John Lamparski/Sipa USA via AP Images
Cars and bicyclists traveled the Queensboro Bridge last summer as the city’s proposed congestion pricing scheme entered an indefinite legal limbo, July 25, 2024, in New York City.
When last we tuned in to the trials and tribulations of New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority in June, officials were only days away from implementing a hugely controversial plan to charge drivers $15 to enter Manhattan’s central business district during peak periods. Desperate for a revenue stream that would allow the MTA to begin and sustain repair and modernization projects—which makes up about 80 percent of its capital program—officials had finally secured the necessary federal permissions to move the congestion pricing plan forward. The expected $1 billion in revenues would enable the MTA to back $15 billion in bonds that work.
It took the governor only ten minutes to undo all of that, “indefinitely.”
The region’s transit advocacy groups erupted. A plan that had been years in the making had no immediately identifiable replacement for those funds. Some fearful Democratic candidates, however, saw a weight lifted that could have dragged them down during campaign season. After shouldering the blame for the state’s poor congressional showing in 2022, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) didn’t want to get blamed again.
Then, just a week after the election, congestion pricing was back.
In reinstating the program at a deeply discounted rate of $9, while insisting that the program can still pull in the required revenues, Hochul avoided making Democratic pols any unhappier than they already are in 2024. Unfortunately, after batting a hornet’s nest out of the park, she’s still getting stung.
“Although the pause was popular and the program was unpopular, her role in pausing it did not make her popular,” says Danny Pearlstein, the policy and communications director for Riders Alliance, a metro area public transit advocacy group. It was, he added, “a little bit of a mess.”
That mess has emboldened the governor’s opponents, and if developments in the coming weeks don’t turn her way, it could leave New Yorkers, the MTA, and her political career in a precarious place. Instead of concentrating on her 2026 re-election campaign, Hochul has a full-scale, multifront war to monitor.
Tom Wright, president of the Regional Plan Association (RPA), a tristate civic organization that researches economic health, environmental resiliency, and equity, told me that if the city learned anything during the pause, it was that, going forward, New York cannot afford to let the MTA crumble. The city is only beginning to recover from decades of disinvestment that only recently ended. Wright reels off a number of recently completed MTA projects, like connecting the Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central Station and opening the Moynihan Train Hall. But those projects, as vital as they are, are not replacements for the state-of-good-repair work on train cars, signals, stations, and electrical systems. That’s the type of work that’s threatened if the congestion plan fails to launch. Anyone who lived through the 2017 Summer of Hell, when a rash of subway breakdowns forced then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo to declare a state of emergency for the entire subway system, can attest to what failing to keep up with the less glamorous aspects of maintenance means.
Hochul’s $9 fee faces formidable political obstacles. The biggest is President-elect Donald Trump, and the threat he previously made to end the program.
The second lesson of the pause was that the other revenue options up for consideration, such as new business taxes or new taxes on residents, were worse options that the congestion pricing plan itself.
But Hochul’s $9 fee faces formidable political obstacles. The biggest is President-elect Donald Trump, and the threat he previously made to end the program on his “FIRST WEEK back in Office.” Surprisingly, after the election, Trump backed off a bit from that pre-election vow. Instead, he commented that he “strongly disagree[d] with the decision on the congestion tax … Not only is this a massive tax to people coming in, it is extremely inconvenient from both driving and personal bookkeeping standards. It will be virtually impossible for New York City to come back as long as the congestion tax is in effect … It will hurt workers, families, and businesses, but in particular, anything to do with jobs. It is the most regressive tax known to womankind!”
Does the president-elect have an appreciation for the role of the MTA, and especially the subway, in ensuring that New York functions? “It’s a really good question, and that will be borne out by how hard he fights to stop it, assuming it gets going,” says Pearlstein. He notes that Trump’s father, Fred, made his money “off of middle- and working-class people in Brooklyn and Queens who had apartments close to a subway stop—that is the foundation of Trump’s wealth.”
Wright believes that the program could be established before Trump takes the oath of office. “As long as [a] judge doesn’t delay this process past January 20, I don’t think that there’s anything that Trump can officially do to stop it,” says Wright. “New administrations can’t go back and reverse decisions that have already been made.”
A court ruling may prove to be the most serious threat to congestion pricing. There are nine pending legal challenges that the program still faces, and of those, New Jersey’s case poses the most serious pre-January 20 threat. The state has sued the Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration, challenging the initial finding of no significant impact from the congestion pricing scheme and arguing that the program needs a fuller environmental review, while noting that the state isn’t getting any revenues to handle those expected impacts.
The New Jersey political battlefield also features members of Congress hard at work bashing the plan, like Blue Dog Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer, who’s positioning himself for his own Garden State gubernatorial run. He’s crusading against the expenses that would be borne by Jersey drivers. Last week, he filed legislation requesting that the Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration re-evaluate traffic and air pollution impacts of the revised plan.
Four New York Republican House members have asked Trump to kill the congestion pricing “cash grab” once and for all. The leader of this quartet is a possible competitor for Hochul’s job, Rep. Mike Lawler, a Hudson Valley representative.
Connecticut, which has the lowest number of drivers affected, would like to see the MTA use the funds to upgrade the Metro-North commuter rail line. This past June, Gov. Ned Lamont (D-CT) had this to say about the wars over congestion pricing: “Look, you’ve got to pay for transportation, we’ve all had debates in our respective states,” he said. “I know what everybody’s opposed to, I’ve got to see what they’re for.”
The congestion pricing program is currently scheduled to launch on January 5, 2025, and already one group that would like to be exempted from the fees, municipal workers—there are more than 280,000 full-time city employees—has floated a new trial balloon. Wright argues that such a move would create a two-tiered system: a private-sector workforce that pays and a municipal workforce that does not.
The RPA, which has studied the idea, found that that kind of exemption would reduce revenues brought in under the program. Surprisingly, municipal workers drive into the central business district at a higher rate than private-sector employees, and within that group the highest-paid municipal earners drive more than lower-paid employees. Currently, there are no plans to add city workers to the existing roster of exempted groups (such as low-income residents and disabled people) or vehicles (such as buses).
In other words, congestion pricing has enemies on all sides of the business district, and none of them want to let go of that $9—even if it means sending the entire system spiraling into a new season of hell.
