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Thanks a lot, Kathy.
A Democratic district leader and former state Assembly candidate claims congestion pricing, implemented by fellow Dem Gov. Kathy Hochul, slammed the brakes on her six-year romance with a working stiff who could no longer afford interborough travel.
Mariama James went viral on X when she revealed how the toll taxed her relationship with her bus driver beau.
“We basically stopped seeing each other bc of Congestion Pricing,” she wrote this week. “He already pays it plus bridge tolls to get from his home in East NY to the depot in Harlem where he works. Coming to visit me inside the zone a few times per week as well, not to mention driving for our formerly frequent weekend getaways to AC became a hardship & no way he’d ever let me pay instead.”
The pair of toll-crossed lovers had a storybook beginning. She met her “MTA man” in 2019 while she was walking on the street near her home in the Financial District.
He chatted her up and then boldly followed her into a grocery store to get her phone number — and the two single-parent “workaholics” hit it off.
They dated off-and-on until 2025, with the couple spending most of their time at her place since the traditional gentleman refused to let her take the train or drive to Brooklyn to meet him.
“We would meet on his break. He’d take me to dinner, like park his bus and take me out,” James told The Post.
The Romeo Ralph Kramden — whose real name James withheld — pulled out all the stops to impress his Alice.
“He is the man,” gushed James, 55, “I didn’t carry a bag. I didn’t pay a tab. I didn’t open the door. I didn’t walk on the outside of the street.”
James, who also advocates for 9/11 victims and their families and is on the board of a youth charity, welcomed the chivalry.
“I have to be the ‘man’ in my life a lot of the time. When you’re an activist, when you’re the leader, I’m in a lot of male circles. . . . So when I’m with somebody that I’m dating or my partner, I let myself be the lady. I let him be the man,” she said.
The busy pair were already stretching thin to see each other prior to the new tax, with the bus driver shelling out over $100 a week for tolls during his commute through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel.
“He was doing that and subsisting and then here comes congestion pricing,” she said.
Congestion pricing went into effect on Jan. 5, 2025, forcing motorists to pay $9 when they drive in Manhattan below 61st Street.
Hochul’s toll did a number on her man’s bottom line — and James’ love life.
“We’ve only seen each other like two times since 2025,” James told The Post. “It just kind of became exhausting and we stopped doing it.”
She continued: “I’m a mother of three. I know how it is for a man, a black man who is not married to the mother of his child who has him on child support.”
“This man is paying additional money to take me out. For that to be a barrier to meeting his obligations, and because of the kind person that he is I know that he’s going to pay,” she continued.
“It was not fun for either one of us at that point because we had to figure out a master plan just to go out.”
She also flamed the Hochul-backed tax.
“I don’t like it. Not for my district,” she said, adding, “All its done is push pollution on our neighborhood.”
It’s been a rough year for James, who in June lost a Democratic state Assembly primary race to Democratic Socialists of America candidate Illapa Saorotupac.
Online trolls have had a field day bashing James for “getting dumped” over Hochul’s toll.
“You couldn’t waterboard this out of me,” one online sniper replied to her confessional post.
James isn’t ruling out a rekindled romance.
“Maybe we’ll start up again one day, who knows?” she said. “Maybe there will be a change in circumstances.”
