In a new op-ed for The Hill, Evergreen Action Vice President for States Justin Balik highlights the early success of New York’s groundbreaking congestion pricing program—a bold, forward-thinking policy that’s already delivering real results. Six months in, the program is easing traffic, cutting pollution, and generating much-needed funding for public transit, with the greatest benefits flowing to communities that have long borne the brunt of transportation-related air pollution. 

Balik argues that, in addition to being good policy, this success is also a powerful example of what government can achieve when bold ideas are paired with real action. With broad and growing public support, New York’s model shows that smart climate and transportation policy isn’t just possible—it’s popular and working.

The Hill: Congestion pricing is working in New York, and it proves government can do big things

By: Justin Balik
July 12, 2025

Key Points:

• In a moment when good government can feel out of reach, New York’s congestion pricing program proves something rare and powerful: We can still do big things. 
  
  
• The program has already delivered tangible benefits in just six months. And despite legal threats from the Trump administration, its hand is weak — as its own attorneys have admitted — and the signs are good that this program will continue. 
  
  
• Congestion pricing has been one of the most fiercely contested and arguably most successful local policy wins in recent American history. My experience in working to pass and implement it offers important lessons for the future of progressive policymaking. Because what happens here reverberates nationally, we must draw the right conclusions — not just to protect it, but to replicate it. 
  
  
• First, progress is possible — and the public will come around. Like the Affordable Care Act, congestion pricing was initially unpopular. It polled terribly. After all, who wants to pay more for anything at a time of rising costs? But with determined advocacy, committed leadership and early results, public opinion is shifting in the program’s favor.  
  
  
• Second, we need to deliver progress faster. Congestion pricing passed into law in 2019, but it didn’t launch until this year. Why the delay? In part, it was due to a multi-year environmental review and engagement process that collected thousands of comments and modeled a wide range of program design scenarios.  
  
  
• Third, none of this would have happened without dedicated public servants. Across the city, the state, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the federal government, hundreds of staff made this work, even as political leaders came and went. I still recall sitting across from Trump appointees at the U.S. Department of Transportation in 2019 who asked city and state officials to explain how the environmental review process worked — a process through which they were supposed to be guiding us.
  
  
• It shouldn’t have to be said, but it does: government functions best when it hires competent, mission-driven people. Investing in the public workforce isn’t a luxury; it’s essential to solving big problems. 
  
  
• Finally, coalitions win. Yes, this was a long and hard-fought victory for transit advocates. But it was also a victory for the broad, diverse coalition they built. Support came from business leaders, real estate stakeholders and others across New York’s civic landscape. 
  
  
• Congestion pricing is working. It’s delivering cleaner air and better transit. Delivering results quickly has to be the norm, not the exception. Now more than ever, we need examples of government delivering real, tangible benefits for everyday people. That requires bold ideas and a clear path to make them real.