Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space

"A community’s physical form, rather than its land uses, is its most intrinsic and enduring characteristic." [Katz, EPA] This blog focuses on place and placemaking and all that makes it work--historic preservation, urban design, transportation, asset-based community development, arts & cultural development, commercial district revitalization, tourism & destination development, and quality of life advocacy--along with doses of civic engagement and good governance watchdogging.

Tuesday, January 07, 2025

The most momentous transportation story of 2025 has already occurred: imposition of NYC's congestion zone

We know about congestion zones from cities like London and Stockholm, where motor vehicle operators pay a toll charge for entering the city core.  London has an additional ultra low emissions zone too.

A few years ago, NYC had considered creating one, but the state stopped them.  They've been studying the issue for some time, a date was set ("A $15 toll to drive into part of New York has been approved, a first for a U.S. city," AP) and the Governor of New York stopped this iteration as well ("L.A. hoped to learn from NYC’s congestion pricing rollout. Now what?," Los Angeles Times) for fear it could swing votes to Republicans, only to go on to agree after the election.  From Bloomberg article "NYC Congestion Pricing Takes Effect After Years of Delays":

Then, a tolling structure had to be created. Rates needed to be high enough to discourage driving and shift motorists to public transit, but not so burdensome that they crippled local businesses and the broader economy. About three weeks before the plan was supposed to start last June, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said an initial $15 charge was too large and paused its launch.

Congestion pricing scanners above First Avenue at East 60th Street in Midtown Manhattan on Sunday morning. Drivers will be tolled via E-ZPass or license plate readers. Credit: Karsten Moran for The New York Times

The fees, which will support the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (NYC Subway and buses, LIRR and Metro-North trains), went into effect yesterday, January 6th ("What New York’s congestion charge could teach the rest of America," Economist).

The scheme is modelled partly on that of London, where since 2003 a daily charge (currently £15, or $19) has reduced the number of cars, improved air quality and funded transit upgrades. New York’s version costs $9 for most drivers (with different rates for lorries and low-income New Yorkers). The zone includes Manhattan’s central business district, south of 61st Street, and most of the roads, tunnels and bridges that connect surrounding areas (see map). The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which oversees the city’s transport system and some suburban lines, hopes that the scheme will reduce traffic in these areas by 10-20% (traffic in central London fell by 18% in the first year). Revenues from the congestion charge are earmarked for much-needed improvements to New York’s ageing subway and other public-transport systems.

Also see:

-- "New York first US city to have congestion charge," BBC
-- "New York City Welcomes Congestion Pricing With Fanfare and Complaints," New York Times
-- "Here’s why no one escapes NYC’s controversial congestion toll — not even locals without cars," New York Post
-- "First in nation zone toll designed to raise $1 billion per year in NYC," Clark County Today
-- "NYC congestion pricing program has launched, tolling drivers entering 60th Street and below in Manhattan," Newsday
-- "The Funniest and Most Notable Reactions to Congestion Pricing," New York Magazine

I'm surprised there is an overnight toll, since traffic then is significantly reduced.

Congestion pricing sign along the westbound Long Island Expressway approaching Van Dam Street in Queens on Sunday. Credit: Newsday/James Carbone

Effect on central business district, will businesses relocate to areas outside of the congestion zone? While I agree theoretically in this form of transportation demand management, and not only does it reduce congestion but has positive effects on the environment, I do worry that post-covid, where the office market has been so diminished, that a congestion toll could accentuate negative effects on the city's central business district.

When your CBD doesn't have much competition a congestion zone toll is less of a worry vis a vis competition for commercial activity.


New York Post graphic.

State of New Jersey against.  NJ fought the toll because they argued it would disproportionately affect their citizens ("Greenlight for congestion pricing as judge rules against New Jersey," Newsday).  Surburbanites don't like it either.  From the Toronto Star article:

Siemiatycki also acknowledged that road pricing is an unpopular idea in suburban areas while taking off road tolls, expanding highway networks and cutting bike lanes have “an effective political wedge.” “We do have to acknowledge that the approach that they’re following is popular. The problem is it hasn’t been effective. I mean congestion has gotten worse during their six years in office,” Siemiatycki said. “It might be good policy, but it’s not good politics,” he said.

