Congestion Pricing in Manhattan is a Predictable Success (economist.com) 104
Manhattan's congestion pricing program has reduced traffic by 10% and cut car-noise complaints by 70% in its first six months of operation, according to city data. The $9 daily toll for vehicles entering Manhattan below 60th Street began January 5, generating approximately $50 million monthly for subway and public transit improvements.
Buses now travel fast enough that drivers must stop and wait to maintain schedules, while subway ridership has increased sharply since the program launched. Broadway theater attendance has risen rather than declined as some critics predicted. Polling shows more New Yorkers now support the toll than oppose it, a reversal from widespread opposition before implementation.
The policy took nearly 50 years to enact despite originating from Columbia University economist William Vickrey's work in the 1960s. Congress blocked a similar proposal in the 1970s, and the current program faced a six-year implementation delay after Governor Andrew Cuomo signed it into law in 2019. Governor Kathy Hochul postponed the launch in 2024 before allowing it to proceed after Donald Trump's presidential election victory.
Buses now travel fast enough that drivers must stop and wait to maintain schedules, while subway ridership has increased sharply since the program launched. Broadway theater attendance has risen rather than declined as some critics predicted. Polling shows more New Yorkers now support the toll than oppose it, a reversal from widespread opposition before implementation.
The policy took nearly 50 years to enact despite originating from Columbia University economist William Vickrey's work in the 1960s. Congress blocked a similar proposal in the 1970s, and the current program faced a six-year implementation delay after Governor Andrew Cuomo signed it into law in 2019. Governor Kathy Hochul postponed the launch in 2024 before allowing it to proceed after Donald Trump's presidential election victory.
And Car horns ? (Score:2)
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Because you need some way to tell the idiot in headphones looking at his phone that he's about to die?
FIFY: âoeWe Got Rid of the Poorâ (Score:2)
That is literally the only metric this program changed.
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If they can afford NYC parking costs on any kind of regular basis they aren't poor.
The poor folks were already taking the train into the city.
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So I can see somebody driving in not as some sort of status symbol but because they needed to being put off by this massively.
Remember an economist calling modern American Life a fragile existence. No safety no protections everything can come cras
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The greater New York city area actually has a pretty decent rail system for getting between the city and the burbs and even before surge pricing taking the train was almost always cheaper than driving in and paying for parking. This means poor people won't be meaningfully effected by the adoption of surge pricing, they were already taking the train.
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Manhattan and poor. Right.
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They need a lot of serfs.
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18% [robinhood.org]. Slightly lower than the ~23% for the city as a whole but roughly 1 in 6 people who live in Manhattan are below federal poverty level.
People who've never been to NYC forget that Manhattan doesn't stop at Central Park North...
=Smidge=
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Manhattan and poor. Right.
You don't have to live in Manhattan to drive through it
Re:FIFY: âoeWe Got Rid of the Poorâ (Score:5, Insightful)
You seem to have forgotten about all the trains and buses that bring people into lower Manhattan.
Millionaire stock brokers ride the subway, so don't even bother with your argument that mass transit is only for "the poors" because you're just going to look like an idiot.
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Would you argue that this program didn't take the poorest 10% of drivers off the road?
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Would you argue that this program didn't take the poorest 10% of drivers off the road?
No, the ability to avoid a congestion charge is related to significantly more than just affordability. E.g. a poor person whose office is a significant distance from a metro station or bus stop is more likely to drive in than a less poor person who can conveniently swap their car trip with public transport.
Roads belong to the rich (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd prefer a progressive tax on business property based on max population density in an area. Get rid of large cities, get rid of most traffic problems.
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Getting rid of large cities makes the poverty problem even worse. Now you not only have traffic problems everywhere, but you have 25% of the population who can't now get around to do any business at all.
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In this world, people are still moving to the city, not the other way around.
When Covid hit and companies allowed WFH, where did the people go? When they were forced back to the office, they were also forced back to the cities and the empty office buildings. Over many people's objections.
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City centers pop up because there is benefit in shared resources.
Compare a large city with proper mass transportation (Tokyo) to a large city with virtually no mass transportation (Los Angeles). Problem isn't the people, it's the planning. I'm sure traffic jams exist in Tokyo but every time I've visited the city (8 or so times) I've never seen gridlock.
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Yes, because spreading out and embracing lower density has done wonders for the traffic in Southern California...
What?
