Free Republic

New York’s controversial congestion pricing toll has yet another high profile critic — Whoopi Goldberg. The 68-year-old joined the chorus of opponents when she ripped the contentious plan to hit drivers with a $15 toll to enter Midtown Manhattan during Gov. Kathy Hochul’s appearance on ABC’s “The View” on Wednesday. “This is a huge deal because I can afford it, don’t get me wrong, I can afford it, but a lot of my friends who drive in every day, who left here because they couldn’t afford to live here anymore, can’t,” Goldberg randomly said at the tail-end of the governor’s...

Hampton Jitney — the popular bus operator that shuttles New Yorkers to the Hamptons — warned that it may be forced to hike ticket prices when New York City’s imminent congestion pricing takes effect. Under the city’s tolling proposal, the private bus company will pay double in tolls to shuttle passengers from Manhattan to the Hamptons and Long Island’s North Fork, according to an email send to riders on Feb. 25 obtained by Bloomberg. “We are asking for help from our ridership,” Geoffrey Lynch, Hampton Jitney’s president, wrote in the email, which encouraged Hampton Jitney customers to voice support for...

Hudson Valley commuters ripped into the MTA’s congestion toll in a town hall in Ulster County Saturday, begging the Big Apple and Albany to put the controversial pricing plan on-hold. The event was sponsored by battleground congressional district Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY), who regularly excoriates his fellow Democrats who are pushing for the Manhattan fares. “I think this is an absolutely unacceptable and ridiculous plan,” Ryan told the crowd crammed into a meeting room in the Castleton-on-Hudson Village Hall on Saturday. The proposed congestion pricing toll would charge drivers $15 a day to enter midtown Manhattan south of 60th Street....

New York City school teachers who commute from Staten Island and The Bronx to Manhattan are at a crossroads: Pay $2,700 more a year to commute by car, spend hours on public transportation — or change jobs. “The city doesn’t care about Staten Island,” special education teacher Paul Caminiti told The Post. He is one of five educators (four from Staten Island and one from New Jersey) in the United Federation of Teachers union who, along with Staten Island borough president Vito Fossella, are suing the MTA over its upcoming congestion pricing plan.

Drivers who evade the controversial $15 congestion pricing toll to enter Midtown Manhattan will be treated like criminals under legislation introduced by Gov. Kathy Hochul. Hochul included a “toll fraud” proposal in her $233 billion state budget plan. The measure would allow cops to charge drivers with Class A misdemeanor toll theft — defined as fraudulently attempting to obtain a credit, discount or exemption from tolls. Scammers who evade paying tolls valued at more than $1,000 could get slapped with a Class E felony and a Class D felony for pocketing tolls valued at more than $3,000.

New Yorkers can only dream about the thrill of the open road as a new survey reveals they spend more of their lives stuck in traffic than drivers anywhere in the US. **SNIP** New York has increased its unwanted lead since last year and the findings were released just hours after New York's Traffic Mobility Review Board released its congestion pricing plan that could see drivers slapped with extra fees of up to $36. Drivers of cars, SUVs and pickup trucks would be charged $15 a day to enter Manhattan below 60th Street. Small trucks would be charged $24, commercial...

Doctors say they're finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish Covid from allergies or the common cold, even as hospitalizations tick up. The illness' past hallmarks, such as a dry cough or the loss of sense of taste or smell, have become less common. Instead, doctors are observing milder disease, mostly concentrated in the upper respiratory tract.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- With Wednesday’s release of the environmental assessment for New York City’s proposed congestion pricing program, drivers got an in-depth look at how much they could be charged to drive into Manhattan’s Central Business District (CBD).The comprehensive report outlines seven different tolling scenarios, with higher tolls rates, up to $23 during peak hours, in the scenarios that offer additional credits, caps and exemptions to certain vehicles.These vehicles could see E-ZPass rates ranging anywhere from $9 to $23 during peak periods and from $5 to $12 during overnight hours, depending on the selected scenario.Higher rates would also be...

GREENVILLE, S.C. (FOX Carolina) - As the 100 deadly days of summer moves forward, we wanted to take a look at how one recently passed state law is affecting drivers. The ‘move right’ law, or as many call it the ‘slowpoke’ law. “If you are traveling on a controlled access highway, you should stay out of the left hand lane unless you are passing or overtaking a car,” said Corporal Joe Hovis, with the South Carolina Highway Patrol.

Top Chinese ports in Shenzhen and Hong Kong record some of the largest congestion in nearly half a year due to China’s zero-tolerance approach, locking down more than 50 million people and shuttering factories to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Bloomberg reports 174 vessels anchored or loaded off the country’s top ports, the largest number since Oct. 21, when a massive typhoon battered the area. “Shenzhen is the second-busiest port next to Shanghai, so we will expect to see significant volume shift to the other ports within China,” said Ryan Closser, a director at FourKites, a supply-chain information provider. “A...

