Congestion pricing was sold as the fix New York City's ailing subways needed. With breakdowns and delays becoming more frequent, an infusion of revenue could help restore the system.

• How Congestion Pricing Could Work in New York

Last year, lawmakers passed congestion pricing, which would charge vehicles a fee to enter Manhattan below 60th Street.

It would raise a billion dollars, which could then be bonded for $15 billion over several years.

But now the federal government is saying, not so fast.

"There are two federal angles. One is the need for federal permission to toll a previously free road that got some federal funding along the line somewhere," said Nicole Gelinas of the Manhattan Institute. "The second part is the need to go through an environmental review process."

• Report Suggests Flat Fee or High Peak Model for Congestion Pricing

MTA officials acknowledge the federal government's ability to delay or possibly even scuttle the congestion pricing scheme, but they are proceeding as if it will be implemented.

"We're doing everything we can to move it as quickly as possible. As I said, we brought the project to our board a month early," MTA Chairman Pat Foye said. "We are working closely with the authorities in Washington to get through the process."

"I think the risk here is we could be looking at a potential delay," said Nick Sifuentes of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. "The MTA can take a bit of a delay in congestion pricing, but we can't push it off too long because they need the revenue."

But the MTA hasn't moved swiftly on its end either. The Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority is supposed to name six members to a "Traffic Mobility Review Board," which would then set the tolling rates and make them public as early as mid-November.

So far, that team has not been named and no meetings have been scheduled, even though congestion pricing is expected to be implemented in the next 10 months.

• Congestion Pricing: 5 Lessons from London

State legislators and Gov. Andrew Cuomo created the review board through legislation.

"Commissions are terrible. We shouldn't do any more of them," Democratic Brooklyn Assemblyman Robert Carroll said. "This is my fourth year in the legislature; we've done three of them."

Albany has certainly done this before, waiting until very late in the game to bring one of these commissions to life. They did so with the pay commission in 2018, and the public finance commission in 2019. In all of these cases, the commissions' recommendations are binding.