Trump administration moves to kill congestion pricing

President Donald Trump said he would kill congestion pricing in Manhattan, and now his administration is making good on the promise. 

On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy announced in a letter to Gov. Kathy Hochul and other state and city leaders that the Federal Highway Authority was pulling federal approval for the tolling program. In response, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority filed a lawsuit to halt the federal government’s attempt to end congestion pricing, with Hochul promising to “see (them) in court).”

The congestion pricing program, created through a 2019 law, required the federal thumbs up through the Value Pricing Pilot Program before it could get underway. The VPPP agreement from the Federal Highway Administration – under the purview of the U.S. Department of Transportation – allows for toll roads across the country, and many are in place in other states, including those controlled by Republicans. New York finally got the approval last year under the Biden administration. 

After an initial pause, Hochul got congestion pricing rolling shortly before Trump’s inauguration, and supporters hoped that having the program officially underway would make it harder to kill. But Trump, backed by Republicans who oppose the tolling scheme, said he would take action to end the program. Pulling federal approval was seen as a possibility, albeit one that would be unprecedented. Hochul has had numerous conversations with the president in recent weeks about congestion pricing, and sources said she hit the brakes on a controversial special election bill last week to use as leverage in negotiations. 

Obviously, those conversations did not bear out. “New York State’s congestion pricing plan is a slap in the face to working class Americans and small business owners,” Duffy said in a statement. “Commuters using the highway system to enter New York City have already financed the construction and improvement of these highways through the payment of gas taxes and other taxes.” 

Trump took to his own social media platform Truth Social to celebrate the decision. “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD,” he wrote. “Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING.”

Hochul directly rebuked Trump’s rhetoric in a statement she released Wednesday afternoon. “We are a nation of laws, not ruled by a king,” she said. “The MTA has initiated legal proceedings in the Southern District of New York to preserve this critical program.” Hochul pointed to early indicators that the tolling program is running well and having positive impacts on the city. At a press conference later on Wednesday, the governor also called the attempt to reverse congestion pricing an attack on New York sovereignty, in the strongest rhetorical rebuke of Trump since he assumed office last month. 

In a statement, MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber said the agency had already “filed papers in court” to ensure the continuity of the “highly successful program.” He added that, “It’s mystifying that after four years and 4,000 pages of federally-supervised environmental review – and barely three months after giving final approval to the Congestion Relief Program – USDOT would seek to totally reverse course.” At the press conference with Hochul, Lieber said that the MTA does not have a contingency plan for capital funding because he’s confident that the lawsuit will be successful.

In his letter, Duffy made two main arguments why approval deserves to be rescinded. First, he claimed that VPPP does not actually cover the tolling method used by congestion pricing, which provides no alternative routes to get to tolled areas. Duffy cited a lawsuit brought by the Town of Hempstead over that very issue, and he wrote in the letter to Hochul that he believes the Federal Highway Administration is likely to lose that case. Second, he said that the program is designed to raise revenue for the purpose of funding capital projects by the MTA, rather than for reducing congestion.

In the newly filed complaint, the MTA and the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority disputed the claims that Duffy used to justify the reversal of the VPPP approval. Among other arguments, they said that the Federal Highway Administration failed to establish what changed between federal sign off for the VPPP agreement a few months ago compared to now. The process to get congestion pricing going lasted many years, was subject to a variety of studies and was the result of extensive conversations with federal partners. “In short, FHWA’s decision to purportedly terminate the VPPP Agreement is in open disregard of a host of federal statutes and regulations, not to mention the MTA and Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority’s rights under the United States Constitution,” the lawsuit reads. 

The complaint also points to the fact that the MTA has begun issuing debt backed by congestion pricing revenue, including hundreds of millions of dollars in short-term notes. While this doesn’t guarantee that the federal government can’t kill the program, and it’s not as solid as the issuance of long-term bonds, it gives transit officials another reason to argue that the federal government can’t take this action. 

The news of the federal government’s action was met with immediate backlash from congestion pricing supporters. Carlo Scissura, president of the New York Building Congress, called the move “grossly shortsighted,” adding that he would work with the MTA and the governor to “legally” keep the program in place. “We simply cannot afford to put more capital infrastructure funding at risk and hurt the millions of daily commuters who deserve a modern and efficient transit system,” he said in a statement. 

The same sentiment was echoed by a variety of other environmental, business and transit groups that made up the coalition that helped get congestion pricing up and running. Many called into question the strength of the legal argument that the federal government is trying to make now. “The Trump Administration’s rationale is plainly pretextual,” said Dror Ladin, senior attorney at Earthjustice. “They have said from day one that they just don’t like congestion pricing, and now they’re trying to justify their hostility by going out on a legal limb that no court has ever endorsed.”

Democrats who have supported congestion pricing also condemned the move by Duffy. “The Trump administration is attempting to undo a program that was approved, implemented, and by all early results, is working to benefit our city,” New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams said in a statement. “That’s not how laws work, and I want New Yorkers to know that as of now, the system is still in place.” 

Even Democrats who have opposed congestion pricing offered a tempered response to the attempt by the Trump administration to revoke federal approval. “We all know President Trump’s ulterior motive here: He doesn’t care about working people who live in transit deserts like mine, he cares about screwing with blue states whenever and however possible,” said state Sen. James Skoufis, who blamed state leaders for putting New York in its current position. “If they had spent any time negotiating a nuanced plan in good faith with working-class communities with zero or near-zero MTA public transit, an equitable program could have been stood up many years ago and protected against President Trump’s chaos.”

Meanwhile, Republicans almost universally lauded the decision to revoke federal approval for congestion pricing. “From the beginning, I have led the effort to end Congestion Pricing and am grateful to @POTUS for following through on his commitment to end this scam,” Rep. Mike Lawler, a potential gubernatorial candidate in 2026, wrote on X. “I will not stop fighting until it’s dead for good and the @MTA is held accountable for its decades of mismanagement and waste.”

One person was conspicuously silent about the Trump administration’s latest move. As of Wednesday evening, Mayor Eric Adams had not released a statement.