Boston Herald

Brake for congestion pricing

One of the options Rooney to study

While a city councilor’s proposal to consider bringing congestion pricing to Boston has proven to be politicall­y polarizing, the region’s business leader says it has to be under considerat­ion given the state of traffic and public transit funding challenges.

Jim Rooney, Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce president and CEO, said congestion pricing, or an additional tolling tax for drivers, is among the strategies the governor’s new transporta­tion funding task force, of which he is a member, will be considerin­g in a 12-month study set to kick off shortly.

When it comes to funding transporta­tion, Rooney said it’s not difficult to come up with ways to raise money. Rather, the challenge is centered around the “political feasibilit­y” of those strategies, he told the Herald.

“Certain people will like congestion pricing; I’m sure that environmen­tal advocates, for example, to the extent that it reduces emissions and traffic, will like congestion pricing,” Rooney said. “Others may feel like it’s not a good idea.”

“I can’t think of a proposal that is not going to be without some measure of controvers­y, but we’re going to have to make some hard decisions,” he added.

Congestion pricing has been kicked around at the state level for years. A bill that would have created a mobility pricing commission to look into such a tax was vetoed a number of times, including by former Gov. Charlie Baker in the summer of 2022, when he cited equity concerns.

Gov. Maura Healey has been more receptive to the idea. She created the transporta­tion funding task force last month, an entity that will look into the mobility pricing strategies the vetoed legislatio­n would have considered.

The idea has also regained traction due to a hearing order brought Wednesday before the Boston City Council, which will debate the impacts of adding a congestion fee to drivers for Hub access. Rooney said, however, that the policy would take at least five years to implement, if it proves to be politicall­y palatable.

“Congestion pricing is actually a form of tolling so we would need to embrace more broad-based tolling,” Rooney said. “What we have today is just the Mass Pike and tunnels and bridges, so that’s the only place technicall­y we could implement congestion pricing, under today’s structure.”

If the commonweal­th was to “embrace” congestion pricing either in or out of Boston, like what New York City is planning to implement, or different parts of the state, “that would mean implementi­ng the same technology and system we have for tolling and then use congestion pricing to help manage the flow,” Rooney said.

Tolling fees could fluctuate during different times of the day, he said, referring to a strategy that tries to reduce congestion by lowering prices at off-peak hours.

“That takes time and by the way there are state and federal regulation­s and laws that need to be dealt with before you can even consider doing it,” Rooney said. “You can’t toll a federal interstate without the feds getting involved.”

In New York City, which is moving forward with plans to implement the country’s first zone-based congestion pricing model, it’s been 14 years since the idea was formally proposed by then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg and five years since it was approved by the state Legislatur­e.

The MTA, which plans to charge drivers once per day depending on the size of the vehicle — $15 for most drivers with a higher fee for truckers and motorcycli­sts paying less — will vote on the final plan in March. The tolling system constructi­on to support that plan has cost roughly $550 million so far, at 70% completion.

Rooney also pointed to a similar effort in San Francisco, which was studying a plan to charge drivers entering a downtown zone $6.50 with discounts based on income until it was put on hold in 2022.

Other U.S. cities have experiment­ed with mobility pricing. Seattle, for example, saw reduced congestion when it increased tolls during peak commuting hours and discounted prices during off-peak hours, according to the U.S. Department of Transporta­tion.

The type of zone-based congestion pricing New York City is trying to implement, and that the Boston City Council seemingly seems poised to consider, has been implemente­d abroad in London, Stockholm and Singapore, but there are no operating examples in the U.S., the department said.

Rooney said taxing drivers by miles traveled in their personal vehicle — which has been tested in Minnesota and Oregon — is another option that the task force will consider to reduce traffic, and raise funding for the MBTA, which is staring down a $567 million budget gap in fiscal year 2025, along with roads and bridges.

Whether congestion pricing is fair will be considered by the task force, Rooney said, acknowledg­ing that it may not be fair to charge people who commute to a part of the city they can’t afford to live in.

Hitting drivers with higher taxes to get more people onto public transit at a time when the T is not reliable will also be considered as a measure of fairness, he said.

“At the end of the day, doing nothing is not an option,” Rooney said. “There’s a bunch of things that have positive and negative aspects to them, but doing nothing is not an option, particular­ly when the gas tax is going away.”