What Happens Now That Congestion Pricing Has Been Halted

Gov. Kathy Hochul hit the brakes on New York’s decades-in-the-making congestion pricing plan on Wednesday, shocking lawmakers and infuriating supporters of the initiative.

The plan would have raised as much as $1 billion per year, according to estimates by the transit authority, for the city’s crisis-plagued mass transit system by charging motorists to enter Manhattan’s central business district.

The plan was supposed to go into effect on June 30, but now it has been “indefinitely paused,” Ms. Hochul said.

So what happens next?

The board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority must vote

The idea to congestion price in New York was first conceived in 1952 but a plan was not approved until 2019. To halt its implementation, Ms. Hochul needs the approval of the 23-member board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which oversees public transit in New York City and much of its suburbs. The board’s voting members are nominated by the governor, with others recommended by the mayor of New York City and the executives of the region’s suburban counties.

The M.T.A. had already earmarked $15 billion that it expected to fund with congestion pricing for long-planned projects critical to the upkeep of the subway, which has slid into decrepitude compared with the systems of other large global cities.

It is not clear when such a vote is expected to take place, how the board will vote or what the M.T.A. will do about a roughly $500 million contract that it had already signed for equipment needed to put the congestion pricing plan in place. The next regularly scheduled M.T.A. board meeting is June 24, just six days before the plan was scheduled to go into effect.