After a grueling, yearslong, process, New York area commuters finally know how much in new congestion charges they’ll pay for driving into lower Manhattan. Actually getting the published tolls approved is going to require more process still.
Earlier this week, the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA)—the state agency that runs rail and bus service in the New York City area—gave initial approval to a toll schedule that will charge the average driver $15 to enter lower Manhattan during peak times (5 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays and 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekends).
Trucks, buses, and vans will pay $24 per day for the same privilege, while larger vehicles like multiunit trucks and sightseeing buses will pay $36 per day. Included in the schedule are discounts for low-income drivers and credits for people using already-tolled tunnels.
Vehicles without an E-ZPass will pay higher rates, ranging from $22.50 for passenger cars to $54 for larger trucks.
The revenue from these congestion tolls will go toward covering the MTA’s budget deficits.
The board’s vote this week merely kicks off an additional round of public input and review scheduled to last four months, during which more changes could be made. This latest stage of public review is in addition to the 19 outreach sessions the MTA held during the yearslong federal environmental review process. The agency has already received 28,000 pages worth of public comments as well.
So, congestion tolls won’t be implemented until spring 2024 at the earliest.
New York’s long road to congestion pricing started back in 2019 when the New York Legislature approved a plan to toll drivers entering lower Manhattan as part of that year’s budget agreement.
The intent of the new tolls was to raise money for the city’s cash-strapped subway system and reduce rush-hour gridlock. London, Singapore, and Stockholm all have tolled congestion zones covering their city centers.
Economics and transportation policy wonks tend to love congestion pricing as an efficient means of rationing scarce road space. Done right, it can be a real benefit to commuters who benefit from more predictable travel times and free-flowing traffic.
From the get-go, however, New York primarily pitched its congestion pricing plan as a means of raising money for the city’s subway system. That helped alienate drivers who’d have to pay it.
“They didn’t lead with, ‘We’re going to stabilize traffic flow and therefore benefit you as motorists,'” Marc Scribner, a transportation policy researcher at the Reason Foundation (which publishes this website), told Reason earlier this year. “You can understand the knee-jerk reaction from a lot of motorists is that this is a cash grab.”
The political opposition from motorists has only complicated what was always going to be a fraught, prolonged implementation process.
Hellbound and Down 