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Only the housing is low density, the business density is still high.
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I'd prefer a progressive tax on business property based on max population density in an area. Get rid of large cities, get rid of most traffic problems.
Of course you do.
You don't own any taxable business property, do you?
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Get rid of large cities, get rid of most traffic problems.
Not quite. While the concentration of business is one issue, the concentration of people and the lack of alternatives to vehicles is another. Countries without central business districts in their cities are still traffic shitshows because people still need to go to work regardless of where that work is, and especially in cities laid out in grids you can cause a traffic jam even when half the people are moving in the other direction.
You want to get rid of most traffic problems, get rid of the traffic itself.
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I live in the Netherlands and even though it has traffic problems, it pales in comparison to the amount of time you lose in public transport, including for our largest cities (which are small in a global sense). I can get to a job in Amsterdam in 20 minutes in rush hour, yet I can walk to the supermarket in a large village.
Of course this situation is a complete accident which grew out of a combination of initial agricultural dispersion and the way post WW2 rebuilding intentionally spread industry around the
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Eh... that's a matter of taste. I wouldn't want to live in central Amsterdam, but not because it's large... just because it's overrun with tourists.
On the other hand, my daughter lives in Toronto, a huge city in a conurbation whose population is comparable to the entire Randstad, and she loves it. And I live in Ottawa, a city whose population is roughly comparable to Amsterdam, a
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What percentile? Wealth lets you find a comfy niche in most places ... or in the case of NY, gives you the political power to ram the poor people off the roads which rightly are for you and yours.
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A metropolitan area of 10 million is not much more productive per capita than 1 million ... but it's a whole lot worse to live in. People don't want to live in the larger metropolitan area, they are forced to due to lack of an alternative. The economy does not optimise quality of living.
As for the environment, keep the total population lower and let the rest live a nicer life, not in Megacities.
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A metropolitan area of 10 million is not much more productive per capita than 1 million ... but it's a whole lot worse to live in. People don't want to live in the larger metropolitan area, they are forced to due to lack of an alternative. The economy does not optimise quality of living.
Of course people want to live in large cities; I for example live in a city of about 200,000 people but would absolutely love to live in New York or Boston or another large city. You are taking your own personal preference and erroneously assuming it applies to everyone else. As for economic productivity per a capita, you are wrong. The difference is large. One standard estimate says that doubling city size results in an increase in productivity of 3 to 8%. See https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article [sciencedirect.com]
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Maybe? (Score:2)
I would be very interested to see what class that 10% belongs to. I don't have firm data in front of me, but it sure feels like it would be people who have lower income. Is that a success? "We priced out people which reduced traffic congestion?"
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"We priced out people which reduced traffic congestion?"
That is no doubt the case. But in Manhattan people who even have the option of driving and parking there are likely not "lower income", just not filthy rich. I don't know what the NYC program is, but part of the point of most congestion pricing goals is to shift traffic to less congested times and places.
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The congestion charge will probably be impacting more people outside the area who drive into Manhattan for work etc.
I think that is right. Where ever they live, not many people who can afford to drive and park in Manhattan are low income. Obviously congestion pricing only works if some people are somewhat price conscious and change their behavior as a result. Low income people mostly have already been priced out of the market. Congestion pricing effects the folks who can still afford to pay for the conven
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The idea seems much less anti-poor if you simply skim over who is no longer driving, which the people who support congestion charges always do. They're masters of whitewashing and euphemism.
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In a manner of speaking, my upper middle class in laws in NYC were very often "priced out" before this change. They owned a nice car and had plenty of money in their wallet, but the hassle of time in traffic and expense of parking was unattractive compared to taking public transport into Manhattan, most of the time.
If the non-rich now have a better run public transport system, the non-rich as a group are probably much better off overall. Having to go in extra early to work because the buses run behind sch
BREAKING NEWS (Score:1)
City announces that thing city did was a resounding success!
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Wait, we're not cheering for states rights on this issue?
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Re:BREAKING NEWS (Score:4, Informative)
people's access to public roads decreased!
No, people's access increased. The cost of accessing a street with a large motor vehicle increased. But if you take the bus you now get there on time.
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That'll keep those unoccupied autonomous cars from causing traffic now that they have to pay with their...bitcoins? AAA points?
