How Subway Riders Will Pay for NYC’s Congestion Pricing Halt

Many New York City residents were dismayed last month when New York Governor Kathy Hochul pulled the plug on the congestion pricing program that would have charged drivers $15 to enter Manhattan south of 60th Street. Once a public champion of the proposal, Hochul unexpectedly reversed herself, arguing that implementing the driving fees would inhibit the city’s recovery from Covid, with low-income commuters bearing a particular burden. (Others vehemently disagreed, accusing her of pandering to car-owning suburbanites who resented the policy.) Among those with dashed hopes included New Yorkers whose communities would have become cleaner and less car-clogged, the planners who had spent years pulling together the Big Apple’s proposal, and city leaders from Boston to Los Angeles who were considering their own congestion pricing initiatives modeled on New York’s.

But no constituency had more cause for complaint than the millions of residents who rely on New York City’s network of trains and buses. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the regional transit system, had planned to use $15 billion from congestion pricing to overhaul dilapidated equipment while simultaneously adding elevators, modernizing stations and extending a subway line. Without the billion dollars collected annually from vehicles entering Manhattan, the MTA board faced agonizing decisions. Should it favor overdue maintenance, or the shiny new projects that riders had been promised?