By any reasonable measure, New York City’s congestion pricing policy—the hotly contested $9 toll to enter the city center, to reduce auto pollution and raise money for the public transit system—is working. These, however, are not metrics that interest the Trump administration.
Auto traffic is down 7.5 percent by one estimate. Pedestrian traffic is rising, delivering striking benefits to the local economy: Retail sales in lower Manhattan were $900 million higher this January compared to last January, and restaurant reservations are up 7 percent. Revenue for the public transit system is flowing in to the tune of $48.6 million, which means that the MTA will be able to build extensive improvements to the system. For those still choosing to drive in and out of the city, the ride is faster. Air quality is probably improving along with decreased emissions, though it will take time to gather data on those improvements. People may be building lifelong planet-saving habits of riding public transit rather than driving their cars.
President Trump doesn’t seem to like any of this, and has ordered New York to shut the program down by March 19. Suddenly, congestion pricing has become an early indicator for the prospects for blue-state resistance to the Trump administration, as Governor Kathy Hochul and the MTA head to court to try to save the program. For a few reasons, congestion pricing is critical terrain on which to fight.
By defending congestion pricing, Hochul is not just defending good policy, the environment, and the quality of urban life, though she is doing that. She is also setting an example to other governors in her party: If she succeeds, she may embolden others. Caving to Trump’s bullying would be a huge mistake, considering that Trump clearly sees killing the policy as a flex for his new autocratic powers. “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD … LONG LIVE THE KING,” the president posted on X, earlier this month.
Note how Trump’s monarchic delusions and hatred for congestion pricing seem to be intertwined: He wants to make an example of New York, to send a message to other cities and states that the king must not be defied.
If Trump seems weirdly obsessed with congestion pricing, it’s because he is. Trump knows he has many fans among conservative suburbanites who love car culture and—with equal passion—hate and fear the subway, seeing it as a symbol of the chaos and danger in urban life, devouring every scary subway story and raging at the idea that their driving should fund this cesspool of crime. It is a culture war, for sure, and not a particularly new one; the provincial and cosmopolitan strains of American life have always been at odds. But this one also dovetails easily with the Trump/Musk administration’s zeal for killing and discrediting the government; it’s important to them to stop this bold government solution to improve our lives because real solutions and positive experiences with government endanger the entire right-wing project.
Congestion pricing also offends the right-wing mind because it encourages people to get out of their private cars and onto our collective, shared public transit.
Trump and his transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, have called the policy unfair to the working class. But that’s largely faux populism on their part, since far more working-class people ride the subway than commute to Manhattan by car. (Anyway, since when do they care about the working class? Trump is not even trying to protect Medicaid.) It’s clear that what really offends the Trumpists is that the policy is unabashedly anti-car and pro–public transit. Duffy’s letter to Governor Kathy Hochul on the matter focused on that issue, calling it “backwards and unfair” that congestion pricing “takes more money from working people to pay for a transit system and not highways.”
Trump is an oddity in being a right-winger of urban origins: Contemporary American conservatism almost requires a person to hate cities. For the Trumpist far right, the urban landscape is populated with everyone they hate: childless women, immigrants, queers. But even for less extreme conservatives, cities have always been unpalatable. Even if they can stomach the unconventional mores and the human diversity—a big lift for many of them—the urban experience simply demands more socialism than conservatives can tolerate. You can live at the end of a remote country road, keep your taxes low and your yard well tended, clenching your teeth as you drive over the potholes. But in a densely populated city, you need subways and buses to get around, and where else can your kids play but in a public park? Cities are a collective project, requiring public investment to succeed, and that’s one reason why, historically, their citizenry hasn’t formed the base of the Republican Party. Despite his being from New York, Trump’s view of urban life is no different from any other conservative’s, and can be summarized succinctly as, “This sucks. Keep driving”—though “Long live the King” is admittedly a fresh twist.
But the Trump versus congestion pricing fight has high stakes for the entire nation. The question is not just whether a president suffering from narcissistic royalist fantasies can punish a city where he knows he’s unpopular. It’s also whether we are going to be able to solve important problems in our society, even as the wrecking ball of the Trump/Musk administration lays waste to our federal government. Trump is right to identify congestion pricing as a policy that is especially antithetical to his anti-urban, individualistic values. That’s just one reason among many that we should fight hard to save it.
