BOSTON, Mass. — Mayor Michelle Wu is putting together a New York City trip for a mix of business leaders, advocates and public officials from City Hall and the state who will look at how that city’s congestion pricing toll has worked, as Boston weighs new ways to pay for public transit.
Wu has said there is no specific plan on the table and that the goal is to learn what changed in New York before and after the toll started. Speaking at a public meeting of the MBTA Advisory Board on Tuesday, she said her staff has had early contact with New York officials about the details and called the toll a big funding stream for transit improvements there. The delegation is expected to leave within a couple of weeks.
Nearly two years ago, New York started tolling drivers who head into lower Manhattan below Central Park. A typical car is charged $9 a day at peak times, a window that covers 5 in the morning through 9 at night Monday to Friday, and 9 in the morning through 9 at night on Saturday and Sunday. Tolls for trucks and buses range from $14.40 up to $21.60, while a motorcycle rider pays half the car rate at $4.50.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has said the program brought in more than $550 million in net revenue in its first year, with the money going to subway and bus work. By the agency’s count, the toll kept 27 million vehicles out of the zone, cutting traffic there by 11%.
The idea faces steep odds in Massachusetts. Congestion pricing was listed as a measure to study in the climate action plan Wu released earlier this year, but Gov. Maura Healey opposed it after the state transportation secretary floated it in 2024. In a Suffolk University poll this year, 69% of voters statewide said they would refuse an extra charge for driving into the city, even with lighter traffic as the payoff, and any plan would need approval from the state Legislature.
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