As Cuomo Exits, Will Congestion Pricing Still Come to New York City?

Gov. Andrew Cuomo leaves behind unfinished transportation projects, including a plan to charge fees to drive in Manhattan.

New York City’s aging subway system was supposed to receive hundreds of millions of dollars for upgrades this year — a windfall that had been badly needed even before the coronavirus pandemic decimated the system’s ridership and finances. But the fate of a congestion pricing plan to help pay for the work has been clouded by the fall of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, whose resignation threw the leadership of the country’s largest transit agency, and its agenda, into doubt. It was Mr. Cuomo who in 2019, after years of resistance, pushed New York to become the first American city to embrace congestion pricing — the imposition of fees on drivers entering the busiest parts of Manhattan, from 60th Street to the Battery. The plan, which was expected to bring in a billion dollars a year to finance public transportation in the New York area, was seen both as a bold challenge to the nation’s entrenched car culture and a way to build a 21st-century transit network.