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Congestion Pricing Plan for Manhattan Ran Into Politics. Politics Won.

“It was a massive effort that didn’t work — and couldn’t work — because of the unalterable opposition of legislators in the outer boroughs and suburban areas,” Douglas Muzzio, a Baruch College professor, said about the congestion pricing plan that died in Albany.Credit...Jeenah Moon for The New York Times

After months of being lobbied on congestion pricing, dozens of New York State Assembly members retreated to a conference room in Albany. Those who wanted to speak — not all did — were given a microphone and three minutes.

One after another, members ticked off why a plan to charge fees for driving cars and trucks into Manhattan’s most congested neighborhoods was a bad idea. It was Manhattan-centric, with few tangible benefits for the other boroughs. Their constituents deeply resented it. And if this was about raising money to fix the failing subways, there were other ways to do that.

“There wasn’t a strong appetite for congestion pricing,” said Assemblyman David I. Weprin, a Queens Democrat who attended the meeting. “It wasn’t any one thing. We had a number of concerns.’’

Though few lawmakers came out publicly against the plan, it is now clear that congestion pricing was in trouble in the hallways and back rooms of Albany long before it was left out of the new state budget. Polling was mixed and even some ardent supporters realized early on that neither the Democrat-dominated Assembly nor the Republican-controlled Senate would go along with it — especially in an election year.

The plan’s best chance had been in the Assembly, where New York City is heavily represented and where Carl E. Heastie, its speaker, who represents the Bronx, was a supporter of congestion pricing. Senate Republican leaders, most of whom are from outside the city, had expressed displeasure all along about imposing any additional financial burdens on New Yorkers, though some Democratic senators had supported the idea.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat and the most visible champion of congestion pricing after reviving it last summer, and his aides, as well as lobbyists and advocates, focused their efforts on winning over the Assembly in hopes that they could present a united front and put pressure on the Senate, according to those familiar with their strategy.

Even so, the plan earned the briefest of mentions in the governor’s State of the State address in January, which signals his legislative priorities: Mr. Cuomo suggested vaguely that “we will have new technology installed which will offer a variety of alternatives, defining an exclusive zone in Manhattan where additional charges could be paid.”

Mr. Heastie told members that he supported the congestion zone, but he also reassured them that he would not try to impose his will on the majority, several legislators said.

“Members had various concerns about the issue,” said Michael Whyland, a spokesman for Mr. Heastie. He said conferences about congestion pricing had been going on since last summer and that the Assembly had voted to support more study of the issue.

In fact, Assembly members from New York City were divided. While the congestion zone was backed by some members from Manhattan and Brooklyn, others saw it as fundamentally unfair to drivers, especially in neighborhoods with few public transit options.

“Families cannot afford paying additional hundreds of dollars a month on top of the rising costs of living,” said Assemblyman William Colton, of Brooklyn. “It is unfair to subject working-class people to these costs without guaranteeing an equal value of increased benefits.”

In the end, the congestion zone became a losing battle, the latest in a long line of failed congestion pricing efforts since at least the 1970s. A decade ago, a similar congestion zone proposed by then-Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg had passed the City Council after much arm-twisting, only to die in Albany after Assembly leaders refused to bring it to a vote.

This time around, the meltdown of the city’s subway system, which was not an issue the last time, seemed to provide a stronger argument for congestion pricing. A state task force assembled by Mr. Cuomo, called Fix NYC, laid out a plan with the congestion zone as the centerpiece and included $2 to $5 surcharges on for-hire vehicles, including Ubers, Lyfts and yellow taxis.

Dozens of influential business, transportation and community groups signed on to the Fix NYC plan, expanding upon a grass-roots effort by Move NY, an early proponent of congestion pricing. The coalition spent $500,000 on a campaign, which included hiring lobbyists to press their case with legislators who were on the fence, and running targeted online ads in their districts. “It was a full-throated, well-coordinated, all-out campaign,” said Alex Matthiessen, the founder and director of Move NY.

But congestion pricing remained a hard sell, and not just to lawmakers. A Quinnipiac University poll of city voters released the day before the budget agreement found that 52 percent of respondents opposed it.

