Congestion pricing is back! The MTA on Monday approved a new plan to charge drivers $9 to enter Midtown Manhattan starting Jan. 5.

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s congestion pricing revival got the transit agency’s green light — clearing the way for motorists entering Manhattan below 60th Street to be hit with $15 tolls by 2031.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority board OK’d the governor’s phased-in congestion pricing plan in a 12-1 vote.

Congestion pricing’s return is “huge for the MTA,” said Janno Lieber, the agency’s chair. He argued that motorists, transit riders and businesses would benefit from the program reducing traffic in Manhattan.

“It’s a hopeful moment for drivers as well as for transit riders and for everybody because life can and should get a lot better if you have to drive to New York, if you elect to drive to New York, if you’re not spending as much time in congestion,” he said. “If you can save 10, 20 or even 30 minutes, your time is money.”

The procedural vote went off without much fanfare compared with the public fury both in favor of and against the long-awaited plan.

Hochul last week announced she’d lift the “pause” on the program — enacted over the summer just days before tolling was first slated to kick off — and carry it out with a $9 toll, instead of the original $15.

But largely hidden in Hochul’s sales pitch was the fact that the lower toll would gradually increase to the $15 that had been approved last year by the MTA.

The phase-in offered by Hochul — and ratified by board members Monday — calls to hike tolls to $12 in 2028 and the full $15 in 2031.

Many opponents have cast congestion pricing as a tax on hard-working commuters and New Yorkers who drive.

“I just can’t vote for it because I see many different avenues of revenue that we could be taxing and with those avenues we would bring more than a billion dollars and it would be less of a burden spread out,” MTA Board Member David Mack, the lone “no” vote, said during Monday’s meeting.

“We have absolutely no enforcement of the parking or all of the other things that would contribute to congestion,” Mack continued.

The vast majority of other board members praised the congestion pricing scheme – which the state is mandated to implement under a bill approved by the state legislature and then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2019.

Some called out critics trying to dismantle the toll program via a slew of pending lawsuits filed in federal and state courts.

“Let’s end these frivolous lawsuits. Let’s stop wasting time and money on politics. Let’s get this done,” MTA Board Member Neal Zuckerman said, challenging opponents to find another way to generate funding for the transit agency’s improvement projects.

Critics, including politicians on both sides of the aisle — and both sides of the Hudson — have vowed to continue the battle against congestion pricing, which President-elect Donald Trump earlier this year promised to “terminate” if reelected.

Lieber said he believes the federal approvals for the first-in-the-nation tolling plan are on solid ground and should be able to withstand any effort to undo them by the incoming administration.

“I am confident that if and when we receive approval from the federal government, albeit the Biden administration, the current federal government, it will stand the tests in the courts,” Lieber told reporters after Monday’s vote.

“Taking away an approval for a program” that’s been OK’d by the feds is not something that can “just be pulled away,” he added.

Lieber said 143,000 people drive into the congestion toll zone every day, compared to 6.5 million who take transit.

He argued the tolls will help make the subways and commuter trains better, and likely draw in drivers who’ll take a second look at taking the rails.

“Don’t believe the hype when people want to represent that this is some sort of dystopian hellscape,” he said. “The New York mass transit system is so much safer than many, many other places in the states where people rail about congestion pricing and rail about New York. Take a look at the crime rates in their major cities.”

As Hochul announced she was bringing back the toll last week, she also fully endorsed the MTA’s next five-year capital plan, price-tagged at $68 billion – the most expensive ever.

Lieber said Monday he expects Hochul to present a detailed proposal for how to fund the roughly $33 billion hole in the capital plan, and will be a vocal advocate for it as the governor works to push it through state budget negotiations in a few months.

Hochul’s budget chief, Blake Washington, told reporters in Albany late last week that discussions on how to raise that revenue will likely involve new taxes or fees on New Yorkers.

“I think taxes generally will be part of the discussion,” Washington said.