How NJ drivers aim to slay NY’s hated congestion – Latest News
When a federal district choose this month blocked President Donald Trump’s attempt to terminate congestion pricing, MTA CEO Janno Lieber cheered: “The Manhattan tolls are here to stay,” he declared.
Not so fast.
Judge Lewis Liman’s ruling involved a single query: Did the federal Department of Transportation have the authority to yank its prior settlement to the toll program?
The choose answered that it didn’t.
But his ruling didn’t resolve the larger problem: whether or not the MTA ever had the legal authority to begin charging tolls on Manhattan’s streets within the first place.
That very totally different query is now squarely earlier than a federal courtroom in New Jersey.
And the reply, I imagine, is no.
Here’s what the MTA doesn’t need drivers to perceive: Federal law typically prohibits tolling on federally funded roads.
The MTA claims it’s entitled to a particular dispensation by means of a federal program known as the Value Pricing Pilot Program, a statutory exception that has permitted sure tolling experiments on qualifying roads.
There are two deadly defects with that rivalry.
For one factor, the VPPP is defunct.
The program expressly requires federal funding of any project working beneath its authority — and Congress hasn’t appropriated a single greenback for the VPPP since 2012.
A program that requires federal money to operate can not legally accomplish that when the federal money dried up over a decade in the past.
There’s additionally a second, impartial drawback: Even if the VPPP was nonetheless up and working, it nonetheless wouldn’t apply to the roads MTA is tolling.
The VPPP utilized solely to roads on the federal interstate system.
And the streets in downtown Manhattan the place the MTA is gathering its $9 toll — streets like 57th Street, Lexington Avenue and third Avenue beneath sixtieth — are not half of that system: They are federally funded arterial roads.
The statutory exception the MTA invoked merely doesn’t apply to the roads it’s truly charging drivers to use.
Put these two defects collectively and the conclusion is unavoidable: The MTA has been scooping up tolls it had no legal proper to accumulate, ranging from the very first day the congestion-pricing program launched in January 2025.
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By our estimate, drivers have been illegally soaked for roughly $600 million.
Under the law, that money have to be returned.
A category-action lawsuit asserting these claims on behalf of drivers is pending earlier than Judge Leo M. Gordon within the US District Court for the District of New Jersey.
The case, Dunne v. Metropolitan Transportation Authority, has the backing of the New Jersey Conference of Mayors, the New Jersey General Assembly Republican membership and the Board of Commissioners of Warren County.
I’m a supporter as a result of my constituents are being robbed by these unlawful tolls.
To date, the MTA has provided no reply as to how its program can survive both one of its two independently deadly defects — not to mention each of them.
Congestion pricing’s impression on New Jersey is substantial.
The congestion-pricing zone runs straight alongside the New Jersey–New York border.
And in accordance to the MTA’s own projected tolling eventualities, New Jersey drivers bear a larger share of the toll burden than Manhattan residents do.
This program was designed to extract more money from the people of New Jersey than from the people of the borough it supposedly serves.
Congestion pricing launched within the closing days of Joe Biden’s presidency, beneath the auspices of a Biden-era federal settlement.
Six weeks later Trump’s new transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, moved to rescind that settlement.
The MTA sued, and Judge Liman’s ruling that Duffy lacked the authority to make his unilateral call was the outcome.
But that’s it. That’s all of the choose determined.
The lawsuit earlier than Judge Gordon is about a totally different struggle, a more basic one: whether or not this program was ever lawful to start with.
The New Jersey class motion is combating to get drivers their money back, each final greenback.
This is a lawsuit filed by strange people who have been wrongfully charged tolls that have been by no means legally licensed, banding collectively to get well what was taken from them.
When a authorities company takes money it had no authority to accumulate, the law requires it to be returned.
This month’s ruling does nothing to extinguish that $600 million (and growing) legal responsibility. It doesn’t even tackle it.
Declare a hole victory if you happen to’d like, Mr. Lieber.
Just don’t spend it but — this prepare hasn’t reached its vacation spot.
Paul Kanitra represents Ocean County in New Jersey’s basic meeting.
