One Big Idea to Prove That Democrats Can Govern

One popular way to explain the election’s red wave in America’s cities is to argue that it’s a reaction to poor governance by Democrats. There are holes in this theory, but it’s an attractive framing because it provokes a productive type of soul-searching. After all, Democrats still do control most of the country’s big cities. If they want to win back urban voters, the ball is in their court.

New York’s lieutenant governor, Antonio Delgado, wrote as much in the New York Times on Thursday: “The challenge for Democrats now is to prove we can govern. Republicans will control Washington, but we control cities and states across the country. Let’s prove ourselves to be the party of competence by improving people’s lives with homes they can afford, quality health care, clean air and safe drinking water, high-performing schools and reliable transportation” (emphasis mine).

Fortunately, one powerful Democratic politician is poised to implement an ambitious, first-of-its-kind policy with the potential to improve the lives of millions in a big city. With proper execution, this initiative could restore the sense that Democrats know what they’re doing and, more broadly, that government can devise effective solutions to everyday problems.

It’s Delgado’s colleague Gov. Kathy Hochul, who is at last implementing a congestion toll around Manhattan’s two central business districts early next year. Congestion pricing is designed to raise money for public-transportation improvements and eliminate gridlock, bringing a host of positive externalities such as lower asthma rates, reliable freight delivery, faster emergency response times, and a functional bus network. A number of U.S. cities, including Boston and Los Angeles, have wondered if the tactic could help them manage the costs of gridlock.

Now New York can light the way. It’s exactly the kind of bold problem-solving that has seemed in short supply in urban governance over the past four years, during a pandemic recovery marked by a murder surge, the arrival of tens of thousands of migrants, rising homelessness, and out-of-control housing costs. New York City, with its indicted mayor and hapless City Council, has not been anyone’s idea of a model.

Originally approved in 2019 under former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the congestion toll was delayed by lawsuits, federal approvals, and the coronavirus. After a date was finally selected—June 30, 2024—Hochul intervened to stall the toll with just weeks to go, reportedly in an attempt to avoid a repeat of the 2022 midterms, in which Democrats wiped out in the congressional races in the New York suburbs, handing the GOP control of the House. Mission accomplished, sort of. Democrats took back three of the four seats they lost two years ago, and Hochul has now set a date for the policy to take effect: Jan. 5, 2025.

This puts the governor in a strange position. She might well have written off congestion pricing as an inevitability, a technocratic solution devised years ago over which she had no control, and watched over its implementation with ambivalence. Instead, by first meddling with, then directing its delivery, at a price point she imposed out of thin air to replace the one chosen after months of deliberations, she has made congestion pricing her own. Just as pro-toll advocates labeled her “Congestion Kathy” when she delayed, anti-pricing opponents are now calling the policy “Hochul’s congestion pricing.”

The good news for Hochul is that road pricing has proved popular in London, Stockholm, and Oslo, with public opinion improving over time.

The bad news is that Hochul does not have time on her side: She will likely face a primary challenge in 2026 and, if she prevails, a risky matchup against a Republican who is sure to make congestion pricing a campaign issue. (One Hudson Valley GOP congressman, Mike Lawler, has already cut an anti–congestion pricing spot.) Further complicating matters: Hochul’s public remarks about the wisdom of the policy have swung wildly. First, she was all for it; then she was against it on the grounds that a $15 toll would be a burden on “hardworking New Yorkers” (despite the fact that many families currently pay many times that amount to take a train downtown); now she is for it, again.

But no matter. Her political fortunes are currently tied to the policy’s success, and so she has a strong incentive to ensure that congestion pricing lives up to its promise as a flagship blue-state policy.

First, Hochul has to make the program a success inside the cordon in Manhattan. She is already off to a bad start. By overruling a board of experts and cutting the toll by 60 percent, she has also reduced the promised traffic decline to just 13 percent. That traffic drop will soon be partly filled by a “rebound effect,” as faster traffic speeds induce more trips. Before you know it, gridlock could once again be holding up fire engines and blocking crosswalks, and the toll will look like nothing more than a cash grab.

Former New York DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan expressed this concern to Curbed last year: “If congestion pricing does in fact remove 20 percent of the traffic and you just wind up with underused car lanes, it’s an invitation for motorists to fill them up again. It will harm the program’s credibility irreparably.”

So the challenge for Hochul is to make sure that big changes accompany the rollout and are seen as part and parcel of the policy. (Nominally, this would be the city’s responsibility, but neither the mayor nor the City Council president wants anything to do with it, and Hochul wields a lot of influence in City Hall right now.) Sadik-Khan has suggested establishing special lanes for e-bikes and scooters, building a pedestrian boulevard through Midtown, closing the Financial District to traffic, and constructing 14^th Street–style busways on all the city’s major crosstown thoroughfares. Big-ticket projects like those could mesh with the city’s own initiatives, like a redesigned Fifth Avenue and “daylighting” at thousands of intersections.

These changes would make it possible for congestion pricing to keep its promises—cleaner air, faster ambulances and fire trucks, a functioning bus network—even after the sticker shock wears off. Ideally, these initiatives would have gotten underway years ago. But as many cities learned when the pandemic hit, it’s a lot easier to do things quickly when there aren’t quite so many cars around.

Second, Hochul has to guarantee that the toll works for New Yorkers outside the zone. That means making sure that the redistributional effect of congestion pricing—tolling a few rich guys who drive into Manhattan to fund subways and buses for the masses—is crystal clear. The transit improvements will be implemented by the MTA, which Hochul controls, and include faster trains, new elevators and escalators, and capital improvements like an extended Second Avenue Subway. Here, too, the MTA should insist that local jurisdictions provide signal priority at stoplights and dedicated emergency lanes for buses, EMS, police, and the fire department. Hochul can also reduce negative spillover, in the form of drivers parking just outside the zone or around outer-borough transit stops, by introducing parking permits in New York City.

And every single good thing the MTA does should be tied to the Robin Hood toll, with Hochul cutting specially made congestion pricing ribbons with all the subtlety of Donald Trump putting his name on those stimulus checks. Democrats have learned the hard way that there is no room for modesty in “deliverism.” (The Biden administration did plenty of governing, of course, but, without an effective communicator in the White House, failed to convince even the groups that had directly benefited from its policies.)

Third, Hochul can address bad actors: She can crack down on drivers who use fake and defaced license plates (law and order is good!), a practice that will proliferate as the toll takes effect. These scofflaws steal more than $100 million from the city each year, and that doesn’t even count the foregone state tolls on bridges, tunnels, and highways!

Finally, Hochul can preempt a surefire right-wing critique by making a serious effort to reform the MTA’s wasteful practices. Lawler, for example, has already framed congestion pricing as a way to make up for missing revenue from farebeaters. But the MTA’s out-of-control spending has been a problem for years, and by promising reform, Hochul can argue she’s fixing New York City’s transit funding on both sides of the balance sheet.

It will be an uphill subway ride. Congestion pricing is unpopular, and framing it as a way to raise money—as a tax, rather than as an infrastructure and quality-of-life improvement—is a losing proposition. Josh Shapiro fixing I-95 this ain’t. But it will also be an interesting test of Democrats’ ability to defy the poll-driven politics that has led many voters to believe that they stand for nothing at all. Congestion pricing was a good idea; now Kathy Hochul has to prove it.