NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

Note that it was snowy in NYC today, so people were likely dissuaded to drive by other factors than congestion pricing as well. It&#x27;ll be interesting to see what impact there is as we get further along in the year.<p>The dashboard is based off of Google Maps travel time data which I&#x27;m unsure of the exact accuracy. I imagine the city might also have other more direct metrics that can be used, such as the count of vehicles passing through the tunnels into the congestion zone.

I happened to be living in London when congestion pricing was brought in and the difference on day 1 in the West End was like night and day. I believe it&#x27;s never gone back to the pre-congestion pricing levels. I fully expect similar in Manhattan.<p>The social media response has been particularly interesting. Predictably, there are a lot of non-NYCers who simply object to the slightest inconvenience to driving in any form. These can be ignored.<p>What&#x27;s more interesting are how many native (or at least resident) New Yorkers who are against this. They tend to dress up the reasons for this (as people do) because it basically comes down to &quot;I like to drive from Queens&#x2F;Brooklyn into Manhattan&quot;. There&#x27;s almost no reason for anyone to have to drive into Manhattan. It&#x27;s almost all pure convenience.<p>The funniest argument against this is &quot;safety&quot;, the idea that the Subway is particularly unsafe. You know what&#x27;s unsafe? Driving.<p>Another complaint: drivers are paying for the roads. This is untrue anywhere in the US. Drivers only partially subsidize roads everywhere.<p>And if we&#x27;re going to talk about subsidies, how about free street parking... in Manhattan. Each parking space is like $500k-$1M on real estate. In a just world, a street parking pass would cost $500&#x2F;month.<p>The second interesting aspect is how long it takes to bring in something like this. In the modern form, it&#x27;s been on the cards for what? A decade? Longer? Court challenges? A complicit governor blocking implementation? That resistance only ever goes in one direction.<p>My only complaint is that the MTA should be free. Replace the $20 billion (or whatever it is) in fares with $20 billion in taxes on those earning $100k+ and on airport taxes. Save the cost of ticketing and enforcement. Stop spending $100M on deploying the National Guard (to recover $100k in fares).<p>Public transit fares (that are going up to $3 this year) are a regressive tax on the people that the city cannot run without.

This is great, but I&#x27;d be more interested in seeing how congestion pricing impacts travel times for buses, specifically, (within and around the congestion zone, including express routes from the outer boroughs), as well as overall transit ridership.<p>@gotmedium, would you consider integrating:<p>1. MTA&#x27;s Bus Time feed: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bustime.mta.info&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Developers&#x2F;Index" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bustime.mta.info&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Developers&#x2F;Index</a> and 2. MTA bus&#x2F;MNRR&#x2F;LIRR&#x2F;Access-A-Ride ridership feed: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;data.ny.gov&#x2F;Transportation&#x2F;MTA-Daily-Ridership-Data-Beginning-2020&#x2F;vxuj-8kew&#x2F;about_data" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;data.ny.gov&#x2F;Transportation&#x2F;MTA-Daily-Ridership-Data-...</a> 3. Equivalent feeds for city-connected NJ transit services.

I think the biggest thing CP is going to do in NYC is end toll shopping. There were previously some pretty obvious arbs available to people trying to get off LI.<p>The biggest policy failure of CP though to me is that they left taxi&#x2F;uber relatively unscathed. Often the majority of traffic is taxi&#x2F;uber, so make the surcharge on them a fraction of what individual drivers pay is kind of nonsensical.<p>Are we trying to minimize traffic (so tax call cars) or parking (so tax taxi&#x2F;uber less since they don&#x27;t have to park in Manhattan?). It smells of lobbying mostly.

While I&#x27;m sure congestion pricing will have a positive impact on traffic, I&#x27;d wait a little while longer to draw any conclusions, considering (1) the data is from a single day (2) lots of people aren&#x27;t back from holiday travel and (3) there&#x27;s a winter storm across the country and a decent amount of snow fell in Jersey&#x2F;New York today, discouraging driving.

The name is rather confusing. I thought this &quot;Pricing Tracker&quot; was going to be tracking the pricing of the congestion toll (implying that it changes dynamically throughout the day), but what it&#x27;s actually tracking is commute time.<p>Something like &quot;Congestion Pricing Impact Tracker&quot; would be clearer.

1. The data is obviously flawed, but if there&#x27;s anything to speculate from it, it&#x27;s that the actual congestion in lower Manhattan isn&#x27;t affected that much.<p>2. So the success of this policy really depends on how much additional revenue it&#x27;s bringing in for the city and the MTA. The $9 increase needs to significantly offset the loss in toll revenue from the decrease in drivers.<p>3. There are so many other simple policies that would benefit quality of life in NYC:<p>- Daylighting — Don&#x27;t allow cars and trucks to park at the corners of intersections. Huge safety benefits.<p>- Metered parking everywhere. Why is NYC giving away the most valuable real estate in the world for free? Would be a huge revenue stream while discouraging car ownership in Manhattan.<p>- Close more streets to car traffic. This is already true on 14th street and it&#x27;s fantastic. Close Houston, 34th, 42nd, 59th, 125th. This would make buses much more efficient and further discourage passenger car usage

Taking the bus from Weehawken into midtown is super smooth now. It&#x27;s a super cold Tuesday, but normally it&#x27;s a honking mess.

