The good news is that an issue has united Democrats and Republicans from Nassau County and New Jersey in common purpose.

The bad news is that the bipartisan opposition of officials from both sides of the Hudson River to congestion pricing is wrong on so many levels.

New York City has very good reason to implement a congestion pricing plan that calls for tolls of up to $23 during peak hours and as low as $5 during non-peak hours from 60^th Street to the Battery beginning in the spring of 2024.

The Manhattan Central Business District, the hub of the largest U.S. economy, ranks as the most congested in America.  Its air quality also ranks among the worst in the world.

Between 2010 and 2019, travel speeds in the Manhattan Central Business District fell by 22% from 9.1 mph to 7.1 mph, according to the New York City Planning Commission.

The planning commission estimated that the region around New York City suffers from driver congestion costs of 102 hours of wasted time per year and around $1,595 per driver annually. Economists say the price is much higher.

The congestion fee is expected to reduce Midtown traffic by about 20%, or roughly 143,000 vehicles a day, and reduce pollution.

It would also provide $1 billion to keep the MTA’s buses and trains running efficiently – about 8% of which would support the LIRR.

Often unappreciated is that the plan would benefit another area suffering from congestion – Nassau County.

This is well known to the 100,000 Nassau commuters who begin their journeys on congested highways in this county and then travel the 10 miles across often congested highways in Queens before entering Manhattan.

But so do commuters to Queens and Brooklyn and non-commuters just traveling highways and roadways within the county.

Now think what a reduction of 20,000 commuters driving to and from Manhattan as expected under the plan would mean.

All these benefits have not discouraged officials from Nassau County and New Jersey and beyond from telling New York City how to run their city and opposing the plan.

So much for local control.

Nassau Congressman Anthony D’Esposito (CD-4), facing a tough re-election fight, recently joined New Jersey Congressmen Josh Gottheimer, a Democrat, and Thomas Kean, a Republican, in sponsoring a resolution in Congress opposing New York’s tolling program.

Among other things, the resolution calls for New York State to make publicly available an economic impact program that has been long available and for state and federal agencies to halt implementation of the program.

But the main opposition is being led by New Jersey’s governor, Philip D. Murphy, a Democrat, who is suing the Biden administration over New York’s plan.

Fewer than 60,000 New Jersey residents commute to New York City by car – about a quarter of the number of Garden State residents who work in the city. But that hasn’t stopped Murphy.

The opposition of Murphy, a self-proclaimed environmentalist with national ambitions, to a plan that seeks to address climate change, has not gone over well with people in New Jersey concerned with record-setting temperatures, fires and extreme weather in the United States and beyond.

But he has gained other admirers, including Vito John Fossella Jr., Staten Island’s Republican borough president. He praised Murphy and announced that he, too, would sue.

In a press release, D’Esposito quoted Gottheimer as saying that New York’s plan comes “at a time when we should be doing everything we can to make life more affordable for hard-working families, New York’s and the MTA’s Congestion Tax will whack middle-class Jersey and New York drivers with a $23-a-day tax to go south of 60th in Manhattan.”

This echoes the criticism of County Legislator Steve Rhoads, who kicked off Nassau’s opposition to congestion pricing last year by calling the MTA proposal’s plan a “commuter tax.”

But the MTA’s plan is not a commuter tax for a simple reason – no one is required to pay it.

People avoid the fee by simply commuting to work by train or bus.

And the MTA has spent $14 billion in recent years on two projects that make it easier to commute by train from Nassau County to Manhattan: East Side Access and the 3rd track.

East Side Access is now saving commuters headed to the East Side valuable time by taking them to Grand Central Station on the East Side rather than Penn Station on the West Side.

The 3^rd Track, the 9.8-mile expansion of rail service from Floral Park to Hicksville, has improved service on a stretch that carries 40% of the LIRR’s traffic on Long Island.

Village of Floral Park Mayor Kevin Fitzgerald recently said the increased service will make “living in Floral Park even more attractive than it already is.”

And if the city’s Central Business District Tolling Program is a tax, then so are tolls at the Midtown Tunnel, George Washington Bridge, Throgs Neck Bridge, Whitestone Bridge, Lincoln Tunnel and the Holland Tunnel, among others.

Are the opponents of New York’s congestion plan in favor of eliminating the tolls at these crossings as well?

Congestion pricing is also not an attack on the middle class unless you consider people with a median annual income of more than $100,000 to be middle class.

And, as we have pointed out, they have the option of not driving to work and using mass transit like most commuters. This would save them the Central Business District toll, a possible Midtown Tunnel toll and the cost of gasoline and parking.

As for D’Esposito’s goal of doing everything we can to make life more affordable, Newsday recently published a series of stories on what makes Nassau County so expensive for residents.

No. 1 on the list was a lack of housing, which Newsday and others before them have said can be attributed to the county’s restrictive zoning and the opposition of local residents and officials.

Between 2010 and 2018 Nassau was last in the country in approval of new housing at 6 units per 1,000 people, according to The Citizens Budget Commission.

But Republican and Democratic officials vehemently opposed two proposals by Gov. Kathy Hochul to increase new housing in Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester counties.

Perhaps New York Mayor Eric Adams will be inspired by the suburban officials’ demands on how he runs New York City to demand that Nassau County change its zoning laws. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. No?

In his press release, D’Esposito also qualified for the Olympics of Chutzpah by quoting Gottheimer attacking the congestion plan by pointing to an MTA study that showed traffic at the George Washington Bridge would increase by 1%.

“The MTA admitted in their own report that the Congestion Tax will increase traffic and cancer-causing air pollution in Jersey and the outer boroughs,” Gottheimer said. “New York’s anti-environment, anti-commuter and anti-business Congestion Tax is nothing but a bailout for the terribly mismanaged MTA — and that’s why there is strong bipartisan support in Congress to stop this cash grab.”

According to the two congressmen, New York City should forego a 20% decrease in traffic and cancer-causing pollution so the George Washington Bridge doesn’t get a 1% increase in traffic.

And yes the MTA has been mismanaged in the past and could run a tighter ship now.

But does that mean we deprive them of a needed source of funding that will help keep fares down now?

D’Esposito would better serve his constituents by pressing the MTA to provide more direct train service to Penn Station and Grand Central and low-cost parking around Nassau’s train stations. That would help boost local businesses around train stations in Nassau County.

New York City is a convenient scapegoat for suburban officials of both parties.

But opponents of congestion pricing should spend more time trying to find solutions to problems in their own backyards and not choking the metropolitan area’s economic golden goose.