Trump Administration Moves to Kill Manhattan’s Congestion Pricing

President Donald Trump has moved to kill congestion pricing in Manhattan after vowing to revoke federal approval of the tolling program.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration, under Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, is set to revoke federal approval for congestion pricing Wednesday in a blow to Gov. Kathy Hochul, the New York Post first reported.

“New York State’s congestion pricing plan is a slap in the face to working-class Americans and small business owners,” Duffy wrote in a letter to Hochul Wednesday.

“Commuters using the highway system to enter New York City have already financed the construction and improvement of these highways through the payment of gas taxes and other taxes,” Duffy wrote. “But now the toll program leaves drivers without any free highway alternative, and instead takes more money from working people to pay for a transit system and not highways. It’s backwards and unfair.”

Duffy wrote in a letter with a full explanation for the decision that his office would be in contact with New York State to facilitate the “orderly cessation” of the “terminated pilot program,” but further details were not made immediately available. It’s unclear when the federal government would try to phase out the new program, which started Jan. 5, but Trump’s decision to cancel the program is expected to face legal challenges.

Hochul held a press conference later in the day with fiery rhetoric in which she said that the toll cameras would stay on until a judge makes a ruling on the matter and that she believed the president was making deliberate attacks against New York’s economy.

“We are not subservient to a king or anyone else out of Washington. So this is the fight we’re in. It’s all about our sovereignty,” Hochul said during the press conference. “We’re in fight mode. Within seconds of us getting this notification, our MTA was prepared. We knew this could come and filed a lawsuit within minutes. I’m very confident we’ll be successful.”

Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chair Janno Lieber said the state agency that expects to pay for infrastructure upgrades using money raised from the $9 tolls already plans to fight the federal reversal.

“Today, the MTA filed papers in federal court to ensure that the highly successful program … will continue notwithstanding this baseless effort to snatch those benefits away from the millions of mass transit users, pedestrians and, especially, the drivers who come to the Manhattan central business district,” Lieber said in a statement. “It’s mystifying that after four years and 4,000 pages of federally supervised environmental review – and barely three months after giving final approval to the Congestion Relief Program – USDOT would seek to totally reverse course.”

Congressman Jerrold Nadler cast doubt on the legality of Duffy’s justification for canceling the program and said litigation would ensue.

“The arguments presented by the USDOT against congestion pricing are utterly baseless and, frankly, laughable,” Nadler said in a statement. “The notion of revoking approval for a federal initiative of this magnitude is nearly without precedent. I firmly believe that there is no legal basis for the president to unilaterally halt this program. The [program] is solidly established under federal law, and its approval cannot be arbitrarily revoked, especially when it is clearly delivering tangible benefits.”

Congestion pricing has already been through the ringer, however, and has cleared almost every hurdle along the way.

Introduced by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2017, passed by the New York State Legislature in 2019 and approved by the federal government under the Biden administration, the program was years in the making. The state has spent more than $500 million on the equipment to collect the tolls.

While outer borough commentators applauded the termination of the program’s approval, others who advocated for the program throughout the decades were outraged by Trump’s decision.

“Public transit riders won congestion relief and are now enjoying faster and more reliable bus service from throughout New York and New Jersey,” Betsy Plum, executive director for the Riders Alliance, said in a statement. “We organized for a decade, held two governors accountable, and prevailed in court in three states after years of exhaustive environmental studies. We are committed to maintaining and expanding on our victory and will defend it with everything we have.”

In the years since Biden entered the White House and began working with state officials to get the program up and running, participants, which included real estate industry leaders, deliberated to determine the pricing structure for the toll.

Eventually settling on a $15 toll, Hochul herself incited rage in June when she paused the launch of congestion pricing, which at the time was scheduled for the end of that month. At the time, many speculated that Hochul hoped to help Democrats keep a majority in the upcoming election. 

But November spelled disaster for the party anyway when Republicans swept the U.S. Senate, House of Representatives and the executive branch. Within days, Hochul unpaused congestion pricing, adjusting the toll to $9, and it was given its final federal approval from the Federal Highway Administration in November.

Upon taking office in January, Hochul and Trump held multiple discussions in which congestion pricing was a primary topic.

Isabelle Durso can be reached at idurso@commercialobserver.com. Mark Hallum can be reached at mhallum@commercialobserver.com.