Judge: NYC Can Keep Better Traffic, Cleaner Air, Trump Can Sit On It (A Subway Seat)

Tells Trump to take the A Train because he's not a king, not even a Duke.

‘Large car moves slowly through Manhattan traffic.” US Environmental Protection Agency, 1973. (Notice the ubiquitous 1973 Impala in the distant background, upper left, just over the jaywalking worker’s shoulder). Public Domain.

A federal judge in Manhattan has blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to kill New York City’s “congestion pricing” plan, which reduces traffic by charging cars entering lower Manhattan an extra $9 toll during daytime hours. Trump had threatened to start withholding federal highway funding to the state of New York if the tolls weren’t ended by Wednesday, but US District Judge Lewis Liman said to hell with that, first in a temporary restraining order Tuesday, then in a 109-page opinion released Wednesday that forbids Trump from trying to shut down the plan or take away New York transportation funding while the case is litigated. That’ll keep the tolls rolling in to the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which administers the program, until Liman issues his final ruling.

It’s funny how memory works. Most of us remember that Trump “joked” about being “THE KING” in a stupid fake tweet on his stupid fake Twitter, but I bet most of us had forgotten that the occasion for his just joking, only serious self-enthronement was contained in a February fake tweet proclaiming that he had ended congestion pricing by fiat, and indeed by all domestic car brands, too.

So there’s some trivia going into your weekend, make whatever use of it you will. For the record, congestion pricing remained in place all the same, and has so far brought in $215.7 million in tolls in the four months since it went into effect January 5. Under the congestion pricing law, that money will go to the MTA to improve public transit, including long-overdue renovations to subway stations and other transit infrastructure to make the system accessible for riders with disabilities.

The revenues so far suggest that, if the law is ultimately upheld, congestion pricing should meet its projected goal of bringing in about $500 million a year for the first three years of the program. (The toll is set to increase to $12 in 2028, then to $15 in 2031, bringing in more money for MTA projects with each boost.) The program is expected to eventually bring in a total of $15 billion for transit upgrades, all tolled. (Dok is fired.)

Liman wrote in his opinion that the MTA had shown that, in trying to strangle the congestion pricing program, the feds had “acted arbitrarily and capriciously” and that shutting the program down suddenly would “harm the public by depriving it of the benefits the tolling program creates,” primarily the significant reductions in gridlocked traffic, which have resulted in faster travel times, and are projected over the long term to reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

This is where we point again to the significant public benefits congestion pricing has brought in other cities around the world. London’s congestion pricing resulted in 20 percent lower carbon emissions and significantly improved use of public transit (already high, what with London having the original series of Tubes, mind the gap). In Stockholm, air pollution dropped by between five and 10 percent, which was enough to have a dramatic effect on childhood asthma; after a few years of cleaner air, the rate of asthma attacks plunged by nearly 50 percent. That’s especially important for New York, since kids in the Bronx have among the highest rates of asthma in our great dirty nation.

Liman rejected Trump’s unsupported insistence that congestion pricing is just terrible for New York’s economy, pointing out that “available data does not indicate that the Tolling Program has harmed economic interests in New York.” The judge also didn’t buy the administration’s argument that the federal government can poke its nose into the matter because some of the freeways leading into Manhattan were paid for with federal funding, so How Dare The MTA impose tolls on The American People’s Roads. Liman said nah, that’s not what federal law says at all: “It is manifestly incorrect that all roads built with federal funds must be free from all tolls.”

Judge Liman really didn’t seem terribly impressed with the administration’s arguments against the plan, calling them at various points “nonsensical” (page 64), and “erroneous” (six different times!). Liman found that the government’s claims “bespeak insincerity” (page 44) and noted that one claim failed to provide “a single historical source that supports their view” (page 73). He also rebuked the administration for behaving, throughout the litigation, as if the matter were already settled for all time, noting that Trump social media post that declared congestion pricing “dead” (page 44).

Yep, that’s a judicial spankin’! Trump will of course appeal (and whine while doing it), but Cardozo Law School professor Michael Pollack said Liman’s thorough dissection of the administration’s claims bodes well for the case as it moves forward, telling The New York Times (gift link), “If I were a lawyer at the M.T.A., I’d be feeling very good about my chances on final judgment.”

Not surprisingly, the administration is now doing its little dance where it decries the mean “unelected” federal judge (no federal judges are elected), pretending to be on the side of ordinary folks, and doubling down on the fearmongering. As we’ve seen before, much of the rightwing talk against congestion pricing pretends to take the side of the ordinary working-class stiff, and to pretend that public transit is a nightmarish descent into urban hell. Here’s Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy fearsplaining to Larry Kudlow on Fox Business that, unlike the city’s schoolchildren who ride it all the time, he’s simply terrified of taking the subway, because nobody comes out of it alive:

DUFFY: If you're a liberal, they want you to take public transportation! I’m OK with public transportation, we have a whole department here for it. The problem is that it's dirty! You have criminals, it's homeless shelters, it's insane asylums! It's a, it’s a work ground for the criminal element of the city to prey upon the good people! So if you want people to ride a subway, make it clean! Make it safe! […] But these liberals, I dunno, Larry … they don’t think through this stuff, and they come up with stupid policy!

Stupid policy like making traffic run more smoothly with less pollution, and funding the maintenance and safety stuff that will indeed improve public transportation?

Not surprisingly, New York transit fans have been pointing and laughing at Duffy, calling him a big old liar and an elitist coward for his fear of public transit. More than one person said it seems like Duffy seems to think that movies like The Warriors or Death Wish are reality, pointing out that New York subways are nothing like his paranoid, movie-fueled fantasies.

We especially liked this one:

And several people reposted this Instagram video from last year, pointing out all the nice helpful subway riders who helped out a fellow passenger after she dropped a bag of — as one does! — live crabs. The comment on the original Bluesky post explained, “This is exactly what the NYC subway is like, and it's beautiful.”

In conclusion, riding the subway can give you crabs, and a sense of solidarity, and Donald Trump and his load of liars can go sit on Trump’s shitty old secondhand 747 and cry.

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New York City Oppressing Manhattanites With Cleaner Air, Less Traffic

Trump Am The Law

Qatar Royals Unloading Their Unwanted, Tacky, Old, Used 747 On Gullible Idiot

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[NYT (gift link) / AP / Gothamist / Order in MTA v Duffy]

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