The city’s life savers — paramedics and EMTs — are in full panic mode over a controversial plan that will force them to pay a $15 congestion toll just to drive to their jobs in Manhattan.
An emergency worker union president is warning the congestion pricing plan, set to take effect as soon as May, will make hiring EMS workers in the city more difficult and ultimately increase response times in some of the Big Apple’s busiest neighborhoods.
More than 400 ambulance workers are assigned to three FDNY Emergency Service stations south of 60th Street in the congestion pricing district, said Oren Barzilay, president of the Local 2507 union representing paramedics, emergency medical technicians and fire inspectors.
Because of low pay and high housing costs in and around New York City, many EMS employees commute from their homes throughout lower-cost exurbs of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Long Island and the northern New York suburbs — instead of taking less convenient mass transit, he said.
Meanwhile, the unions representing EMS workers are among the few that haven’t secured a new labor contract with Mayor Eric Adams’ administration and EMTs and paramedics are some of the lowest paid among the city’s uniformed forces.
Currently, salaries for EMTs range from $39,386 to $59,534 after five years, while the salaries for medics start at $53,891 and max out at $75,872 after five years.
Now, they’ll have to pay about $4,000 extra per year to drive to their jobs in the new Manhattan toll district, Barzilay said.
“It’s an insult — a slap in the face,” he fumed.
“I have members who live 100 miles away in places where housing and cost of living is cheaper. They can’t afford to live in the city,” Barzilay said.
“Our EMS workers are the city’s life savers. They put their hands on people to save their lives. We bring the emergency room to New Yorkers’ homes. We bring people back from the dead every day,” Borzilay said.
“This is what my members get in return — a $15 toll! These aren’t just other drivers coming into the city. They are essential workers.”
He warned city taxpayers will end up suffering most.
“A $15 toll is going to cause a hiring problem of EMS workers for the city. I don’t think response times are going to be good in these neighborhoods in the congestion pricing zone,” Barzilay said.
“People are having to pay to go to work. They’re supposed to get paid to go to work.”
Three FDNY EMS ambulance stations are located in the congestion zone — at Bellevue hospital, on the Lower East Side and Chelsea. They are among the busiest stations in the city, which cover the Times Square business district and the downtown financial district.
Mayor Eric Adams has also said there should be some exemptions for people with medical appointments and city vehicles.
The toll program introduced by a state-commissioned task force last month recommended that the MTA charge drivers $15 once per day if they drive into Manhattan south of 60th Street during peak hours.
Transit officials said they’ve held the line on granting exemptions to the $15 congestion toll for people who reside outside the zone — at least thus far — because waiving the fee for one group of drivers will trigger a lobbying blitz from others wanting a break.
Exclusions will force the MTA to raise the congestion toll higher than $15 to make up for the loss of revenue from exemptions, officials said.
The pricing plan is expected to generate $1 billion annually to help the MTA finance up to $15 billion in repairs, improvements and expansion projects across its network of subways, railroads and buses.
“It does all hang together, if you change one piece of it, it affects other things,” Carl Weisbrod, who headed the MTA’s Traffic Mobility Review Board, which recommended the $15 congestion toll, warned last month.
Gov. Kathy Hochul has defended the plan.
But ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who muscled the state’s controversial congestion pricing law through the legislature in 2019, is now urging officials to put the brakes on the program.
MTA spokesman David Steckel responded, “Ambulances and other emergency vehicles are exempt by law, and emergency response times are expected to improve with less traffic in the currently heavily congested roadways in Manhattan’s Central Business District.”
The rub is that individual government employees — such as EMS workers — are not exempt when they drive to work.
“Just as public-sector employees are not exempt from existing tolls on bridges, tunnels, and highways, they should not be exempt from a Program designed to reduce congestion in the CBD [Central Business District], whether driving privately-owned or publicly-owned vehicles,” the state’s Traffic Mobility Review Board said.