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My point was that with little to no unoccupied autonomous cars actually driving around, it's disingenuous to say that it's possible to reduce cars' access to public roads without reducing people's access to public roads. Maybe the number of people getting access overall is higher, but they're not all the same people. Using public transport is such an apples-and-oranges difference from driving that a lot of people were probably forced to leave their job and/or move by this change. Congestion charges work by
troggs gonna trogg (Score:1)
Fuck off, muggles. Streets are for rich people
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Streets are for people not cars.
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don't correct me just cuz i'm wrong
also, hey slashdot, yes i know all caps is yelling THATS WHY I WAS DOING IT
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Why? It sounds wonderful. But in this case you really can have it both ways. You can live in a nice socialist city while still getting the experience of any other. All you need to do is set your alarm clock to be a continuous two hour barrage of people honking their horns, install a 10km/h speed limiter in your car, and run a generator at home with the exhaust pipe into the window so you get that sweet smell of gridlocked traffic.
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Congestion pricing is about as capitalist as you can get.
Postponed until Trump elected? (Score:2)
Governor Kathy Hochul postponed the launch in 2024 before allowing it to proceed after Donald Trump's presidential election victory.
That's an odd statement, or at least worded oddly. Was the decision to no longer postpone the plan related to Trump being elected? Or was that merely coincidental? The way it was worded makes me believe the governor changed her mind after Trump was elected so that if anything went wrong she'd find a way to blame Trump for it.
This sounds great but I wonder about the fees for people that commute regularly into Manhattan. Are they able to drive to some commuter parking lot outside Manhattan then take publi
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Automated driving (Score:3)
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What is your measure of success? It sounds like your goal is to maximise the amount of cars on the road moving smoothly. That is a disaster for a city as pedestrians and multimodal transport have to deal with moving traffic.
A real measure of success is minimising cars, regardless of how they drive and supplanting it with a form of transport that can move more people for a given unit area: bus, train, tram, metro, cycling or walking.
Bonus points if you can then reclaim the road from dirty cars and turn them
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Automated driving will make cities absolutely suck [youtube.com]. A car adds to traffic, whether it's driven by a human or not. And once autonomous cars are available, if you have an appointment but can't find parking, you'll just get your car to drive itself around until your appointment is over. What do you suppose that will do to traffic?
Car dependent businesses (Score:2)
Back in the last century, New York politicians were decrying the fact that the city was becoming a "food desert". You can't support much more than corner bodegas, with their beer, cigarettes and chips based on walk-in traffic. The city decided to relent on some development regulations and allow big box grocery stores with parking garages, fresh produce and better product selections.
We'll see how this turns out. It will, of course take years. In the interim, politicians will declare success.
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That's just not true at all, and you have some car induced brainrot if you believe it. Grocery stores existed long before nearly everyone had a car. People that don't have a car get groceries. Adding car-focused grocery stores is the wrong way around; making grocery stores with fresh produce and better product selections more walking and biking accessible helps everyone that can't drive (people
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making grocery stores with fresh produce and better product selections more walking and biking accessible helps everyone that can't drive (people that can't afford it, people with disabilities, etc.)
Seattle is trying that. And the inner city grocery stores are closing. And the urbanists are wringing their hands.
As someone else pointed out: The people in NYC living below the congestion pricing boundary are wealthy. They can afford delivery. So this just pushes the traffic into the poor neighborhoods. Thanks to NYCs geography, this is made simple. Cordoning off one end of the island is relatively easy.
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You know, it is possible to shop at a big grocery store without driving to it.
OK, drink a glass of water and sit down because I know that came as a huge shock.
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This isn't the answer (Score:1)
Congestion pricing is just a money grab to finance MTA at the end of the day, it was never about anything else. That said, they did stumble into a solution, limiting the amount of cars coming into the city. I don't think entry should be based on how much you can afford though, there should be some sort of lotto or random selection of cars that can enter free.
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Congestion pricing is just a money grab to finance MTA at the end of the day, it was never about anything else. That said, they did stumble into a solution, limiting the amount of cars coming into the city.
It may have been a cash grab. Regardless, if you make something more expensive, you'll get less of it. If your goal is to reduce congestion in NYC, adding a fee is a quite reasonable way to accomplish it. As you say, there are lots of other ways to make driving more expensive (if you consider a lottery a cost, which it is in economic terms). Pricing could also be dynamic: the more crowded the streets, the higher the entry price.
