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The list of exemptions granted for congestion pricing in New York City seems about as long as the list of aircraft carriers berthed in Nebraska. One group that would appear to have an airtight reason for an exemption is New York’s firefighters, who often use their personal vehicles to transport gear to a firehouse that can’t be brought onto mass transit. Andrew Ansbro is the president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association. He appeared on the WOR Morning Show to lay out the saga for what happened when firefighters asked for an exemption from congestion pricing.
Ansbro told host Larry Mendte that Governor Hochul appeared to empathize with the logic behind the request, but when firefighters went to the MTA, that’s when they were left burning mad. “Basically, the Governor said go to the MTA. The MTA said, you know, Janno Lieber said, ‘You have a great excuse for an exemption. Unfortunately, your business relationship with New York City doesn’t concern us. New York City should be the one that should be reimbursing you for the toll’. And then we went to New York City… The city’s answer was, well, we can’t pay 270 firefighters to bring their cars into the city if we’re only going to use 40 or 50 of them to move people around twice a day.”
Ansbro summed up the new problem that now faces the city. “A New York City firefighter’s gear is contaminated with cancer-causing agents. We’ve known this for a long time, and we’re at the point where [we’re asking] why are we putting these things in our car. The long-term result is the city is going to have to figure something out where they buy dozens of vans and hire hundreds of firefighters on a daily basis to move the other firefighters around. It’s become a bit of a nightmare. Firefighters are waiting around long periods of time just to get back from where they started.”
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