Fantastic. That&#x27;s step one, now fix the public transit, and make it safer and cleaner, so that people actually enjoy using it consistently rather than just needing to do so.<p>Do that and NYC will be a much, much nicer city to live in.

The harsh law of hacker news: For any topic outside of strict software development, the strength, viciousness and certitude of opinions expressed is inversely proportional to the level of knowledge about the subject.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.strongtowns.org&#x2F;journal&#x2F;2021&#x2F;3&#x2F;3&#x2F;the-fundamental-global-law-of-road-congestion" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.strongtowns.org&#x2F;journal&#x2F;2021&#x2F;3&#x2F;3&#x2F;the-fundamental...</a>

Congestion pricing can work to dissuade individuals from living in the burbs, only if there is controls on real estate to deal with the influx of people moving inward. The other benefit is an increase of mass transit usage, which is a plus?<p>I personally took a cab from Newark to Laguardia at MIDNIGHT and it took 40 min to cross into Manhattan to get to the Queens-Midtown tunnel. Just a new level of traffic. Was fun going in the MIB tunnel.

Good, I was hit by a car in NYC while on a bike and it caused a fracture. If this reduces congestion, then I support it because I could have easily died. However, this was accompanied by hikes in public transit pricing. I don&#x27;t think transit officials are acting in good faith when it comes to their moral arguments and just want to justify raising taxes for the poor.

It would be interesting to see the effect on average noise levels. Anecdotally, I have heard fewer honks from single unit trucks today.

I wish people would focus more on scooters and motorcycles than moving people in busses. Coming from a place with decent and cheap public transport, no one likes it. It&#x27;ll never be as fast, you&#x27;ll always be closed in a bacteria greenhouse with strangers, there will always be crazies, it&#x27;ll never have the exact path you need, you don&#x27;t have as much control over it.. For the past year I&#x27;ve been commuting on a motorcycle with no car and even with snow it&#x27;s surprisingly fine. Maintenance is cheap since it&#x27;s much more DIY friendly, I get back from work up to 65-70% faster than cars, usually 35-40% (rush hour), I average 5,8-6,1 l&#x2F;100 without trying to save fuel.. It&#x27;s very comfy if you&#x27;re not in a location where winters are particularly harsh. But at that point freezing your ass off at a bus station waiting to get in the bacteria greenhouse isn&#x27;t great either.

Bad timing on the charts before and after. Coming back off holidays, delayed flights, and in the middle of massive snowstorms. The constant data is flawed and results irrelavant. You need to wait until the spring&#x2F;summer and compare windows of time to previous years.

What I am interested to know but cannot find is:<p>Are there are cameras inside the zone tracking cars to bill them if you are already <i>in</i> the zone, or if cameras only track <i>entry</i> to the zone? (i.e. cameras only on the border). If someone happens to evade the cameras, do they catch them eventually just by traveling within the zone? I believe London for example has internal zone cameras.<p>The purpose being, first of all, to ensure that people do not somehow evade paying just by operating solely within the zone, defeating the purpose of reducing traffic. And secondly, to stop people from engaging in loophole seeking behavior.<p>I hope that loopholes and people defrauding the system (license plate obscuration, etc) are quickly caught and penalized. You would hope that if a car enters or is detected with invalid plates, it triggers an automatic report to police nearby to follow up. Otherwise, like so many things (it seems now) we just throw our hands up at people who evade the rules and charge those who follow them. (my comment spurred by an NYT article about how people might scam the system)

Note that a gimped version of congestion pricing was actually implemented, putting it closer to being an annoyance more than an actual deterrence.<p>Originally it was meant to be $15, but was ultimately lowered to $9.

Related:<p><i>NYC Congestion Pricing Set to Take Effect After Years of Delays</i><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=42598936">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=42598936</a>

They don&#x27;t indicate what the &quot;average&quot; data before Jan. 5 represents. January and February after week 1 have lighter traffic than the rest of the year. If the pre-congestion data extends beyond the winter season, including week 52 and week 1, it can&#x27;t be meaningfully compared until more data is collected.

Curious how that works ? Does one need an EXPass or is a bill sent out ?<p>I am also wondering if other Cities will adopt this. Eventually I can see this or something like it be rolled out nationwide as EVs become more popular.

