Opinion | Congestion Pricing Shows the Future of the Democratic Party

One of the lesser-known acts of the French Revolution, in the days before the storming of the Bastille, was a series of attacks on the toll barriers at the boundaries of Paris.These customs houses were a natural target for angry commoners: They levied the octroi, a tax on goods entering the city that was both an everyday financial burden and a symbol of oppression.

When the revolutionary government formally abolished the tolls a couple of years later, Parisians celebrated on the Champs-Élysées.(One product that had just lost its heavy tax was wine.) By that time, the king and queen were under house arrest.The story was one of many concerning precedents for New York’s Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, as she prepared to oversee Manhattan’s central business district tolling program, better known as congestion pricing, which takes effect today.

The ring of tolls is intended to clear the region’s dirty air, ease Manhattan’s gridlock and fund the buses and trains that transport the vast majority of commuters.Governor Hochul has become the reluctant face of the program since she decided last year to pause its implementation, consider alternatives, reinstate it and override a committee of experts in order to choose a lower fee: $9 (down from $15) to take a car into the heart of Manhattan during the day.

She seems about as excited to carry this initiative through her 2026 re-election campaign as Frodo was to journey across Middle-earth.But at a moment when Democrats are in retreat, the success of this program is a major test for the party’s ideals, as well as its ability to actually get things done in the places it controls.Few areas of the country moved further toward the G.O.P.

this past November than the boroughs and suburbs of New York City.If Democrats can figure out how to make congestion pricing viable, they can set a model for a whole host of innovations — in transportation, housing, crime, corruption and taxation — that, like this one, will re...