Pre-K music teacher says NYC's congestion pricing plan will cost her 2 months of her salary
NEW YORK -- Congestion pricing is set to start in New York City on Jan. 5. As critics condemn the planned re-launch, one woman who lives in Manhattan's Central Business District says she is one of the working class people it will hurt, even with the lower fee.
Meredith Levande works as a Pre-K music teacher in the Bronx. She commutes from the Lower East Side by car so she can bring her guitars and other supplies to seven locations she visits. She makes the commute five days a week.
"I'm just praying it gets killed again," Levande said.
Every day, she gets on the FDR Drive from the Lower East Side and heads north, exiting the Central Business District. Her commute takes her about an hour.
Levande brings her "Music with Miss Merry" to seven locations in the Bronx, including the Mosholu Montefiore Community Center on Gun Hill Road.
"I bring a speaker," she said. "I'm walking around with 20 tambourines."
That's not all. Her equipment includes a headset, microphones, cables and props.
"It's still a significant amount of money"
So does she think the reduced $9 congestion pricing fee is more affordable?
"It's still a significant amount of money that I will have to pay every time I leave my house, because I don't live near a train," Levande said. "The train is a 25 minute walk from my home."
Her alternatives are challenging.
"When I researched all my options, I think it was three buses and two trains with all of my equipment," she said. "It's just unrealistic."
Levande said the $15 fee would have cost her about three months of her salary. At $9, she says it equates to about two months.
"I'm just going to have to evaluate as time goes on what makes sense," she said. "For anyone to tell me I should just go work in Manhattan, they don't see the larger picture of children who are worthy and deserving of loving adults that bring them joy and fun to their day that they don't otherwise have."
Levande who has three masters degrees, including one in early childhood special education, says many of the nearly three dozen Pre-K classes she teaches across the Bronx are trauma-informed.
"She does bring something that this community does not have a lot of," Pre-K teacher Ray Bobcombe said.
MTA Chair Janno Lieber has previously said employers should compensate workers for the toll.
"Why should money be taken away from early childhood education to fund the MTA?" Levande said.
She believes the $9 fee will eventually increase.
"There are so many ways to fund the MTA and when you look at all of the anti-car policies in the city, I very strongly believe this is about making it so difficult to drive that people just give it up," Levande said.
She'll be charged $9 when she comes back home and gets off the FDR.
Levande says she wrote a letter to President-elect Donald Trump asking him to keep the plan at bay. She is a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed by small business owners against the MTA, and says it's unclear if she qualifies for a low income discount plan which would give her a 50% discount.
Levande says because the application includes sharing tax information with a private entity, she does not trust it is a secure system.