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President Trump intends to revoke federal approval of New York City’s congestion pricing program, fulfilling a campaign promise to reverse the policy that tolls drivers who enter Manhattan’s busiest streets to help finance repairs to mass transit.
In a letter to Gov. Kathy Hochul on Wednesday, the president’s transportation secretary outlined Mr. Trump’s objections to the program, the first of its kind in the nation, and said that federal officials would contact the state to “discuss the orderly cessation of toll operations.”
The letter, from Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, cited the cost to working-class motorists, the use of revenue from the tolls for transit upgrades rather than roads and the reach of the program compared with the plan approved by federal legislation as reasons for the decision.
Mr. Duffy did not indicate a specific date by which the federal government intended to end the program.
Mr. Trump wrote in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, that New York was “saved” as a result of this news.
“CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED,” he wrote. “LONG LIVE THE KING!”
Ms. Hochul defended the congestion pricing program on Wednesday and vowed to fight the president’s move.
“We are a nation of laws, not ruled by a king,” she said in a written statement. “We’ll see you in court.”
Even before the governor’s statement, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which manages the tolls, filed a lawsuit challenging the federal order.
The program had already had positive effects on the region, including reduced traffic and faster travel times, Janno Lieber, the authority’s chair and chief executive, said in a statement. Mr. Lieber added that the tolling would “continue notwithstanding this baseless effort to snatch those benefits away.”
There was no precedent for federal officials to revoke approval for a major transportation project in New York, especially one that was working, said Michael Gerrard, a Columbia Law School professor who supports congestion pricing. He said he did not believe the federal government had the legal authority to halt the tolling program.
“It is certainly not dead by any means,” he said. “Secretary Duffy has issued an order of questionable legality.”
Congestion pricing started on Jan. 5 and charges most drivers $9 to enter Manhattan below 60th Street, an area that includes some of the city’s most famous destinations like Times Square and the Empire State Building.
The plan aims to discourage drivers from entering the congestion zone. It also hopes to clear pollution from Manhattan’s core while helping to raise $15 billion for the M.T.A.
In other cities around the world, congestion pricing has cut traffic and vehicle emissions while encouraging the growth of alternative transportation modes, including buses and bike lanes. The tolls are typically unpopular at the onset before gradually winning over more public support.
Much of the funding is tied to critical transit repairs and upgrades. The projects include replacing subway signals that were installed during the Great Depression and making more stations accessible to riders with disabilities and parents with strollers.
But Mr. Trump had said that he would end the tolls because he claimed they were drawing visitors and businesses away from Manhattan. Observers had speculated that he would try to withdraw federal approval for the plan or threaten to withhold federal funding.
Early data has suggested that gridlock lessened during the program’s initial weeks as fewer drivers piled into the tolling area.
In the first week of February, weekday traffic inside the toll zone dropped 9 percent compared with the same time last year, with an average of 561,678 vehicles entering the area, down from 617,000, according to the M.T.A.
And foot traffic, a measure of business activity, has improved since the tolls took effect, according to city data. Through Jan. 31, 35.8 million pedestrians entered major business districts in the tolling zone, nearly 5 percent more than in the same period last year.
Advocates for public transit expressed outrage at the decision.
“Demolishing congestion relief is one of the stupidest policy proposals we’ve seen,” said Danny Pearlstein, a spokesman for Riders Alliance, a transit advocacy group.
Will Sheperd, a high school social studies teacher from Hamilton Heights in Manhattan and an avid cyclist, said that congestion pricing was necessary to alleviate pollution and make the streets safer for pedestrians.
“To have the federal government decide policy for New York City is just outrageous,” he said. “It’s not surprising given who this man is. He really seems to hate New York.”
But the toll had been challenged by many powerful opponents, including Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey, who wrote a letter to Mr. Trump on Jan. 20 — the day of his inauguration — urging him to stop the program. New Jersey had fought hard to prevent the plan from taking effect, filing a lawsuit that had been widely considered to be its most formidable threat. Days before the scheduled start of congestion pricing, Judge Leo M. Gordon of U.S. District Court in New Jersey ruled in favor of the program’s supporters, and the plan moved forward.
