As someone who lives in the NYC metropolitan area, the problem here isn't with the idea of congestion pricing, it's with the public transit system. Public transit options to travel between Midtown and Brooklyn, or Staten Island and downtown, etc. are sorely lacking, as are options to get into the city from places not well served by the MTA trains. The subways and buses are unreliable at best. Once those are fixed, I'd embrace congestion pricing. Until then, the toll only hurts people who can't easily afford to pay: it's no coincidence that those people live in the places where it's less convenient to get into Manhattan. They're stuck either paying the extra few grand each year or spending an extra hour every day on the mediocre transit system.

Once NYC (*including* the other four boroughs, not just Manhattan itself) gets its public transit on par with London, Copenhagen, etc., I'll embrace the congestion pricing.