Wednesday, new York Governor Kathy Hochul surprised the state and the country when she announced she would indefinitely shelve New York City’s long-in-the-works congestion pricing plan. The policy, in the works since 2007 and set to begin in just three weeks, was designed to ease car traffic, curb highway deaths and send $1 billion in annual funding to the city’s transit system by charging drivers up to $15 per day to enter the busiest parts of Manhattan, with higher rates during “peak hours.” (Truckers and some bus drivers could have paid more than $36 a day.) At its core, the idea is simple, if controversial: make people pay for the roads they use.
But congestion pricing was also destined to become one of the most ambitious American climate projects, perhaps of all time. Their goal was to convince people to abandon their gas-guzzling vehicles, which are solely responsible for about 22 percent of America’s greenhouse gas emissions, and on subways, buses, bikes, and your feet. Policymakers, researchers and environmental fanatics around the world have concluded that even if the transition to electric vehicles were to happen at lightning speed, avoiding the worst of climate change will require fewer cars. in general.
Now the movement has suffered a serious setback, in a country where decades of car-centric planning decisions mean many can only imagine getting around in a very specific way. Just a few years ago, cities from Los Angeles to San Francisco to Chicago began studying what priced highways would look like. “Cities were watching what would happen in New York,” says Sarah Kaufman, director of the Rudin Center for Transportation at New York University. “Now they can call it a ‘failure’ because it didn’t happen.”
On Wednesday, Hochul said his about-face had to do with concerns about the city’s post-pandemic recovery. The congestion pricing plan faced lawsuits from New Jersey, where travelers argue they would face unfair financial burdens. Chambers and porticospurchased and placed to charge drivers when entering the area, they have already been installed in Manhattan, to the tune of about half a billion dollars.
Kaufman, who says she was “stunned” by Governor Hochul’s sudden announcement, says she isn’t sure where politics goes from here. “If we can’t take bold and potentially less popular steps in a city that has easily accessible public transportation, then I wonder where this can happen,” she says.
Other global cities have had success with congestion plans. London’s program, implemented in 2003, remains controversial among residents, but the government reports that it has reduced traffic in the target area by a third. One study 2020 suggests that the program has reduced pollutants, although exemptions for diesel buses have mitigated its effects on emissions. Stockholm’s program, launched in 2006, increased the city’s public transportation ridership, reduced the total number of miles locals traveled by car, and emissions reduction between 10 and 14 percent.
But in New York, the future of the program is unclear, and local politicians are currently scrambling to figure out how to plug the hole in the transit budget that would result from a last-minute suspension of the fare plan. The city’s transportation system is huge and expanding: Five million people ride Metropolitan Transportation Authority buses and subways, nearly twice as many as fly every day in the United States.
In New York, drivers entering the area below 60th Street in Manhattan would have been charged a maximum price of $15, but would have only been charged once a day. They would have paid $3.75 for off-peak hours. Taxi and private transportation trips in the area would have had additional fees. After years of controversy and public debate, the state had created some exemptions from the congestion charge: some vehicles carrying people with disabilities would not have paid, low-income residents of the area would have received a tax credit for their tolls; and low-income drivers would have been entitled to a 50 percent discount.