More than 10,000 subway trains were canceled in March for a variety of issues, and Mayor Bill de Blasio is now again pushing for congestion pricing.
Once in place, drivers entering Manhattan through bridges and tunnels below 60th Street
would be charged an additional toll. The $15 billion in expected revenue would go toward the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's
2020-2024 Capital Program, which would invest billions into the region's subways, buses, commuter railroads, bridges and tunnels.
The plan received a key approval from the Federal Highway Administration in March, which said New York will need an environmental assessment to make sure there would be no severe impacts on the environment and require a public comment period. In recent months, the plan has seen little to no movement toward final approval.
The mayor today recommended city Department of Finance Commissioner Sherif Soliman to the Traffic Mobility Review Board, while calling on the MTA to speed up the process of launching the congestion pricing plan.
"Congestion pricing has always been part of the solution. We got to an agreement, but it still has not happened, and it needs to. It needs to happen urgently," the mayor says. "The city's coming back, the economy is coming back, kids are going back to school in September. You are going to see more and more people ready to come back to the subways, but they got to know the subways are going to be better."
The mayor also announced today that the city's Marriage Bureau will reopen on Monday, with marriage licenses being issued on Friday, June 23.