On February 20, 2025, that’s last Wednesday, the Trump administration announced that it is bringing congesting pricing in Manhattan, New York, to a close. The action fulfills a campaign promise that the President had made.

An overlooked burden of the congestion pricing is the cost it adds to working and middle class commuters to Friday, Saturday, and Sunday worship services, Jewish, Christian, and others. The congestion pricing for entrance to Manhattan below 60th Street is between $9 and $13.50. There is a discount for low income vehicle owners.

Manhattan Center City has always had worship centers like St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, Temple Imanu-El and the 96^th Street Islamic Cultural Center that attract congregants from all over the metropolitan area. Many Manhattan Center City churches may have up to 2000 commuters, according to a 2019 Manhattan Center City study produced by A Journey through NYC religions Data Center. The number of congregants that have to pay tolls varies quite a bit according to worship site. Further, special events at these sites can attract 1000s of additional toll payers. Manhattan Center City religious groups may need to ask how congestion pricing will affect them.

*Assume most commuter worshippers coming across toll connections. Muslims, Buddhists, and other religions either don’t commute to worship sites in Manhattan, are comparatively small in number of worshippers, or we lack data for them. Our data comes from A Journey through NYC religions Data Center reports 2015-2020, estimates from the Archdiocese of New York, FutureChurch Report 2023, Jewish Community Study of NYC 2023.

**Minimum toll is $9.00 ($468/year, 52 commutes), Maximum toll is $12.50 ($750/ year, 52 commutes). The 2013 projected toll is from MTA data sheet.

The congestion pricing could drain religious congregations’ resources of $44 million to $61 million a year. The impact falls most on religious congregations working and middle-class commuters. The median income in New York City is about $76,000, and residents with less than a median income are most often commuters into Manhattan (median means 50% of NYC residents are above and 50% are below this income level). Some commuter worshippers can only take the sparsely scheduled Sunday trains or come by car every Friday, Saturday, or Sunday.

The cost would be $468 to $650 per year per commuter if they went to every Sunday, Saturday, or Friday worship service. As one’s income goes down in the city, the cost of living in the city is so high that one additional cost is really a pretty big burden. One rabbi told me, “I don’t see how they can live in the city and worship in Manhattan, but they do.”

Congestion pricing may decrease congregational attendance, giving, and identification with Manhattan. It is one more reason for the working and middle classes to leave the Metropolitan New York City area. Low-commitment and low-connected religionists are the most sensitive to increased costs of going to worship.

For the poorest congregants, it means little aspirational memberships in wealthy churches. The upward mobility mentality is crippled by the expensive commutes to work and worship.

How price sensitive is participation in religious worship services? The only scientific data about this for New York City religion, that I know of, is provided by The Jewish Community Study of 2023.

Among the reasons among Jewish adults for not participating in programs, 7% of the survey respondents in Metropolitan New York City listed “can’t afford to participate.” The nominally engaged Jews were also likely to say that they don’t have a synagogue membership (which costs money). However, this question doesn’t afford us a very clear glimpse on price sensitivity.

There are numerous studies about the economic aspects of religious activity. But these too are not too helpful because of the complexity of the factors involved. In general, research has found that low-commitment religionists are the most cost-sensitive. Would they be the ones commuting in the first place?

A parallel is the impact on the restaurant business, which often is a weekend affair for city sightseers from the metropolitan region.

The restaurant business is significantly down after congestion pricing. This is a result of the increased cost for the commuters and for the restaurant suppliers, who have to pass along the cost. Some restaurants are so worried about this impact, that they are offering a nine-dollar commuter rebate to customers.

In a story on January 30, 2025, the Bar and Restaurant News claimed that “new congesting tolling in New York City is taking a toll on restaurants.” The “bridge and tunnel” crowd is a significant part of restaurant business in Manhattan. Terence Tubridy, an owner of several venues in Manhattan, observed that the burden has particularly been heavy on their workers who often have to come from “transportation deserts” or have a legitimate fear of traveling on the subway, particularly late at night. The subways are also unreliable on weekends, particularly impacting hourly wage laborers.

Church and synagogue leaders have told A journey through NYC religions that there was not much congestion in their areas of Manhattan on weekends, and this is confirmed by other Manhattanites, including restaurant workers, restaurants, who told Bar and Restaurant News that on weekends, the congestion was much lower because it was really only the people that were occasionally coming to Manhattan. This shows that the state and city basically ignored the interest of congestion and ignored the interest of religious groups and Manhattan business in their haste to raise money for their budget gaps caused by improvident government expenditures through the years. The governments also don’t seem to have been primarily concerned about environmental concerns, because the big environmental concerns are on the weekdays, not on the weekends. So this is why there’s been many complaints from other political leaders in the metropolitan area that it’s really a money grab by New York, not a real concern for workers or for the environment.

