For a politician, nothing concentrates the mind like an upcoming election. New York Governor Kathy Hochul isn't up for reelection this year but she seems to remember the 2022 race in which Republicans flipped three House seats. This year she's trying to avoid that happening again. So this morning she suddenly announced she would do a 180 degree turn on New York's congestion pricing plan.

“I have come to the difficult decision that implementing the planned congestion pricing system risks too many unintended consequences for New Yorkers this time,” Hochul said in a pre-taped statement released to reporters...

“Once the congestion pricing plan was not accompanied by massive service increases, it became a betrayal of working people in the outer boroughs and the suburbs,” said John Samuelsen, Transit Workers Union President. “Working New Yorkers show their frustration at the ballot box, and somebody looked at some polling. That’s what it demonstrated.”

The plan was set to start on June 30. It would have charged cars driving into lower Manhattan up to $15 for the privilege and trucks would have paid more. Until this week, Gov. Hochul was fully behind the plan.

Just two weeks ago, the governor told attendees at the Global Economic Summit in Ireland that implementing congestion pricing was critical to “making cities more livable.”

Environmental groups are not happy about the sudden change but some swing district candidates were relieved.

Kate Slevin of the Regional Plan Association, a nonprofit urban research and advocacy group that has championed the tolling program, called the move “a total betrayal of New Yorkers and our climate.”...

Yet an undercurrent of support for Ms. Hochul’s move was also evident among lawmakers, particularly those representing swing districts.

“Many see it as welcome news,” said James Skoufis, a Democrat who represents Orange County in the State Senate, adding that despite the plan’s approval five years earlier, opposition had been growing in the Legislature. “Some of it is outspoken, some of it is quieter, but it is widespread.”

The plan isn't officially dead yet but that decision is up to a board that the governor controls. Mayor Adams expressed support for the change and has not been a proponent of the plan in the past. This turn puts Gov. Hochul on the same side of the issue as Donald Trump who criticized it last month.

“I can’t believe that New York City is instituting Congestion Pricing, where everyone has to pay a fortune for the ‘privilege’ of coming into the City, which is in desperate trouble without it,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social, his social media platform, on May 7. “It is a big incentive not to come — there are plenty of other places to go.”...

His comments aligned him with Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey and former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, both Democrats and staunch Trump opponents who have also been vocal critics of the city’s congestion pricing plan...

Even before Ms. Hochul formally announced the delay, supporters of the plan were criticizing her by tying her to Mr. Trump.

Another factor in the reversal might have been the half-dozen lawsuits aimed at blocking the plan. The most serious of those was brought by New Jersey.

Federal transportation officials allowed New York to move ahead with congestion pricing without fully addressing how traffic and pollution would be shifted to its neighbors across the Hudson River as drivers avoid the new tolls, a lawyer for the State of New Jersey argued in federal court on Wednesday.

Now, as traffic patterns change, those New Jersey communities will be forced to shoulder the environmental burdens of the tolling program while New York receives all the benefits, the lawyer, Randy M. Mastro, said in his opening remarks in New Jersey’s lawsuit against congestion pricing.

Unfortunately, the decision to reverse course comes after the state spent more than $500 million setting up the physical infrastructure to monitor cars. Unless the governor reverses course again, that money will apparently be wasted.

This also leaves the question of how the public transport system will be funded now that the estimated $1 billion in congestion pricing money is off the table. Gov. Hochul is said to be considering an alternate tax on businesses.