Donald Trump is trying to make driving into Manhattan great again. On Wednesday, his administration announced its plan to kill congestion pricing, the policy charging most drivers a $9 toll to enter lower Manhattan.
The Department of Transportation announced in a letter that the federal government would “effectively [end] tolling authority for New York City’s cordon pricing plan, which imposes tolls on drivers entering Manhattan below 60th St.” Transportation secretary Sean Duffy called congestion pricing a “slap in the face to working class Americans and small business owners.” The letter did not include a specific date for the end of the program, which Trump has called “destructive to New York.”
New York lawmakers first approved the plan to toll vehicles going into Manhattan back in 2019, though it took years for the federal government to green-light the measure. Governor Kathy Hochul has stated that the funds from the program — which has already reduced traffic in lower Manhattan — would support aging improvements to the state’s mass-transit infrastructure. But Duffy wrote that it was not a “fair deal” to send the revenue to “the transit system as opposed to the highways.” In response to the announcement, the MTA has filed a lawsuit in federal court to block Trump’s motion.
Legal experts have serious doubts that Trump has the authority to kill the program. But if his congestion-pricing ban is upheld in the courts, it would get rid of $15 billion in revenue the state has allocated for mass-transit improvements.
