Hochul’s blunders on congestion pricing | Editorial

Kathy Hochul, an unpopular governor who has never been mistaken for a skilled politician, has given the green light for congestion pricing in lower Manhattan, a plan that could be implemented as soon as Jan. 5.

If you value cleaner air, traffic reduction, the revival of a crumbling, century-old subway system and a new fleet of electric buses, you know this makes sense, and we have often praised congestion pricing as a smart strategy that has worked to cut pollution and relieve congestion from London to Singapore.

So we wish Hochul luck and hope she gets the plan rolling before Donald Trump returns to the White House, because he promises to terminate it faster than you can say . But congestion pricing is also likely to torpedo Hochul's career, and that's her own fault, because she took a tricky agenda for commuters to accept and butchered it by chasing away potential allies who have short tempers.

New Jerseyans will cheer her political demise, with good reason: Hochul never once sought partners on this side of the river, and never considered giving New Jersey a share of the $2 billion in revenue that congestion pricing will generate annually, much of it from New Jersey drivers. And she roused hostile opposition from every New Jersey politician by slamming 20,000 of their constituents with a fee that was painfully steep the first time around.

It was not a sound strategy for someone with a 34% approval rating. Hochul has since reduced the fee it will take for George Washington Bridge commuters to drive into Manhattan's Central Business District - from $15 per trip to $9 – but asking any Jersey driver to fork over another $2,160 per year is failing to acknowledge this immutable truth: The two states have interconnected economies and transit systems, and her refusal to give our state a penny of it – so it can upgrade NJ Transit – only leads to lawsuits and angry statements from gubernatorial candidates.

"New York has a history of dumping their messes on New Jersey," said political scientist Matt Hale of Seton Hall. "Congestion pricing could have been a win on both sides of the river, if she had treated New Jersey like a partner instead of an ATM machine."

Instead, he added, Hochul "took congestion pricing off the table in June to take a contentious issue for New York elected officials out of the 2024 election. But rather than solve it, she decided to dump the mess on New Jersey for our 2025 election."

Or as Doug O'Malley of Environment New Jersey put it, "It was an unforced error to ice out New Jersey from the beginning. New Jersey drivers will pay the congestion tax and the vast majority of NJ commuters who ride the subway and the bus will ultimately benefit. But NJ Transit should receive a portion of the revenue just like Metro North and the LIRR.

"There would be increased support from New Jersey, if Hochul works to change the funding allocation. Congestion is a regional problem, congestion pricing is a regional solution, and transit funding should be shared regionally as well."

If NJ Transit received the same 10% as LIRR and Metro North, it could have been a game-changer, many in Trenton believe. One clue: Rep. Mikie Sherrill, a likely candidate for governor, issued a statement whingeing about how "the revenue paid by New Jerseyans will not go toward fixing NJ Transit" in the second sentence.

We asked her whether a 10% revenue share for Jersey would make the plan more palatable and earn her support. Sherrill, who represents a district where only 1.4% of the New York commuters will incur a congestion fee, did not respond.

Granted, revenue sharing seems implausible at this late stage. The law would need to be changed if Hochul decided to give New Jersey a piece, and the New York legislature doesn't get back to Albany until January.

So she must act now: We're about to embark on another phase of suicidal environmental stewardship, one in which the president of the United States will bray about the "climate change hoax" and pull the US out of global agreements made years ago to reduce the damage to the planet.

This time, Trump is also armed with a Project 2025 blueprint that has 150 pages dedicated to anti-environmental policies and is loaded with phrases such as "the perceived threat of climate change."

And this time, his attack poodle will be an EPA director named Lee Zeldin (coincidentally, Hochul's opponent in her 2022 reelection), whose only environmental achievement was to be awarded the Oil Slick Award by environmental advocates from his time in the New York State Senate.

So, it is incumbent on the rest of us - New York and New Jersey – to scale back on emissions in our own neighborhood and keep its mass transit operating in good order. A well-designed congestion pricing program would help accomplish that. To dismiss congestion pricing so disdainfully – as New Jersey politicians are prone to do - is to ignore a crisis that is sprinting toward critical mass.

Our regional partner could have made it easier for us to do that. Whether it was arrogance or myopia, Gov. Hochul failed miserably.