Trump To New York: Drop Dead

Why he wants to kill a hugely successful policy

A short, somewhat parochial post today. I’ll return to the big issues tomorrow. But it’s Sunday, so let’s take a break from the big picture and talk about traffic — specifically, New York’s new congestion pricing and the people who want to kill it.

A bit over a month has passed since New York City finally did what economists and urban planners have urged for decades: it began charging vehicles for the right to enter lower Manhattan. As I wrote at the time, the case for such a charge is Economics 101: driving into a highly congested area worsens traffic congestion, imposing costs on other drivers, trucks making delivery, and so on. The idea that drivers should have a right to harm other people without payment is bizarre, if you think about it, and the $9 congestion fee is very modest compared with reasonable estimates of the damage those choosing to drive into the city actually does.

So how’s it going? All indications are that the congestion charge has been remarkably successful, exceeding even its supporters’ expectations. Traffic congestion has clearly declined, with travel times falling on most routes within the congestion relief zone. Some of the major routes into and out of Manhattan have seen spectacular improvement. Here, for example, are pre- and post-charge travel times through the Holland Tunnel, which connects lower Manhattan to New Jersey:

Source: Congestion Pricing Tracker

At the same time, transit ridership has increased. Overall, there’s no reason to believe that significantly fewer people are entering lower Manhattan; they’re just getting there in ways that hurt others less.

The congestion charge is also proving increasingly popular among those actually experiencing its consequences — an important qualification I’ll get to in a minute. One remarkable result of a recent Morning Consult poll is that 66 percent of adults who regularly drive into lower Manhattan support the congestion charge, while only 32 percent oppose it. The most likely explanation is that the time these drivers save from shorter commutes is worth more to them than the cost of the fee.

Yet Morning Consult found that while residents of New York City approve of the congestion charge, residents of New York State as a whole disapprove by a substantial margin. What this tells us is that negative views of the charge come from upstaters, people who will almost never pay it or experience its effects.

Which brings me to the most important enemy of this remarkably successful policy, someone who definitely isn’t personally affected: Donald Trump, who told the New York Post that he wants to “kill” congestion pricing (and bike lanes too.)

The first question is, why should Trump be weighing in on this issue at all, let alone trying to force the city to change policy? Aren’t conservatives supposed to believe in local control? Why, it’s almost as if slogans like states’ rights and local control were merely cover stories for policies like explicit or implicit racial discrimination.

As far as the merits of the case are concerned, Trump asserted that traffic is only down “because no one’s coming to the city,” which is clearly false. And he appeared to support claims that transit ridership is down because people are afraid of crime. In reality, weekday ridership on the subway is still well below prepandemic levels, but weekend ridership has recovered strongly, suggesting that the overall decline is mainly about remote work, not fear of crime.

So what’s this really about? I very much doubt that either Trump or upstate New Yorkers feel deep sympathy for the relatively small number of New Jersey residents who commute into the city by car — and as I mentioned, those drivers appear in general to like the policy’s results.

I do wonder whether general hostility to New York is part of the story. Many people, and Trump in particular, are committed to the view that one of the safest places in America is an urban hellscape. A policy that improves life in the city runs counter to that narrative and inspires visceral opposition. And Trump in particular surely wants to hurt a city that has never supported him.

But maybe the biggest reason for Trump’s desire to kill the congestion charge is a phenomenon I identified the last time I wrote about this: the rage some Americans obviously feel at any suggestion that people should change their behavior for the common good. What we’re seeing with regard to the congestion charge is that some Americans feel that rage even when they themselves aren’t being asked to make changes.

Petty rage is, alas, a powerful political force. Let’s hope that it doesn’t kill one of the best policy changes we’ve seen in recent years.