New Jersey Governor Philip D. Murphy had strongly objected to the congestion pricing as “a disaster for the working and middle-class commuters.”

Governor Kathy Hochul of New York originally proposed a $15 fee for the total congestion fee that would have raised the cost of synagogue and church commuters to $780 a year and will drain $73 million from the Manhattan religious congregations.

The state spent a half a billion dollars preparing for the program, even before they asked permission from the government, according to The New York Times and to the U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean P. Duffy. The U.S. Federal Highway Administration has to approve of congestion pricing under its “value pricing pilot program” (VPPP).

This pricing is a legal exception to the Congressional requirement that roadways and bridges funded by the federal government may not charge tolls. Secretary of Transportation Duffy determined that the congressional allowance was a violation of congressional authorizations that goes back to the enactment of the Federal-Aid Road Act of 1916. Congress required that roads constructed with federal aid must be free of tolls of all kinds, subject to limited exceptions. In 1991, Congress created a limited exception to the tolling prohibition for “congestion pricing pilot projects.” This was later renamed “value pricing pilot programs” (VPPP). Congress has allowed tolls as long as an alternate toll free entrance or roadway is available. Consequently, there are tollways in many of our cities, but there are always streets and roads that are free going along the tollway and that fits the federal rules. However, the congestion pricing of New York is something a little different.

The New York plan cordons off part of the city, lower Manhattan under 60th Street, with tolls, with no way of entering that part city on a parallel free way. The New York initiative is the first cordon pricing toll like this, meaning tolls to get into and out of a city or an area of the city, that has ever been allowed. In other words, below 60th Street is a ghetto of the rich walled off by tolls. Consequently, the town of Hempstead in Long Island has a pending lawsuit on this exact issue. The Trump administration justifies its policy change in a way that closely follows the Hempstead complaint. The federal government has also pointed out there’s a legal tension between the city and state’s purposes of decreasing congestion and increasing their revenue.

The federal administration claims that the law allows the purpose of reducing congestion, but not for the purpose of revenue generation. New York State and the City will likely claim in court that revenue generation is allowed as a byproduct of congestion pricing. However, the prolific claims by the city and state on the need for revenue undermine their claim that the tolls were not primarily about revenue

The federal government also points out that the half a billion dollars of costs to establish the program were incurred before the federal government had ever approved of it. The feds are now not prepared to give any money to the city for their preparation.

This is one of those issues, like Sunday parking, that transportation and religious interests overlap. Space in the city is about who has the right to live here with visibility, representation, and recognition. If you’re denied that space or hindered from occupying that space, it is a way of decreasing your visibility, your recognition and your right to be there. In fact, one of the classic discriminatory tactics is to suppress the right to space and the visibility and recognition that it brings.

The eagerness of the city and state to grab cash probably inclined them to ignore the rights of any other claims like those of the religious groups. Urban planners have also been notorious in ignoring of religious groups in their plans.

However, any discussion should include the question whether the congestion tolling is undue and discriminatory against religious groups that meet on the weekends. Their situation is a little different from the restaurants who can recoup expenses all week.

At least, the various governments need to do an impact study to make sure that there are not discriminatory impacts.

The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons ACT, the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution, and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14^th Amendment prevent governments from discriminating against religious institutions.

The governments need to show that they did due diligence with a proper impact study to address this religious discrimination issue. I would imagine that the restaurants feel the same way.

Recently, Duffy has offered considering a lower toll of $3. This may go a long way to resolving the issue. This would bring the yearly costs to religious commuters to $150/year, representing itself as a small ticket price for visibility, recognition, and congregation.

Still, for the restauranteurs or the religious, there is no justification for congestion pricing on the weekends. By all accounts, congestion, as measured by various official measures, does not exist on the weekends, so the only purpose was to grab the cash. And you can’t just grab the cash when it means you’re grabbing money from the offering plate. This is Tony Carnes for a Journey.

Explore how congestion pricing affects access to religious gatherings and what it means for your community.

Discuss with your religious leader about solutions.

Religious leaders need to engage with ly  policymakers to seek solutions and adjustments to the congestion pricing policy.