Trump Wants To Kill NY Congestion Pricing – It Raised $48.6 Million In Tolls During Its First Month – CleanTechnica

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

---

Who would have thought that New York’s congestion pricing plan would raise $48.6 million in tolls during its first month? Clearly not President Donald J. Trump, who insists that the toll plan hurts local business. Trump has ordered the Department of Transportation to revoke New York’s federal congestion pricing authorization. The MTA countered with a lawsuit to stop the interference and says it will keep collecting tolls.

Trump’s #1 raison d’être for the congestion pricing fuss is extending his 2017 tax cuts for the next ten years, which the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates would add $4.6 trillion to the deficit.

Congestion pricing was approved in 2019 by state lawmakers after more than six decades of efforts to bring it to New York streets. When the program began in January, it became the nation’s first, following similar programs in London, Stockholm and Singapore. The New York version will route the billions of dollars it raises for much-needed repairs to the region’s decaying mass transit system.

This morning, the MTA website assured motorists that “Congestion Relief Zone tolling remains in effect.”

On Friday, Governor Kathy Hochul showed the President a 22-slide presentation that described traffic benefits, commercial office leasing, Broadway attendance, and foot traffic in the tolling zone — all of which have risen since the Congestion Relief Zone was implemented. The presentation included survey data that pointed to a majority of frequent drivers into Manhattan who support the toll.

Hochul intimated that Trump wasn’t buying into congestion pricing when she discussed it with him at the White House. “I wanted to take my case to him directly, and let him see the benefits of this program because our city is paralyzed with gridlock,” Hochul said Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation. “We had a path forward to be able to make the city move again, and it’s working. I wanted to just have that opportunity to convey that.”

In a surprise move, Hochul abruptly paused the program in June just as it was ready to get underway. At the time she had expressed concerns that the toll would impede the city’s recovery. She brought it back shortly after the November elections.

Now for the remainder of 2025 and for several subsequent years passenger cars must spend $9 a day to enter some of the most congested roads in Manhattan at peak traffic times. The tolls are expected to increase for most drivers to $12 in 2028 and to $15 in 2031. These tolls are anticipated to produce $500 million per year during its first three years, $700 million per year after the first toll increase, and close to $1 billion a year after the next one.

What is Congestion Pricing?

Vehicles entering the Congestion Relief Zone, local streets and avenues in Manhattan south of and including 60 Street, are being charged a toll. This toll to reduce gridlock in New York City is intended to help traffic to move faster, people to breathe easier, and the city to work better. There has already been a substantial reduction in the number of vehicles entering the Congestion Relief Zone, transforming the area from gridlocked to unlocked. Travel has been more efficient along previously slow roadways, bridges, and tunnels throughout the region.

Less traffic means cleaner air, safer streets, and better transit.

The public has access to detailed data about how vehicles enter the Congestion Relief Zone (CRZ) every day. That’s because New York City acknowledges that, given the way this program directly impacts shared public space, it is critically important that the public be able to see the changes already taking place. With their own eyes, and now with their own data, the City says it wants to empower everyone to better understand this program.

This dataset is now available on NYS Open Data: MTA Congestion Relief Zone Vehicle Entries.

The pages feature interactive, web-based dashboards on topics guided by the reporting requirements outlined in Public Authorities Law § 553-j (4) and Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1706, as well as the reporting commitments made in the Final Environmental Assessment for the CBD Tolling Program. All data behind these visualizations pull from datasets published on the NYS open data portal.

What’s the Status of the New Program?

Prior to its start date, officials expected congestion pricing to encourage people to use public transportation rather than driving to get into parts of Manhattan. Paid ridership on the MTA’s subways and commuter rail lines increased in January, with the agency collecting $11 million more than budgeted in farebox revenue last month, according to MTA data.

From January 25 through February 25, there were over 3 million vehicles that entered the CRZ. The MTA expects to collect an average of $40 million a month in the program’s first phase.

The first month’s revenue will pay for $11 million of expenses related to setting up tolling cameras and other parts of the system, and environmental projects to address concerns about urban pollution that might arise because of changing traffic patterns. That leaves about $37.5 million that can be applied toward financing major transit repair projects, said Jai Patel, the MTA’s co-chief financial officer. To date the MTA has issued $500 million in short-term notes for the capital projects, support by the congestion pricing toll as well as additional MTA revenue. Work has already begun on a formerly delayed project replacing subway signals on a stretch of the A and C lines in Brooklyn. Plans to purchase new commuter rail locomotives are also underway.

US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sent a letter to Hochul this week that laid out the consequences should New York City continue with its congestion pricing: the Federal Highway Administration would withdraw from an agreement with the MTA that gave the transit agency the authority to charge drivers. The MTA immediately filed suit, seeking a court decision to stop Duffy’s efforts.

Kurt Forsgren, the managing director of U.S. public finance at S&P Global Ratings, told the New York Times it was too early to tell how the legal dispute with the Trump administration would play out. However, further confusion could make it more expensive for the MTA to borrow money for necessary projects, and those costs could be passed onto taxpayers, he added.  “Everyone’s watching to see what will happen.”