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“Tolls are optional. There’s always a way to get to your destination without paying. This proposal blocks off public access entirely unless you pay.”

Only a few rutes from outside Manhattant into Manhattan without paying a toll, and for that few the traffic delays on the few routes without tolls often have such dense and congested traffic that you wished you’d paid the toll on one of the other routes. At least in most cases with tolls, the toll is not charged to escape Manhattan.

The tolless routes into Manhattan are:

Brooklyn Bridge and Manhttan Bridge from Brooklyn
Queensboro Bridge from Queens
Several local Bridges across the East River from the Bronx (which puts you into highly cangested northern Manhattan north of 168th Street).

In those cases at least you are going from one part of NYC to another. Though some folks living out on Long Island, will, after travelling all the way into Queens or Brooklyn will try to ditch the main highway from the east into Manhattan, which goes through the Midtwon tunnel (a toll) and venture over the congestion of Queens or Brooklyn to get to a lower Manhattan bridge without a toll.

From north of Manhattan, you can take Broadway south from Yonkers through the northwestern side of the Bronx, and on south through Harlem and down into the rest of Manhattan.

From the west (New Jersey) there is no entry to NYC without a toll.

And the way they are projecting to do the “congestion” pricing, even if you manage to use the ways into Manhattan that do not have a toll, they want to charge just being on the Manhattan streets anywhere south of 59th Street.

Parking garages will bloom all over northern Manhattan north of 59th street and nearest the subways, offering rates to compete with the congestion pricing. Makes me wonder if they and real estate developer interests are not part of the push for congestion pricing in Manhattan.