Many of the downtown employees who worked at home during the pandemic have yet to resume their daily treks into the city, leaving a smaller customer base for restaurants that depend on office workers for breakfast, lunch and afterwork business. Charging those who drove an additional $9 a day will be a disincentive for the telecommuters to return to their midtown offices, asserts Andrew Rigie, executive director of the Hospitality Alliance. He also cites the burden that will fall on foodservice establishments that use trucks in their catering operations. “It’s death by a thousand cuts,” says Rigie. Most of those threats are still what-if’s; congestion pricing went into effect at 12:01 a.m. Sunday, or too recently to be felt full-force by the industry. But there’s no uncertainty about the impact on distribution vehicles. Any truck entering the central business district is charged a toll ranging from $14.40 to $21.60, depending on its size. The rates drop to $3.60 to $5.40 from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. weekdays and from 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. on weekends. “It’s significant,” says Seth Gottlieb, SVP of logistics for the distributor Baldor Specialty Foods. “It’s going to be a significant cost on top of a lot of significant costs.” In any 24-hour period, Baldor dispatches 80 trucks into the high-traffic zone covered by congestion pricing, or all of Manhattan south of 60th Street. Twenty of the vehicles resupply operations that prefer mid-nighttime drops. The other 60 will be subject to the toll. Unlike passenger vehicles, trucks can be charged multiple times per trip. The technology supporting congestion pricing has been programmed to charge cars only once per day, no matter how many times they zip in or out of the tolled zone. That leeway isn’t extended to cargo vehicles.
Gottlieb cites the example of a truck reupping a restaurant on 60th Street, the northern border of the fee zone. It’s charged as soon as it rolls onto 60th. “If it can’t find a place to park near the restaurant, it’ll have to circle around until it can find one. It’s charged every time it leaves and re- enters the zone.” Baldor has reconceived its routes to prevent those multiple assessments but has promised restaurant customers that they’ll see no other change in service protocols. Drop sizes, drop times and the frequency of deliveries will remain as they were before congestion pricing took effect, declares Gottlieb. Nor, he insists, will the midsized homegrown distributor pass along what it’s assessed in tolls to customers. “We’re going to look for efficiencies and absorb the cost in that way,” says Gottlieb. “Other businesses that bring food into the city may not have that opportunity.” Advocates of congestion pricing say the operators of commercial vehicles could benefit from the initiative. Research indicates that the tolls will likely reduce traffic in the covered zone by 13%. With less time eaten by gridlock, say the proponents, trucks will spend less time getting from one place to another.
HOSPITALITY NEWS FEB | Page 45
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