Boston Mayor Michelle Wu told the MBTA Advisory Board on Tuesday that her administration has reached out to New York City officials to learn how congestion pricing has worked there, as the city weighs the controversial traffic-and-transit funding tool for its own streets. The policy, which charges drivers tolls to bring their cars into a downtown core during busy times, has never been implemented in Boston.
“Our teams have been in touch a little bit,” Wu said, according to GBH, adding that the outreach was “just to understand what they have experienced, and the details there.” Wu's comments came before an MBTA Advisory Board meeting focused on public transportation funding, where, as WCVB reported, she discussed the New York conversations directly. The advisory board had scheduled Wu to offer her perspective on Boston's role as the region's principal employment and activity hub and the need for coordinated transportation and housing policy, according to the MBTA Advisory Board.
A Climate Plan That Studies, Not Enacts
The congestion pricing conversation isn't new in City Hall. Boston's climate action plan already proposes studying financial tools including parking fees, tolls and congestion charges as ways to cut driving and reinvest the proceeds into public transit, the Boston Globe reported. But the plan stops short of commitment: the city isn't enacting congestion pricing, the Globe noted, just exploring it, and officials did not answer additional questions about what the study would entail or when it might wrap up.
The stakes for Boston's emissions goals are real. Boston's climate action plan proposes studying ways to cut driving and reinvest proceeds in public transit. Experts cited in that coverage also cautioned that Boston would likely need state or federal approval before it could impose tolls or a congestion charge of its own.
What New York's Experiment Shows
New York City's program, which took effect at midnight on January 5, 2025, is the closest real-world test case available to Boston planners. Most drivers there pay around $9 to enter Manhattan's busiest areas during peak hours, with taxi, green-cab and black-car riders paying a $0.75 per-trip charge and high-volume for-hire vehicle customers paying $1.50, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The toll applies to vehicles entering Manhattan south of and including 60th Street, varies by vehicle type, time of day and applicable discounts or exemptions, and residents with New York State household adjusted gross income under $60,000 may qualify for a tax credit covering tolls paid.
One year in, the results have been notable. The MTA reported 27 million fewer vehicles entering the Congestion Relief Zone — an 11 percent drop in traffic — along with a 9 percent increase in subway trips into the zone, a 2.3 percent rise in bus speeds, and a 7.1 percent decline in vehicle miles traveled. Figures on the program's financial payoff have varied by report: Governor Hochul's office said earlier that revenue was on track to reach a forecasted $500 million for 2025, while the MTA's first-anniversary release put net revenue at more than $550 million, money the agency says has allowed it to proceed with $15 billion in transit improvement projects. A preliminary injunction in Metropolitan Transportation Authority v. Duffy has kept the program in effect pending further court proceedings, per the MTA.
Why Boston's Funding Debate Keeps Returning Home
Wu framed the New York outreach as part of a broader, long-running search for transportation revenue rather than a sign that Boston is about to act. “We've all been talking about revenue for a long time now,” she said, according to GBH, pointing to the broader financial strain cities are facing. So far, Massachusetts' own funding debate has centered less on congestion pricing and more on existing tools: a transportation funding task force convened under Governor Maura Healey considered congestion pricing but ultimately left it out of its final report, instead recommending that the state lean on the existing surtax on high earners rather than adopt new taxes or fees, according to CommonWealth Beacon.
The question carries urgency because the MBTA's finances are strained. The agency's budget was signed into law on July 4, 2025, and provided the T only $470 million in state contract assistance, short of the $687 million its own spending plan had assumed, CommonWealth Beacon reported. The funding gap added pressure as the agency prepared its budget. Reports on the size of the resulting gap have differed: CommonWealth Beacon cited MBTA projections showing a $239 million current-budget deficit growing to a $560 million shortfall in fiscal 2027 and $732 million in fiscal 2028, while an earlier Globe report described a $700 million shortfall in the agency's next budget reaching nearly $900 million by 2028. Either way, the figures underscore why Boston officials keep circling back to tools like congestion pricing even as no formal proposal has emerged.
