President Donald Trump\u2019s effort to stop the MTA\u2019s congestion pricing program fell flat Tuesday after a federal judge ruled the U.S. Department of Transportation\u2019s attempt to kill the tolls was unlawful.<\/p>\n
The order from Manhattan U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman stated Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy doesn\u2019t have the authority to revoke federal approval for the program.<\/p>\n
The ruling represents a major loss for Trump who, during his 2024 campaign, vowed to \u201cTERMINATE\u201d the tolls upon returning to office. The White House last month dispatched one of its top legal attack dogs<\/a> to fight the tolls in court.<\/p>\n Representatives for the White House and U.S. DOT did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n The feds approved the congestion tolls under former President Joe Biden, and the MTA launched the program in early January 2025<\/a>. It imposes a $9 daytime base fee on drivers who enter Manhattan south of 60th Street, and uses the revenue to fund mass transit improvements. The MTA said it raked in $562 million from the fees last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n Duffy sent a letter to the MTA last February demanding the agency stop charging the fees or else face funding cuts. The MTA responded with a lawsuit.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve said it all along, and Judge Liman\u2019s clear, detailed ruling leaves no doubt: congestion pricing is legal. It\u2019s here to stay. And it works,\u201d MTA Chair Janno Lieber wrote in a statement. \u201cTraffic is down, business is up, and we\u2019re making crucial investments in a transit system that moves millions of people a day. Today \u2014 once again \u2014 Sec. Duffy failed and New York is winning.\u201d<\/p>\n Liman previously ruled the feds could not withhold funding from New York or the MTA in retaliation, but the question as to whether the tolls could remain in place indefinitely remained up in the air until he issued his ruling on Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump\u2019s effort to stop the MTA\u2019s congestion pricing program fell flat Tuesday after a federal judge…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,56,63,65,64],"class_list":{"0":"post-151391","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-ny","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-nyc-headlines","12":"tag-nyc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}