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Congestion Pricing Dead in NYC
Trump Admin Claws Back Approval for Congestion Pricing in Manhattan
The federal highway administration reversed its approval for the tolling program, and said it will pursue “the orderly cessation” of the system.
This article originally appeared in The City.
NEW YORK - Barely six weeks after the launch of congestion pricing, the plan to toll motorists driving into the core of Manhattan is facing yet another existential threat.
President Donald Trump followed through Wednesday on his August campaign pledge to “TERMINATE Congestion Pricing,” likely setting the stage for more legal fighting in the long-running saga. On January 5, New York became the first U.S. city to implement such a vehicle-tolling scheme, which is designed to unclog streets and fund billions of dollars in mass transit upgrades.
The president’s transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, sent a letter to Gov. Kathy Hochul that reverses the Federal Highway Administration’s approval of the tolling program. The news was first reported by the New York Post.
In the letter, Duffy said he shares “the President’s concerns about the impacts to working class Americans who now have an additional financial burden.” He said the highway agency would be in touch with local transit officials “to discuss the orderly cessation of toll operations.”
The move comes as Hochul had said her administration was negotiating with the Trump administration over the program’s future. Advocates for transit riders have already vowed to fight to keep it alive.
“We’ve defended the program, we’ve won lawsuits against the program, we’ve held two governors accountable,” Danny Pearlstein, policy director of Riders Alliance, told THE CITY. “And we will do whatever we need to do to defend it from people who would try and undermine our big success.”
Just weeks into his second stint in the White House, Trump said he would pull the plug on a program that MTA officials have hailed as an early hit for its part in reducing congestion south of 60th Street in Manhattan, cutting travel times and speeding bus service.
“It’s doing what we expected it to do and anything to roll it back is going to really make lives worse for everyone who’s living in and around the New York metropolitan region,” Julie Tighe, president of the New York League of Conservation Voters, told THE CITY. “People are going to be back to wasting time in traffic given that you’ve seen really substantial improvements.”
The decision by Trump — who had initially said he would squash congestion pricing during his first days in office — came after he and Hochul discussed halting the vehicle-tolling initiative that follows the lead of cities that include London, Stockholm and Milan.
Initially approved by a 2019 state law, congestion pricing was designed to generate revenue for the regional transportation network, with the legislation specifying that 80% of the money go toward subway and bus improvements in the MTA’s 2020 to 2024 capital program.
Among the projects to be paid for by congestion pricing are modernizing signals along multiple subway lines, adding elevators to more stations, extending the Second Avenue Subway from the Upper East Side to Harlem and buying more electric buses.
As part of congestion pricing, the MTA has also committed to more than $330 million in mitigation measures that are supposed to provide environmental benefits to communities in The Bronx and elsewhere in the city that have been historically hard hit by air pollution and chronic disease.
But Trump’s move again imperils the years-in-the-making plan that Hochul herself temporarily paused in June, just weeks before its scheduled launch, citing what she called the “undue strain” of what would have been a $15 peak-hours toll for most motorists. But days after Trump’s November win in the presidential election, Hochul reversed course and revived congestion pricing with a reduced $9 toll.
Since the Jan. 5 launch, MTA officials have repeatedly touted the early successes of the new tolls, citing reduced traffic south of 60th Street in Manhattan, improved trip times on river crossings into the central business district, faster bus speeds across the Hudson and East River bridges and tunnels and increased ridership on the subway and express buses.
“What we studied, what we expected, what we planned for is what seems to be happening,” Juliette Michaelson, the transit agency’s deputy chief of policy and external relations, said at the January 29 MTA board meeting. “That is great news for people who live here, people who work here and even people who just visit occasionally.”
Janno Lieber, the MTA chairperson and chief executive, described himself as “very optimistic” that congestion pricing can survive another challenge after it beat back numerous lawsuits from both sides of the Hudson River and endured a rigorous federal environmental review process.
“We’re batting .1000 — we’ve been sued in every court east of the Mississippi and we’ve won every time,” he told reporters after a Citizens Budget Commission breakfast discussion recently. “So we’re very optimistic that, on the law, this program is very solid.”
Lieber cited how it’s potentially tougher to roll back such a program once it’s in place, pointing to highway tolling programs in Texas and Florida that operate under the same law.
“There are reasons for them to move carefully on this front,” he said. “When you start suggesting that commitments by the federal government to states and localities are subject to being reversed on a dime because we had a change of administration, that upsets the whole apple cart of federal-state relations.”
Kate Slevin, executive vice president of the Regional Plan Association, told THE CITY there is not a straight line for the federal government to cancel congestion pricing.
“There will be some time that the courts would have to hear the case again and figure out what to do,” she said. “We don’t see a clear legal path right now for this to be turned off.”
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