“It was an intractable issue,” said Douglas Muzzio, a public affairs professor at Baruch College, adding that congestion pricing came with too much baggage to ever really gain steam in Albany. “It was a massive effort that didn’t work — and couldn’t work — because of the unalterable opposition of legislators in the outer boroughs and suburban areas.”

Several Assembly members who supported congestion pricing said that the lobbying and outreach failed to convey the urgency of the congestion zone.

Richard Brodsky, a former Democratic assemblyman from Westchester County who led the opposition to a congestion zone in 2008, said that just as before, it failed because its supporters were tone-deaf to the financial realities of working-class and middle-class drivers, and made no serious policy effort — no traffic studies, no public hearings — to assess the causes of congestion and the impact of the new fees.

“This has always been a policy nostrum of the elites, sort of a big lab test in which the lab rats — the regular people — wanted no part of it,” he said.

Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, a Democrat from the Bronx who had previously opposed congestion pricing, said he tried to keep an open mind but found that some advocates were unwilling to consider options that could have made it more palatable outside Manhattan.

“The only people who weren’t open-minded were the congestion-pricing absolutists — it was their way or the highway, or should I say, it was their way or the subway,” he said. “When push came to shove, this was just not a good option.”

Mr. Cuomo, who also faces re-election, seemed to distance himself when he failed to publicly embrace a congestion zone or include it in his budget amendments, according to legislators and advocates. Several legislators, expecting to be asked for their support, said that they waited for phone calls from the governor that never came.

Some advocates said he never did enough to move congestion pricing forward as he had with other divisive issues, such as same-sex marriage and the minimum wage.

“Governor Cuomo’s inaction proves he does not understand the magnitude of the crisis — or he just doesn’t care,” said Paul Steely White, the executive director of Transportation Alternatives, an advocacy group.

But Peter Ajemian, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, pointed out that the governor was the one who revived congestion pricing, formed the task force and fought for it in budget negotiations. “The suggestion he didn’t do enough is nonsensical,” he said.

Kathryn Wylde, a member of the task force and president and chief executive of the Partnership for New York City, a business group, said she was told by leaders of both houses as early as February that their members were not ready to pass a congestion zone this year.

Many legislators, she said, were unwilling to support another new fee for the M.T.A. without being able to tell their constituents that they would see a direct benefit, such as more express buses. “There’s a historic unresponsiveness of the M.T.A. bureaucracy to local communities,” she said. “Every legislator has a story about how they tried, and failed, to get their attention.”

Ms. Wylde added there was simply not enough time to negotiate with individual legislators for the transit improvements that they wanted in exchange for their support. “It’s a political problem, and there wasn’t time to work it out,” she said.

As congestion pricing stalled, the governor and his aides tried to salvage the congestion zone by negotiating for authorization of about $200 million to lay the infrastructure for an eventual congestion zone but leave the actual details of how it would operate — such as boundaries, fee amounts and hours and any exemptions — until after the election.

But legislators rejected that, too. “I don’t think there was ever consensus about a full-throttled congestion pricing bill,” said Assemblyman Joseph Lentol, a veteran Brooklyn Democrat.

Instead, Mr. Lentol and others supported an alternative — a tax on high earners — arguing that wealthy business leaders who earn money from people coming into the city should pay for transit repairs. “I’d prefer that those who benefit from it, pay for it,” Mr. Lentol said.

Neither the millionaire’s tax nor the congestion zone made it into the state budget, only the surcharges on for-hire vehicles, whose booming numbers have contributed to congestion. The surcharges on rides south of 96th Street — $2.50 in yellow taxis, $2.75 in other for-hire vehicles — are expected to raise more than $400 million annually for public transportation.

“It seemed to be the path of least resistance,” Mr. Weprin said.

Scott Rechler, a member of the governor’s task force and the M.T.A. board, said that as much as $50 million from the new surcharges could be used to make transit improvements outside Manhattan, and set the stage for passing a congestion zone next year when the legislators are not concerned about getting re-elected.

“Whenever you’re adding a new fee to your constituents, there is a political reality to that,” he said. “Why take that risk in an election year when you can do it the year after?”

Follow Winnie Hu and Jesse McKinley on Twitter: @WinnHu and @jessemckinley

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 19 of the New York edition with the headline: Manhattan Congestion Zone Had Only Slim Odds in 2018. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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