Some Manhattan elected officers are calling for EVs to get a break on congestion pricing when it goes into impact in 2024, studies Streetsblog New York Metropolis.

New York Metropolis is poised to change into the primary U.S. metropolis to implement congestion pricing, levying additional tolls on automobiles touring into the central borough of Manhattan underneath a program formally referred to as the Central Enterprise District Tolling Program.

2013 Nissan Leaf electrical automobile examined as taxi in New York Metropolis, April 2013

In a letter to the Visitors Mobility Assessment Board, which recommends toll costs and exemptions to New York Metropolis’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), a gaggle of state lawmakers requested for reductions for EVs as a result of they “don’t contribute considerably to the smog and air pollution of the Central Enterprise District.”

Reductions, the quantity of which weren’t specified, would observe a coverage enacted by London. The British capital launched congestion pricing in 2003, applied steeper charges in 2019, and in the long term goals to make its central core fully car-free.

2013 Nissan Leaf electrical automobile examined as taxi in New York Metropolis, April 2013

In an interview with Streetsblog, Julie Tighe, president of the New York League of Conservation Voters, argued that the comparability to London was irrelevant. New York State goals to permit solely EV gross sales after 2035, Tighe, famous, so ultimately EVs will make up a big portion of the visitors New York Metropolis’s congestion pricing goals to scale back. Stockholm, which does have congestion pricing, as soon as discounted EVs however phased out that coverage.

Whereas EVs do scale back emissions and native air air pollution—particularly in an space like Manhattan that sees inner combustion vehicles interminably idling at visitors lights—they do not scale back visitors, which advocates argue is what congestion pricing is basically about. Permitting extra EVs additionally exacerbates the issue of the place to cost them. Charging infrastructure is extra restricted in dense cities than within the suburbs.