America’s first congestion pricing plan brings a huge drop in NY traffic

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New Yorkers have been traveling faster along Manhattan’s bridges and tunnels since the city implemented its long-debated fare plan earlier this month, according to new data available. of traffic.

Morning speed from New Jersey through the Holland Tunnel, the highway under the Hudson River into Manhattan, nearly doubled to 28 mph compared to last year. The evening speed over the Manhattan to Brooklyn Bridge has increased from 13mph to 23mph.

If these trends continue, car drivers those willing to pay the $4.50-$14.40 toll to enter a congested downtown US city will save thousands of hours a year crawling through smoky tunnels or blocked bridges.

New York’s congestion pricing plan, which went into effect on January 5, is intended to ease traffic and help fund much-needed $15bn. improvement of mass transportation.

The fee applies to vehicles entering the “relief zone” below 60th Street in Manhattan, a section of the island that includes Midtown, Greenwich Village, SoHo and the area around Wall Street. Most passenger cars entering the area now pay $9, while trucks pay $14.40 and motorcycles, $4.50. Other vehicles, including emergency vehicles, are exempt.

The plan means New York joins London, Milan, Singapore and Stockholm in a small group of major cities with congestion pricing. Traffic London, which launched its program in 2003, down 14 percent in its place in the first year. Some cities experienced declines of more than 20 percent.

The increase of New York the speed is reflected in data provided to the Financial Times by traffic tracking firm Inrix, and compiled from anonymized vehicle GPS, mobile devices and road sensors. The data includes speeds on different routes around the city, at different times of the day, from before and after the charging scheme started.

“Luckily Manhattan has very few access points, and they’re limited to bridges and tunnels, so you can get a sense of what’s going on,” said Inrix analyst Bob Pishue.

Of the eight bridges and tunnels examined, seven had a maximum speed of at least one hour of rush hour. The three bridges into Manhattan that are not connected to the congestion zone did not experience the same increase in speed.

An FT analysis of hourly traffic data from New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority also showed fewer vehicles in the affected tunnels during rush hour. The bridges and tunnels outside the area were heavily trafficked.

A report this week from the MTA also showed a significant drop in travel times, including 30-40 percent for vehicles entering the Manhattan business district. It also found that city buses are moving at a higher speed and that their number is slightly higher.

According to the Congestion Pricing Tracker, a project by college students Benjamin and Joshua Moshes that tracks travel times with Google Maps, peak times in the Holland Tunnel have dropped from 20 minutes to nine minutes this week.

Benjamin Moshes said: “We are very confident that we are seeing significant changes in the bridges and tunnels leading to the congestion zone.”

Lewis Lehe, an assistant professor of civil engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, found that drivers in some cities with congestion pricing responded more surprisingly to the introduction of tolls than to subsequent price increases — a theory who you call “greater elasticity in income“.

Lehe was “surprised” by the magnitude of the results shown in the first data in New York, but warned that it will take time to fully understand the effects of the new tariffs.

At five o’clock in the evening near the mouth of the Holland Tunnel in lower Manhattan, only one car stopped in what would have been closed for blocks until recently. The forty guards who used to guard the crossroads had disappeared. Tunnel speeds have increased by nearly 50 percent.