Could a NYC congestion toll also support transit network improvements between NJ and NYC, not just NYC?  OTOH, I wish that the congestion toll would also be used to improve NJ-related transit such as: (1) extension of at least one NYC subway line into NJ; (2) building a subway on Bergenline Avenue; (3) creation of fixed rail transit from NJ to Staten Island; (4) working to merge NJ Transit trains with Metro North and LIRR trains to have through running trains, improving the system overall; (5) investments in PATH; etc.

A congestion zone for DC?  People suggest a congestion zone for DC and it has been mentioned in documents by the City's' DOT.  But especially since covid, and transit usage is less than half of what it was before, that there are too many other competitive districts: Alexandria, Arlington, Bethesda, Tysons, the I-70 corridor; etc., for the city to go it alone.  Especially since the Republican federal government will aim to further reduce the number of agencies and workers in DC.

Maybe if the fee also supported other transportational improvements, not just serving DC, it could work.  E.g., merging VRE and MARC, having MARC service in Montgomery County be bi-directional, etc.

World class cities as examples for others: will NYC's congestion charge lead to such an adoption elsewhere.  I suppose there are many such articles, but I found three, about the possibility of their cities imposing congestion fees, emboldened by the action in NYC.

-- "Jammed and polluted Mumbai needs congestion fee, a la NYC: Experts," Times of India
-- "New York City has imposed a congestion charge on drivers entering Manhattan. Should Toronto follow suit?," Toronto Star

I have a line that "world class cities don't just take, they give," in that when they adopt best practice it empowers other places to do something similar.  This goes with London with the congestion charge, even though it was preceded by Stockholm in Europe and Singapore.  Similarly, Paris wasn't the first city to adopt bicycle sharing, but it was the first study to introduce it on a huge scale, which empowered other cities to adopt bicycle sharing as well.

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8 Comments:

At 1:59 PM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

A Sluggish Start for Congestion Pricing
It would be more effective if Ubers, taxis and trucks had to pay more.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/07/opinion/congestion-pricing-slow-start.html

On its third day, New York City’s congestion pricing system isn’t going as well as hoped, but it’s still a good idea and it can be improved.

Congestion pricing is supposed to do two things: raise money and reduce congestion. I don’t know how much money it’s raising, but the numbers suggest that it has yet to meaningfully reduce congestion inside the relief zone.

Vehicles are moving faster over the bridges and through the tunnels, but they’re going as slowly as ever on city streets, according to real-time traffic data. On Tuesday at 9 a.m., for example, it took only about 11 minutes to get through the Holland Tunnel between New Jersey and Lower Manhattan. That’s around 50 percent faster than it took at that hour on Tuesdays before the congestion pricing.

But moving around inside the zone remains sluggish. To get from Hell’s Kitchen on the West Side of Manhattan to Midtown East took the same amount of time on Tuesday at 9 a.m. as on past Mondays at that hour.

... It’s early yet, but the difficulty that the congestion pricing system is having in speeding up traffic inside the zone shouldn’t surprise anyone: Its main impact is on personal vehicles, which accounted for only 35 percent of the vehicles inside the zone before congestion pricing began, according to the Traffic Mobility Review Board.

For-hire vehicles (such as Ubers) and taxis accounted for 52 percent of vehicles in the zone, and they are more lightly charged per unit of congestion that they cause. The same is true of trucks and commercial vans, which pay once and then can drive around all day inside the zone.

The solution is to raise congestion fees for those types of vehicles, as Michael Ostrovsky of Stanford and Frank Yang of the University of Chicago wrote in a research paper last year. The city is already giving incentives to delivery trucks to make more of their deliveries at night.

https://web.stanford.edu/~ost/papers/nyc.pdf

Effective and Equitable Congestion Pricing: New York City and Beyond (NBER)

https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/pr2024/reduce-truck-deliveries.shtml

 
At 10:22 PM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

Do Car-Free Zones Hurt Disabled People? We Asked Experts.
City planners and advocates are seeing “accessibility used as a political football.”

