Janno Lieber, the head of New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, had won.
Congestion pricing, the tolling program designed to cut down traffic in Manhattan and raise billions of dollars for the region’s aging transit infrastructure, had survived an onslaught.
Attempts by lawmakers to narrow its scope. A wave of lawsuits from truckers, residents and powerful neighbors in New Jersey. A last-minute pause in June by Gov. Kathy Hochul, who delayed the plan until after the presidential election.
But President Trump attempted to snatch away that victory on Wednesday, declaring on social media that he had unilaterally killed the program. “LONG LIVE THE KING,” he added.
In a letter, the U.S. Department of Transportation said that it would revoke the federal agreement that had authorized the toll, just months after it was approved by the Biden administration. The M.T.A. challenged the letter in federal court almost immediately and vowed to keep the tolls on in the meantime.
For Mr. Lieber, congestion pricing’s unflagging defender, the road ahead, like the way before, remains long and difficult.
After a grueling campaign to start the toll, which only went into effect on Jan. 5, Mr. Lieber must now help fend off the most serious threat to the program yet: the native New Yorker in the Oval Office.
And he must defend the program against the White House even as he asks Washington for help at the same time. The M.T.A. is pressing the federal government for a portion of its biggest ever capital needs budget, a $68 billion plan to remedy a slew of other transit problems not funded by congestion pricing.
But the state budget isn’t due until April. First, Mr. Lieber must reassert control of the congestion toll.
“No, we have no contingency plan,” Mr. Lieber said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon when asked about possible alternatives to congestion pricing. He added that he was confident the M.T.A. would prevail in court.
Losing the $15 billion expected from congestion pricing could be disastrous for the region. Subway signals installed during the Great Depression won’t get replaced, deteriorating rail bridges could halt service, plans to make more stations accessible for riders with disabilities and parents with strollers will be delayed, and over 100,000 jobs in the state that are tied to those projects and others could be lost.
The perils of navigating a fraught and political post are not new to Mr. Lieber, 63, a former real estate executive who previously led the rebuilding of the World Trade Center.
He has called himself the patron saint of challenging problems. Transit supporters call him the last chance to ensure the system gets extensive repairs, before a cascade of deferred problems ripples across the subway, buses and commuter railroads.
“He has to show to New Yorkers that this was not in vain,” said Eric Goldwyn, the director of the transportation and land use program at New York University’s Marron Institute. “You can be sure that any sort of screw-up is another arrow in the quiver of the haters.”
It wasn’t clear that Mr. Lieber would even stay in his job after congestion pricing was halted last summer.
In June, Gov. Kathy Hochul, citing economic concerns, abruptly paused the program just weeks before it was to go into effect. The decision was a shock to toll supporters, many of whom wondered whether Mr. Lieber, who became the chief executive and chair of the agency in 2022, would resign in protest.
But Mr. Lieber, who served as a transportation adviser to Mayor Ed Koch and President Bill Clinton, denied that was a real possibility.
“Why didn’t I walk away?” he asked on a recent morning from his office in Lower Manhattan. “It’s so not my shtick.” The pause turned out to be temporary.
He called his relationship with Ms. Hochul “very professional.” Meanwhile, Mayor Eric Adams has distanced himself from congestion pricing, calling it a state matter.
Mr. Lieber is, several friends and colleagues said, a canny politician, who can trudge through the bureaucratic mire with humor. For a civil servant, they said, he’s unusually optimistic.
In 2017, Gov. Andrew Cuomo hired Mr. Lieber away from a lucrative job at Silverstein Properties to become the M.T.A.’s head of development projects. His job may not pay as well as private development, but Mr. Lieber was always drawn to public service, colleagues said.
His tenure was soon tested by the governor’s resignation over a sexual harassment scandal, but in 2022, he was appointed by Mr. Cuomo’s successor, Ms. Hochul, to run the agency. Through the tumult, colleagues said, he focused on the work, kept a cool head.
Dan Doctoroff, a former deputy mayor and a longtime friend, said Mr. Lieber had called him on the day that Ms. Hochul paused congestion pricing, frustrated but calm. He asked Mr. Doctoroff to get her to reconsider.
