American exceptionalism is over. Wellphlbet, in one small way.
New York is back on track to become the first city in the United States to adopt a congestion fee on polluting cars and trucks coming into the most heavily trafficked city blocks.
In so doing, it is finally joining many other world cities with similar levies designed to clear up traffic and air pollution.
Many of those fees have been in place for decades. And while in some cities, they have briefly been politically fraught, in most, they have become an ordinary part of city life.
Singapore imposed a fee on all cars nearly 40 years ago. Oslo followed in 1990, with even electric vehicles, which do not spew pollutants from tailpipes, having to pay to come into the city center. Stockholm put the idea of a congestion price to a vote in 2006 — a majority voted in favor — and has had it ever since.
Some cities, like Milan and Amsterdam, charge vehicles entering the city center based on how polluting they are; electric vehicles pay nothing.
And London, having first introduced a fee in 2003, has steadily widened it since. It now covers polluting cars and trucks in the entire city, an expansion that became one of the most contentious issues in Mayor Sadiq Khan’s re-election bid earlier this year. He won with a comfortable margin.
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