Photo: Gary Hershorn/Getty Images
When Kathy Hochul put congestion pricing on ice last June, she insisted that it was a pause — that the $15 Manhattan toll on drivers could be reactivated at will. The program was supposed to bring in about $15 billion, which would draw upon $3 billion in federal matching funds to build the East Harlem leg of the Second Avenue Subway, delivering major quality-of-life improvements — from much faster commutes to reduced air pollution — to a neighborhood that has long needed it. The agency also had contracts to modernize and computerize service on some of the most delay-prone stretches of the system. It has an order already drafted to continue the MTA’s push to replace its oldest and most breakdown-prone subway trains with new and reliable models.
All of that is now at risk, because Donald Trump, if his first term is any guide, will likely try to cancel Washington’s portion of that funding. Trump has displayed a reliable hostility toward rail projects, and especially our rail projects, and there’s little reason to believe he’ll treat this one differently. Hochul therefore has one last chance to reverse her decision: The whole congestion-pricing plan, and by extension the recovery of the New York subway, lives or dies based on what she does between now and and Trump’s return to office on January 20. If she doesn’t restart it now, it’s probably finished for good.
Consider Trump’s record. Just a month after he took office, his Secretary of Transportation, Elaine Chao — wife of Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell — used bureaucratic maneuvering to hold up previously agreed-to funding for a major project to modernize a commuter railroad system in California. The three-month blockade ended only after a top Republican lawmaker from Utah, Senator Orrin Hatch, intervened because the new trains for the line were going to be built in his state. Later on, plans to replace the decrepit Portal Bridge — one of the two spans needed across the Hackensack River — were stalled until 2020 and were funded only after New Jersey governor Phil Murphy and his wife dined with Trump at his Bedminster golf club. Most notoriously, Trump refused to back the $16 billion Gateway project, which would build two new tunnels and rehabilitate the existing ancient tubes that carry Amtrak trains between New Jersey and New York. Even after a bipartisan delegation from the two states managed to get money for the tunnels put into a federal budget bill, Trump, sources told the Washington Post, objected because it could be seen as a win for Senator Chuck Schumer. Andrew Cuomo tried a TV stunt to catch his attention, and that didn’t work either. Only under Biden was it finally funded.
When Hochul “paused” the toll, she explained the decision at the time by noting the cost-of-living crisis — essentially, inflation. Credit is due to the governor, who doesn’t get much, for spotting the trend that polls suggest ultimately cost the Democrats the presidency. (Though it’s unlikely that the move did what it was supposed to, which was to retain a bunch of suburbanite votes and thus win a couple of congressional seats, and thus the House, for the Democrats. That majority is unlikely to materialize.) Now she’s boxed in: Turn on the toll and she’s a liar; don’t do it and needed projects go unbuilt as yet more proof that government can’t deliver, the same type of thinking that empowered Trump. Meanwhile, the underfunded subway continues to degrade, reinforcing that very view.
One irony of all this is that good transit addresses the very issue both Trump and Hochul were concerned about. You’ll spend a maximum of $34 per week to ride subways and buses in New York City. That’s less than a tank of gas, let alone a car payment, insurance, upkeep, and parking. Transportation is usually the second-biggest expense for any household after the house itself. Expanding transit is the surest way to make it cheaper and easier for everyone to get around, relieving pressure on the budget.
Two liberal New York State lawmakers, State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal and Assemblyman Robert Carroll, used Trump’s victory this week to renew their calls for Hochul to switch on the tolling system (which is already installed, paid for, and ready). Carroll called for implementing the plan as proposed; Hoylman-Sigal’s post was less specific, and perhaps an open door to a compromise like the one I wrote about earlier this year. Hochul has been saying that subway funding to replace the toll will be negotiated in the budget, which is due April 1, but at a press conference on Wednesday, she said she would present a plan before the end of the year. Speed is key. Every day of delay increases the chance Trump can nix both the toll and the federal funding already secured. The way to turn back the cynical tide that’s coursing through our politics is to show that government can work; the way to prevent a future wave of fury over inflation is to build infrastructure that helps to shield New York’s families from it. We need a deal to fund the MTA and we need it now.
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