New York City’s congestion pricing resurrection includes lower toll rates

Five months after New York Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered the “indefinite pause” of New York City’s congestion pricing, the governor is trying to resurrect the program with lower prices for all motorists.

On Thursday, Nov. 14, Hochul announced plans to restart implementation of congestion pricing in the Central Business District of New York City. The new tolling program was scheduled to go live on June 30 before the governor put the launch on hold on June 5.

Hochul’s reason for hitting the snooze button on congestion pricing was the cost burden on motorists during a time of economic hardship amid high inflation and rising costs of groceries and housing. Critics alleged the decision was an attempt to garner support from voters ahead of the November election while creating a $15 billion hole in funding for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

“Some skeptics predicted we’d never find a path that would lower tolls while still addressing congestion and the important funding of public transit that millions of New Yorkers rely on,” Hochul said on Thursday. “But that’s exactly what we did.”

What is that path? A 40% reduction in toll rates across the board. For passenger vehicles with an E-ZPass, that means paying $9 instead of $15 once per day. For truck drivers, the original $36 toll rate will be reduced to $21.60 every time they enter the Central Business District, with no daily cap.

Implementation of congestion pricing in New York City is scheduled for midnight on Jan. 5.

That 40% reduction includes the tunnel-crossing credits in the original plan. The new plan maintains the 75% discount between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. on weekdays and 9 p.m. and 9 a.m. on weekends.

However, revised plans call for a slow return to the original price structure. The new 40% reduction will remain intact from 2025 through 2027. From 2028 through 2030, MTA can increase the toll rate to 80% of the original price structure, which is $12 for passenger vehicles and $28.80 for large trucks. After 2030, congesting pricing can revert back to the original $15 for passenger vehicles and $36 for trucks.

Money from tolls will fund public transit projects in New York City.

During Thursday’s news conference, New York City Deputy Mayor for Operations Meera Joshi, a former acting administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, noted that a good portion of congestion pricing revenue will be used to keep truckers off the road.

“Over $100 million will be spent funding reducing polluting trucks that travel our city streets, especially in the Bronx, and it also buys that borough additional greenspace and an asthma center,” Joshi said.

Trucking Association of New York President Kendra Hems said the new plan “is still bad for the economy” and maintains a “disproportionate pricing structure, which once again unfairly targets trucking operators.” Hems pointed out that the association was “entirely excluded from all discussions pertaining to the reinstatement of this plan.”

“As we have repeatedly stressed, a reduced rate congestion pricing structure is a positive development for our industry but is not sufficient on its own,” Hems said in a statement. “The decision to maintain the per-trip charge, rather than adjusting the fee to a per-day structure, is yet another example of the continued disregard toward our industry from the most powerful people in the state.”

Race to the finish line

Supporters of congestion pricing have been scrambling to restart the program since Donald Trump won the presidential election.

In May, Trump called the program a “disaster” and vowed to terminate it in his first week in office if reelected.

A legal coalition led by New York City Comptroller Brad Lander has been trying to unfreeze the launch of congestion pricing. After Hochul issued an indefinite pause to the program, three lawsuits were filed in state court challenging that decision. On Thursday, Lander applauded news of Hochul lifting the pause and endorsed the price reduction.

“We brought our lawsuits to ensure that congestion pricing would go into effect as required by law – and it couldn’t come at a more urgent time,” Lander said in a statement. “If we don’t get the system in operation before Donald Trump becomes president, we’ll lose $15 billion in critical transit investments that we’ll never see again.”

Meanwhile, several New York lawmakers are lobbying to end congestion pricing permanently. On Tuesday, Nov. 12, U.S. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., held a press conference announcing continued efforts to stop the program.

“I’m proud to stand here with my colleagues in a bipartisan way to tell the governor: ‘There is no way we will allow you to move forward with congestion pricing without a fight, and we will fight you tooth and nail until congestion pricing is dead for good,'” Malliotakis said. “The governor should learn, look at the will of the people – listen to the will of the people – who’ve made it very clear that they do not want this tax cash grab.”

That same day, Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., along with four other Republican New York representatives including Malliotakis, sent a letter to Trump asking for his support in stopping congestion pricing.

The House reps urged the president-elect to reverse the Federal Highway Administration’s approval of the program and to find alternative revenue options for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, including federal funding.

“Gov. Hochul recently announced that she would pursue an almost immediate implementation of the congestion pricing cash grab, despite cynically ‘pausing’ it earlier this year in an effort to win back the House,” the letter states. “Now that her efforts have failed, she is planning to fast-track this cash grab, which will only serve to throw fuel on the fire of the driving force of this effort: the horrific mismanagement of the MTA’s massive, bloated budget by the MTA and Hochul.”

Meanwhile, there are at least nine federal lawsuits challenging New York City’s congestion pricing. Nearly all of those lawsuits claim the federal government failed to apply the proper environmental review procedure. Some of those claims were shot down in June.

More relevant to Hochul’s decision to reduce prices, a federal lawsuit filed by the Trucking Association of New York focuses on what it claims are unfair prices for truck drivers.

Despite trucks making up only 4% of traffic in the congestion-pricing zone, they will be charged more than twice as much as passenger vehicles.

“It is disappointing that, after a lengthy pause, the governor’s revised plan still does not provide a solution to the constitutional violations we highlight in our lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York, which argues that the congestion pricing policy unfairly targets trucking and logistics companies by charging far higher rates than passenger vehicles,” Hems said. “Until this discrepancy is addressed, the Trucking Association of New York remains committed to seeing out the legal process and is hopeful that our ongoing litigation will preserve business-as-usual for New Yorkers.” LL