Congestion‑inflation is tightening its grip on New York City.
The MTA’s contentious congestion‑pricing plan is now forcing businesses to shift the extra tolls onto their customers, even beyond the so‑called “relief zone” in downtown Manhattan, according to industry leaders on Wednesday.
Pinning down exactly how much the tolls inflate prices is tricky, experts said. The extra cost of crossing the congestion zone doesn’t always sit as a clear line item on a customer’s bill.
Delivery fleets, for instance, face tolls up to $21.60 on each trip into the area below 60th Street. Lightning Express says every customer is paying that fee. “It’s just easier to say you know what, if it’s in Manhattan, you get charged with congestion pricing,” owner Joe Fitzpatrick explained.
“To say that congestion pricing is working,” he added, “I think that’s a joke.”
Zach Miller, vice‑president of government affairs for the Trucking Association of New York, told The Post that he’s seen the same pattern with service providers adding congestion charges to each invoice—even in parts of the borough that aren’t heavily trafficked. “The administrative burden is really the silent killer,” he said.
Some companies absorb the fee, but the extra cost is “absolutely cutting into the bottom line.” Larger freight trucks can trigger several tolls in a matter of minutes if they’re teetering on the zone’s boundary while trying to offload goods. “We have heard that essentially the service providers just add in the congestion charge to every service fee they charge,” Miller added.
Lightning Express’s Fitzpatrick noted that one of his eight trucks can weave in and out of the zone four times in a single day.
An MTA spokesperson dismissed the complaints and defended the scheme, arguing that trucks spend less time stuck in traffic, which saves fuel and labor costs that can be passed on to consumers. “No wonder business leaders support congestion pricing,” the spokesperson said.
But shop owners inside the zone say the tolls have hurt their profits over the past year, forcing some to hike prices. Bodega worker Suhel Ahmed of 705 Quick Stop told The Post that customers balked when the price of a $2.50 cookie jumped to $3.00. “We have to raise the prices to cover the delivery fees from the congestion pricing,” Ahmed said. “The customers don’t like it, but there’s nothing we can do about it.”
Stavros Dakis, owner of the Townhouse Diner, is nearly 56 years old and has run his business for 55 years. “I’m paying about $100 a day in fees for deliveries because of congestion pricing,” he said. “We’re losing business, especially on Mondays and Fridays when a lot of people don’t come to the office to work. We have to raise the prices, and suddenly people stop buying two coffees a day.”
Steve Ross, hardware store owner, adds that he spends roughly $1,000 a month on deliveries and has begun adding a $15 delivery fee—whether inside or outside the zone—to cover the toll costs. He noted that he never used to charge for deliveries, which was an advantage over competitors who did. “Now I can’t do that anymore. I’m covering my costs but it’s not a good optic, it’s really not.”
Jeffrey Bank of Alicart Restaurant Group, which runs several eateries, said that not everything can simply be passed on to the consumer. “People shop and buy things a certain way… and it’s not that everything’s just a pass‑through. It doesn’t work that way in the small business world,” he said.
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