(I didn't read TFA. Did they address the aggregate affect on commute times? I'd
Temporaty at Best (Score:1)
Anyone who looks at the demographics of people "living in the suburbs and working in the city" will quickly notice that any improvement in travel will, over the next 10 to 20 years, result in more people moving farther from the city, which increases traffic to the same commute time as before. In other words, this is why we can't have nice things.
Such a surprise (Score:2)
It works in other places. Whyever would it not have worked in Manhattan?
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Car brained idiots always assume that their locale is completely unique and all the usual things that have proven time and time and time again don't apply for some reason.
Hmm, ok (Score:2)
"People use less of more expensive stuff." Got it ...
I think I'll just keep working from home in flyover country.
This is always the way (Score:1)
People who've grown up in car-dependent places and have been brainwashed by car advocates always bitterly oppose any sort of measure to reduce car dependence... until they see what it's actually like and how much better it makes things. Then support generally skyrockets.
The question isn't... (Score:1)
Buses now travel fast enough that drivers must stop and wait to maintain schedules, while subway ridership has increased sharply since the program launched. Broadway theater attendance has risen rather than declined as some critics predicted. Polling shows more New Yorkers now support the toll than oppose it, a reversal from widespread opposition before implementation.
The question isn't does the fee initially increase revenue (of course it does, driving thru Manhattan used to be free, now it's $9), it's what is the effect on tax revenues (as they represent a fraction of the retail commerce that happens) over an extended period. The first month or two might seem great because so many "out of towers" that rarely visit the city may wind up paying a fee they never knew existed.
While some cities are struggling to get employers to bring workers back into their offices (I'm loo
Re:How is a 10% reduction in traffic a success? (Score:5, Informative)
That some shit numbers and I dont even live in NYC.
It's hard to understand for people who don't spend their lives researching traffic and road capacity, but the difference between perfectly smoothly moving traffic and complete gridlock is often only 15-20% depending on the road layout. A traffic management study where I live found that only an 13% reduction in cars would completely eliminate morning traffic jams on the highways and allow the highway to move at the rated speed.
10% is a roaring success, you can see that in the other number, 70% drop in noise complaints. That means there's a massive reduction in idiots honking their horn because they are frustrated at not moving.
Re:How is a 10% reduction in traffic a success? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How is a 10% reduction in traffic a success? (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed that irony is the basis for "induced demand" where by making smoother road travel creates more demand on road infrastructure and thus gridlocks the now bigger road. That's where you also find the non-linear nature of congestion pricing. On top of the scenario you mentioned, some people immune from the concept (the rich don't give a shit), and some people are unable to avoid it (some vehicles need to exist at any price, e.g. delivery vehicles).
But price isn't the only lever. That study I mentioned for the 13%, it was a follow on study conducted after a different study showed the post COVID workforce preferences Tuesday and Thursdays for their time off. Those are now by a long shot the two worst days of the week for traffic in the country, and the study that came up with the 13% figure was actually investigating if distributing days off / work from home would eliminate traffic jams. The answer was yes. Now the government is running all sorts of marketing campaigns and asking companies to provide incentives to work Mon, Wed, and Friday in the office and have people work from home or take Tuesday / Thursday off. Unfortunately it's not working since it means giving up the 3 or even 4 day weekend, and no one is motivated to go to work on a Wednesday.
Behaviour change is difficult. Taxing is easy but limited.
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Ironically improved traffic may make driving more desirable.
Not ironic. This is why we don't normally see big improvements in traffic from small improvements in roads.
You need massive upgrades to roads to get that reduction in congestion, which isn't practical in places like NY, with so much pent-up demand. Doubling road capacity might not even fix it. So demand must be reduced.
If the money goes to upgrading the neglected subway system, they might not need to increase pricing.
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Not ironic. This is why we don't normally see big improvements in traffic from small improvements in roads.
English lesson: Being logically explainable does not make something less ironic. The concept of irony applies only to surface level glances at a concept.
You need massive upgrades to roads to get that reduction in congestion
Ironically enough, no. massive road upgrades create induced demand and cause gridlock as well thanks to massively increased ridership.
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Irony is when the intended meaning is the opposite of the literal meaning. e.g. "Hey Garbz, your English knowledge is amazing."
But for all intensive purposes, I could care less.
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"You need massive upgrades to roads to get that TEMPORARY reduction in congestion."
FTFY
The only way to reduce congestion is to reduce demand. WFH is one way. Congestion pricing is another, and is only really viable here because NYC actually has a transit system.
