Trump's recent announcement that he will be rescinding federal government approval of the NYC congestion toll program has Democrats up in arms. NY Governor Kathy Hochul has vowed to go to war with Trump in the courts in order to keep the program in place. She claims that federal law prevents the White House from unilaterally halting the program and that the toll is necessary to maintain infrastructure in Manhattan while making residents safer.
Congestion pricing was enacted in January and charges drivers $9 each time they enter the Central Business District below 60th Street in Manhattan. It has three stated goals: to reduce traffic, lower carbon emissions and raise revenue for mass transit.
However, congestion pricing is actually rooted in an issue which Governor Hochul tends to gloss over: Carbon taxation. Road pricing is a key element of the notorious 15 Minute City concept often put forward by the World Economic Forum (of which Kathy Hochul is an adherent), and it is specifically justified by proponents as a method for reducing carbon emissions. In other words, road pricing or the "congestion toll" is a way to apply direct carbon taxation on the general public.
The 15 Minute City concept is built around the fallacy that travel reduction is necessary to "save the planet" from global warming. The idea is relatively simple - Create artificial obstacles through law to reduce or remove individual travel. The WEF refers to this as "sustainable and inclusive mobility". The Davos crowd presents sustainable mobility as a quest for "convenience" to encourage people to stop using private transportation, but nothing is as convenient as having your own vehicle.
The globalists know this, so, in order to create convenience for the public they have to make private transport very inconvenient. Hence, charging multiple tolls per day for accessing certain roads, or all roads, with your own car. The more carbon taxes you pay for simply driving the less you will want to drive and the more convenient "green transportation" options will seem.
Congestion tolls are a negative incentive to keep lower and middle class people from using personal transportation, keeping them trapped within small areas where they can walk (in 15 minutes) or take public transport, but rarely leave.
The ultimate purpose of 15 Minute Cities is to centralize populations into tiny areas, completely eliminate private transportation and control all citizen mobility. The idea received increased attention from the WEF and the establishment media during the covid lockdowns, when it was suggested that covid travel mandates should be kept in place in order to mitigate climate change.
As many critics have noted in the past, there is zero scientific evidence of causation between carbon emissions and higher temperatures. The Earth has had numerous warming periods over its long history, most of them occurring long before human industry existed.
Not only that, but historic carbon trends show no match between rising carbon levels and higher temperatures. That is to say, the entire climate science industry is built on a hoax that falsely connects human activity to climate change.
Road pricing appears to be an attempt to enforce carbon taxation by another name, and initiate the beginning stages of 15 Minute Cities though "sustainable mobility".
Beyond the hysteria and fraud surrounding climate change, another factor that must be considered is mass surveillance. The spread of thousands of traffic cameras using AI to identify and track drivers in real time is not just a problem in terms of squeezing taxpayers for more money on roads they already paid for. There's also the question of whether or not these cameras will only be used for collecting license plate numbers.
The cameras are also used to identify expired licenses, expired tags, lack of insurance, etc., and fines can be collated and sent to the driver by mail without them ever encountering police. While some people might argue that if you're "not breaking the law then you have nothing to worry about", there is the danger of false positives as well as the normalization of AI automated law enforcement. A society that is constantly watched by government and AI is not a free society.
The Trump Administration's opposition to New York's congestion program is correct on numerous levels.