When congestion pricing made its long-awaited debut in New York City earlier this month, Gov. Kathy Hochul at first steered clear of praising one of the most significant policy acts of her tenure.
Then more than a day after the tolling program began, she told reporters it was great, but she didn’t mention its projected environmental or traffic-reducing benefits or its importance to improving the subway.
“What I want to do for the suburbs — the Hudson Valley — is to shave time off the commute,” she said shortly after riding Metro-North from Hastings-on-Hudson into New York City.
The decision to focus her first public comments after the program’s launch on the expected benefits for suburbanites reflects the way one of New York’s first suburban governors thinks about transit. It also suggests that her political fortunes are likely to be tied to congestion pricing and whether voters believe the program improves their lives.
Observers noted that Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, is predictably focusing on swing areas of the region, which dominate state politics. Because so many proponents of congestion pricing have zeroed in on benefits to urban residents, Ms. Hochul appears to be trying to broaden the program’s popularity by talking about how it will work for suburbanites, too. In a response to a request for comment, Ms. Hochul’s office referred back to her earlier statements listing the programs benefits, her focus on commuters’ concerns about its cost and the urgent need for more investment in the system.
The program’s supporters often focus on benefits to subway riders and New Yorkers who spend time inside the tolling zone. It charges most drivers $9 to enter Manhattan’s most gridlocked streets and aims to reduce traffic and pollution while raising billions of dollars for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which oversees the region’s mass transit system.
But Ms. Hochul must court suburban voters, many of whom are frustrated about rising costs, as she looks to her re-election run in 2026. She has sagged in the polls, and her path to victory will probably run outside the city.
More than half of New York State voters who responded to a Siena College survey in December opposed the program, including 60 percent of downstate suburbanites.
“The real heat on this issue is in the lower Hudson Valley and then on Long Island,” said Republican Senate minority leader Robert Ortt, who represents Niagara. “That seems to be where most of the opposition is, and I think for the governor, if you do not do well in those areas, things get a lot more difficult when you are talking about re-election.”
Last week, Ms. Hochul underscored infrastructure improvements to the Metro-North Railroad and promised to make the trip 15 minutes shorter. And she reminded the public that she reduced the peak toll from $15 to $9 as part of a broader effort to make the state more affordable — a central focus of her State of the State address on Tuesday.
Neal Zuckerman, an M.T.A. board member from Garrison, N.Y., who represents Putnam County and who chairs the authority’s finance committee, emphasized that congestion pricing was necessary to improve the lives not only of city dwellers but of those who travel to Manhattan from nearby suburbs.
“Congestion pricing is not just about below 60th Street in New York City,” Mr. Zuckerman said. “Congestion pricing is, in part, about funding the entire M.T.A. And the M.T.A. is one system, from all the way up in Wassaic, all the way out to Ronkonkoma.”
Ms. Hochul has to appeal to the suburbs without neglecting New York City voters. “She’s got to be somewhat worried about her New York City base for various reasons and trying to expand her support heading into the election,” said Danny Pearlstein, a spokesman for Riders Alliance, a group that advocates for the region’s transit riders. He added: “On top of that, she has in her M.T.A. chair, Janno Lieber, a born-and-bred New York City guy who’s been all over New York City, touting the advantages to New York City. And I think she wants to try and balance that.”
The day after the program began, Ms. Hochul mentioned city projects such as the Second Avenue subway but promised that the new revenue from congestion pricing and other improvements would cut commute times on certain routes by 15 minutes within a year. About 20 percent of the revenue from congestion pricing would go to commuter rail.
For the governor, this moment has been long in the making. Ms. Hochul was saddled with congestion pricing by her predecessor, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who supported it before he resigned, but later questioned whether now was the right time to enact it. In June, weeks before the program was supposed to go into effect, Ms. Hochul pulled the plug, citing the cost of the tolls, in part. This decision angered many members of her own party frustrated by the decrepit state of the transit system.
Then shortly after the November election she restored the tolling program and lowered the fee.
But the drop from $15 to $9, said Republican State Senator Bill Weber, was little help for Rockland commuters who can choose to drive, ride the bus or take two trains into Manhattan. He added that this commute is onerous and unfeasible for many of his constituents. Ms. Hochul would have more credibility with Rockland County and Orange County voters, he said, if she spoke about more exemptions for some commuters and a long-term plan to bring a direct connection from his part of the state into New York City.
“Her pitch is not landing well,” Mr. Weber said. “She keeps telling us ‘We are reducing it from $15 to $9,’ and that falls on deaf ears.”
Carl E. Heastie, the Assembly’s Democratic speaker who has long supported the program, is preparing for a tough negotiation with Ms. Hochul over how to pay for the next M.T.A. infrastructure improvement plan, which runs until 2029. He and State Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the Democratic majority leader, rejected it on Christmas Eve, citing a multibillion-dollar budget gap in the authority’s plan. So now it will be part of the budget negotiations.
He told reporters that it’s not surprising that voters dislike a new charge.
“The voter is always going to say they would rather pay nothing, but the M.T.A. must be funded,” he said. “It is vitally important, and like I said, us rejecting the plan at that point does not mean we are not going to fund the M.T.A.”
On Friday, Ms. Hochul rode the Long Island Rail Road to events in Nassau County to preview her affordability plan and touted increased ridership on the service. Her team posted a photo of her on X, seated in a car working on her iPad. On Friday, she noted that 75 percent of commuters from Suffolk County and 80 percent of commuters from Nassau County come into Manhattan on the train.
The experience was smooth, just like her ride from Hastings-on-Hudson, where she said, she “made friends with everybody.”