Congestion pricing plan OK’d in New York

New York City officials gave the go-ahead Wednesday to test out a new approach for thinning traffic on Manhattan’s car-choked streets and paying to improve the city’s rundown subway system.

The board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the agency that runs New York’s transit system and several river crossings, gave the go-ahead Wednesday to proceed with its plan to implement “congestion pricing” in the area south of Central Park.

By making drivers pay to enter the heart of the city, the MTA says it could cut the number of vehicles entering into lower Manhattan by 100,000 every day. Roughly 900,000 cars and trucks currently enter the area daily. Advocates say the impact could be quick, based on the experience of other cities such as London and Stockholm, that have rolled out similar systems.

“It’s a Day One phenomenon,” said Jon Orcutt, the director of advocacy for Bike New York and a former executive for the New York City Department of Transportation. “When something has a price, it influences what people do.”

Kate Slevin, the executive vice president of the Regional Plan Association, said congestion pricing will address many of the region’s needs at once. “It’s not like there’s just one goal here,” she said. “The goals are to invest in public transit, make it better, reduce traffic and, if you're actually living in New York, make the streets calmer, safer, less noisy and less polluted.”

Even though truck drivers would pay significant fees, Slevin said, they would also end up with a better ride, and the businesses that depend on them would benefit from the increased reliability.

Of course, the plan remains controversial, especially for commuters in New Jersey and the outer boroughs who drive downtown. The number of those drivers appears to be relatively small—an analysis by Curbed found that only 4% of outer borough residents drive into Manhattan, compared to 57% who use public transit. But the dispute has led to six lawsuits to try to derail the congestion pricing scheme before it takes effect.

Most cities suffer from traffic jams, but several factors make Manhattan especially prone to congestion. One of those is that it is the center of the biggest metropolitan region in the country, where some 3 million people worked every day before the pandemic. About half of them commuted in. Another is that there are few efficient ways for freight to enter the island, and most goods have to be trucked in. Manhattan also doesn’t have alleys like other cities, meaning that more trucks use city streets for loading, unloading and garbage collection, which blocks other drivers trying to get through.

And traffic is getting worse. The MTA said the number of vehicles entering the congestion zone is 25% higher than it was before the pandemic. Average vehicle speeds have been dropping as a result, from 9.1 mph to 7.1 mph.

“Gridlock is bad for the economy, environment and quality of life for people who live, work and visit New York City—and it comes at a cost,” the agency explained. “Employees on the clock waste time sitting in traffic. Workers get to their shift late because the bus is delayed. Ambulances are stuck behind cars when every second matters.”

Meanwhile, the New York City subway system experienced chronic breakdowns in the years before the pandemic, with then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo even declaring a state of emergency in 2017 to cope with frequent system failures. Other structural issues continue—from obsolete signals to flooding stations to stations and platforms that are inaccessible to people with disabilities.

The MTA’s plan, which is more than a decade in the making, is expected to raise $15 billion to pay for new trains, new signals and other modernization projects. Some of the money will also support the two commuter rail systems that MTA operates.

The influx would be substantial. Congestion pricing revenue makes up more than half of what the MTA has for its capital program, and the agency has had to put projects on hold because of the legal uncertainty over whether it will receive those funds.

“100% of congestion pricing revenue is allocated to the MTA capital program to fund transit improvements throughout the region,” the Regional Plan Association noted recently. “These projects focus on improving station accessibility through the installation of elevators and ramps, upgrading the MTA bus fleet to zero-emission buses and electrifying bus depots, reducing service disruptions and delays, and protecting against outages and extreme weather.”

Drivers entering the zone will pay a fee that depends on the type of vehicle, the time of day and whether the vehicle has an E-ZPass toll transponder. Someone driving a passenger car or light truck that has a transponder, for example, would pay $15 during the day or $3.75 overnight to enter the zone. People without transponders would pay 50% more, and would be billed using license plate scanners.

Trucks and buses will pay higher fees. Motorcyclists would pay less. Taxis, for-hire vehicles and ride-hail vehicles would be charged either $1.25 or $2.50 for every trip into the zone. People driving in using tolled tunnels will get a discount on the entry fee for the congestion zone. Low-income drivers can qualify for discounts. School buses, some government vehicles and emergency vehicles would be exempt.

One lingering concern is how the MTA will enforce the tolls, particularly for people who intentionally obscure their license plates. That’s become a more common practice in recent years, says Orcutt, especially as the city has deployed more speed cameras to get drivers to slow down near schools.

The MTA estimates it lost nearly $21 million in tolls from obstructed plates in 2023, which is a 137% jump from 2020.

“There are pretty hardcore scofflaws doing this stuff in pretty large numbers, and [Mayor] Eric Adams hasn’t made traffic enforcement of any kind a priority,” Orcutt said. “That's the thing that worries me is that we’re just going to see this super proliferation of cheats, and nobody doing much about it.”