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2024/12/car-free-disability-congestion-walkable-cities/

 
At 11:33 PM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

https://www.fox5ny.com/news/nyc-congestion-pricing-tracker-nj-reverse-new-jersey

New Jersey mayor proposes 'reverse congestion pricing' toll

Fulop believes reverse congestion pricing is the answer to New York City's new toll.

"There's plenty of crossings between Staten Island, New York, Bergen County, Hudson County into New Jersey," Fulop said. "There's plenty of opportunities to have the same sort of impact fee that New York is putting on New Jersey."

Big picture view:
The idea is the money will go to fund New Jersey’s mass transit system, plagued by delays and cancelations.

"My view is that New Jersey Transit is a terrible product, and it should be invested in more, and until you get a reliable transportation system in New Jersey, you can't responsibly think that people are going to take the trains," Fulop said. "But this was an opportunity to get hundreds of millions of dollars into New Jersey Transit, and I think the governor just took a very easy political approach."

There was an option for New Jersey to get hundreds of millions from New York's new toll, but that opportunity was lost in the midst of litigation.

 
At 5:43 PM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

The Congestion-Pricing Haters Need to Get a Grip

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/the-congestion-pricing-hochul-cuomo-opponents.html

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/jennifer-keesmaat-as-chief-planner-i-tried-to-get-toronto-to-make-drivers-pay-to/article_fb662b04-cd3c-11ef-a780-f740724f4006.html

Jennifer Keesmaat: As chief planner, I tried to get Toronto to make drivers pay to come downtown. It’s still the right thing to do

NYC congestion pricing turns upper Manhattan nabes into parking ‘war zone’ — as drivers take up spots to avoid toll

https://www.aol.com/nyc-congestion-pricing-turns-upper-125253441.html (NY Post)

 
At 10:43 PM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

Congestion Pricing Has Eased NYC Traffic. Not Everyone Is Happy.

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/nyc-congestion-pricing-traffic-update-e31e638a

https://archive.ph/z0RJr

What remains, however, is a region divided on the issue of adding to the cost of driving in a notoriously expensive city.
The number of vehicles entering New York City’s congestion pricing zone, located at 60th Street to the southern tip of Manhattan, fell 8% last week compared with the average January workday from 2022 through 2024, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Most vehicles must pay $9 a day to enter the congestion zone at peak hours.
Congestion pricing has reduced travel times on many Manhattan streets, but its impact has been sharpest for the bridges and tunnels entering the city. Trips across the Holland Tunnel, connecting Manhattan to New Jersey, took about 4½ minutes, a 65% drop in travel time during the morning rush compared with January 2024, according to the MTA. Trips across the Lincoln Tunnel took about four minutes, a 39% reduction. Travel time on the Brooklyn Bridge also clocked in at about four minutes, a 28% decline.

... Gregg Reuben, chief executive of parking-management firm Centerpark, which operates 35 garages in Manhattan, said the number of customers has dropped 20% since congestion pricing went into effect. Centerpark operates parking garages inside and outside of the congestion zone and has seen a drop-off in business at all locations, he said.

... Buenaventura, the taxi driver, said congestion pricing has been tough for cabbies too. Less traffic means shorter rides on the meter. Also, there have been fewer people hailing cabs recently, he said.
Before the start of congestion pricing, Buenaventura said he could get up to 15 trips if he stayed in Manhattan for most of the day. Now he’s getting three or four trips in the span of six or seven hours, he said.
It previously took one hour to wait in the taxi line at New York City’s airports to pick up a passenger. Now he waits about three or four hours as demand has fallen, Buenaventura said.