His patience paid off. Days after the presidential election, Ms. Hochul revived the toll, which is charged on vehicles entering Manhattan below 60th Street. Most drivers pay $9, down from the originally planned $15.
Mr. Lieber said he wouldn’t take credit for Ms. Hochul’s “evolution” on the issue but also wouldn’t speculate on whether the pause had been designed to help Democrats’ odds in the election.
Danny Pearlstein, a spokesman for Riders Alliance, a transit advocacy group that has at times been at odds with the M.T.A., said Mr. Lieber could one day be regarded as the next Richard Ravitch, the former M.T.A. chairman who is widely credited with rescuing the subway from financial ruin in the 1970s and ’80s.
But Mr. Lieber can also rub people the wrong way.
At a time when consolidating support for congestion pricing is crucial, John Samuelsen, the international president of the Transport Workers Union, said Mr. Lieber would find few new friends in Washington.
“He might be the most narcissistic person I’ve ever met in my life,” said Mr. Samuelsen, who negotiates on behalf of M.T.A. employees and has faced off with Mr. Lieber at the bargaining table. “He thought he was smarter than everybody in the room.”
Early results from congestion pricing have been promising.
In the first week of February, weekday traffic within the zone was down 9 percent compared with the same time last year, according to M.T.A. data.
On an average weekday during the first three weeks of the toll, drivers shaved 15 minutes off the time it took to cross town on 34th Street, a trip of less than two miles that took 36 minutes a year earlier.
Despite fears that the program could chase away visitors, foot traffic in the area has increased since the toll began, according to the city’s Economic Development Corporation. Through Jan. 31, 35.8 million pedestrians entered business districts in the zone, nearly 5 percent more than in the same period last year — a faster rate of growth than in business districts outside the zone.
Mr. Lieber also frequently points to the results of a recent poll that found that nearly six in 10 New York City voters believe the city should keep the toll. He said he expects those numbers to improve as more drivers come to appreciate faster commutes.
Legal experts said Mr. Trump did not have the authority to unilaterally end the toll, but there are other ways in which he can exert influence over the plan.
Marc Molinaro, a Republican from New York and a vocal critic of both the M.T.A. and congestion pricing, is expected to head the Federal Transit Administration. The agency does not directly control the fate of the toll, but it distributes billions of dollars a year in grants to mass transit projects, a large share of which New York relies on.
Mr. Molinaro’s office declined to comment on how the agency might impede congestion pricing, but transit experts said the department could delay reimbursing New York for major capital projects, like the expansion of the Second Avenue subway line, as a way to exert influence.
Mr. Lieber said that it was too early to discuss the other avenues that Mr. Trump could pursue but added that he was confident in the legal case to keep the toll.
In the meantime, part of his mission will be to prove that the M.T.A. can responsibly use the revenue raised through congestion pricing.
The M.T.A. said it lost roughly $800 million to fare and toll evasion in 2024, a sum that critics call evidence of the agency’s mismanagement. But Mr. Lieber said efforts to combat it, including hiring more guards to monitor subway gates and installing barriers at turnstiles, are working. Subway fare evasion fell 26 percent in the second half of the year, according to agency data.
The M.T.A. said it had saved $400 million last year by consolidating costs, primarily in its subway and bus division, while increasing service.
“I don’t think it’s appropriate that people like to make their entire discussion of the M.T.A. about how ‘you guys suck, and you waste money,’” he said. “There are always going to be episodes and pockets of shortcomings, but we’re going to keep at it.”
The challenges for Mr. Lieber were already apparent earlier this month, when he traveled to Albany to persuade lawmakers to fund the M.T.A.’s next capital plan.
The agency has identified funding for only about half of the $68 billion it is seeking over the next five years. As part of the plan, Mr. Lieber is asking the federal government for $14 billion, which some fiscal experts thought was unrealistic even before the growing tensions with Washington.
Congestion pricing is designed to fund projects in the agency’s previous five-year capital plan, not the proposed new one, meaning that any interruption to the tolls could throw the next budget into disarray.
If the president can’t be reasoned with, Mr. Lieber said, he’s still confident he will find a way to save the toll, and the billions of dollars in revenue it represents.
“This is not the first time a president has said ‘drop dead’ to New York,” he said.
