MTA begs judge to keep Trump admin from nixing congestion pricing
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is pushing back against the Trump administration’s threats that New York could lose potentially billions in federal funding if it keeps congestion pricing going.
The transit agency asked a federal judge late Monday to ensure the battle over the Manhattan tolling scheme stays in the courts — and doesn’t move to the streets, as Trump’s Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has thrice threatened.
Duffy should be barred from making good on his “patently unlawful” move to “avoid the judicial process,” and end the program through threats of “unlawful retribution” if the state fails to comply with his constantly-shifting deadlines, lawyers for the MTA wrote in a court filing.
The motion, filed by the MTA and the city Department of Transportation, asks the judge to issue a preliminary injunction blocking Duffy’s efforts to kill congestion pricing and his threats that the feds will withhold funding and approvals for roadway construction projects.
“With no serious defense on the merits,” MTA lawyer Roberta Kaplan wrote, “the Administration has now resorted to what seems to be its modus operandi: attempting to improperly leverage federal funding in order to coerce compliance with its wishes, rather than defend the legality of its propositions in court.”
The MTA argued a preliminary injunction was needed because, if Duffy were to make good on his “coercive” threats to withhold all sorts of federal transportation funding to the state, it “would have immediate and harmful implications.”
“The threatened measures will undeniably cause irreparable harm,” Kaplan wrote to Manhattan federal court Judge Lewis Liman.
“That is the point: Defendants acknowledge that they seek to coerce compliance with their lawless demands by threatening the funding of other public projects,” the MTA lawyers wrote.
“On the other hand, capitulating to Defendants’ demands would be just as devastating,” they added, citing the loss of roughly $50 million in monthly revenue from congestion pricing to support public transit.
In papers filed with the motion, Kaplan also claimed Duffy’s first congestion pricing kill letter sent on Feb. 19 to the MTA and Gov. Kathy Hochul “rests on pretextual and borderline frivolous legal arguments, to which the Court owes no deference.”
Duffy’s claim that the scheme is illegal since it doesn’t allow for New Jersey drivers to use a toll-free route, “defies belief,” she wrote, since the transportation boss is also a Garden State resident — presumably well-aware of the numerous Hudson crossings.
To drive a toll-free route — even before congestion pricing — would “add approximately 300 miles to New Jersey drivers’ commutes, considering that the closest un-tolled Hudson River crossing is in Albany,” Kaplan wrote.
“In short, Defendants are making it up as they go along,” the papers said, “the definition of arbitrary and capricious decision making.”
The federal DOT did not immediately comment.
According to an internal memo erroneously uploaded by federal attorneys last month, even the government lawyers tasked with fulfilling Duffy’s demands agreed that his current legal strategy was “very unlikely” to succeed.
Just hours after the mistaken disclosure, the DOT removed the Manhattan lawyers from the case, after a spokesperson accused them of leaking the document, and replaced them with attorneys from the Department of Justice’s Civil Division.
Since sending his first letter giving Hochul 30 days to cease the toll — or else — Duffy has issued two new deadlines without taking his threatened retaliatory action.
The current deadline for the MTA to stop collecting the tolls — which charge drivers $9 to enter Manhattan below 60th Street — is May 28.
Hochul and MTA CEO Janno Lieber have insisted that the tolling cameras will stay on despite Duffy’s deadline.
