New York’s congestion pricing has finally gone into effect, following years of legal and political wrangling. Basically, if you insist on driving into the most densely populated part of the city, you now have to pay to do so. You can still walk or take public transportation freely, and you can still drive if you want, but driving costs extra. Not everyone is happy about this new charge, including real estate mogul Andrew Heiberger, who told something called Freedom News dot TV that he can’t believe he has to pay to drive a few blocks to see his kids.
As Heiberger explained in the video below:
Starting today the congestion pricing is going into effect – $9 each day to pass 60th Street. While I disagree with it for many reasons, for me in particular, it really hits home, because I live right here on 61st Street in this building, and my car is right there parked in front of my building. If I want to turn around and go up town to visit my kids who live on 79th Street, I have to pay $9 to go around the block because there’s no way for me to go uptown without going around the block and paying $9. I think something has to be sorted out on behalf of residents.
If you plug 61st Street and 79th Street into Google Maps, you’ll see it’s about a 20-minute walk. If you don’t dilly-dally, you could probably make it in 15. It probably takes just as much time to walk across the Costco parking lot. This guy, though, can’t wrap his mind around doing something so basic. Instead, he’d rather drive and spend just as much time, if not more, hunting for parking. After all, cardio is for the poors.
This is especially rich coming from a guy who lives in an area famously known as Billionaire’s Row where monthly rent would likely be north of $10,000. He’s also the founder of Buttonwood Development and Town Residential, two real estate companies that are worth quite a bit of money. Even if he paid $18 to visit his kids every single day, that’s only $6,500 or so per year. He probably spends more than that on a bottle of wine at dinner. The man just doesn’t want to walk even though we know walking is good for longevity, and the ultra-wealthy are obsessed with longevity.
Then again, maybe Heiberger is just tired from a lifetime of pulling himself up by his bootstraps. Instead of wasting his time working at McDonald’s and smoking weed, the New York Post reports that a young Heiberger “launched his real estate career at the tender age of 17, buying and selling vacant lots in Suffolk County” before going on to start Citi Habitats, a rental company he later sold for $49.6 million, at 25. If you hadn’t been so lazy, you could have done the same thing, but you didn’t, and now you’re still a poor.
Where Heiberger got the money to buy and sell New York real estate as a teen, no one can say. It’s a complete mystery. Perhaps it is completely unknowable. But don’t let the fact that it was 100 percent Daddy’s money stop you from believing that you could also live on Billionaire’s Row if you just put your head down and work hard enough.
And really, the city should come up with a solution for wealthy residents who don’t want to mingle with the rabble. The privilege they inherited should exempt them from minor inconveniences such as paying an insignificant amount of money to drive a few blocks. Plus, it’s not like the city is going to do anything useful with the money collected from the tolls. It’s just going to go to improving public transportation and making life better for regular New Yorkers whose parents didn’t even love them enough to leave them eight-figure trust funds. Eww.
