Not long ago, Andy Darrell’s feet could cart him across Manhattan faster than many a bus. Now, whenever he boards a coach, the Environmental Defense Fund’s regional director for New York said, “I’m actually happy I took the bus.”
It’s not just the cross-town coach where his ability to get around has improved, either. Darrell, like many New Yorkers, is something of an equal-opportunity commuter; depending on the day, he may walk, bike, bus, train, or taxi. And in the last six months, he said, “each of those options has gotten better.” This is neither a coincidence nor an inexplicable occurrence. Darrell has enjoyed a greater ease of mobility because he, along with hundreds of thousands of other Manhattanites, lives within the city’s new Congestion Relief Zone.
Six months ago, on January 5, New York City put a price on traffic, charging most drivers $9 to enter Manhattan’s Central Business District, south of Central Park, during peak daytime hours. Despite much consternation and controversy surrounding its implementation—including New York Gov. Kathy Hochul briefly canceling the program before it was originally due to take effect last June—it’s already seen resounding success in its first half-year, with benefits far beyond speedier bus service.
By all accounts, the congestion pricing program represents a boon for residents, commuters, and businesses: fewer cars, more pedestrians, less honking, fewer deaths and injuries from car crashes, more business for restaurants, and more ticket sales for Broadway theaters. And while those who don’t frequently go below 60th Street in Manhattan may not have noticed any meaningful day-to-day changes just yet, the program should improve life across the five boroughs. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is using the revenues from congestion pricing to help modernize subway signals, build new train lines, make stations more accessible, buy new buses, and invest in other projects designed to improve city life. The climate and environmental benefits should be tangible, too. The MTA predicts that air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions from the Central Business District will decrease by about 10% by 2045; already, vehicle emissions within the congestion zone have dipped an estimated 2.5%.
Several cities across the country are watching the outcomes of congestion pricing in New York with eager eyes. Though the Big Apple was the first city in the nation to enact such a program, several other major metro areas—including Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, and Boston—have considered similar initiatives in recent years. But anyone yearning for a tax on traffic in their cities can learn more from Manhattan than just the immediate good it’s brought; they can glean lessons on advancing social policies, too. After all, while many benefits materialized within six months, the program took over 18 years of organizing and advocacy to implement.
“The urgency is on for a lot of states and municipalities. People are looking for ways to fill a lot of gaps in transportation funding.”
Kevin Shen
transportation policy analyst, Union of Concerned Scientists
Darrell knows that struggle better than most. He was an appointee to New York City’s first-ever Sustainability Advisory Board in 2006 under then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Three years before the board was established, London started charging drivers entering the city center. “We looked at the experiences there and realized, Hey, this would be a good idea for New York,” he said. So when the mayor and his advisory board released their first sustainability plan on Earth Day 2007, congestion pricing was a key component. That August, the federal Department of Transportation under former President George W. Bush even offered $354 million to help make the program a reality.
But, as Darrell explained, the city and the MTA couldn’t unilaterally toll traffic and direct the funding toward mass transit—that requires changes to state law. Despite the best efforts of Bloomberg and a robust coalition of business, transit, labor, and environmental groups, the bill failed to pass the legislature. In fact, in a complete role reversal, the state’s then-Republican-controlled Senate was willing to approve the measure, said Riders Alliance policy and communications director Danny Pearlstein, “but it was the Democratic assembly who blocked it.”
While the first push for congestion pricing stopped there, “the coalition remained loosely in place over the years,” Darrell said, to keep the issue simmering in the minds of lawmakers. But it wasn’t until the 2010s came to a close that the opportunity finally emerged for congestion pricing to have its day.
Thanks to what Pearlstein called “the mismanagement of the MTA by the former Gov. Andrew Cuomo,” the MTA faced a state of emergency in 2017. “From 2012 to 2018, subway delays quadrupled,” Pearlstein said. Meanwhile, the transit authority’s debt swelled to historic levels. Desperate for a new mechanism to finance transit, Cuomo and former Mayor Bill de Blasio turned to congestion pricing, which the legislature approved in 2019. After that, it was just a matter of determining the details.
Similar crises-as-opportunities may soon present themselves for other cities considering congestion pricing. “The urgency is on for a lot of states and municipalities,” said Kevin Shen, a transportation policy analyst with the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists. “People are looking for ways to fill a lot of gaps in transportation funding.”
But for other cities to be successful, they’ll need to understand and emulate key aspects of New York’s campaign. That includes drumming up multi-sector support—what Darrell called “the strange bedfellows coalition.”
Community engagement is also important for addressing concerns. For instance, a common argument levied by those opposed to the traffic charge was that it would hurt working people who drive into Manhattan. But the MTA’s data show that 85% of people commuting into the congestion pricing zone use public transit, whereas only 11% drive – and those drivers tend to be wealthy, advocates argue. As a result, Dr. Steven Cohen, a policy and sustainability expert at Columbia University, said congestion pricing is “one of the purest forms of redistributive public policy,” where fees on the rich fund quality-of-life improvements for the working class.
“An important thing is to remain focused on and to shine a spotlight on the way that people’s lives will get better with these policies. We’re doing this because we want a city with less traffic, better transit, and cleaner air.”
Andy Darrell
New York regional director, Environmental Defense Fund
Of course, the benefits for working people may not be as simple to sell in other cities where transit ridership is not as high as in New York City. But that doesn’t mean those programs can’t be designed for equity, said Zack Deutsch-Gross, policy director for the California-based transit advocacy nonprofit, Transform. Transit agencies and congestion pricing advocates can still engage with as many community members as possible and center their needs, Deutsch-Gross said. Those conversations should guide program specifics to ensure it doesn’t harm the people it should help. New York, for instance, has exemptions for disabled drivers and 50% discounts for low-income drivers.
It’s also crucial that everyone, whether they pay the toll or not, has confidence that the funds raised will be spent on improving public transit and not be skimmed to backfill general funds or other municipal programs. Darrell, Cohen, and Deutsch-Gross all pointed to the importance of the “lock box” that has been established to ensure that the MTA can spend the money on a slate of long overdue improvements, like replacing the archaic system of mechanical train signals with a digital system that would enable the subway to run more cars, more frequently.
“I love the precedent New York set there,” Deutsch-Gross said of the lock-box approach. “It’s true accountability.”
“An important thing is to remain focused on and to shine a spotlight on the way that people’s lives will get better with these policies,” Darrell added. “We’re doing this because we want a city with less traffic, better transit, and cleaner air.”
That’s exactly what the city has seen: traffic and bus service improved immediately. An MTA spokesperson said over email that air pollution figures won’t be available until later this month. But as Darrell put it, intuition suggests “fewer cars, fewer trips, better air quality.” That’s certainly what other cities like London and Stockholm have seen, and a study published in 2020 shortly after congestion pricing for New York first passed predicted that the city could see air pollution reduced by up to 17.5%.
This program has set an important precedent for the United States. While there were success stories of congestion pricing in Europe and Asia, some were skeptical that it could work in the U.S. Now, there’s no doubt that, at least in our densest cities, it can make such a clear and immediate impact that everyone—including drivers—is on board, and hardly anyone wants to see it repealed by the federal government. It doesn’t seem likely to go away any time soon; the Trump Administration’s efforts to block congestion pricing have routinely failed, to the great relief of many who have already come to accept it as normal.
“It’s only been in place since January,” Darrell said, “and yet it has become really part of the fabric of New York City.”
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