NY's broken congestion pricing plan hurts the Hudson Valley — and your package deliveries

Whenever a New Yorker receives a package from an online order, they likely have a truck driver to thank for its timely delivery — and that’s also true for the medicine they receive at the pharmacy, the food they buy from their local grocer, and nearly every other good they purchase.

It is easy to take the complex logistical ecosystem upon which everyone relies for granted, but the reality is that it is far more fragile than typically understood. Unfortunately, that is a lesson the entire Hudson Valley will learn the hard way later this year if a misguided New York City congestion pricing framework is implemented without significant changes to how trucks are charged.

Lawmakers would impose a toll on all vehicle traffic below 60th Street in Manhattan to reduce congestion during peak hours. This includes a flawed way to charge trucks for access to the streets on which they must make deliveries. That may seem like a New York City issue, but we’ll be paying the price here in the Hudson Valley and beyond — all while receiving limited benefits.

How will congestion pricing impact NY trucking companies? And NY consumers?

It is first worth emphasizing how our industry operates to understand this plan's broad negative impact.

Many trucking companies that service the five boroughs — including mine, one of 107,000 such companies statewide — are based in the Hudson Valley. The region is also home to many drivers who live here even as they service the boroughs and surrounding communities, delivering goods of all kinds to local businesses and residents.

Those drivers deliver more than 96% of all goods in New York State, serving as the backbone of the supply chain that keeps shelves stocked and businesses operational. They do so based on customers' demand, making deliveries when businesses are open and, in most cases, with little flexibility.

Furthermore, the interconnectedness of the supply chain — which operates on a global scale, as we were all reminded during the height of the pandemic — means that what happens in one community impacts what will happen in another. Those impacts are even greater in a regional economy as intertwined as New York City and its suburbs. When prices increase in Manhattan, residents and businesses in Haverstraw, New Rochelle, Poughkeepsie and everywhere in between will also feel the squeeze.

Enter congestion pricing, which will charge trucks like those in my fleet $24 or $36 (depending on truck size) per trip into the zone during peak hours. Crucially, those fees will be charged every time a truck goes into the zone — even if one of my drivers makes a steel delivery to a job site on 48th Street, travels to the Upper East Side to deliver equipment on 97th Street, and then has another stop an hour later on 26th Street.

If that sounds unreasonable, that’s because it is. A company like mine can do little about it: we make deliveries when requested and cannot account for the frequency with which our trucks will enter the zone on a given day.

This is an added expense on top of our already astronomical fees. My company currently pays about $7,500 in predictable monthly tolls in New York City alone — fees that are factored into our motor carrier agreements and impact the cost of our deliveries. Introducing congestion pricing will significantly increase those costs, influence our upcoming motor carrier agreements, and cause our end clients to raise prices themselves to account for higher delivery charges.

For a smaller operator like mine, common in the Hudson Valley, it may be difficult to keep up. Our larger counterparts operate nationally and are more flexible in pricing because they can absorb fees and costs more easily, leaving smaller companies in a difficult competitive position.

Not being able to easily account for new costs will reduce my ability to provide the wage increases and benefits drivers earn in a tight labor market, making us less competitive for talent. Many prospective drivers tell me that they’d prefer to work for a small company, but bigger companies can offer higher salaries. This trend will be exacerbated with more fees, forcing companies like mine to make fewer deliveries with fewer drivers, threatening our business model and raising the barrier of entry into the field for young entrepreneurs.

NYC $15 toll: Can Hudson Valley commuters speak out before congestion fee starts?

More perspective: NJ is right. Congestion pricing plan is bad for NYC's surburbs

This is the solution NY should embrace

That is an outcome we should all work together to avoid. Fortunately, we still have time to fix the broken congestion pricing plan to include a version of an exemption or varied fee for our truck drivers.

A reasonable place to start is by charging each truck one predictable daily fee that is not charged each time a truck enters a zone. This would remove variables, increase predictability for businesses like mine, and stabilize prices in New York City and beyond.

That is a commonsense solution everyone should support. Next, our policymakers must act and fix this before it is too late. Consumers in New York expect and deserve nothing less.

Joseph Fitzpatrick is president of Lightning Express Delivery Service, a Hudson Valley-based logistics company and vice chair of the Trucking Association of New York’s board of directors.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: NY congestion pricing: Plan severely impacts shippinhg, trucking