NEW YORK — Gov. Kathy Hochul gave the green light to a controversial Manhattan toll plan, but her political foes and allies — President-elect Donald Trump and the powerful New York City teachers union among them — have separately vowed to stop it.
Hochul’s administration and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority rushed to have the program known as congestion pricing in place before Trump is sworn in — a move that came months after she temporarily blocked its implementation over political concerns. Now the MTA and governor are fending off multiple legal challenges aimed at squelching the tolls — attacks that are scrambling the region’s hard-charging politics.
In a dramatic and jarring move, Hochul suddenly delayed the tolls in June over concerns they would kneecap Democratic House candidates in battleground races. In another about face, she revived congestion pricing in the aftermath of the election and nixed a planned $15 toll in favor of $9.
Federal officials have signed off on the revived toll structure and the start date is scheduled for Sunday.
But New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat and ostensible ally for Hochul, has sued over the toll program. The United Federation of Teachers, a politically key labor union for New York Democrats, is in court to stop it as well. And Manhattan residents who oppose the tolls also filed a class action lawsuit.
Last-ditch efforts by New Jersey in federal court to halt the tolls faltered in the days leading up to the program going into effect.
Republicans want Trump to rescind federal approval of the program — a move he signaled he would make over the summer. And House GOP lawmakers are pressing for a law to block the tolls — a bill that’s garnered Democratic support from moderates like Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a candidate for New Jersey governor.
The eclectic forces pushing for congestion pricing — including the city’s influential business leaders and left-leaning transit advocates — highlight how congestion pricing has upended the region’s politics. Further complicating that picture are Democrats’ fears that after a campaign season that hinged on voter anger with high prices, their party will weather further fallout — with Hochul and swing-seat lawmakers falling squarely within the potential blast radius.
Whether voters ultimately embrace the first-in-the-nation program is expected to be a crucial factor in the political future of the New York governor and her opponents heading into the 2026 elections.
“It could definitely hurt the governor and some congressional candidates and state legislative candidates,” said Queens Assemblymember David Weprin, a Democrat who’s a plaintiff in the teachers’ union lawsuit. “It’s going to have a negative impact in two years if it’s still in effect and not stopped.”
Tolls will still reach $15 by 2031 under the new iteration of the program — in time for the start of a hypothetical third full term for the New York governor.
Officials plan to use the toll revenue to obtain $15 billion in bonds in order to shore up the metropolitan region’s troubled mass transit infrastructure. Supporters contend the plan will reduce traffic and improve air quality. But the temporarily lower toll — which Hochul framed as a savings for impacted commuters — has done little to quell opponents. Tolling begins two weeks before Trump takes office on Jan. 20.
MTA CEO Janno Lieber has rolled out Trump-tailored arguments, appealing to the Republican as a New York City civic leader who owns office buildings filled with commuters who rely on MTA buses and trains. Lieber has also tried to make the approval process seem as boring as possible, noting that the federal program congestion pricing falls under — the so-called Value Pricing Pilot Program — has been in place for decades.
“What we’re doing is not some crazy initiative solely of the city or the state or the MTA,” Lieber said at a press conference in November. “This is a federal program that has been on the books for 20-plus years that we’re operating under, so I am confident that if and when we receive approval from the federal government — albeit the Biden administration-era federal government — it will stand the test in the courts.”
Some members of Congress have talked about trying to block the tolls or punish New York for imposing them, but Rep. Jerry Nadler, a New York Democrat, said he doesn’t expect they’ll go very far.
“They’ll try to figure out ways of undermining it in Congress, but I don’t think there are any,” he said, adding that the Senate could block some of the attempts even if they made it through the House.
Across the Hudson, Murphy hired Randy Mastro, a former deputy mayor in the Giuliani administration, to fight congestion pricing in court by challenging the federal environmental review for the tolling program. Hochul has said she made “very generous offers” to settle the suit with New Jersey, but those proposals were rejected.
Since Hochul announced her plan to resume the tolls, Mastro has been urging the federal judge handling Murphy’s lawsuit to weigh in. Murphy’s office also issued a statement from Mastro that accused Lieber of “trying to balance the MTA’s books through an unfair and unpopular fee on hardworking New Jersey commuters that has been poorly designed and insufficiently thought through from the beginning.”
An unpopular chief executive who is seeking a second full term in 2026, Hochul has insisted reviving the tolls is necessary to improve the dilapidated mass transit system in New York City and the surrounding area — an endeavor she’s described as vital for the region’s economic health. She has cast the decision to put the toll in place as politically bold and has emerged as an ardent defender of the program.
“Those who analyze my career know I never gravitate toward easy,” Hochul said at a forum moderated by the business-boosting Partnership for New York City. “Easy says somebody else is going to do that. I take on hard.”
But Hochul remains sensitive to the political impact of the program. In late December, she rejected a plan that would increase tolls by 25 percent on so-called gridlock alert days following backlash from opponents.
The governor took heat in June when she temporarily paused the program. At the time, Hochul publicly argued the planned $15 toll was too high for working people. Privately, she was acting on concerns raised by Democratic House candidates who feared Republicans would use the issue as a cudgel in crucial races. Lawsuits filed in the wake of the pause by advocacy groups that supported the program — including the Riders Alliance and Sierra Club — have been settled. Advocates are now eager for the tolls to be in place at the start of the year, before Trump returns to the presidency.
“The most important thing now is for the governor to get the program up and running well in advance of the inauguration so that it can prove its worth and defuse the criticism of any of the people who might try to stop it once the federal administration changes hands,” Riders Alliance spokesperson Danny Pearlstein said.
While Hochul may have gotten the public politics right in the short term— a subsequent Siena College poll found most New Yorkers supported the pause on the tolls — she failed to bring along supporters in the influential business, transit and environmental advocacy communities who spent years pushing for the program.
But for now, Hochul has neutralized some critics with the move to bring the tolls back. John Samuelsen, the president of the Transport Workers Union International, said her decision to pair the tolls with pledged service upgrades was a step in the right direction.
“If she had done this from the beginning she wouldn’t have been hit with the political avalanche,” he said. “It was unfortunate.”
Hochul’s political allies, meanwhile, acknowledge many voters have a jaundiced view of congestion pricing. New York Democratic Chair Jay Jacobs said she was, in effect, boxed in by the need to raise revenue.
“There’s no question in any poll you take — it’s unpopular,” Jacobs said. “But I don’t know if the governor, looking at it, could do much else. We need the money.”
Political ramifications over her decision are likely to continue for Hochul. A potential Republican challenger to the governor, Hudson Valley Rep. Mike Lawler, has blasted the toll plan’s impact on his suburban constituents and released a 90-second video highlighting his opposition.
“There’s a general agreement it’s a terrible plan,” said Kathryn Freed, a former state Supreme Court justice and New York City Council member who’s part of a class-action lawsuit filed by Manhattan residents. “It’s not going to reduce congestion. It’s not going to reduce pollution.”
Another possible Hochul opponent, Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres, likened Hochul’s congestion pricing switch to the president-elect’s political stylings.
“This reflects the kind of erratic and chaotic governance one would expect from a Trump presidency,” said Torres, who has been criticized by the Hochul campaign for shifting political positions. “It’s embarrassing.”
Jason Beeferman contributed to this report.
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