“The current congestion pricing scheme is a disaster for working- and middle-class New Jersey commuters and residents who need or want to visit Lower Manhattan and now need to pay a big fee on top of the bridge and tunnel tolls they already pay,” Mr. Murphy wrote in the letter.
Representative Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, a Democrat who is running for governor, has argued that drivers hoping to skirt the congestion zone would opt to cross the George Washington Bridge north of the zone, leading to a potential increase in pollution in his congressional district.
He has also maintained that the toll is mainly a “cash grab” to shore up the M.T.A.’s finances, rather than an environmental remedy.
“They never cared about how the tax would hurt Jersey families — they just needed the cash to pay for the M.T.A.’s woeful mismanagement,” Mr. Gottheimer said in a statement on Wednesday.
Many New Yorkers have also opposed congestion pricing. They have contended that it hurts drivers who may have limited and unreliable transit options in the boroughs and suburbs outside of Manhattan, and simply shifts traffic and pollution to other parts of the city and region.
Residents in the South Bronx, which is already burdened by a large number of commercial trucks that contribute to elevated rates of asthma, have worried that diverted traffic could make the neighborhood’s air even dirtier. Preliminary data from the first two weeks of congestion pricing found a possible uptick in traffic there.
Republican leaders have called on Mr. Trump to halt the tolling program. Representative Nicole Malliotakis of Staten Island said that in her conversations with Mr. Trump in recent months she had emphasized the negative effects of the program on her constituents. In those talks, Mr. Trump told her he would end congestion pricing, she said — adding that she was grateful he had kept his “promise.”
“Today’s actions are a victory for hardworking, taxpaying commuters who have been unfairly burdened by this toll,” she said.
Representative Mike Lawler, a Republican from Rockland County, echoed this view.
“I feel great. President Trump followed through on this word and helped end a program I have been fighting for years,” he said.
Rafael Santana, 66, who lives in the Bronx and works as a limousine driver, said that he was happy Mr. Trump was trying to stop the tolls because he was worried that congestion pricing would hurt businesses. Mr. Santana said that he did not mind the city’s heavy traffic.
“Customers don’t care about it,” he said. “Everybody knows if you go to a big city there’s going to be traffic.”
But other New Yorkers said that Mr. Trump should not be getting involved in what they saw as a local issue. “I think he should absolutely stay out of it,” said Cassie Robinson, 61, who lives in Manhattan and opposes congestion pricing. “I think it’s something that the city of New York and the state of New York should figure out.”
Ms. Hochul had already stopped the plan once, in June, weeks before it was initially supposed to go into effect. She had also cited concerns about the cost of the tolls, which at the time would have charged most drivers a peak fare of $15 to enter the zone. Ms. Hochul revived the plan shortly after the November election with the reduced $9 fee.
The potential demise of congestion pricing would force the state to come up with another way to raise $1 billion a year to fund the M.T.A.’s capital plan, and would leave the state with little way to recoup the half-billion dollars spent to prepare the city for the program. Already transit agencies are borrowing against the toll revenue, according to the authority’s lawsuit.
The New York Post was the first to report the existence of the letter from Mr. Duffy to Ms. Hochul revoking certain federal permissions necessary for the tolling program to go into effect.
The New York Times reported last month that Mr. Trump was considering killing the program. In recent weeks, the governor spoke to Mr. Trump multiple times about the tolling program in an effort to convince him of its benefits.
The path forward for funding transit infrastructure in the state is now unclear, said Speaker Carl E. Heastie who blamed Mr. Trump and other Republicans like Ms. Malliotakis and Mr. Lawler for this predicament.
They “just blew a $16 billion hole in the most important transit system in the nation,” he said. “They better have a plan to address this.”
Maggie Haberman, Camille Baker, Shayla Colon and Tracey Tully contributed reporting.
