Congestion pricing inspires a lot of hatred. The concept is simple: charge drivers a toll to enter an area—usually downtown—in order to raise money for public transit, while reducing traffic and pollution. And it has worked now in several cities, reducing pollution and commute times, with numerous side benefits. Yet as Washington D.C.’s mayoral race heats up, the departing mayor Muriel Bowser has insisted that it is “the wrong policy for the wrong time.” The Washington Post editorial board agrees, calling it “self-destructive,” and claiming it would “cripple” downtown D.C.
Like so much else that emanates from the Washington Post these days, these words represent the ghoulish death rattle of a dying order. The right hates congestion pricing because they despise public goods and want to keep us alone and fuming angrily in our cars. Moderates fear controversy and too often accept right-wing narrative as a proxy for public opinion. But the two mayoral candidates to Bowser’s left—especially Janeese Lewis George, a socialist City Councilor—support the policy. Regardless of the outcome of its elections, Washington D.C. should go ahead and embrace congestion pricing, because it works.
We have seen what the car-dominated world brings us: long commutes and numerous traffic fatalities; extreme vulnerability to price shocks like the one resulting from Trump’s senseless war on Iran; pollution that exacerbates childhood asthma and other conditions; an unending climate crisis that caused Los Angeles to begin last year with deadly fire and end it with flooding that filled people’s homes with mud. We know that alternatives are out there. It’s time to move on.
In New York City, we’ve seen what congestion pricing can accomplish. According to MTA data released at the end of 2025, just under a year into the policy, congestion pricing has reduced traffic in the tolled zone by 11 percent and exceeded its goal in revenue raised for the public transit system (raising more than half a million after expenses). The anticipated downsides haven’t materialized either. It’s not hurting businesses; in fact, by some measures, it’s helping. In the tolled zone, foot traffic has not only increased, but has increased more than in the rest of Manhattan. By other measures—storefront vacancies declining faster in the tolled zone, increased sales tax receipts—business is booming.
The argument that it hurts the poor—which the Washington Post recently recycled—was always a canard, since in New York City, even in the outer boroughs, less than a third of low-income residents have cars, and only 2 percent use a car to commute into Manhattan for work. It can’t even be said to hurt the working or middle class, since New York City car owners are significantly richer than New Yorkers without cars. True, car ownership is less rarefied in other cities. But given the volatility of gas prices and car insurance, relieving people of the need to drive by using revenue to improve public transit is an urgent matter of economic justice.
Not only was the right wrong about congestion pricing’s ills, but the problems anticipated by the left haven’t come to pass, either. Some environmental justice advocates and Bronx residents feared that drivers trying to avoid the toll would flood the South Bronx, exposing an already-polluted area to even more deadly congestion. But that has not happened.
Oblivious to all this, Trump keeps trying to cancel New York’s congestion pricing law, not only with social media posts stating in block letters “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD,” as if trying to will it so through keyboard warfare, plus lawsuits. Governor Kathy Hochul has so far stood up to him, and the courts keep backing her up, with a federal court early this month declaring, yet again, that New York’s policy is legal and that the president can’t stop it.
And now that it’s working, congestion pricing is also popular. Among New York City residents, more people favor it than oppose, a Siena College poll found this month. That’s a big change: as recently as December, a little less than a third wanted congestion pricing to remain in place, with more than half supporting the president’s efforts to kill it. (Back in April 2024, when it was still hypothetical, it was even less popular, with two thirds of New Yorkers opposed.)
This experience—widespread hatred of congestion pricing as a proposal, followed by popularity once it’s implemented – is mirrored all over the world. In London, where congestion pricing has cut car traffic in half, raised billions for public transit and increased visitors and commuters to the city’s center, only 39 percent of Londoners supported the policy at first, with approval soaring to 59 percent just five months into its implementation, as traffic dropped. In Stockholm, the same thing happened: people resisted congestion pricing at first, and upon seeing the results, 70 percent of the city’s residents favored it.
Indeed, there’s evidence that a more serious war on cars could be effective and popular in the long run. New York City officials are discussing the possibility of charging for street parking, which will inspire the predictable howls of pain from committed motorists. But if it improves quality of life in the city, people might end up liking this, too. Over the last two years, Paris has been restricting car use even more than New York, banning most private cars from entering some neighborhoods, with steep fines. A year ago, Parisians supported making 500 more streets car-free, in a referendum. A recent mayoral election was widely viewed as a referendum on the pedestrian-centered urbanism of outgoing mayor Anne Hidalgo—and her fellow Socialist party candidate won handily. Drowning out the loud critics, the voters endorsed a cleaner and more livable city. The Parisian mayor rode to the site of his victory speech on a bicycle.
Rather than listen to the Trump toadies at the Washington Post, or the city’s current, cautious, centrist leadership, D.C. should consider following the examples of New York and Paris. Cities can aspire to more than the misery that car culture has inflicted on the world. Let’s embrace a vision of urban life in which we can all—literally—breathe more easily.
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