Trump victory could doom congestion pricing, keeping city’s air unhealthy

New York’s working class and people of color have long had to breathe its dirtiest air. That's partially because they often live closest to the city’s most heavily traffic-congested areas.  Supporters of congestion pricing say that the policy would help alleviate that burden for many New York City residents while bringing the state closer to its climate goals.

Congestion pricing aims to reduce traffic in downtown Manhattan by tolling personal vehicles entering the area during busy hours. Those tolls would bring in up to $1 billion per year, which would go towards funding improvements to New York City’s public transportation system – a system that commuters will need to rely on more, if the state is to meet its climate targets. 

But with the possibility of a Trump presidency looming, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s indefinite pause of the tolling plan leaves it vulnerable to federal interference. If Donald Trump is elected president and then kills the plan, residents and workers in and around Manhattan’s Central Business District – which policy-makers define as everything on or below 60th street except for FDR Drive – could pay the price.

“We can't risk backsliding during this pivotal time for moving forward with climate action in New York and across the country,” said Justin Backal Balik, the state program director for environmental nonprofit Evergreen Action, which supports the congestion pricing plan.

In May, Donald Trump promised on social media to “terminate congestion pricing” within his first week back in office. If congestion pricing is not already underway by the time he potentially takes office on Jan. 20, he would have multiple options for following through on that promise, according to New York Focus. Since the congestion pricing plan requires federal authorization, the Trump administration could refuse to provide the final federal sign-off for the project or insist on a more detailed federal environmental impact study, which would further stall the project. “We've had Donald Trump as president before. We've seen this movie, and usually the sequel is worse than the original,” Backal Balik said, adding that Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz “have the opposite track record of investing in climate friendly transportation solutions.”

That could result in a four-year delay in the project, undercutting New York’s ability to meet its climate goals. Those goals, laid out in the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, call for a 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2050. The state Department of Transportation has the urgent task of transforming the state’s transportation sector, which accounted for 28% of the state’s total greenhouse gas emissions in 2019. With road transportation accounting for more than half of that, reducing the total distance driven by cars (also known as vehicle miles traveled) across the state is a key element of the Department of Transportation’s Carbon Reduction Strategy, which was finalized in 2023.

A comprehensive, 868-page environmental impact study of the congestion pricing plan authored by the Federal Highway Administration, as well as state and local agencies, found that the plan would reduce vehicle miles traveled overall across the tristate area, particularly in the Central Business District. That decline in vehicle use would immediately prevent at least 100,000 tons worth of carbon dioxide in greenhouse gas emissions each year, the study says. Delaying congestion pricing would also prevent improvement in air quality for some of New York City’s most polluted communities. The environmental impact study estimated that tolling vehicles entering the Central Business District would reduce vehicle miles traveled there by at least 11.5%, which would mean a significant drop in harmful pollutants like fine particulate matter, which is linked to cancer, respiratory illnesses, and heart disease. 

The dirty air coming from the Central Business District’s heavy traffic congestion causes adverse health effects for its roughly 617,000 residents. That impact is most pronounced in Community District 3, which includes the Lower East Side and Chinatown. More than 66% of residents identify as non-white and the area has a 26% poverty rate, according to the NYU Furman Center. In 2022, the air in Community District 3 had an annual average of 7.2 micrograms per cubic meter of fine particulate matter, which was 24% higher than the citywide average. And between 2017 and 2019, 90 out of every 100,000 children on the Lower East Side and Chinatown had asthma emergency department visits due to fine particulate matter exposure, a figure 45% greater than the citywide average. 

Congestion pricing has drawn its fair share of opponents, like Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella and New York City’s United Federation of Teachers, who filed a lawsuit in January aimed at halting the plan. Among their concerns is that the plan would drive increases in traffic at key highways and intersections in Staten Island and the Bronx as commuters circumvent tolls – which they say would lead to increased air pollution in those neighborhoods. 

But the federal environmental impact study found that those concerns were unfounded. While certain roads within its study area of 28 New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut counties could see a slight uptick in traffic congestion as a result of congestion pricing, that would not come at the cost of significant air or noise pollution in those areas. According to a 2024 reevaluation of congestion pricing by the Federal Highway Administration, the state  and the MTA have have also agreed to spend $155 million raised from congestion pricing over five years to help counteract any potential increase in pollution from congestion pricing in the South Bronx and help it deal with the long term environmental burden it has faced. That money would go toward projects like an asthma center, enhanced ventilation for schools near highways, and renovations for parks and green spaces. 

Despite the clear conclusions of the environmental impact study, Hochul announced in June that she would “indefinitely pause” the congestion pricing plan, just weeks before it was scheduled to go into effect. The move angered environmental advocates, who warned that it would harm the city’s mass transit system and make it tougher for the state to meet its climate goals.

“In order to meet the goals that New York has laid out for itself, if you just do the math…it means you have to invest in mass transportation.” Backal Balik said. As of now, New York's public transportation system is in dire need of repairs like signal upgrades that improve service, new railing for subways, new rolling stock and equipment, and new accessibility improvements, Backal Balik said. If those upgrades and repairs are not made, commuters will be incentivised to drive. “You're going to increase auto usage, increase transportation pollution, increase other air pollutants that make it harder for people to breathe,” Backal Balik said.

“Fewer cars on the road means less truck exhaust in people's lungs,” said Danny Pearlstein, the policy and communications director for the Riders Alliance, a grassroots organization of subway and bus riders in New York City. Along with the environmental groups Sierra Club and New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, Riders Alliance sued Hochul in July in an attempt to reverse her indefinite pause of congestion pricing. The lawsuit argues that Hochul’s pause violated the CLCPA as well as the state constitution, which was amended in 2021 to grant the right of “clean air and water, and a healthful environment,” to every New Yorker. In September, a New York judge allowed the suit to proceed despite Hochul’s objections.

During the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Hochul said she intends to release a new plan. But it remains unclear how much it would deviate from the established one. What is clear is that any major deviation would require new approval from the state Legislature, which could be a lengthy process, and potentially from the federal government as well. 

With the clock ticking to get congestion pricing started before a potentially unfriendly administration in the White House, advocates and residents alike have been left wondering just how much the governor is prioritizing their health and the health of the planet.