When a federal district judge this month blocked President Donald Trump’s attempt to terminate congestion pricing, MTA CEO Janno Lieber cheered: “The Manhattan tolls are here to stay,” he declared.
Not so fast.
Judge Lewis Liman’s ruling concerned a single question: Did the federal Department of Transportation have the authority to yank its prior agreement to the toll program?
The judge answered that it did not.
But his ruling didn’t resolve the bigger issue: whether the MTA ever had the legal authority to start charging tolls on Manhattan’s streets in the first place.
That very different question is now squarely before a federal court in New Jersey.
And the answer, I believe, is no.
Here’s what the MTA doesn’t want drivers to understand: Federal law generally prohibits tolling on federally funded roads.
The MTA claims it’s entitled to a special dispensation through a federal program called the Value Pricing Pilot Program, a statutory exception that has permitted certain tolling experiments on qualifying roads.
There are two fatal defects with that contention.
For one thing, the VPPP is defunct.
The program expressly requires federal funding of any project operating under its authority — and Congress hasn’t appropriated a single dollar for the VPPP since 2012.
A program that requires federal money to operate cannot legally do so when the federal money dried up over a decade ago.
There’s also a second, independent problem: Even if the VPPP was still up and running, it still wouldn’t apply to the roads MTA is tolling.
The VPPP applied only to roads on the federal interstate system.
And the streets in downtown Manhattan where the MTA is collecting its $9 toll — streets like 57th Street, Lexington Avenue and 3rd Avenue below 60th — are not part of that system: They are federally funded arterial roads.
The statutory exception the MTA invoked simply doesn’t apply to the roads it’s actually charging drivers to use.
Put these two defects together and the conclusion is unavoidable: The MTA has been scooping up tolls it had no legal right to collect, starting from the very first day the congestion-pricing program launched in January 2025.
By our estimate, drivers have been illegally soaked for approximately $600 million.
Under the law, that money must be returned.
A class-action lawsuit asserting these claims on behalf of drivers is pending before Judge Leo M. Gordon in the US District Court for the District of New Jersey.
The case, Dunne v. Metropolitan Transportation Authority, has the backing of the New Jersey Conference of Mayors, the New Jersey General Assembly Republican membership and the Board of Commissioners of Warren County.
I am a supporter because my constituents are being robbed by these illegal tolls.
To date, the MTA has offered no answer as to how its program can survive either one of its two independently fatal defects — let alone both of them.
Congestion pricing’s impact on New Jersey is substantial.
The congestion-pricing zone runs directly along the New Jersey–New York border.
And according to the MTA’s own projected tolling scenarios, New Jersey drivers bear a greater share of the toll burden than Manhattan residents do.
This program was designed to extract more money from the people of New Jersey than from the people of the borough it supposedly serves.
Congestion pricing launched in the final days of Joe Biden’s presidency, under the auspices of a Biden-era federal agreement.
Six weeks later Trump’s new transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, moved to rescind that agreement.
The MTA sued, and Judge Liman’s ruling that Duffy lacked the authority to make his unilateral call was the result.
But that’s it. That’s all the judge decided.
The lawsuit before Judge Gordon is about a different fight, a more fundamental one: whether this program was ever lawful to begin with.
The New Jersey class action is fighting to get drivers their money back, every last dollar.
This is a lawsuit filed by ordinary people who were wrongfully charged tolls that were never legally authorized, banding together to recover what was taken from them.
When a government agency takes money it had no authority to collect, the law requires it to be returned.
This month’s ruling does nothing to extinguish that $600 million (and growing) liability. It doesn’t even address it.
Declare a hollow victory if you’d like, Mr. Lieber.
Just don’t spend it yet — this train hasn’t reached its destination.
Paul Kanitra represents Ocean County in New Jersey’s general assembly.
