A federal judge has temporarily halted the White House's effort to end New York City's controversial congestion pricing tax.
The ruling prevents the Trump administration from withholding federal funds from various New York City transportation projects as an incentive for the city to end the tax scheme until at least June 9.
Congestion pricing charges most motorists $9 to enter lower Manhattan below 60th Street during peak hours. There are lower charges on weekends and holidays.
The city claims that over the five months the tax has been in effect, traffic is down 11%, pollution levels have dropped, and the tax has raised $215 million. Why reaching into the pockets of mostly middle-class New Yorkers for nearly $50 a week is a good thing was not explained by the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA).
The congestion pricing program is the first of its kind in the United States. The Trump administration has strenuously opposed the tax for being unfair to working families and charging automobile drivers to fund a mass transit system whose upkeep had been neglected for decades.
The Trump-appointed judge, Lewis J. Liman, ruled that New York State “would suffer irreparable harm” without the order. He also claimed that the MTA “showed a likelihood of success” in winning its case.
In a February letter, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said he was revoking federal approval of the toll, because it exceeded the scope of the program that authorized it. He said it was an unfair cost to drivers, and that the toll should not primarily be used to fund mass transit projects instead of roads.
The M.T.A. quickly sued to block Mr. Duffy’s intervention, arguing that the program had been thoroughly reviewed, including by federal agencies, and was working as planned. Since the toll started, traffic is down, speeds are up and the authority is on track to use the toll revenue to finance $15 billion in critical upgrades.
Despite both sides agreeing to let the case play out in court, Mr. Duffy said last month that his agency would begin withholding federal approvals and funding for a range of transportation projects beginning on May 28, starting with a payment freeze on a number of highway and transit accessibility projects.
The toll would have been unnecessary if Democratic lawmakers in Albany had fully funded transit maintenance and modernization programs. City politicians wanted that cash for their own pet projects. Somehow, the money never quite made it to where it was needed most.
The congestion tax was 20 years in the making. Naturally, now that the transit system is crumbling, the politicians are too terrified to go directly to the people and ask for it. Instead, they are employing a backdoor tax that hits the long-suffering working class the hardest.
Other major cities, such as Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago, are watching closely as their transit systems, also suffering from decades of neglect, are in dire need of upgrades. Trump's idea was to stop the idea of congestion pricing in its tracks and kill the program before it achieved the bureaucratic momentum to become permanent.
It now appears that only the Supreme Court will be able to stop congestion pricing.
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