Thirty days into his presidency, Donald J. Trump took aim at congestion pricing—an issue fraught with controversy in both his old New York stomping ground and his official residence, Palm Beach.
On February 19, Trump ordered Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to revoke federal authorization for New York’s congestion-pricing program. After failing to sway Trump in a closed-door meeting, Governor Kathy Hochul accused him of wanting to be a king and vowed to fight in court. Trump has since doubled down, while the MTA and advocacy groups have sued to block the program’s repeal.
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In Palm Beach, the showdown is drawing particular interest. The island’s growing popularity and Trump’s residency have worsened rush-hour gridlock, making traffic a constant complaint. Even in this MAGA stronghold—where Trump won 68 percent of the vote in 2024—some of his staunchest supporters are calling for relief. Could congestion pricing be the answer?
No, say town officials, for jurisdictional and political reasons. Nonetheless, the traffic nightmare and congestion pricing are regular subjects at town-council meetings. Earlier this month, Mayor Danielle Moore had to tell angry residents, “We feel your pain.”
Adam Kerr, a transportation engineer, told a Civic Association gathering that Palm Beach, with a resident population of some 9,000, had recorded the largest recent increase in yearly traffic growth. In the past year, he said, the rate of traffic growth had more than doubled—from a five-year average of 2.7 percent to 6.3 percent. Each day in 2023, some 60,000 cars came to and from the island via one of its three main bridges—19,000 daily trips on Flagler Memorial Bridge, 27,000 on the Royal Park Bridge, and 12,500 on the Southern Boulevard Bridge, closest to Mar-a-Lago.
Palm Beach’s daily morning and evening gridlock—already stretching for a mile—is expected to worsen as West Palm Beach experiences explosive growth. Traffic experts predict heavier congestion due to the rapid transformation of the city just across the Intracoastal Waterway.
Billionaire real estate developer Stephen Ross is leading this transformation, turning what was once a gritty, crime-ridden area into a thriving business and financial hub. His new firm, Related Ross, plans to invest nearly $10 billion in West Palm real estate, according to a recent Wall Street Journal report.
More visitors to the island may be great for shops and restaurants, said Maggie Zeidman, a former president of the town council. But the congestion is a big problem. “Our roads are not meant for this much traffic,” Zeidman said.
Kirk Blouin, Palm Beach’s town manager, attributed the island’s traffic challenges to several factors, but emphasized two recent developments—multiple raisings of the bridges that link Palm Beach to West Palm Beach, and the U.S. Secret Service's unpopular decision to close a major highway linking the northern and southern ends of the island whenever Trump is in town. Since his inauguration, Trump has returned to Palm Beach roughly once a week.
Blouin noted that Palm Beach has little control over road closures or bridges, as the town does not oversee them. Mayor Moore, who has called traffic congestion Palm Beach’s most pressing issue, has quietly lobbied the Coast Guard—diplomacy being the town’s preferred approach—to limit bridge openings to one per morning and afternoon rush hour. However, many unscheduled openings still occur due to barges traveling to and from an environmental project in neighboring Lake Worth Beach. Barge traffic, managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, takes priority over automobiles. Blouin admitted that the town’s quiet diplomacy had yet to sway the Army Corps. The town, however, has received a legal memo from a more aggressive resident, a trained attorney, who believes Palm Beach has standing to sue the Corps under the federal Administrative Procedure Act, which allows legal challenges to regulations if significantly changed circumstances have rendered them “arbitrary [or] capricious.”
The second possible roadblock to congestion pricing in Florida is President Trump’s intense opposition to the New York program, which signals how he might react to attempts to implement such a scheme in Florida, though the cases are clearly different. New York badly needs to raise revenue for its troubled MTA system, while Palm Beach wants to preserve its ease of life. Potential opposition would, however, come despite New York’s results. Since their launch on Jan. 5, the tolls have already yielded a 7.5 percent reduction in traffic, faster commutes to the city, and reduced congestion and carbon emissions. The tolls raised an estimated $50 million in their first month for the city’s cash-strapped bus and subway systems, which New Yorkers depend upon given that more than half of city households do not own a car.
Michael B. Gerrard, a Columbia Law School professor and expert on congestion pricing, argues that because New York’s program began before Trump’s second term, it would now be hard to reverse. Moreover, Gerrard notes, the state’s pricing scheme has already withstood several court challenges. To end it, Congress, which has only a slim Republican majority, would have to pass legislation cutting off federal funds to the MTA, which could effectively force New York to cancel the fees. While possible, Gerrard said, such action would be “extraordinary.”
To implement congestion pricing on state roads leading to Palm Beach, residents would need to persuade a state senator or representative to introduce a bill in Florida’s Republican-controlled legislature, where many may oppose the idea. Even if such a measure passed, Governor Ron DeSantis—who favors reducing road-usage fees and oversees a massive budget surplus—would have to sign it.
The process would then need to be repeated at the county level for county-controlled roads. And even if, by some miracle, the West Palm Beach County Commission approved the program, it would still require endorsement from Palm Beach residents and property owners on the island’s private roads.
Faced with potentially unyielding opposition, Palm Beach’s elected officials have begun seeking alternatives to mitigate the island’s gridlock. They have worked with West Palm Beach to coordinate traffic lights and enable more cars to get through each red-green cycle at rush hour, and have stationed more traffic police at intersections to speed traffic. Recently, the town changed the hours that landscapers and construction workers can perform noisy and quiet work so that they travel outside rush hours.
Blouin, however, has conceded that such measures fall short of a real solution. Such steps “may be small,” he said, “but we’re looking at everything.”
At the meetings, town residents have proposed other ideas—a ferry service from the island to West Palm Beach, for example, and shuttle buses to carry workers from West Palm to the island, which some companies have started offering. But town officials doubted that such ideas would garner support or reduce gridlock. “Frankly, I’d be surprised [if] the demand is there, because people aren’t going to do that unless it improves their workday,” Blouin said of the shuttle-bus proposal. “It would just take workers longer to get to their jobs on the island,” he added. Many likely wouldn’t be discouraged by the tolls, and the costs would be passed along to the residents who employ them.
Given Florida’s political landscape, Palm Beach residents may have to learn to live with gridlock. Blouin said that officials had recently sent out a survey to local businesses to gauge interest in a shuttle service for town employees and the employees of local businesses. That, too, is a Palm Beach way of doing business: when you don’t know what to do, or when what might be done is politically impossible, send out a survey.
Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images
