CNS –
They’re the biggest losers in New York City when it comes to congestion pricing.
The city’s maze of one-way streets — and apparent bad planning by the MTA — is forcing these New Yorkers to pay the controversial $9 toll even for just driving off their block.
Residents and workers who use a parking garage on East 61st Street lamented to The Post about having to pay the hated fee, which launched Sunday, despite it being located one block north of the Manhattan congestion tolling zone .
Because the 615 Garage exits onto Fifth Avenue, a one-way street headed south, drivers who park there have no choice but to enter the costly area — even if they end up immediately turning around to head uptown.
“You have to drive past the congestion pricing to go around the block and to go back uptown for any reason, whether it be to go to work, whether it be to leave the city, whether it be to visit your children, or whether it be to get a haircut or anything else that you do uptown,” said Andrew Heiberger, who lives at East 61st Street and Fifth Avenue.
His luxury building’s “unique location” — where the only exit is onto Fifth Avenue, and Central Park blocks westward traffic — effectively means there’s a toll right outside his front door and no way to avoid it.
“There should be something worked out where you’re not charged the toll, regardless of whether you can afford the toll or not,” he told The Post Monday.
Scores of unhappy New Yorkers and motorists have railed against the unfairness of congestion pricing, even before the $9 base tolls took effect Sunday.
Since the hated scheme began, residents have worried about toll-averse commuters turning neighborhoods into parking lots , companies saddled customers with congestion pricing surcharges and a first responder union told its workers to flee stations in the zone .
Proponents argue that the tolls will drive down traffic in Manhattan and bolster mass transit — an aim that Heiberger shares.
Heiberger called himself a “big fan” of everything from mass transit to bus and bike lanes to turning over Times Square to pedestrians.
He also said he would have no problem affording the $9 tolls just to drive from his building, which is partly connected to the parking garage — but the absurdity of doing so strikes him as unfair.
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“It’s the same as putting a toll on a suburban street in the middle of a subdivision, which basically if you lived in one house and you wanted to visit your friends down the street in a cul-de-sac, there would be a toll to get from one house to the other house,” he said.
Juan Rios, 58, who works as private driver for a tenant in the luxury building, likewise called it “crazy” to pay a toll just to drive.
“It’s not my car, but it’s still crazy because every time you have to go you have to pay once a day,” he said.
David Delarosa, 50, a UPS worker who services the building, was even more blunt.
“It sucks!” he said.
“If they park in this garage and they want to go north, they have to go around pass the toll and come back. That’s horrible.”
It’s not clear if the block’s unlucky geographical quirk was factored in by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority when it drummed up the congestion pricing plan as part of a state law signed by then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2019, and approved by the feds in 2023.