Jersey City officials and a coalition of Hudson County bike groups have opposed the New Jersey Turnpike Authority’s plans to widen the Hudson County extension through Bayonne and Jersey City to the Holland Tunnel and replace the aging Newark Bay bridge. The opposition is based on concerns the project won’t alleviate congestion and would create more traffic and air pollution from vehicles cutting through Bayonne and Jersey City neighborhoods when traffic backs up on the extension. Bike advocates have a powerful ally, Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, who had a letter sent on the city’s behalf, asking the Turnpike Authority...

After years of work, shifting lanes, blocked exits and delays, the I-4 Ultimate Construction project is finally almost done. The new system will bring new lanes and tolls, and will offer a road that should be safer and faster. Advertisement Lynden Turnquest works for Truly Nolen, and for more than six years he's weaved his way through construction, hoping for relief, but not betting on it. "Once it opens up and the construction is done it'll be like WOOHOO!!! And then it's back to traffic again," Turnquest said. But how did we get to the point where officials felt we...

The global supply chain, and particularly the North American supply chain, have been in crisis for about a year. There are a lot of reasons for this, almost entirely government-created, and it appears that the federal government has finally noticed it. Joe Biden has been a lifeguard, lawyer, city councilman, senator, and vice president. While it’s hard to tell what he is now, he has gone public with a request to hear from the American people on this matter, and he has said that he will welcome advice. It would be a first for him, but we will try, anyway....

Facing an unprecedented shipping crisis, which includes a record 61 container ships in the queue in San Pedro bay, the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach on Friday announced their intent to extend operating hours at truck gates in an effort to reduce a massive backlog of containers gumming up retail, manufacturing and agricultural supply chains. The Port of Long Beach is drawing up a pilot program for drayage trucks to retrieve and return containers at night, while the Port of Los Angeles is coordinating a weekend gate program, dubbed Accelerate Cargo LA, that will operate on a trial...

The city’s Department of Transportation (DOT) said today it will begin work this weekend along the Brooklyn Queens Expressway (BQE), in an effort to extend the life of the triple-cantilever roadway that runs underneath the Brooklyn Promenade. Crews will begin work Friday evening, but the real impact on traffic will be felt Monday, when DOT plans to reduce the number of lanes on the portion of the expressway from Atlantic Avenue to the Brooklyn Bridge from three to two in both directions. The agency warned drivers to expect construction-induced traffic jams, and suggested they take public transit instead. Trucks and...

After years of construction, with traffic-cone obstacle courses, tire-bursting potholes and white-knuckle steering along ever-shifting lanes, it might stand that the coming tolls for the rebuilt Interstate 4 would also bring the same level of dread. But drivers might be in for a pleasant surprise. “We actually don’t know yet how much the tolls are going to be,” said Jared Perdue, the state’s transportation secretary for Central Florida. “There are a lot of unknowns and a lot of assumptions.” But while final toll calculations are still underway, Perdue’s agency estimated recently that the I-4 toll lanes will now not be...

Several friends and fans contacted me urgently this week: "TxDOT's going to bulldoze the Chronicle! You're in danger!" As part of its current "virtual public meeting" at a computer near you, the Texas Department of Transportation released schematics – big long aerial views of the corridor – for its three alternatives, one of which it has abandoned already, for rebuilding I-35 through Central Austin: what the agency calls the Capital Express Central project. And sure enough, there we are, under layers of proposed new concrete and asphalt at the address formerly known as 4000 N. I-35, where we've been since...

Long before she was tall enough to sit behind a steering wheel, Paula Nelson-Blattner was experiencing the best and the worst of the Howard Frankland Bridge. “As a kid, I was always nervously asking my parents, ‘Did you check your gas?’” said Nelson-Blattner, 52, who got the creeps crossing the concrete span, perched as it is atop golf-tee shaped pillars as far as 58 feet above the waters of Old Tampa Bay. “Of course, once you’re close enough to read the warnings, not a gas station is in sight and it’s far too late to turn back.” The “check your...

Starting next week, billboards, social media, television and print media will carry messages urging thousands of Valley motorists, including those in the West Valley, to prepare for four years of disruptions in their driving routines. It’s not exactly Armageddon that the Arizona Department of Transportation will be heralding, but it certainly won’t be a walk in the park either, especially for car and truck traffic on I-10. West Valley motorists who need to get to the other side of the county or Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport can expect significant increases in traffic as motorists try to evade the inevitable...

We previewed last week to readers that port congestion wasn’t just observed across US West Coast ports, such as Los Angeles/Long Beach, but also severe congestion was developing in southern China. At the time, we called it a “perfect storm” ahead of the peak shipping season. Now the world’s largest container line, Maersk, calls the port congestion at Yantian International Container Terminal, a deepwater port in Shenzhen, Guangdong, in southern China, a much more significant disruption to its operations than the shutdown of the Suez Canal in March. Ditlev Blicher, Maersk Asia Pacific Managing Director, was quoted by Seatrade Maritime,...