Mayor Bowser disavows plot to tax anyone driving to the capital

OPINION:

Credit to Mayor Muriel Bowser for recognizing that the District of Columbia isn’t Manhattan. For the past five years, she has been suppressing a report meant to promote a tariff on drivers entering the federal city. Earlier this month, she released the material with a letter roasting its assumptions.

“In addition to these significant methodological flaws, there’s a more fundamental issue with trying to impose a congestion pricing tax for Downtown DC: It’s the wrong policy at the wrong time,” she wrote.

Car-hating, left-wing activist groups are eager to advance any crackpot scheme that makes automobile owners miserable. So the D.C. Council hired an engineering outfit that specializes in mass transit, bicycle lanes and just about everything else that inconveniences big-city motorists to evaluate the proposal. It starts from the premise that roads are racist.

“Through this project’s analysis, the study team, the District Department of Transportation (DDOT), and DC Sustainable Transportation (DCST) document that BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) communities face greater challenges with transportation access, cost, and safety,” the newly unveiled report claimed.

Armed with a load of similarly dubious presuppositions, the authors cooked up justifications for forcing anyone making the journey downtown on four wheels to cough up $10 per day for the privilege. That amount would be just the introductory rate. Once such an approach settles in, there would be no limit to how high it could go. London charges $28, for instance.

Such a hefty price would turn the capital city into more of a ghost town than it was during the COVID-19 freakout. Although it is labeled as a congestion-reduction initiative, it wouldn’t eliminate gridlock; it would relocate it.

Cars would flock to the edges of the tax zones to shop, eat and socialize. Those areas would become more crowded, and the streets would become clogged.

At the beginning of last year, New York City levied a congestion toll with the blessing of President Biden’s autopen. According to INRIX, Manhattan is still the second most congested city in the nation. Traffic levels with the tax in effect are the same as they were in 2024 and 2023. It’s just a money grab — a destructive money grab.

“Taxing people up to $10 to drive into Downtown DC is a bad idea — especially now. At a time when office occupancy remains well below pre-pandemic levels and local retail businesses continue to struggle with reduced foot traffic, imposing a congestion tax would undermine our collective efforts to retain and attract residents, businesses, and tourists,” Ms. Bowser wrote.

Although she has been against this plan for years, Ms. Bowser likely realizes it also would be foolish to antagonize Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who has been doing everything in his power to dismantle the Big Apple’s driving fee.

Predictably, a district judge intervened earlier this month to protect the Democrats’ agenda, even though the project requires Uncle Sam’s permission under a legal provision stating that “all highways constructed under the provisions of this title shall be free from tolls of all kinds.”

With President Trump’s strong support, Mr. Duffy rescinded the waiver issued under the previous administration, but the judge prefers to keep Mr. Biden’s policy in place. The litigation is likely to drag out for years.

Ms. Bowser was wise to reject the courtroom wrangling and deep-six a revenue-raising exercise that would have hurt the city’s working-class residents.