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During his first week back in office, President Trump checked off a long list of tasks he said he’d do: securing the border, dissolving DEI, ditching climate regulations.
But a promise from the campaign trail remains: “TERMINATE Congestion Pricing in my FIRST WEEK!!!”
And if — when — Trump makes that move, New York’s Democratic officials will have little power to stop him, if they even want to.
Congestion pricing has been operating for three weeks, and proponents would like you to do one thing: Forget about it.
The state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority has released just one week’s worth of data, showing vehicle volume down in the congestion zone by about 8%.
We know nothing about whether thousands of daily trucks are driving around Manhattan instead of through Manhattan. That was a key worry, after the MTA’s environmental review estimated that congestion pricing would dump hundreds of trucks a day on the Cross-Bronx Expressway alone.
We know nothing about whether northern New Jersey and Staten Island are seeing more traffic, as the congestion-pricing review indicated they would.
And the MTA didn’t tell us much about whether some drivers have switched to transit, or are simply avoiding Midtown and Lower Manhattan.
The MTA could put up a dashboard to give the public this information.
Instead, on highway stretches that might see more traffic, it says that “post-implementation data [will be] collected approximately three months after the start of tolling operations.”
It’s not clear that congestion pricing has three months.
No, not much happened last week — but only because Trump needs key personnel in place before he can start to intervene.
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-Staten Island), a vocal congestion pricing opponent, told me that Trump’s Department of Transportation, through the Federal Highway Administration, could “potentially reverse the Biden administration’s rubber-stamping of the program.”
That is, Trump’s DOT could retroactively revoke the federal government’s approval of the toll, on the grounds that the MTA never submitted a full environmental impact statement evaluating the program’s long-term effects on air quality outside the congestion zone.
Under the law, opponents contend, such a statement is necessary to win the feds’ blessing — but the Biden administration bypassed that, accepting the MTA’s shorter environmental “assessment” instead.
But Sean Duffy, Trump’s DOT pick, awaits Senate confirmation, and Trump hasn’t yet named a highway administrator.
“Once those positions are filled,” Malliotakis said, “we can get to work.”
In normal circumstances, retroactively revoking approval for a highway project — which congestion pricing is, as it touches major federally funded roads — would be strange.
But a federal judge still hasn’t ruled on New Jersey’s lawsuit against the program, which relies on the Biden DOT’s assertion that the environmental assessment was sufficient.
If the new administration’s DOT changes its tune in court, it becomes harder for the judge to rule in New York’s favor.
Duffy had his Senate committee hearing in mid-January. He garnered bipartisan assent, and nobody asked him about congestion pricing.
The committee has no New York senators — but you’d think a national Democrat would have asked, considering NYC’s congestion pricing scheme is supposed to be a national pilot.
And the committee does have a Democratic senator from New Jersey, Andy Kim — who confined his remarks to wondering whether the Trump-era DOT will continue funding new Amtrak tunnels under the Hudson (probably).
Meanwhile, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy last week reminded Trump he thinks the program is a “disaster.”
Malliotakis, too, just presented Trump with a letter signed by 26 state and local officials imploring him to halt the program.
So Trump is hearing from many opponents, but from few supposed champions.
Hochul, who scrambled after Trump’s election to quickly launch the program she had indefinitely “paused” last summer, didn’t tout it as a recent accomplishment in her state of the state speech or her budget address.
And her budget itself has made it harder for her to tell the public about congestion pricing’s supposed fiscal benefits — because she’s currently hunting for a couple billion more dollars a year for the MTA in taxes or fees.
Since congestion-pricing proponents have long claimed the program would answer our transit-funding prayers, it’s tough to argue: We just saved transit! Now pay up to save it again.
Mayor Adams, who has always been inconsistent on the idea, now disavows all responsibility, saying that what he thinks “doesn’t matter.”
Opponents have another avenue, too: If the Federal Highway Administration route fails, the GOP-majority Congress could pass a provision forbidding federal highway funding to cities that levy a toll to enter a particular district.
New York’s swing-district House members — such as Malliotakis and Hudson Valley Rep. Mike Lawler — would steer such a provision.
This is what happens when Democrats lose touch with voters: They lose power in Washington, and lose some power, too, over the cities and states they nominally control.
Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.