Rideshare company with no NYC license has been conning congestion pricing and ditching millions in tolls: official

They’re conning congestion pricing!

An unlicensed rideshare company may be ditching tens of millions of dollars worth of Manhattan congestion tolls — and it’s time for the MTA to do something about it, a top city official said.

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City Council Democratic Majority Leader Shaun Abreu is calling on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to investigate discount rideshare company Empower, which has been skirting the toll to enter Midtown Manhattan that competitors like Uber and Lyft have to pay and bake into the cost of a trip.

Taxis and livery vehicles have to pay for each trip into the congestion zone, while regular vehicles only pay once — and Empower has allegedly been ditching tolls because it’s operating without a city license.

“Yellow taxis and licensed for‑hire vehicle companies collect these charges from their passengers,” Abreu wrote in a letter to MTA Chair Janno Lieber on Tuesday.

“Empower, however, appears to be offering rides without collecting either the state congestion surcharge or the MTA’s Congestion Relief Zone toll,” said Abreu, who chairs the council’s Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. “This allows Empower to advertise artificially lower prices while other transportation providers and their drivers continue to follow the law.”

MTA Chairman Janno Lieber claimed the MTA has been trying to recoup the lost fees from Empower.

“They’re ripping off the public,” Lieber said at an unrelated press conference Wednesday. “We have to find a way to make sure if they found a loophole it has to be closed.”

But a spokesperson for Empower said the company has been trying to pay the congestion toll and their efforts are being refused.

“Empower has repeatedly offered to facilitate the assessment and payment of any taxes or fees, including congestion fees, that TLC licensed drivers working for themselves using our software should pay to the City,” a spokesperson for the rideshare company told The Post.

The spokesperson said representatives from Empower met with city officials at the end of March and the city rejected their offer to pay for the congestion fees. A spokesperson for the mayor’s office did not immediately respond to an inquiry about the meeting from The Post. 

Empower has said its drivers pay a monthly fee to use the app, set their own prices and keep the full fare, which the company said makes it a marketplace rather than a dispatcher.

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But the company has not enrolled in the MTA’s per‑trip congestion plan and does not hold a Taxi and Limousine Commission license, so riders using the app do not see a congestion fee line on their receipts, and Abreu claims the company is not collecting those per‑trip charges.

Abreu said Empower may be handling up to 1 million trips a month in New York City, and the missing fees from those rides could add up to “tens of millions of dollars a year” that should be going to the city’s subways, buses and commuter rails.

“No company should be able to gain market share by declining to collect charges that its competitors are legally required to impose,” Abreu wrote. “The MTA must ensure that the Congestion Relief Zone program is enforced consistently and that its tolling framework does not reward companies operating outside the city’s established regulatory system.”

Abreu asked the MTA to investigate whether Empower trips are being charged the Congestion Relief Zone toll, determine how many rides may have gone untolled and calculate and recover any missing revenue.

Abreu also requested a briefing to the City Council on the results of the review and on the steps the MTA will take to ensure consistent enforcement of congestion pricing rules moving forward.

New York City is already suing Empower.

City lawyers argued in a lawsuit filed earlier this year that Empower is pretending to be a neutral software subscription, but in practice it does everything a rideshare company does — matching riders and cars, setting the economic terms of trips and processing payments — while skipping the TLC license cost and the congestion‑related fees.

“Mayor Mamdani ran on being a friend to hard-working drivers as well as on affordability for New Yorkers,” a spokesperson for Empower said. “Drivers using Empower to work for themselves are making thousands of dollars more per month than they make working for Uber.”

Empower has also been fighting with Washington, DC regulators since it launched there in 2020.

Courts in Washington ordered Empower to stop running paid rides because the company refused to register as a for‑hire operator, and judges have hit both the firm and CEO Joshua Sear with millions of dollars in contempt fines for continuing to operate anyway.

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Empower is still contesting the DC rulings.