Bistate Battle Over Congestion Pricing Escalates With New Lawsuit

Good morning. It’s Thursday. We’ll discover out a few second lawsuit from New Jersey difficult New York’s congestion-pricing plan. We’ll additionally take a look at a wristwatch that belonged to Andy Warhol, who stated everybody could be well-known for quarter-hour.

A brand new lawsuit from New Jersey signaled an escalation within the cross-border combat over New York’s congestion-pricing plan, which might generate cash for mass transit with tolls on drivers coming into Manhattan under sixtieth Avenue.

Suburbanites complain that congestion pricing would trigger extra visitors on their roads and extra air pollution of their communities. Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey sued the federal authorities final summer time to dam the plan, saying it might create unfair monetary and environmental burdens for his state’s residents.

On Wednesday, Mark Sokolich, the mayor of Fort Lee, N.J., introduced one other lawsuit difficult congestion pricing as an environmental menace.

Sokolich, who was joined by different northern New Jersey officers, together with Consultant Josh Gottheimer, a fellow Democrat, stated that extra automobiles would undergo Fort Lee on the way in which to the George Washington Bridge as soon as congestion pricing took impact, as a result of drivers would keep away from Midtown Manhattan and the brand new tolls.

The lawsuit, a possible class-action continuing with Sokolich and a Fort Lee resident who has bronchial asthma as plaintiffs, asserts that congestion pricing would enhance pollution like nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide in Fort Lee.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which oversees mass transit in New York and is relying on congestion pricing for $1 billion a yr in new income, had hoped to start out amassing the cash subsequent spring. Janno Lieber, the authority’s chairman and chief government, stated final week that Murphy’s lawsuit to dam congestion pricing threatened much-needed work.

“We’re accomplished being the great, quiet neighbor to everyone — we’ve had sufficient,” Sokolich stated. “I’m going to let you know that the extra visitors is secondary at this level. We deal each day with the pollution, the soot, the filth. Extra visitors brings extra air pollution.”

Gottheimer, whose district contains Fort Lee and who has lengthy opposed congestion pricing, stated the tolling system would add $5,000 a yr to the worth commuters paid to drive to work in New York.

“That’s on high of the $17 they pay a day already to cross the bridge or go into the tunnel,” he stated. “That’s on high of parking. It’s on high of gasoline and the billions of {dollars} Jersey residents pay yearly to New York in earnings taxes.”

Eugene Resnick, an M.T.A. spokesman, stated, “congestion pricing wants to maneuver ahead for much less visitors, safer streets, cleaner air and big enhancements to mass transit.” He additionally stated that the Site visitors Mobility Overview Board, a six-member panel that may advise the authority on how a lot drivers ought to be charged and who ought to be eligible for exemptions, was persevering with its work. It has but to launch its suggestions.

Sokolich’s go well with, citing reviews that the M.T.A. deliberate to spend $130 million to deal with air pollution issues within the Bronx, famous that New Jersey stood to obtain no such compensation. The go well with seeks a “full and correct environmental examine” and a monitoring program for individuals with respiratory issues ensuing from extra visitors.

However Sokolich stated in an interview that his precedence was merely stopping congestion pricing. “I’m not suggesting that if there have been some stipend program, it might be justified,” he stated. “We will’t commerce off our well being for a verify right here.”

Climate

Count on a sunny sky and light-weight wind all through the day, with a excessive temperature round 50 levels. The night may even be clear, and temperatures will drop to round 40 levels.

ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING

In impact till Tuesday (Election Day).

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Andy Warhol is legendary for saying everybody could be well-known for quarter-hour. He may have timed everybody’s quarter-hour. He owned lots of of wristwatches. It took the earnings from who-knows-how-many Marilyns and Campbell’s soup cans to purchase all of them.

A number of the watches had been discovered after his loss of life within the material of the cover atop his four-poster mattress. Others, like one to be auctioned subsequent month at Christie’s, had been found later, stashed in a file drawer with a false backside.

Surprisingly, contemplating how Warhol’s work — Pop Artwork — elevated brighter-than-bright colours and on a regular basis objects that no one else checked out twice, the watch that is occurring the block is basic and understated. It’s a self-winding perpetual calendar mannequin from the Swiss producer Patek Philippe. It has a dial-within-the-dial that watch specialists name a moon part register.

Christie’s expects to promote it for $350,000 to $600,000, partially as a result of it’s uncommon. Solely 586 had been made, and solely 449 others have the yellow gold case that Warhol’s has. The circumstances on the remaining are pink gold, platinum or white gold.

Patek Philippe launched that mannequin in 1962, the yr of Warhol’s first exhibition of his Campbell’s soup cans.

“It was fairly a feat of watchmaking when it got here out,” stated Rebecca Ross, a Christie’s vice chairman who’s head of sale for watches. “You actually wouldn’t count on him to have anything.”

He was some collector, and never simply of watches. After he died in 1987, about 10,000 objects had been provided in 2,526 tons at Sotheby’s: all the pieces from Artwork Deco cigarette holders and Bakelite bracelets to work by Magritte, Man Ray, Picasso and Norman Rockwell. It was sufficient to fill three flooring when it was displayed earlier than the public sale. The New York Instances requested, “The place did he put all these items?”

Greater than 300 watches had been included in that sale. Warhol had apparently been “hoovering them up from markets and sellers together with cookie jars, American Indian artwork and various ephemera,” as The Robb Report put it in 2020.

Not all had been Patek Philippes or Rolexes. There have been three plastic watches with photos of Gumby, Fred Flintstone and Judy Jetson that had been initially valued at $60 to $80. They offered for $2,640 for the three (slightly below $7,000 now).

After which, months after that public sale, the curator of the Andy Warhol Basis discovered the cache within the false-bottom drawer. There was one other public sale.

Ross stated that Warhol’s Patek Philippe was made in 1977 and that Warhol had purchased it the next yr. “The case doesn’t appear to have been polished an excessive amount of previously,” she stated. “He could have even used the perpetual calendar operate. I can see him actually enjoying round with it.”

METROPOLITAN diary

East Ninth Avenue bakery

Pricey Diary:

I’m remembering with nostalgia a bakery on East Ninth Avenue close to First Avenue that I used to frequent within the Nineteen Seventies.

It was run by two brothers who offered bread by the pound in loaves they saved in giant drawers.

“Good day, expensive,” they might say after I entered. “If you happen to eat this bread, you’ll be able to stay without end! You by no means have to eat anything!”

They might minimize a slice from a loaf, put it in my hand and direct me to style it on the spot to make their level. There have been numerous rye and darkish pumpernickel loaves.

One brother started to lose his reminiscence, and it was touching to see the opposite take care of him as they carried on the enterprise.

Finally, the brothers died, and I heard on the information that one had secretly constructed up a small fortune that he handed on to a nephew.