New York City is now officially the first and only locale inside the United States to utilize “congestion pricing.” Despite years of pushback from local residents, and recent attempts from New Jersey officials to stop the plan, NYC will now require anyone driving into its busiest quadrants to pay a fine. The cameras are now active and the fines are legally in effect to help combat a problem that were arguably the city’s own making.
The rates are $9.00 for passenger vehicles and up to $14.40 for trucks and buses during peak hours. These prices come down overnight, with passenger vehicles seeing rates as low as $2.25. Taxi cabs (including Uber and Lyft vehicles) are afforded major discounts since they’ll be crossing in and out of the affected zone throughout the day. However, the above presumes you’re being charged automatically via an E-ZPass electronic tolling system.
All tolls are expected to rise in 2028 and should effectively double by 2031.
Those without a pass driving below 60th Street will have their license plate photographed by the city’s new enforcement camera systems and charged significantly higher rates by mail. Keep in mind that this is in addition to bridge and tunnel tolls — which can range between $7.00 and $12.00 for passenger vehicles. Rates are again higher for those lacking an E-ZPass and come up significantly for commercial vehicles with more than two axles.
We’ve covered the topic in the past, mainly in regard to how the project had progressed after Michael Bloomberg suggested taxing vehicles for entering the busiest parts of NYC when he was still mayor in 2007. But things didn’t really take off until the highly influential and perpetually underfunded and increasingly in-debt Manhattan Transit Authority (MTA) got involved, suggesting that the scheme could be a good way to help bolster funding for mass transit.
The reality of the situation was that commuters didn’t want another fine. While the vast majority of people working inside of Manhattan take some form of public transportation, plenty still drive and are already being subjected to daily vines via bridge/tunnel tolls. The new congestion charging adds another layer of fees and opens that up to people living inside the city, as it pertains to anyone crossing the imaginary line that distinguishes the “Congestion Relief Zone” from the rest of Manhattan.
But the MTA endorsed the idea and has a lot of sway. Its chair and CEO, Janno Lieber, praised the program as part of a news conference held on Sunday. Meanwhile, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy (D) has vowed to continue opposing the scheme on the grounds that it will cripple regional commerce and has been getting support from Donald Trump. There are also several pending lawsuits against the city for implementing the program.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D), who openly supported the plan, actually stalled it for a period over economic concerns in June of this year. NYC originally wanted to charge drivers of passenger vehicles $15.00 with rates being far higher for delivery trucks. Locals came out to protest the initiative and the city brought the rates down somewhat, with the plan for the city to gradually raise rates over the next several years.
For the MTA and city leadership, the concerns revolve around allocating more funding for public transportation and solving the congestion issue that has only gotten worse in recent years.
However, opponents have pointed out that plenty of the changes the city has made over the last decade have directly contributed to the problem. Many Manhattan streets that were four or five lanes a decade ago are now only two lanes wide so that space could be made for wider sidewalks and new bike paths. As NYC has been pursuing Vision Zero strategies that have already been embraced in several European cities (e.g. Paris and London), part of the agenda’s overarching strategy is to intentionally eliminate space for vehicles and create new fines for drivers.
New York even had some of its own. Transportation Alternatives’ NYC 25×25 was endorsed by Mayor Eric Adams and seeks to take another 25 percent of street space away from cars so that it could be “reclaimed” for reasons of equity and public safety. The scheme is loaded with euphemistic language and fairly vague beyond its plans to slim down roads or reduce parking so there can be more plazas and green space for pedestrians.
As a former NYC resident, your author witnessed this first hand. While it was never exactly cheap or easy to own or even just drive a vehicle inside the city, changes incurred over the last fifteen years made it significantly harder. Traffic became noticeably worse, with more delays during peak hours. I would likewise argue that none of it seemed to improve public transit, which just kept getting less safe, less reliable, and more expensive.
Pedestrians also haven’t gotten any safer. Despite the above actions, annual injuries and deaths have increased since the above implementations. Bike lanes have been more successful, as they help isolate riders from traffic. However, you still see a plethora of cyclists cutting through cars and jumping red lights or riding on the sidewalk whenever you leave the house.
While the MTA is assuming the new congestion charging would result in hundreds of millions of dollars annually that could be used for essential infrastructure repairs. It’s been putting them off for decades and had previously said that about the city raising bridge and tunnel tolls. The new camera systems are supposed to amass at least $500 million annually and incur a trove of valuable traffic-monitoring data. However, the brunt of that will need to go toward paying off their installation until at least 2026.
With other U.S. cities now considering Vision Zero policies of their own, or outright preparing to copy New York’s European-style congestion charging, we would caution them to be mindful of the potential consequences.
We’ve seen European residents attacking similar traffic enforcement cameras in protest to a point where it’s actually ended up costing the government more to keep them operational than they could amass via fines. It likewise seems like a big risk to intentionally limit traffic to places that are highly dependent upon local commerce. Claims have been made to the contrary, however, with advocates of Vision Zero and similar policies claiming that reduced traffic makes these areas more livable and thereby encourages people to want to go out and hit the stores.
Regardless, the Manhattan Transit Authority claims that it will publicly release data showing the effects of congestion pricing on traffic and how much money was amassed as its earliest convenience. We’d wager that everything below 60th Street will see a modest decline in traffic as fewer locals bother going there.
Frankly, the real winners seem to be the MTA and companies like Uber, who lobbied for this heavily. By making driving increasingly unappetizing for Americans in and around New York, they’re effectively driving scads of customers into their hands. Meanwhile, NYC residents living below 60th Street seem to have it the worst — as they’re now effectively forced to pay an additional fine whenever they want to drive outside of their own neighborhood.
[Images: rblfmr/Shutterstock]
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