 
At 10:51 PM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

New Jersey’s Governor Asks Trump to Move Swiftly on Congestion Pricing

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/20/nyregion/new-jersey-murphy-congestion-pricing-trump.html

New Jersey’s Democratic governor, Philip D. Murphy, asked President Trump on Monday to re-examine New York’s congestion pricing program, which is charging drivers $9 to enter Manhattan’s central business district and which his state had unsuccessfully sued to block.

Mr. Trump has already declared his distaste for congestion pricing. He called the plan, which New York’s Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, rushed to implement right after he won the election, “the most regressive tax known to womankind,” and warned that it would “put New York City at a disadvantage over competing cities and states, and businesses will flee.”

 
At 12:03 AM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

Crain's New York Business: Business foot traffic is up within the congestion pricing zone

https://www.crainsnewyork.com/transportation/congestion-pricing-zone-business-foot-traffic

Spectrum News NY1: First responders in congestion pricing zone say toll is a financial burden

https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/transit/2025/02/04/first-responders-midtown-lower-manhattan-congestion-pricing-financial-toll

Fast Company: A million cars have disappeared: What NYC is like after one month of congestion pricing

https://www.fastcompany.com/91272434/a-million-cars-have-disappeared-what-nyc-is-like-after-one-month-of-congestion-pricing

Subway crime plummets as ridership jumps significantly in 2025 in congestion pricing era

https://www.amny.com/nyc-transit/nyc-subway-crime-plummets-ridership-jumps-2025/

According to data on the New York State website, subway ridership has increased almost every day since congestion pricing began on Jan. 5 — often in the hundreds of thousands of additional commuters daily.

For example, on Jan. 8, the first Wednesday with congestion pricing in effect this year, over 530,000 more people were on the trains than the same day last year (3,834,806 vs. 3,303,727).

Traffic fatalities across the city are also down, the NYPD’s CompStat 2.0 dashboard shows. Year to date, there were 10 deadly collisions on the roads compared to 18 in 2024—an over 44% drop year over year.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/nyregion/nyc-trump-congestion-pricing.html

Trump Administration Considers Halting Congestion Pricing
The New York City tolling program began on Jan. 5 after defying obstacles for decades. A move to stop it would likely touch off a legal battle between the state and federal government.

Legal experts said that it was unlikely the federal government could directly scrap congestion pricing and whatever maneuver it employed to derail the plan would undoubtedly be challenged in court.

“It is questionable whether the administration can unilaterally halt congestion pricing,” said Michael Gerrard, a Columbia Law School professor who supports the program. “The legal authority for that is not at all apparent.”

Atlanta Journal Constitution: Gridlock Guy: Could congestion pricing work in Atlanta?

https://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta-news/gridlock-guy-could-congestion-pricing-work-in-atlanta/OPT6P4OVPJBK5MHA5MOQBIIGSE/

If Georgia, the City of Atlanta, or a suburban county or city wanted to implement congestion pricing, would it be effective?

First, that would depend on a reliable alternate way to travel. MARTA is only built out in a small footprint. Sure, money from a congestion toll could help to build out MARTA, but we have seen how agonizingly slow that extra taxes money actually turns into real progress.

What Metro Atlanta’s “congestion zone” would be is also very debatable. The heart of Downtown Atlanta, particularly the surface streets, is not congested enough to warrant such a toll. I-75/85, the Downtown Connector, is a terrible stretch, but so are a host of other Atlanta freeways and roads.

If toll supporters wanted to find a uniform “perimeter” for tolling, it would probably die at the steps of governments in each county. The building of a regional transit system has seen the same fate.

Opposition to congestion pricing in greater Atlanta would likely be great. People heavily opposed Peach Pass toll lanes, but those will expand. Tax hikes of any kind, however, go over like a lead balloon in Georgia.

 
At 12:07 AM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

NYC’s Congestion Pricing Pulls In $48.6 Million in First Month

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-24/nyc-s-congestion-pricing-pulls-in-48-6-million-in-first-month

=====
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/02/21/whats-nycs-congestion-pricing-and-why-does-trump-want-it-dead/79319522007/

Trump wants NYC’s congestion pricing dead. Will the toll system be roadkill?

 

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