Republican gubernatorial hopeful Rep. Lee Zeldin blasted the MTA’s planned congestion pricing program on Monday as a cash-grab by officials.

“Congestion pricing is a process of putting their hands into the wallets of people who can least afford it,” the Long Island congressman said. “What’s going to happen is, once this gets done, then they’re just going to ask for more money.”

The MTA estimates it will cost drivers between $9 and $23 during peak hours depending on what if any exemptions are provided.

Officials say the toll would raise roughly $1 billion per year, which officials plan to leverage into $15 billion of debt to finance the construction projects: $12 billion would go to subways and buses and $3 billion would go to the MetroNorth and Long Island Rail Road.

That accounts for about one-quarter of the MTA’s overall $55 billion program to overhaul, renovate and expand the region’s subways, commuter rail roads and buses — a price-tag that’s reignited criticism of the agency’s ability to control costs.

MTA watchdogs have particularly focused on the $6.9 billion to build the roughly mile-long extension of the Second Avenue Subway from 96th Street to 125th Street.

However, there is little dispute that the subway system’s century-old switch-driven stoplight signals desperately need replacing, which was a key tenant of the Fast Forward program brought by then-city transit chief Andy Byford.

It called for replacing the switch-driven stoplight signals that date back to the 1920s and frequently fail with a new computerized system that would allow trains to run faster, more frequently and much more reliably.

The L train and the 7 train both use the new signals technology and can run trains as frequently as every two minutes during the rush hour and post on-time percentages of better than 90 percent. But the improvements came with a hefty price tag estimated at $40 billion and it would take a decade to get the signals installed along the major trunk lines and interlockings in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan.

The MTA projects it will spend $13.2 billion on new signals and new subway trains that are compatible with them between 2020 and 2024 alone.

Asked how he would fund the MTA work instead, Zeldin cited an op-ed he wrote a decade ago pegged to making the transit agency more efficient.

“In it,” he said, “are a whole bunch of different items that would end up making the MTA operate more efficiently. If you go back and read through it, it’s amazing how many of those items still have not been tackled.”

The column contained 10 recommendations, though the bulk of the savings and new revenues came from recommendations to slash overtime spending and sell off real estate, like the agency’s former headquarters on Madison Avenue.

However, the agency currently faces a staffing shortage largely due to the coronavirus pandemic, which has forced it to bring back retired employees and expand overtime spending to keep trains running.

And its former headquarters is now slated to be redeveloped in a deal set to earn the MTA $1 billion, which is set aside for major projects like signals already.

Lines now slated for signal overhauls include the frequently delayed 6th Avenue subway between Broadway-Lafayette and Rockefeller Center, where the signals are between 83-90 years old.

Three notoriously unreliable trains in Brooklyn will also get overhauls: The A and C along the Fulton Street subway from High Street to Euclid Avenue; and the G will get new signals from Court Square to Hoyt-Schemerhorn.

“Without that $15 billion that would be gleaned from the money that is raised through congestion pricing, there’s a giant hole in the MTA’s capital plan, and our region’s essential transit system is going to suffer,” said Lisa Daglian, the head of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA. “Without continued investment, the summer of hell is going to look like day in the park.”

Zeldin was pressed about his plan shortly before he joined a delegation of lawmakers — including GOP Rep. Nicole Malliotakis and Democratic councilmen Bob Holden and Kalman Yeger — who again called on Gov. Hochul to delay or outright cancel the proposed congestion toll.

“This is nothing more than a war on cars,” said Malliotakis.