MTA Board Votes to Confirm Hochul’s Congestion Pricing Pause, Scales Back Future Plans

The MTA on Wednesday unveiled a pared-down plan to maintain the transit system — which was forced on the agency after Gov. Kathy Hochul halted congestion pricing days before the start of the vehicle-tolling tolling plan.

The Central Business District Tolling Program , voted into law by state lawmakers in 2019 , would have been a first for a U.S. city and aimed to pay for $15 billion of upkeep and expansion projects in the MTA’s $55 billion 2020 to 2024 capital program. The money would have modernized subway signals, funded the purchase of thousands of new trains and buses, renovated stations and increased station accessibility for people with disabilities.

Instead, the MTA’s board meeting on Wednesday confirmed that the transit agency is gutting its ambitious future plans after Hochul earlier this month paused the June 30 start of a tolling program that had been counted on to cut congestion, improve air quality and fund transit improvements.

The reworked plan now shifts away from station repairs and accessibility upgrades, as well as expansion projects that would have extended the Second Avenue Subway to Harlem and create a Brooklyn-Queens light rail line. The MTA will instead focus on what officials described as “higher priority” projects that will keep the system safe and reliable.

“We’re talking about track, we’re talking about the elevated structures, the tunnels, we’re talking about the power system, state of good repair to literally keep the service going,” Tim Mulligan, the MTA’s deputy chief development officer, said during a presentation to the board. “Those are the projects that went to the top of the list.”

But the shift will also slow plans to buy the next generation of subway cars and delay the MTA’s purchase of more than 250 electric buses, even as the agency faces a 2040 mandate to fully electrify its 5,800-coach fleet by 2040.

In all, $16.5 billion of what the MTA described in agency documents released during Wednesday’s meeting as “less urgent projects” will be deferred.

“Some projects are going to be put to the back burner as a result,” Janno Lieber, MTA chairperson and CEO, said while addressing the board. “And no matter how we feel about the pause on congestion pricing, we are going to work with everyone — the executive chamber, the legislature, the feds — to find a way to preserve and revive the projects that are being resequenced right now, because we are short of money.”

A 10-1 vote by the MTA board members who were present Wednesday inside the agency’s Lower Manhattan boardroom affirmed Hochul’s move to indefinitely delay the implementation of congestion pricing, but also leaves open the possibility of restoring the cuts to the capital program if and when funding becomes available.

“When that financial solution that is being talked about arrives, God willing, we will be ready to put Humpty Dumpty back together again as quickly as possible,” Lieber said before the vote.

The single nay vote on Wednesday came from David Mack, a Long Island real estate executive who represents Nassau County on the board — and who in March was the sole board member to vote against the tolling rates.

Road Rage

The sudden shift away from a plan that was years in the making — and which cost the MTA hundreds of millions of dollars in tolling infrastructure and design work — stirred up outrage among elected officials and other mass transit advocates, who packed the MTA boardroom to protest Hochul’s about-face on congestion pricing.

“The governor’s abrupt announcement to indefinitely pause the implementation of this program was shocking and deeply disturbing,” said Assemblymember Robert Carroll (D-Brooklyn), who is on the committee that oversees the MTA, told the board. “The governor’s move is bad environmental policy, bad transportation policy, short-sighted politics and a usurping of the legislative process.”

The reversal also has implications for the MTA’s 2025 to 2029 capital plan, which is due by October and which could take on deferred work, such as the next phase of the Second Avenue Subway .

“Investing in New York’s vast transit system is not one and done, congestion pricing was designed to fund a single five-year capital program,” Jon Orcutt, a former top official with the city Department of Transportation said during the board meeting. “Defunding the 2020 capital program to the tune of $15 billion or $17 billion not only blows apart the current program, but it will severely impact what can be done in the 2025 capital program, pushing a huge set of needed transportation improvements and benefits into an unclear future.”

The MTA will now have to do less with less, as plans to make 23 more subway stations accessible to people with disabilities will be put on hold, despite a 2022 legal settlement that 95% of the nearly 500 subway and Staten Island Railway stations be made compliant by 2055.

“New Yorkers deserve nothing less than world-class transit and it is our responsibility to deliver that under any circumstances,” Dan Garodnick, an MTA board member and chair of the City Planning Commission, said during the meeting. “Needless to say, that gets a little harder with a significant shortfall of at least $15 billion in our 2020 to 2024 capital program.”

In an emailed statement after the board vote, Hochul touted her past “unwavering support for the MTA” and said that she will work with the agency and the state legislature to firm up funding for the deferred projects and future plans.

“This administration’s proven commitment to the MTA, as well as my record of delivering resources for critical priorities in the state budget, should provide the MTA with full confidence in future funding streams,” she said.

Lieber repeatedly described the response within the MTA to Hochul’s decision as “businesslike” and said the agency will make do for now.

“We’re not coming up with plans to go rogue and have a coup against the state of New York, it’s nonsense,” Lieber told reporters after the board meeting. “What we’re doing is being businesslike and just making sure, number one, that we’re protecting ridership and service and, number two, that we remain ready to implement congestion pricing when the temporary pause, as it’s been described, is lifted.”

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