Barring a late miracle in a courtroom, congestion pricing seems destined to drop on New York City on January 5th. The $9 charge on vehicles entering Manhattan below 60th Street has many groups crying for exemptions for their workers. One such group is the legions of restaurant workers who are employed in mid-town and downtown. Andrew Rigie is the executive director of the NYC Hospitality Alliance. Rigie appeared on the WOR Morning Show to plead the case that restaurant workers are essential to city commerce and therefore deserve an exemption to congestion pricing.
“We’re almost at the day when it’s going to take effect,” Rigie told hosts Larry Mendte and Laura Curran, “so we’ll keep fighting to the end and continue to fight through. If nothing changes before January 5th, we’ll have to show the negative impact it’s having on local restaurants and all the people that rely on them and make the argument once again that it is a bad policy for all of these small businesses.”
Rigie says the truck companies that supply the restaurants will pass the cost on to their customers, who will raise their prices to compensate; that’s just one way small businesses below 60th Street fear they’ll lose more money. “We know these trucks need to come into the zone; they’re not just going to be able to eat the cost and be passed on to small businesses. And then there’s unique things, like the city has this commercial rent tax a lot of people don’t know about because it’s not implemented on businesses around the city, just those within the congestion zone, for the most part… that’s why I say death by a thousand cuts. We get it; we need a working public transportation system, but public policy has to be designed in different ways to fund different needs.”
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