Congestion Pricing in Manhattan is a Predictable Success (economist.com) 58
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.
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.
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Re:How is a 10% reduction in traffic a success? (Score:4, 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.
Not the most important metric (Score:3)
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.
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.
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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.
And Car horns ? (Score:2)
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FIFY: âoeWe Got Rid of the Poorâ (Score:1)
That is literally the only metric this program changed.
Re:FIFY: âoeWe Got Rid of the Poorâ (Score:4, Informative)
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?
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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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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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 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.
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?
troggs gonna trogg (Score:1)
Fuck off, muggles. Streets are for rich people
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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
Automated driving (Score:3)
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
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.
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?