With President-elect Donald Trump and members of the Republican Party opposed to New York’s congestion pricing program for Manhattan, transit advocates are pressuring Gov. Kathy Hochul to restart the program before Trump takes office.
The aim of the program is to relieve traffic congestion in the borough’s midtown and downtown business district while raising money for the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s capital investment needs. Hochul halted implementation of the plan on June 5.
“It’s time for Governor Hochul to turn on congestion pricing now and get this critical program up and running before the next administration takes office,” said the Congestion Pricing Now Coalition in an email statement. “Without a partner in the federal government to support our climate initiatives and our public transportation, Governor Hochul must take matters into her own hands and do everything she can to protect New Yorkers.” The Coalition includes Lyft, Uber, the American Institute of Architects and environmental organizations.
Opposition to the tolling plan came from the borough of Staten Island as well as New Jersey and other suburbs around New York City. Hochul’s action to indefinitely pause the program was widely seen as an effort to help Democrats running for congressional House seats. The plan appears to have worked: New York Democrats gained three seats in the Nov. 5 election.
The incoming president made his position on congestion pricing clear in a post earlier this year on his social networking site, Truth Social, where he vowed to “terminate” the program in his first week in office. The Republican-led House Appropriations Committee’s fiscal year 2025 transportation appropriations measure carries a prohibition against New York’s tolling plan.
U.S. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, a Republican representing Staten Island and southern Brooklyn, yesterday issued a joint press release with local elected officials in which she addressed a statement to Hochul that says, “There is no way we will allow you to move forward with Congestion Pricing without a fight, and we will fight you tooth and nail until Congestion Pricing is dead for good.” Malliotakis suggested in a Nov. 8 post on the social media site X that New York close its migrant shelters and use that money, which she pegged at $5 billion a year, for the public transit system.
Advocates for the tolling plan are calling on Hochul to implement the program before Inauguration Day, which they believe will make it more difficult for the incoming administration to quash the program. “Sharks are circling New York's public transit network and proposing absurd schemes destined to fail,” said Riders Alliance Policy and Communications Director Danny Pearlstein in an email statement. “Governor Kathy Hochul must prove she can resist the insanity and take care of the basic infrastructure millions of New Yorkers depend on each day."
Politico reported that Hochul is looking to the Biden administration to approve the tolling program with a lower fee without having it go through another environmental review. The governor also reached out to Trump directly in a Nov. 7 call, but it is unclear if they discussed congestion pricing. According to the news site City & State New York, Hochul would not say if she had discussed reinstituting the program with federal officials.
The New York state legislature passed the congestion pricing program in 2019, which was signed into law by then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
