Governor Hochul halts congestion pricing. Staten Island dodges bullet.

0:00 Speaker 1 What is this Sunday morning? Is Vita Facella, the Staten Island Borough President and veto you declaring a victory about what’s going on with congestion pricing.

0:16 Speaker 2 Yeah, thank you so much, John, as always for having me. And yeah, we think it’s a nice victory, especially for the people who would have had to pay about four thousand dollars a year just to get to work on top of everything else they’re doing. And I think that the congestion pricing funeral should be held sooner or rather

0:36 than later. With all that said, you never know because the keywords that they used were suspended indefinitely, as opposed to dead. But the important thing is that we fought it right from day one and using platforms like yours the WABC to get the word out that congestion pricing was bad or was bad for the people of Staten Island.

0:57 We teamed up with the US President Mike mo Grew and elected officials and we’ve fortunate once again to have the pro bono legal services of the Blue jell Amino, Mark Fonti. They’ve been with us and this is just one more battle. Unfortunately, it looks like this week we won.

1:17 Speaker 1 Now I understand I saw last Thursday and Friday, and there’s people picketing Governor Huckles or official Governor Huckle was very brave in doing this. See their picketing Governor Huckel’s office that that you did wrong. I mean, who are these people?

1:37 Speaker 2 Some of these folks who pushed for congestion pricing, you know, then they may have noble goals and but the reality is they don’t understand fully the negative implications is we have a lot of people who commute to work don’t have an alternative but to use their car, and congestion pricing in Port was designed to get one billion dollars

1:56 and be get people out of their cars, which is fine if they have alternative. You know, we can’t ride a bike from Staten Island to Manhattan with ten thousand people can’t ride their bike to work every day. We have to use it because there are a few mass transit options. So as much as they wanted congestion pricing

2:14 and to get people out of their cars and keep cars out of Manhattan, we just felt there would been really a negative situation. Not to mention the fact that the MTA’s owned study proved that airge quality would get worse on Staten Island and.

2:27 Speaker 1 Traffic understood, and.

2:33 Speaker 2 Young cop or teacher that you know they should pay four thousand dollars more just to get to work.

2:39 Speaker 1 Yeah, that’s not fair. And if the MTA would only collect its fares, would have the fair beating, they would have the money.

2:50 Speaker 2 What’s the excellent point we try to raise that throughout the whole process was hundreds of millions of dollars that is being lost to fair evasion. You ask a bus driver, what do you do if some it gets on the bus and doesn’t pay the bus services? Welc, I’m not going to do anything. We have videos of people at

3:06 subway stations just walking through a gate not paying. So it’ll be a double whammy for those poor folks who have to drive to work to get doubly penalized, and it will only get worse. We know, John, you’ve been around.

3:19 You are the smartest guys. I know that as soon as they get their foot in the door, that fee will will continue to rise. Before you know what, that four thousand dollars becomes eight thousand dollars per year.

3:30 Speaker 1 And they’re closing down so many lanes in the city where they’re creating congestion Vito. And when you create congestion and then you ask for congestion pricing, it sounds like you know something’s wrong.

3:48 Speaker 2 Then well this has been those This goes back fifteen plus years. There was an effort to implement congestion pricing more than fifteen years ago, probably closer to twenty and it failed. Each month that passes there are more and more measures that are put in place to make driving in the city painful. And the goal is, yes, it’s

4:10 some of the safety and some of it is good, good in its deeds, but overall, the logic behind it is get people out of their cars and take away lanes, add bike lanes, put pedestrially close closed streets right, and all of that is really part and parcel of what those who push congestion pricing from day one. It’s it’s

4:34 to get people out of their cars, which is fine if people have alternatives, and many people, especially on Staten Island, are not.

4:41 Speaker 1 How is the crime situation in Staten Island We dropped a couple of weeks ago, and you were concerned.

4:47 Speaker 2 We’re always concerned. You know. My view is my view when it comes to crime, as we always treat as if a family members getting robbed or mugged or even worse. So we are ever vigilant to keep crime down. I think we may in some progress, especially on stolen cars, which was out of control a couple of years ago,

5:06 through good policing and coordination. I think that’s come under control a little bit more. And summertime it tends to bring out, you know, street crime. But we have argued regularly to get the police department more cops in Staten Island.

5:22 They have come through, but we just have to remain vigilant and keep Staten Island in New York City safe.

5:28 Speaker 1 Vito Ficella, Borough President, Staten Island, thank you for everything you do and thank you for speaking out, and thank you for creating this scenario where congestion, pricing goes down and we’ll talk to you again real soon.

5:44 Speaker 2 God bless you, John, thank you for the opportunity to speak out, and thanks for all you do for New York City in this country. We appreciate it.

5:51 Speaker 1 God bless you