The branding of congestion pricing has been so disastrous.<p>It could have been separated into two very normal things: tolls and parking fees. Every city has those. NYC could have played with those knobs until they got mostly the same effect but there would have never been any nonsense about it being illegal or unconstitutional or whatever car advocates are saying.<p>Even if this works, it will always be hated and fought by a large minority.

I did a bike ride on Saturday and passed the Port Authority terminal on my way home and it was very packed. When I rode by yesterday afternoon I noticed it was significantly less crowded.<p>I think its attributed to the fact that it was a weekday and the weather was worse, however I would like to think the pricing had some effect.<p>Time will tell!

Congestion pricing should really be referred to as a &quot;lower manhattan driving tax&quot; or similar. It&#x27;s a misnomer to claim it to be &quot;solving&quot; congestion outside of rush hours like 7-10 and 3-7.

Great. Step two: NYC should force Lyft and Uber to buy taxi medallions for each car. There are way too many of idle cars trolling around, taking up space and polluting.

Mouse-over over the chart is broken (scrollbar shown and hidden again and again). I believe you dont need to set x-overflow-auto on the div where the scrollbars appear.

I think it would be interesting to include the George Washington and Verrazano Bridges as they would be alternative routes.

1. The graph doesn&#x27;t work on desktop. It keeps endlessly animating in the data values flyover at a given point.<p>2. Congestion pricing, more generally, is ivory tower social engineering (economic discrimination like toll lanes) and a disproportionate tax on the working poor. It would be fairer if it were progressively taxed based on income.

I&#x27;m incredibly hopeful that NYC congestion pricing pays off in a big way - and that we start to see it in other cities across America. I really, really want congestion pricing in downtown SF. During rush hour, cars block the box and slow down busses, with cascading effects.

Whether it&#x27;s the government or corporations, big organizations are the problem.<p>We need a small business revolution in this country.<p>Side note: An economy made up of small businesses was Adam Smith&#x27;s original vision (the godfather of capitalism). He also hated the idea of a corporation. What we have today really is very far from Adam Smith capitalism.

Someone gets shot outside a hotel, but damn it if we won’t figure out how to charge people more money.

I like congestion pricing because it keeps poor people off the road so the middle can commute faster<p>&#x2F;sarcasm

congestion pricing doesn&#x27;t work. its simply a shrug for the wealthy, and reduces money for lower income.

in a short amount of time , commute times will recover to baselines, or worse, the city will waste the additional revenue , the residents will be poorer , and leaders will pat themselves on be back.<p>Expresslanes made commute times worse . Little of the revenue went to the roads . Few of the roads were fixed .

This doesn&#x27;t show the number of cars and traffic within the area. The real test will be the amount of traffic within the zone

I just love how everyone suddenly becomes transportation experts in this thread and pour out their opinions that are purely based on their anecdotes and beliefs but nothing else.

Will companies compensate workers for having to pay congestion pricing just to get to work??

This seems to be selling use of the public roads to rich people (who can more easily afford the tolls).<p>Isn&#x27;t this a step backwards for social justice?

If NYC subways weren’t freezing&#x2F;boiling, filthy, moldy, infested with rats and mice, and dangerous, maybe you wouldn’t have to brow beat people into using them.

There&#x27;s a lot of interest in forcing people to use public transit but relatively little interest in making transit something people want to use. If people think they&#x27;re going to be stabbed or assaulted they&#x27;re not going to want to use it. Other countries don&#x27;t have this problem and until the transit types realize this normal people are going to reject transit alltogether.

Although marginally better traffic might be a side effect of congestion pricing, its primary effect is a wealth transfer from lower- and middle-class residents of Manhattan, who must buy goods locally at higher prices, to MTA contractors and their labor unions, who already make construction on the New York subway far and away the most expensive in the world.<p>Where is the congestion pricing tracker that measures the higher cost of groceries to working-class lower Manhattan residents?

Well, if you make the road a luxury, less people will be &#x2F;able&#x2F; to use it. It&#x27;s nice to see someone is measuring just how much luxury is being created here although I don&#x27;t think these metrics are particularly useful outside of that goal.

Congestion charging started in London in 2003. I&#x27;m skeptical about the justification that it&#x27;s intended to disincentivize unnecessary driving because people who drive frequently get a bulk discount rather than a surcharge as one might expect if that were the actual intention. A bulk discount is more indicative of a policy intended to maximize revenue. I&#x27;m also skeptical about the justification that it&#x27;s intended to reduce pollution because the discount for electric cars is ending this year. I have a moral issue with it as well because the roads are financed by everyone&#x27;s taxes. Around the time the charge was starting it was easy to find supporters for it on tv chat shows but I never met one in real life. I assume there are some but that they support it in a naive attempt to keep anyone poorer than them off the road. Otherwise, the supporter&#x27;s problem of too much congestion would be easily solved by not driving. The charge has tripled since its introduction so maybe there&#x27;s an element of poetic justice in it for some of them.