Re: How is a 10% reduction in traffic a success? (Score:1)
The problem with "work from home" for the cities where workers used to go 5 days/week is the loss in tax revenue and restaurant/support revenue. Workers who don't work in the city don't pay city income taxes, don't buy breakfast, lunch and/or dinner in the city, and don't employ cleaners/maint workers in the city.
Work from home can decimate a city that relies on tax revenues collected from office workers to fund the government.
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I wonder at what rate they'll need to increase the pricing in order to maintain it. Ironically improved traffic may make driving more desirable.
They will have to increase the price eventually as demand for transport overall rises. The point of the pricing is to deter driving enough that the street network operates within its capacity limits; if driving becomes more desirable than status quo ante, they aren't charging enough and will have to raise prices to keep demand manageable.
Think of it this way: either way, traffic will reach some equilibrium. The question is, what is the limiting factor? If using the road is free, then the limiting factor
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As a real world comparison, I'm from England, and we've obviously had a similar system in London for a couple of decades.
I live in a town/city on the south coast (Brighton) about 60 miles sout of London. Smallish cit (by English standards) - about 300k people. There's no congestion charging, and traffic is absolute chaos. It's always girdlocked, crossing any road as a pedaestrian is a pain, the noise and disruption is frustrating, etc. I cycle a lot in Brighton, and it's often just quicker to get off an wal
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My own experience isn't congestion charging but destination charging. It costs a fortune to park in the city where I live, we're talking $200 / workweek which equates to 20% of the average yearly salary in this country. I drive a lot, but have never driven into our city for anything other than a necessary work trip. I picked up a colleague from the UK who was staying at a hotel in the city on the way to our plant and he asked how often I come into the city, I pointed out that it was the first time I drove t
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I agree with you. My experience here is much the same. My mum lives in a rural area (an island off the English sourth coast ), and the big town in the centre is about 10k people and 10 miles away. She never goes there, cos its such a pain and expense parking - she visits a handful of times a year.
I know here in my city a day's parking is about £30 GBP (so about $40 USD), so about comparible to what you're talking about (i assume you get some discount if you get a monthly pass)
I always assume that city
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Good response to a typically mindless FP. Small consolation that we know who the idiot is? If he didn't want to be recognized as a jackass, then perhaps he shouldn't bray?
However I think your response should have considered the design optimization. The traffic network is not a random artifact, but one that was carefully designed to achieve certain objectives within certain constraints. Fluid mechanic approach might emphasize the limits of linear flow before turbulence starts? Or even consider resonance effe
Not the most important metric (Score:4, Insightful)
But it isn't.
The important metrics are complaints, intra-city transit time and indicators of impacting routine life (like commercial indicators, Broadway, that sort of thing). As in, making the infrastructure work for the humans that live there without blowing up anything important.
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"making the infrastructure work for the humans that live there"
That means redesigning things for humans, not for cars.
Re: Not the most important metric (Score:1)
The metric that matters most is the. Collection of tax revenue - the minute tax revenues drop, high-minded changes will go out the window - if on the other hand tax revenues remain stable or increase, the changes are here to stay.
Re:How is a 10% reduction in traffic a success? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: How is a 10% reduction in traffic a success? (Score:2)
How would you know what a shot number was? If the goal was to restore flowing traffic, reduce horn honking from standstill traffic, increase city revenue for mass transit, seems like a decidedly non-shit number to me. You dont need to cut traffic in half to make the roads work, a modest decrease from full capacity will do it.
Detectable is good result for govt. (Score:2)
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10% in this sort of scenario is definitely a success. There are lots of cases where a reduction of 10% is a big deal though the number is not always intuitive. For example a 10% reduction in fuel use by a newer generation jet airplane is a big deal when they industry is spending many millions on fuel. Cutting CO2 emissions by 10% would also be a huge number.
I once had a telescammer call me and try to get me to buy some magic snake oil to dump in the tank of my semi truck to increase fuel efficiency by 10
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I spend about $1500/year on gas for my Jeep.
A 10% reduction isn't enough to bother putting any effort into.
Hell, a 100% cost reduction probably would not get my attention either, especially if it required a cost in terms of time or money.
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Multiply that by a million and then get back to me. Or take it over years. It really is a lot.
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Because the trend line before now always had it at an increase, and there is no possible capacity increase in lower Manhattan.
This isn't that hard to figure out.