NYC employers: come back to the office, or else. NYC govt: stay the hell out of our city. We’re imposing a $15 cover charge just to get in.

Photo above - is this a sign of a vibrant economy? Or a menace to society? NYC's new congestion tax might make this even more complicated . . .

Congestion pricing. If you don’t live near New York, or read city newspapers, you might have missed this. (see link at bottom) A vaguely worded law goes into effect this weekend. A $15 fee to enter Manhattan. That’s after – and additional to – the $15.38 toll to cross into the city if you use the GW Bridge, Lincoln Tunnel, Holland tunnel, or various lesser known bridges. $30 bucks a day before you even clock in.

No wonder downtown workers are furious, and insist on their right to continue working from home. $150 a week just to get into the city. Before parking. And when you do come in, there’s a 9% sales tax when you buy something. A 3% CITY income tax, above and beyond the state income tax (around 7% for the average city worker).

No thank you, these folks do NOT want to return to the office.

Congestion pricing. Is it a tax? A toll? A nuisance fee? The Biden administration has threatened to use executive orders to overturn nuisance fees. Baggage fees and overdraft fees were targeted already in 2024. Why not also give beleaguered NYC workers some relief with the stroke of a pen?

It’s unfair to pick on Biden. I don’t hear Trump promising to zero out NY's new admission charge either.

How many people would the congestion fee hit? About 90,000 cars drive into the city on a workday. 90,000 X $15 bucks is . . .cowabunga! About a million and half bucks a day. $350 million a year. None of which, I suspect, will be used to actually reduce congestion. All that money will be spent on other things, to be named later.

Is NYC actually getting more crowded? Well, it would be LOSING people, if it weren’t for the influx of migrants. There’s around 130,000 more of them just since 2022. Refugees mostly don’t drive cars, pay tolls, or pay income taxes. They do pay that 9% sales tax.

Who’s going to win the “back to office/get out of Dodge” shouting match? My guess is there will be dozens of court cases, mostly ruling against JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, Price Waterhouse, Met Life . . . People will mostly keep working from their NJ, Connecticut, and Scarsdale dens. They might appear in Zoom meetings, like Hollywood Squares gameshow panelists.

But if the courts DID force workers to come back, it probably would mean millions and millions MORE in congestion profits for NYC. Unless bird flu turns out to be a real thing, and people are sent home to wear N95 masks again. Remember, the incoming HHS Secretary doesn't believe in vaccines.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

Federal judge rules on NYC congestion pricing; interpretation differs between parties

This page is a permanent link to the reply below and its nested replies. See all post replies »

swirlie · F

Similar fees are being charged in London England for cars to enter the downtown corridor, the purpose of those fees being to discourage the use of personal vehicles and to encourage the use of public transit.

If one insists on taking their car to work in NYC, then one simply has to pay the fee to the little troll-man who wears the green hat, who lives underneath the bridge and is in charge of the lift-gate who will let you across his bridge once you give him his crossing fee. What you raise awareness to is the cost of 'owning' a job in downtown NYC.

SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F

@swirlie thanks for your reply. i was aware of london's scheme. it started out as "odd number tags vs even number tags". different days for different ending digits. don't know if this is still part of the restriction. i can see lots of ways to game this, for families which own multiple cars.

why don't cities encourage major employers to relocate to less congested areas? Oh . . my bad . . . governments are reaping a tax bonanza (income tax, real estate tax), which they don't want to endanger. and they don't want to spend more money on roads/infrastructure either.

swirlie · F

@SusanInFlorida

why don't cities encourage major employers to relocate to less congested areas?

I looked into this very question when I was studying Urban Planning in university. My beef about having a downtown work location was that by the time one pays parking, plus bridge tolls and other fees just for the privilege of working for some corporation in a downtown location, understanding that ALL of it is paid with 'after-tax' dollars by the employee, not pre-tax gross income dollars, that daily cost to a lowly employee of said corporation is sometimes equal to their first two or three hours of after-tax pay each day before those employees even start working to put food on their table.

