In the first month of congestion pricing, the MTA reported over 1 million fewer vehicle entries into the toll zone than would be expected without the program, driving the significant traffic reduction seen above. It’s also worth noting that the above chart shows reduction in travel times rather than congestion—in many cases, congestion has completely disappeared, and the new travel times represent a congestion-free trip. This reduction reverses a years-long trend of rising traffic into Manhattan - congestion pricing took a worsening gridlock problem and solved a significant portion of it overnight. Additionally, while there were fears that congestion pricing would just re-route traffic to other boroughs, the data from the first months of congestion pricing suggests that traffic has not increased elsewhere in the city.
Transit ridership has seen a notable spike since the implementation of congestion pricing as travelers into Manhattan are switching from driving to transit.
The MTA as a whole is averaging 448K more public transit riders per day this year. To put this into perspective, the second-highest ridership subway in the US is the DC Metro, which averaged 304K riders per day in January this year. The MTA ridership growth since congestion pricing went into effect is almost 50% larger than the total ridership of America’s next-largest subway system.
Unsurprisingly, bus ridership has seen the greatest relative growth, likely due to the fact that it most immediately benefits from congestion pricing thanks to faster travel times.
Im mostly pro congestion pricing but there are two things that make me sympathetic to some of the detractors.
One issue is that well, the New York metro area as a whole is better than the rest of the country when it comes to public transit and getting people into the city. It is still has big gaps and holes. For example if you live west of the Hudson the metro north is not as complete as east and then you have towns in nj also not on the rail line. These people don’t have the means to be able to take public transit in a way that doesn’t add a significant, significant amount of time to their already long commute. And on top of that, they’re already paying pretty hefty tolls to get to and into the city on top of the car maintenance and the gas. And a lot of these people live in the far fringes of the metro area, not just because they are priced out of the closer, better connected suburbs, as well as the city itself.
The other side of the argument is that the MTA is genuinely dysfunctional. Like it was only a few years ago that the governor decided to try and do a surprise visit to see the workers working overtime and found that nobody was there.The MTA is mismanaged in all facets. I don’t blame people for being skeptical that this money will be well utilized.
That said, a large majority of people who are anti- congestion are just car-brained and do live near a convenient rail or park and ride and Would probably improve their own quality of life if they just took public transit instead of sitting in traffic every day.