MTA Revenue Up, Traffic Down, Hochul Ready to Fight Anyone Who Disagrees; Results Suggest Policy Actually Works, Which Is Unusual
MANHATTAN, N.Y. – New York Governor Kathy Hochul celebrated the one-year anniversary of congestion pricing at a 14th Street YMCA on January 5, 2026, flanked by Mayor Zohran Mamdani and MTA Chair Janno Lieber, announcing that the first year of the tolling scheme had produced exactly the results its proponents promised: less traffic, faster buses, more transit riders, and enough revenue to begin funding the capital improvements the MTA has needed for approximately 40 years. She invited anyone who disagreed to meet her at a diner and have a conversation, which is either a gracious offer or a veiled threat, and which is consistent with the tone of New York’s congestion pricing debate throughout its many-year history.
The congestion toll, which charges passenger vehicles $9 during peak hours to enter Manhattan below 60th Street, went into effect January 5, 2025, after a political journey that included enactment, a last-minute delay by Hochul herself during the 2024 legislative election season, national media coverage of that delay, further delay, reimplementation at a lower rate than originally planned, and a court challenge by New Jersey, which filed suit on the grounds that its residents’ right to drive to Manhattan should not be subject to a charge, a legal theory that has not yet prevailed but that has not fully run its course.
The Numbers
In its first year, congestion pricing generated approximately $1 billion in net revenue for the MTA, which has dedicated the funds to its $68 billion capital plan. Traffic volume entering the central business district below 60th Street declined measurably from pre-toll baselines, with the most significant reductions on crossings that previously had no tolls. Bus speeds in Manhattan improved on routes with dedicated lanes, a correlation that transit advocates noted with satisfaction and that the MTA noted with the caution appropriate to attributing multi-factor outcomes to single policy changes. Subway ridership increased, though the extent to which this reflects congestion pricing specifically versus the broader post-pandemic ridership recovery is a question that economists are still disentangling and that everyone on the subway at rush hour is experiencing as a physical reality regardless of its causal attribution.
‘We’re winning this battle one year into it,’ Hochul said at the anniversary event, a statement that carries the particular confidence of a politician who delayed an implemented policy and then watched it succeed, which is not a comfortable sequence but which she has navigated with characteristic determination. The Governor’s offer to meet naysayers at a diner is presumably open to the New Jersey plaintiffs as well, though the logistics of determining whose diner it would be introduce the kind of bistate jurisdictional complexity that has defined the Port Authority’s operations since 1921.
Who Is Still Complaining
Opposition to congestion pricing has not disappeared with the first year’s positive results, because opposition to policies that produce positive results rarely does, especially in New York, where the opposition to anything tends to outlast the evidence by several news cycles. Outer borough drivers, who rely on personal vehicles for commutes that the subway does not serve efficiently, continue to find the toll regressive, a concern that the tolling structure attempted to address through low-income discount provisions that exist and are underutilized, because the application process involves documentation that people who are working multiple jobs do not always have time to gather. Truck operators object to the commercial vehicle charges. New Jersey continues its lawsuit. The crossings that were previously free and are now tolled generate periodic complaints from drivers who have not yet internalized that ‘previously free’ and ‘correctly priced’ are not the same thing.
The City has reported that the first-year performance metrics will be used to inform rate adjustments and exemption reviews scheduled for 2027, a process that will generate its own political debate, its own diner invitations, and its own New Jersey lawsuit. The MTA has committed to transparent reporting on how congestion pricing revenues are spent, a commitment that transit advocates are holding it to with the diligence appropriate to people who have been promised things by the MTA before. The transit system is improving. The toll is working. The naysayers are invited to a diner. New York, somehow, continues.
The Capital Plan This Enables
The $68 billion capital plan funded partly by congestion pricing includes 1,140 new subway cars with an option for 1,250 more, station accessibility upgrades under the Americans with Disabilities Act, signal modernization that will allow more trains to run more reliably, and the continuation of the Second Avenue Subway extension into East Harlem, which is currently being contested in court by one landlord who would prefer not to have his building inspected, a subplot that the capital plan did not model but that New York’s infrastructure history suggests it probably should have. The new subway cars will begin replacing the oldest cars in the fleet, some of which have been in service since the 1980s and which ride with the particular character of vehicles that have carried millions of people through decades of fiscal crisis, deferred maintenance, and every human experience that New York City produces. They have earned their retirement. The new cars will be quieter, more reliable, and air-conditioned in a way that actually functions throughout the route. New Yorkers will complain about them anyway, because it is New York and complaining about the subway is a constitutional right.
For more satirical brilliance visit Private Eye. SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/