Hooray! Trump & Co. is saving working-class drivers from Kathy Hochul’s elitist Midtown tolls
Hooray! Team Trump is coming to the rescue of working-class motorists by killing the city’s despised “congestion” tolls.
Kudos to President Donald Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy for making the move.
As Duffy explained in revoking federal approval Wednesday, the $9 hit for driving in Manhattan below 60th Street was a fraud from the start.
Rather than cut traffic, it was actually designed primarily to raise money for the MTA.
Yet motorists — teachers, cops, deli workers, secretaries and others, many with no alternative but to drive into the city — got stuck with the tab. That’s blatantly unfair.
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New York’s “congestion pricing plan is a slap in the face to working-class Americans and small-business owners,” fumed Duffy in a letter to Gov. Kathy Hochul.
It “takes more money from working people to pay for a transit system and not highways. It’s backwards and unfair.”
Hear, hear! Wealthy Manhattanites have plenty of access to public transportation, yet the “congestion” funds go to shore up the system they disproportionately use.
And the toll scheme left drivers — particularly those from the outer boroughs, Jersey and Connecticut — with no “free highway alternative.”
Which gave Duffy solid grounds for overturning it, since the “pilot program” under which the Biden crew OK’d these tolls, is supposed to allow motorists a non-toll option.
Plus, as he noted, the Midtown tolls clash with federal highway-aid program rules that bar tolls on federally funded roads unless Congress grants a waiver.
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This was a clear perversion of rules for “pilot” (i.e., test) programs that are to explore ways to reduce traffic — not to find a means of generating “transit revenue” forever.
Sure, the MTA is facing budget gaps.
But it’s always facing budget gaps.
Fares rise, taxes shoot up, government handouts grow — all to plug the system’s holes. Yet the agency’s “financial crisis” never goes away.
Socking motorists who have no other choice but to drive with stiff tolls is no way to finance a transit system.
The MTA and its ultimate boss, Kathy Hochul, need to figure out how to fix the agency’s budget woes (cut costs, fix work rules, end union-demanded perks, etc.) without repeatedly hitting riders, taxpayers and now . . . motorists.
Meantime, thank goodness Team Trump is standing up for the little guy.
