Trump Administration Considers Halting Congestion Pricing

The New York City tolling program began on Jan. 5 after defying obstacles for decades. A move to stop it would likely touch off a legal battle between the state and federal government.

Congestion Pricing in N.Y.C. 

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• How Much It Will Cost You
• Trump Considers Halting Program
• Early Results Mixed
• Hochul’s Sell to the Suburbs
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The Trump administration is considering a move to halt New York City’s congestion pricing program, according to multiple people with knowledge of the matter.

The Department of Transportation is discussing whether to withdraw a key federal authorization that the tolling plan received from the Biden administration last year. Such a move would almost certainly touch off a legal battle between the state and federal government, and could effectively kill congestion pricing in its infancy.

No final decision has been made but President Trump had vowed to halt congestion pricing when he entered office, saying it was harmful to the city’s economy. The program’s opponents have urged Mr. Trump to re-examine it, with Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey calling it “a disaster for working- and middle-class New Jersey commuters and residents” in a letter to Mr. Trump last week.

The tolling program, which is meant to provide funding for public transit, started on Jan. 5 after surviving a number of lawsuits seeking to block it and a last-minute suspension by Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York in June.

Ms. Hochul and Mr. Trump have spoken twice this week including on Thursday morning. They discussed a range of issues including congestion pricing, according to a person familiar with the matter, with the governor conveying to Mr. Trump that the program was showing signs of success.

President Trump told Ms. Hochul, the person said, that there would be no immediate action and that before any decisions were made they should touch base again next week.

Avi Small, Ms. Hochul’s spokesman, said in a written statement that “America’s economy relies on New York City, and New York City relies on public transit.”

A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

There is little precedent for the reversal of a transportation project of this magnitude, transit experts said. New York’s congestion pricing plan, which first took shape more than six decades ago, is the first such program in the country.

Legal experts said that it was unlikely the federal government could directly scrap congestion pricing and whatever maneuver it employed to derail the plan would undoubtedly be challenged in court.

“It is questionable whether the administration can unilaterally halt congestion pricing,” said Michael Gerrard, a Columbia Law School professor who supports the program. “The legal authority for that is not at all apparent.”

Officials for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates congestion pricing, declined to comment on the latest potential threat to the plan, but pointed to recent comments they had made about the plan’s resilience.

“We’ve been sued in every federal court and state court east of the Mississippi, and we’re batting 1.000,” Janno Lieber, the chair and chief executive of the M.T.A., said in an interview this month. “We’ve won every time.”

Other cities that have implemented congestion pricing programs, including London, Stockholm and Singapore, have used the tolls to cut traffic and vehicle emissions, push people to use other modes of transportation and raise money. The tolls are typically unpopular at the onset before gradually winning over more public support. In New York, more than half of voters across the state were opposed to congestion pricing in a Siena College survey released in December.

The plan, which state lawmakers approved in 2019, charges most vehicles a $9 fee to enter Manhattan below 60th Street. The program cleared its final bureaucratic hurdle in November when the Federal Highway Administration, an agency within the Transportation Department, granted New York the approval it needed to toll drivers.

Congestion pricing seeks both to reduce the number of vehicles entering the newly tolled zone and to help the M.T.A. raise $15 billion in financing for repairs and upgrades to the city’s aging subway system. The funding is also earmarked for improvements to the authority’s bus fleet and two commuter train lines.

The Transportation Department was still in the early stages of weighing the best legal strategy to try to dismantle congestion pricing, three people familiar with the discussion told The New York Times.

One option under consideration, the officials who requested anonymity said, is that the highway administration could reopen the program’s environmental review process and force a pause.

Sean Duffy, a former Republican congressman, was confirmed as transportation secretary this week. Mr. Trump, however, has yet to name a nominee to lead the highway administration and a host of lower-level roles across the government remain unfilled. It would be difficult to build a case against congestion pricing without addressing those vacancies first.

“What I know is that this is a priority task that has been given to the Department of Transportation by the president, and he is serious about doing something,” said Representative Nicole Malliotakis, a New York City Republican who has vocally opposed the plan.

Mr. Trump is expected to name Marc Molinaro, a former Republican congressman from New York and a noted critic of the plan, to lead the Federal Transit Administration. The agency did not have a direct role in approving the program, but it does control billions of dollars in grants that could be used to pressure the M.T.A. to change course.

A reversal of approval from Washington could also bolster ongoing federal and state lawsuits brought by the program’s opponents, including the State of New Jersey, legal experts said.

In December, a federal judge in the state ruled that congestion pricing could begin, but also ordered federal transportation officials to review and explain some aspects of the program’s approval that he found to be arbitrary and capricious. Randy Mastro, a lawyer for New Jersey, said on Thursday that this was “an appropriate time for reflection, reassessment and potential change on the federal government’s part.”

Kathryn Freed, a retired New York State Supreme Court justice who is part of a group of New York residents suing over congestion pricing, said that while there were significant legal obstacles to stopping the program, the lawsuits against it could provide an opening for federal officials to agree with demands from opponents for further environmental review.

Opponents of the tolling program have said that it punishes drivers from the boroughs and suburbs outside Manhattan who have limited and unreliable transit options, and that it simply shifts traffic and pollution to other parts of the city and region. They have criticized the program as a money grab by a state transit agency with a troubled financial history.

“It’s a bad plan,” Ms. Freed said. “It was about money, it wasn’t about congestion.”

Ed Day, the executive of Rockland County, who is suing to stop the program in federal court, has called it “a misguided policy” that “raises serious questions about fairness, priorities and accountability.”

“If President Trump cancels congestion pricing first, it makes our job that much easier,” he said on Thursday.

While the results of congestion pricing are preliminary, the tolling program appears to be working. On an average weekday in January, 553,000 vehicles entered Manhattan south of 60th street, down from a three-year average of 583,000 vehicles, according to M.T.A. data released on Wednesday. The traffic improvement in the congestion zone is likely more extensive, because the figures include vehicles on highways along the perimeter of Manhattan that are not tolled.

Improvements on some major roadways were striking. In the first three weeks of the tolling plan, on an average weekday, drivers shaved 15 minutes off the time it took to cross 34th Street, a less-than-two-mile trip that took about 36 minutes a year earlier.

“Gridlock on our streets is an economic negative in the city of New York and our surrounding communities,” Midori Valdivia, an M.T.A. board member, said in a text message. “We’ve already seen some early success and improvements to quality of life — with travel time percentage reductions in the double digits. Why stop now?”

The program may also be driving more residents onto mass transit. The agency reported that weekday subway ridership rose 7.3 percent in January, compared to the same month last year. A total of one million fewer vehicles have entered the congestion zone since tolling began.

If the Trump administration moves to stop congestion pricing, it would be the first time in recent decades that federal officials have sought to revoke approval for a major transportation project, said Samuel I. Schwartz, a former city traffic commissioner.

Mr. Schwartz recalled that in the 1980s federal officials briefly threatened to withhold approval and funding for the rehabilitation of the Williamsburg Bridge over safety issues, including whether its lanes were too narrow.

Supporters of the tolling plan are hopeful that its early success will blunt any attempts to strike it down, said Danny Pearlstein, a spokesman for Riders Alliance, which supports the region’s transit riders.

“Nothing succeeds like success,” he said, “and congestion pricing is a proven winner in its first few weeks of operation.”

Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting.