Hochul plans to bring back congestion pricing

After at first leaking the news and then making a formal announcement that she had ordered the indefinite pause of implementing congestion pricing tolls for driving below 60th Street in Manhattan, Gov. Kathy Hochul now says that she is trying to formulate a new plan for the congestion pricing tolls.

Hochul has been at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Last night, she announced during the poll of the delegations that New York’s delegates had voted to nominate Vice President Harris and Gov. Tim Walz for the Democratic ticket. Also at the convention Hochul gave an interview to Politico in which she said a new plan to institute the congestion pricing tolls would be announced before the end of the year.

Hochul told Politico that the state legislature needed to be brought on board since it would have to act on a new plan for the tolls and that in order to put the new tolls into effect in 2025 legislative support for the plan would need to be developed in the coming months.

When she announced the indefinite pause in allowing the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to start collecting the new tolls, Hochul said he main reason was concern over the economic impact it would have on individuals. It’s believed that in moving ahead with congestion pricing in 2025 Hochul would propose reducing the amount of the new tolls from the original $15 per passenger car to a lesser amount.

Source reports indicated that Hochul would also consider proposing that police, firemen, school teachers and other government workers be exempt from congestion pricing.

It had been reported that Hochul was pressured to not allow the new tolls to go into effect before the November election because Democrats might lose votes. She had previously denied that her decision on congestion pricing was political and told Politico that what she did was not related to the election.

The goal of the congestion pricing tolls was to raise $15 billion for the MTA in addition to reducing traffic congestion and air pollution in Manhattan. After blocking implementation of the new tolls, Hochul said she was working to find other sources of new funding for the MTA.