Blakeman warns congestion pricing is headed to a community near you if Hochul wins

Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman warned New York voters that congestion pricing could come to a “community near you” if Gov.Kathy Hochul wins reelectionBlakeman, the Nassau County executive, vowed to kill the program outright if he beats the Democratic incumbent in the Nov.

3 election as he claimed Hochul could have a menu of new taxes she could unleash if she secures another term.“Doesn’t matter whether it’s New York City, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany, Binghamton or any town in between,” Blakeman claimed while speaking on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan Tuesday.“If you live in Brooklyn, Flatbush Avenue.If you live in Queens, Queens Boulevard, Northern Boulevard.

If you live in the Bronx, Tremont Avenue.Staten Island, the Staten Island Expressway — congestion pricing will come to you if Kathy Hochul is reelected,” he told The Post.

“I will stop that as governor.“That’s a way for them to raise more money because they don’t know how to run a large organization,” he said of Hochul and city Mayor Zohran Mamdani while calling congestion pricing “nothing more than a tax on the middle class.”“Our budget in the state of New York is twice the size of the State of Florida and there’s 4 million more people in Florida,” Blakeman said, echoing a September Citizens Budget Commission report that found New Yorkers paid the highest tax burden per-person in the entire country.“We don’t have a revenue problem in New York state, we’ve got a spending problem,” he said.Blakeman was speaking on Fifth Avenue and East 62nd Street, just below one of the congestion toll cameras that charges drivers $9 every time they pass into Midtown Manhattan — and the streets were packed with traffic the congestion pricing was supposed to reduce.“You can look here.I don’t think it’s reduced traffic at all,” he said.

“I think that what you’re seeing here is traffic congestion.”Killing congestion pricing has been one of the...