President Donald Trump’s administration on Wednesday (February 19, 2025) ordered a halt to congestion pricing tolls in New York City, which thin traffic and fund mass transit by making people pay to drive into Manhattan’s core.
Launched on Jan. 5, the city’s system uses license plate readers to impose a $9 toll on most vehicles entering Manhattan neighborhoods south of Central Park. In its early days, transit officials said the toll has brought modest but measurable traffic reductions.
The federal government has rescinded its approval of the programme, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy announced Wednesday, calling the toll’s financial burden “a slap in the face to working class Americans and small business owners.”
The Federal Highway Administration will work with the state on an “orderly termination of the tolls,” according to the statement.
Within minutes of the announcement, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, a state agency that runs the New York City subway and other public transit, filed a federal lawsuit to keep congestion pricing alive.
Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said the toll program would continue while the lawsuit plays out.
The president, whose namesake Trump Tower penthouse and other properties are within the congestion zone, vowed to kill the plan as soon as he took office. The Republican declared victory on his social networking site Truth Social after the Transportation Department announcement.
“CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED.” Trump wrote, adding, “LONG LIVE THE KING!” The White House later posted an image of Trump wearing a crown in front of the New York skyline.
Hochul was quick to fire back.
“New York hasn’t labored under a king in over 250 years,” she said at a news conference at Grand Central Terminal, one of the city’s train hubs. “We sure as hell are not going to start now.”
Similar toll programs for getting people into public transit by making it cost-prohibitive to drive have long existed in other global cities, including London, Stockholm, Milan and Singapore, but the system had never been tried before in the U.S.
New York intends to use the money from tolls to issue bonds that would fund billions of dollars in improvements and repairs for the city’s creaky and cash-strapped transit system, which carries some 4 million riders daily.
As in other cities, New York’s congestion fee varies depending on the time and the size of the vehicle. Trucks and other large automobiles pay a higher rate, and the fee goes drops to $2.25 for most cars during the quieter overnight hours — less than the cost of a subway ride.
The tolling system has been divisive, with most opposition coming from suburban commuters or from those living in areas not well-served by the subway system.
Transit advocates and environmentalists heralded it as an innovative step to reduce air pollution and speed up traffic for vehicles that truly need to be on the road like delivery trucks, police cars and other first responders.
“By blocking this successful policy, Trump will be directly responsible for more traffic, more crashes, more polluted air, slower buses and less funding for our transit system,” said state Sen. Andrew Gounardes, a city Democrat.
The tolling plan was approved by New York lawmakers in 2019, but stalled for years awaiting a federal environmental review during Trump’s first term before being approved under the Biden administration.
The toll survived several lawsuits trying to halt it before its launch. Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy of neighboring New Jersey fought it in court and wrote a letter to Trump on Inauguration Day imploring him to kill the program.
Hochul also had misgivings. Last June, she abruptly halted the tolling system’s planned launch, citing concerns about its impact on the local economy. The Democrat then revived the toll in November following Trump’s election, but reduced the toll for passenger vehicles from $15 to $9.
Since then, she has lauded it as a win for the city and discussed the issue multiple times with the president.
New York City’s embattled Mayor Eric Adams, also a Democrat, was once a supporter of congestion pricing but has more recently punted on the subject, appearing unwilling to wade into a brewing fight between Trump and the state.
“If the federal government has the authority to do something within their powers, then we can’t sit back and complain about it, because we do things within our powers,” Adams told reporters last month when asked about Trump potentially canceling congestion pricing.
Published – February 20, 2025 09:52 am IST
