Twenty electric-hybrid refrigeration units went live Wednesday at the Hunts Point Produce Market, the first installment of what officials say will eventually replace up to 1,000 diesel-powered cold storage units at the sprawling 113-acre South Bronx facility.
The rollout connects directly to congestion pricing. MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber was on hand to make the case that the Manhattan tolling program, which launched in January 2025, is delivering returns well beyond midtown traffic relief. “Many people don’t realize that we’re using the revenues not just to improve mass transit, but also to pay for clean investments including right here at the Hunts Point Produce Market,” Lieber said.
The numbers he cited are striking. Swapping out a single diesel unit, Lieber said, eliminates particulate matter equivalent to 330 truck trips per day on the Cross Bronx Expressway. Multiply that by the 20 units already replaced, and you get an emissions reduction equal to pulling 6,000 trucks per day off one of the most polluted corridors in the country.
The Cross Bronx carries a brutal legacy in this neighborhood. Diesel exhaust from the trucks that rumble through it day and night has baked into the air that Bronx residents breathe, and the consequences show up in hospital data. Asthma emergency room visits in the Bronx from 2022 through 2024 far exceeded rates in every other borough, according to state Health Department figures.
Rep. Ritchie Torres, who represents the area, put it plainly. “Repeat asthma hospitalization is so common here in The Bronx that we accept it as normal,” he said Wednesday. “We accept it not as a bug, but as a feature of growing up in The Bronx, so we’re fighting to change that reality.”
The Hunts Point Produce Market distributes more than 2.5 billion pounds of produce annually. The diesel units powering refrigeration on the trucks running in and out of that market have long been a concentrated source of the toxins hitting nearby residents. Replacing them with electric-hybrid units is among the mitigation measures the Bronx was explicitly promised when congestion pricing was negotiated.
Those commitments add up to $330 million in investments for Bronx communities. The package includes asthma case-management centers, parks renovations, and expansion of the city Department of Transportation’s Hunts Point Clean Trucks Program. That initiative has been at this for more than a decade. Since 2012, DOT has replaced, retrofitted, or scrapped 711 particulate-spewing diesel trucks through the program.
Wednesday’s announcement extends that work. Another 75 refrigeration units are scheduled for replacement later this year, officials said, with the longer-term goal of reaching the full thousand.
Meanwhile, congestion pricing has logged its own numbers. Since launching last year, the tolling program has reduced vehicle trips south of 60th Street by 27 million, according to MTA figures. Lieber framed it simply: “That’s a lot less traffic, a lot cleaner air and a lot of other good stuff.”
The benefits of that cleaner air, though, have not necessarily flowed south to the Bronx on their own. The refrigeration unit swap is a reminder that what happens below 60th Street and what happens on the Cross Bronx are connected but not the same story. The Bronx was sacrificed for highway infrastructure decades ago, and a toll on Manhattan drivers is only beginning to account for that debt.
For residents who have spent lifetimes managing asthma in one of the most polluted urban corridors in the country, 20 electric refrigeration units is a start. A modest one. But the framework that produced this rollout, connecting toll revenue to direct health mitigation in overburdened communities, points toward something worth watching as more of those promised funds move from commitment to concrete action.
The next 75 units can’t come soon enough.
