me because I'm in disguise - a baseball cap, different teams, you never know which team I'm sporting, maybe they're even from up North, who knows?

But I'm out there, and I see it and I know the anxiety people have when you're at the intersection and cars are flying through and the delivery trucks are jammed up, they can't make their deliveries and they're getting frustrated, and the cars behind them are all beeping because they can't get through.

It is chaos. It is chaos. And think about the pedestrians just trying to get around the bicyclists, the delivery people. It is dangerous for them. But all this concentrated activity, the vehicles sitting there idling because they cannot move and our buses that are not moving, it's also creating all this exhaust and emissions that our people are breathing.

As I mentioned at the outset, we're more cognizant of what's going into our lungs these days, and we're experiencing the effects of the wildfires in Canada. What about the wildfires that are happening on our own streets right here coming out of the exhaust pipes from all these vehicles - 700,000 vehicles enter the central business district every single day of the week. That's almost impossible to comprehend. And so, buses, like I said, can't move. They're trying to do the right thing, people on buses. You're trying to make sure they're doing what's maybe more affordable for them, which is important. We have to keep those buses moving. These people have to get to their jobs too. It doesn't help that they have our buses immobilized.

The health consequences are our kids getting asthma. And thank you Ritchie Torres for spotlighting challenges we have in the Bronx and other places because that's not okay. It's not okay that kids, no fault of their own, walking back and forth from school, are inhaling something that's going to give them health consequences years from now.

The average New York driver, those who are still driving, spend 102 hours stuck in traffic. Talk about stress, talk about anxiety, talk about time away from your families, your friends. And the cost - when you quantify the cost of the congestion in our City, it equates to about $20 billion a year. I happen to think we can do a lot better things with $20 billion, don't you? I think that's a complete waste. That's a loss to our economy. People are late for work. People are spending too much money on gas, and it doesn't have to be this way.

That is the good news. This does not have to be our destiny, New York, and it's not going to be any longer. We have the power to build a healthier, safer New York. But also, how exciting is it for us to know that we can be the model for the rest of the nation. That's what we always do. We're always the leaders. We're always the first in America.

Others will look at us. Other cities are paying attention. How is it going to work here? Well, we're going to show them. We're going to show them how you do this. And I mention sports teams all the time. I love our sports. But I think about how we love to win here in New York, right? We love to win. We have, right now, it's the Yankees and Mets season.

But sometimes losing is a good thing too. Let me explain that, with congestion pricing New Yorkers have a lot to lose. How about 15 to 20 percent fewer vehicles in the central business district every single day? Less noise, less honking, less gridlock. How about less air pollution, lower carbon emissions, lower speeds, fewer crashes? I don't mind losing that. Fewer kids getting hit by cars on their way to school.

And again, we talk about being first in the nation. A couple other places have done it globally. We've watched them. That's why we know this will work here. We know it'll work. We saw what happened in places like London and Stockholm where the congestion dropped 10 to 20 percent.

It's extraordinary. But all the talk about losing - New Yorkers are winners. Let's talk about the fact that we can generate revenue. We can win the effort to make sure that we have enough resources, enough money to continue funding the system that allows us to have this alternative. We have to keep public transportation strong and vibrant and clean and on time. Otherwise, we're not offering people a better alternative. And thank God we have a better alternative - a fantastic alternative. But we're going to keep making sure we have the investments to make sure that years from now, it is just as viable and as vibrant as it's always been.

So, $1 billion extra a year to leverage $15 billion in bonds. That money can be transformative. Now, we just came off a budget session, made sure we had the money to keep the trains from going off the cliff, which is where they were heading because we could not have foreseen the loss in ridership, the loss in revenues, et cetera, because of the pandemic.

So, I'm here to say: We'll continue doing our investments, but it's not going to be enough. This is a viable funding source that is going to help us sustain the level of service and even enhance it for commuters who have not yet discovered the ease and the benefit of using trains that may be right there for them, but they're just so conditioned to driving the cars. We're going to help them see the light. We're going to help them find the road. So, we're going to be able to continue investing in new subways, new subway cars, commuter rail cars, electrify our bus fleet. How about that? Facilitating our ADA compliant and accessibility retrofits, which is critically important.

So, let me conclude by saying this: Doctors know, parents know, sometimes it takes a little while for the decongestant to start taking effect. Okay. We're going to give it a little bit of time. We're going to get this right. We're going to get the messages out. Danna, thank you again, and all others are going to help educate people.

And the point is, today we've diagnosed the illness. We have the medicine. We can make it better. And ultimately the body, this vibrant body known as New York City, will be so healthy and vibrant, and it'll live forever because of what we're doing here today. So, thank you everyone who's been part of this journey for such a long time.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And with that, let me introduce the leader of the MTA, someone who will continue to build the legacy of this incredible accomplishment, especially during some of the most challenging times in the history of our City, Janno Lieber."

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