There was little doubt that New York City’s congestion pricing scheme, which charges vehicles a toll to enter parts of the city, would benefit pedestrians who would have to compete with fewer 4,000-pound hunks of metal on wheels blowing through intersections. Turns out, it’s also been pretty good for the people behind the wheels of those beasts. According to a new working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, traffic backups have also lessened in the outer boroughs and suburbs of New York, resulting in shorter travel times even for those outside of the congestion zones.
The study used Google Maps traffic trends and trip data to determine average trip times before and after New York City implemented its congestion toll in Manhattan’s central business district. As expected, cars are moving faster through the metro area with less traffic on the road. The study found that traffic speeds have increased about 15% since congestion pricing took effect, with even bigger gains during normal rush hour compared to the pre-toll era. Cars that do opt to pay the $9 toll and go through the congestion zone save about three minutes per journey and a collective 83,000 hours per week, per the researchers.
Contrary to some concerns, though, traffic has not simply piled up outside of the congestion zone as people try to get around it. Instead, trips are getting shorter on those streets, too. According ot the study, traffic speeds outside of the business district have increased by about 8%, with neighborhoods closer to the congestion zone seeing even greater increases. Drivers who avoid the toll zone have saved a collective 461,000 hours per week in traffic. The study found that the average trip is only about eight seconds faster than pre-congestion zone, but there are more than 100 times as many of those trips as there are trips through Manhattan, so the aggregated savings are significantly higher.
While the largest effects of congestion pricing happen closer to the zone, the research did find that there is at least some wide-reaching impact of the toll zone. They found that car trips on Long Island saw speeds increase by 2.3% and that there was even some improvement on highways throughout the tri-state area. Basically, traffic speeds have improved everywhere. The study also found “no evidence of offsetting slowdowns on different road types,” which suggests that the policy has “reduced overall traffic volumes rather than simply displaced congestion.”
That probably won’t mean all that much to some of the congestion zone’s biggest detractors, who hate it on principle more than because it’s bad policy. President Donald Trump has suggested that his administration will kill the congestion zone experiment—though even his own Department of Justice said in a leaked memo that there isn’t much of a legal case for doing so. You’d think that there would be even less of a reason now that there’s evidence of broad success without significant downsides, but when has that ever stopped this administration from pursuing worse outcomes for everyone?
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