Congestion pricing revenue is delivering one of its lesser-known promises: cleaner air for the South Bronx.
MTA officials and elected representatives announced Wednesday that they will use funds collected from the city’s tolling program to purchase 75 hybrid and clean-diesel refrigerated trucks for the Hunts Point Produce Market, a move they say will significantly cut carbon emissions in one of New York’s most pollution-burdened neighborhoods.
The investment puts money directly into the South Bronx, a community that spent years fighting for environmental justice and spent the months before congestion pricing launched bracing for the worst. Residents, local leaders and advocates had worried the tolling zone, which covers Manhattan below 60th Street, would push drivers to reroute through the Bronx to dodge the fee. The MTA’s own environmental assessment projected as many as 4,000 additional vehicles entering the borough each day.
That feared surge never came. Studies conducted by the MTA, the New York City Department of Transportation and Hunter College in March 2025, more than a year after the program launched on January 5 of that year, found no significant increase in cars or trucks diverting through the borough. Transit officials said Wednesday those findings hold.
U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres, who represents the South Bronx, called the truck purchase a “monumental breakthrough for public health and environmental justice” and credited MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber for following through on commitments made to Bronx communities before the tolling program began.
“He has kept his word,” Torres said. “He’s honored his commitment to the public health of the Bronx.”
The focus on Hunts Point is not incidental. The produce market is the food distribution backbone of New York City, handling roughly 60 percent of the fresh produce that reaches the five boroughs. That scale comes with a cost to the surrounding neighborhood. The trucks hauling goods in and out of the market rely on Transport Refrigeration Units, diesel-powered cooling systems that emit approximately 15 percent more carbon dioxide than standard vehicles, according to a 2020 study published in the journal Science of the Total Environment.
City Council Member Justin Sanchez, who represents Hunts Point, has been vocal about the health burden those freight deliveries place on his constituents. The neighborhood already shoulders some of the worst air quality in the city, a legacy of highways, industrial facilities and decades of neglect by the planners who shaped the Bronx.
The congestion pricing program, when it was being designed, included explicit commitments to direct mitigation funds toward communities like Hunts Point. Those commitments covered cleaner freight vehicles, public health investments in overburdened neighborhoods, and the creation of greenspace to offset emissions. The truck purchase is the most visible delivery on those promises so far.
The tolling program has been politically contested since before its launch, and it survived a 2025 attempt by the Trump administration to rescind federal approval. New York courts ultimately allowed the program to continue. For South Bronx advocates who were skeptical from the start, the congestion pricing debate was never really about Manhattan traffic. It was about whether a program designed around Manhattan would leave outer-borough communities behind or actively invest in them.
Wednesday’s announcement offers at least a partial answer. Seventy-five cleaner trucks will not fix the South Bronx’s air quality crisis, but replacing diesel-heavy Transport Refrigeration Units with hybrid and clean-diesel alternatives at one of the country’s largest urban produce markets is a concrete and measurable step.
New York’s outer-borough residents have long watched federal and state infrastructure dollars flow around them rather than to them. Congestion pricing was sold partly as a corrective to that pattern. Whether it fully delivers on that promise over time will depend on how officials continue to allocate revenue. But for Hunts Point, today’s announcement is a signal that the commitment was not just rhetorical.
