Streetsblog NYC | By Dave Colon | March 23, 2023
New Yorkers who shop online would pay an extra 25 cents per package under a new state proposal to raise $226 million annually for city infrastructure.
State Sen. Andrew Gounardes's bill, which was introduced on Wednesday, aims to combat the city's growing addiction to instant delivery. The number of packages delivered on New York City streets every day has reportedly risen from 1.5 million to 2.3 million since the start of the pandemic.
The money raised from just a 25-cent tax could be bonded to fund $1 billion per year in infrastructure construction, Gounardes said. Such an infrastructure fund would could funnel cash to mitigate the harms of the increased trucking on city streets, he said.
"These packages are on trucks that are clogging up our roadways, contributing to the structural demise of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and air pollution," said Gounardes (D-Bay Ridge). "We're proposing an infrastructure fund to help pay for some of the capital costs to mitigate some of the consequences of last-mile trucking, and freight growth."