{"id":60354,"date":"2025-12-04T02:37:06","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T02:37:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/60354\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T02:37:06","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T02:37:06","slug":"nyc-congestion-tolls-still-just-a-cash-grab-can-trump-kill-it-soon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/60354\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC congestion tolls STILL just a cash grab \u2014 can Trump kill it soon?"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Post reporting reveals<\/a> the widely hated congestion-pricing scheme isn\u2019t delivering on its promises; Let\u2019s hope President Donald Trump can soon make good on his promise to kill it.<\/p>\n

The tech company TomTom reports traffic in the zone has dropped about 4% in the first third of the year, in contrast to Gov. Kathy Hochul\u2019s claim of an 11% drop.<\/p>\n

Plus, businesses tell The Post<\/a> that they simply add congestion zone costs to all their invoices \u2014 thereby inflating everyone\u2019s costs.<\/p>\n

So much for Hochul\u2019s talk about making New York more affordable.<\/p>\n

But help may be on the way: Trump pulled federal approval of the gov\u2019s tolls back in February; Hochul sued \u2014 and a federal judge blocked the move<\/a> pending his final ruling, now expected within weeks.<\/p>\n

For now, Hochul\u2019s heinous charge on working-class drivers and small businesses of up to $21 a day remains in effect.<\/p>\n

\t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPost Editorial Board<\/p>\n

Yet Trump last month reiterated his vow<\/a>, directing \u201cTransportation Secretary Sean Duffy to take a good, long look at terminating New York City Congestion Pricing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perversely, MTA boss Janno Leiber brags<\/a> that the tolls are key to balancing his agency\u2019s balanced budgets \u2014 yet they bring in less than the nearly $1 billion the MTA is now losing to fare evasion.<\/p>\n

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Which means the working stiffs hit by \u201ccongestion pricing\u201d are basically covering for the lowlives jumping the turnstiles.<\/p>\n

Talk of congestion tolls long ago began as a push for trucks to do off-hour deliveries to avoid blocking traffic; instead, the scheme\u2019s become a cash cow to cover for the huge revenue loss triggered by city district attorneys\u2019 refusal to enforce the fare-beating laws.<\/p>\n

As it happens, Leiber hates fare-beating, too; it\u2019s not his fault the politicians would rather play motorists for suckers than uphold core quality-of-life laws. <\/p>\n

Then again, he\u2019ll be facing a fat hole in his budgets once the courts stop protecting the tolls \u2014 and other planned MTA revenues are at risk, too, in the all-too-likely event that the state\u2019s casino revenues fail to match predictions. <\/p>\n

Perhaps Hochul and the Legislature will then finally start looking for a non-despicable funding stream to keep the subways running. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Post reporting reveals the widely hated congestion-pricing scheme isn\u2019t delivering on its promises; Let\u2019s hope President Donald…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60355,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[748,153,304,141,9,24,56,63,65,64,299,17898],"class_list":{"0":"post-60354","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-congestion-pricing","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-editorial","11":"tag-mta","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-ny","15":"tag-nyc","16":"tag-nyc-headlines","17":"tag-nyc-news","18":"tag-opinion","19":"tag-tolls"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60354","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=60354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}