Cities earn as you say, a tax bonanza from those corporations and moving to the outskirts of town to some industrial area where traffic isn't usually an issue, is not the true issue that's at stake here.

Corporations are not in business to accommodate people who work for minimum wage in their downtown corporate office spaces.

Corporate Headquarters are usually located in a pricy downtown corridor for the prestige of the city address itself, which they print on all their office stationary, including their website which may show a picture of the Corporate Office located in fancy part of the city.

Let me give you a few examples:

Trump Corporation (which is not owned by Donald Trump by the way), has at least 3 corporate addresses in downtown NYC. Those prestigious addresses are:

Trump Tower, 725 5th Avenue
Trump Work Tower, 845 United Nations Plaza
Trump International Hotel, 1 Central Park West (not east)

With reference to the last one, a corporate address is perceived to be more prestigious if it's street name is 'West' rather than if it's 'East', because in the corporate world, "west is best, east is least" when it comes to Real Estate value.

The Trump Corporation is in the Property Management business on the surface, but what their underlying business model is really all about is Real Estate ownership in the most prestigious part of any city where they have property investments, including golf course addresses.

When Trump Corp makes a new golf course or purchases one that's for sale, it's not actually about the game of golf that corporate decisions are made, it's actually about the address location of the golf course itself which is what Trump Corp then invests their 'borrowed' money into.

I say borrowed money because Trump Corp is technically bankrupt and will not be allowed to go into Receivership because as a Corporation, they owe way too many banks way too much money to go into Receivership which the banks are not prepared to 'write off' as bad loans.

The banks (Citibank) therefore, will not allow Trump Corp to fall into Receivership, despite Trump Corp never having made a single interest payment on the loan it received to build Trump Tower over 20 years ago, which means they've been defaulting on all construction loans since day one.

McDonald's fast-food restaurants is another example. McDonald's appears to be in the hamburg and fries business, but their true business model is Real Estate ownership, not burgers, which means that a McDonald's restaurant will only be built where the land values are the highest in a city, not the lowest.

Eventually a McDonald's restaurant will sell, but will only sell for the land value that sits underneath the building, not for the purpose of finding another franchisee who will continue to flip burgers for McDonald's!

Where I live in downtown Toronto, Trump Corp built a hotel/condo/office tower in Toronto about 15 years ago but which remains largely vacant space even to this day, despite the acute lack of office space in the Toronto downtown core...

Trump Toronto International Hotel & Tower, 325 Bay St Toronto Canada.

Bay Street in Toronto is New York's equivalent of Wall Street.

The Toronto Stock Exchange is located on Bay Street along with ALL international banking institutions from around the world which have offices located in Canada, just as the NYSE is located on Wall Street.

Trump Corp doesn't give a hoot about the cost to employees of having to commute at great cost to downtown Toronto or New York City when they show up for work in the morning, because after all, employees below the Executive Management level of any corporation are just "wage-earning laborers" as far as all corporate management is concerned.

The prevailing corporate attitude is that employees are just an evil, yet necessary business expense which is a tax write-off at the end of the day, which makes the concept of human employees sitting in office cubicles at great corporate expense, much more palatable to Executive Management.

Corporate "labor" therefore, is considered the cost of doing business, not the reason for being in business. The high cost of commuting to the city center is not considered corporate management's problem, it's the employee's problem.

SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F

@swirlie major corporations congregate in cloistered expensive districts, because executives find it more convenient to take compatriots from nearby companies out to expensive lunches there.

swirlie · F

@SusanInFlorida
That is not only totally incorrect, it is grossly obtuse perception of the corporate world on your part.

SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F

@swirlie investopedia says you are incorrect.

https://www.investopedia.com/londons-financial-districts-7548716#:~:text=Canary%20Wharf%2C%20situated%20in%20the%20East%20End%2C%20stands,hosting%20the%20headquarters%20of%20major%20banks%20and%20corporations.

swirlie · F

@SusanInFlorida
Investopedia is for gullible people like you who know nothing about the corporate world but who like to write National Inquirer-type stories about it in your idle time.