NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

I do wonder how google handles edge cases, passengers, busses, etc. I've been in rideshares where the driver is using 4 phones - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/17/business/apps-uber-lyft-d...

Still though, an inch or two around here is not a big deal. I only really start complaining when I have to break out the snow blower.

Small correction, every ride that starts and/or ends in the zone incurs the fee so a taxi that enters, does 12 trips, then leaves pays the same amount as a private car even though they only entered the zone once.

> Why should it be cheaper to be chauffeured?

It isn't. It's vastly more expensive to ride in a taxi when you include the fare.

It should be cheaper. No circling the block looking for parking, no space needed at all for that matter. That alone is worth giving taxis/ubers at least a different pricing structure.

I don’t know about cheaper - this is already on top of the $2.75 per-ride NY State congestion fee. So now, if you take an Uber ride in NYC that’s even just a few blocks or few minutes long, it will be $2.75+$1.5 = $4.25 of just congestion fees for every ride.

Because there are fewer cars in the system for each chauffeured ride vs private vehicle.

> Taxi/Uber toll is passed directly onto he rider.

Only partially right? Tax incidence depends on the price elasticity of demand and price elasticity of supply.

The car takes up space in the city the entire time it's there, even if the congestion impact is less while it's parked.

And further, if I am already paying $50 fare to take an Uber, a $1.50 toll is not deterring me or reducing my usage at all. It is less than the rounding error on the tip I give the driver. I probably won't even notice it amongst the 5 line items of fees, taxes, surcharges, etc on the digital receipt.

> This is where some of the concerns about classism come into play. I'm already paying more to be driven around in an Uber vs drive myself. Why should I be given a toll discount?

It's not obvious that Uber is exclusively the higher-class option. Someone could easily make the same calculation you just did and decide that for them even owning a car wouldn't be worth it, they'll just do Uber every time they need to. You can afford to own a car and do Uber anyway, others can only afford to Uber occasionally when needed.

I don't have data to back it up, but I would actually be surprised if the average Uber customer in NYC owns a car at all.

Think of the congestion charge as a charge on the vehicle, rather than on the person, as the stated policy goal is to reduce the number of vehicles in the CBD, not the number of people overall. The Uber is very likely going to continue to be used to service other passengers after dropping you off within the same calendar day, so one potential "fair" solution is to split the congestion charge among the many passengers using that one vehicle. That is your reduced Uber toll charge. But even in this case, it's not really an even split, taxis are going to generate a much higher congestion charge revenue than a single passenger car.

Once the Uber drops you off, it's available to take someone else somewhere they need to go. Car services are an essential part of a total system that enables people not to have to drive. Personal cars are the opposite of that.

It's one of those things about the way Americans think about transit that makes me insane, they try to assess the ROI of every single individual leg of a transit system rather than assess the system as a whole.

For example they'll cancel late night bus service because very few people use it. Except that the people who do, are people who occasionally are forced to stay late at their job and rely on the bus running late. Once it's cancelled they have to drive to work every single day since they're not sure they won't be stranded. The 3-4 bus rides a month they used to take are exchanged for 22 private car trips because you cut back service.

That's just one example. Here's another more suited to your example. What if you generally switch to taking transit into the city, and only take an uber when it's raining or you have something heavy to carry?

If I allow there to be a robust market for Ubers in the city then that's possible. If I aggressively charge Ubers then you can't do that, and you're back to driving every day.

There's plenty of examples. But in short it's clear that private cars are by a mile the worst and most inefficient thing occupying the roads. That's what we want to have the strongest incentives against.

Alternatively, day parking rates drop enough (due to market forces) to compensate for the cost of the toll.

Are you sure? Compare before/after for the main affected regions (Holland Tunnel, Queensboro) versus the unaffected regions. We definitely need more data, but I think there's an immediate reduction in the obvious places.

Google maps traffic data is live

Singapore is probably the better model to look at? We had congestion pricing before London.

Nope, it's been great for poorer people who take transit at higher rates than others, and congestion pricing funds useful transit expansions for them.

> Nobody belongs to them all.

Why not?

IMO, ideally:

- Some people work from home or drive elsewhere

- Others take transit instead of driving

- The remainder pay a fee that they didn't previously, which can fund more transit

Or you get voted out of office and your charges reversed down to zero - or perhaps negative as the people are so mad they take it out on the transit this was supposed to fund.

Politics is tricky, don't take so much you make people affected mad enough to undo what you wanted.

Any examples of cities that have done a good job on this?

The fact that its a recurring revenue scheme allows them to get bonds based on that income. I think I saw that they were planning to secure $18B for a project when it was $15 for the toll.

You are exaggerating that number greatly. The number is 8% of the budget for retired employees.

PDF Source, page 9: https://www.osc.ny.gov/files/reports/osdc/pdf/report-17-2025...

It should be noted that the MTA has made at least some pension reforms so that current and future employees won't be as costly. Employee contributions are increased as well as the retirement age.

Driving in New York has been terrible for a century. The only way to make it better is to disincentivize people from doing it by making it more costly and making public transit better. Urban planners have known this is the case since at least the 40s.

Congestion pricing isn't some kind of new punishment. It's a bill, long overdue, finally getting paid (and only partially).

And will the drivers be prepared to fund this via another channel?

I agree NYC is not wisely spending its $100 billion per year, but I think the congestion tax makes sense as a way of pricing in externalities. As a non-car-owner in lower Manhattan I dislike passenger cars -- they make it much less safe for me to bike around, and less pleasant for me to walk around. I think most people here benefit if we have way fewer large vehicles in the city, so the limited spots should be reserved for people who get immense economic value from them, like truckers or movers, not random people from the suburbs who want to have dinner in the city.

> as far as I can tell got very little for my money

You literally lived in the greatest city in the history of world civilization.

Sorry it didn't work out for you.

In Manhattan ebike access is excellent -- there are tons of bike lanes and bikeshare stations. They are typically as fast as Ubers for getting around the city since traffic is so bad here, and much cheaper. The main issue is that it's not very safe. Probably this does not generalize to most other US cities.

I've driven electric motorbike for 7 years and it's absolutely great for everyday commute. Lighter ones tend to have removable batteries so they work even when you don't have a garage with electric outlet. Some heavier ones you can even take on an occasional long trip, though that's not super convenient – it's commuting (combined with joy of riding) that makes them useful.

One does need to know where one is going to service it, though, because they can sometimes have stupid electrical issues which are objectively easy to fix but hard for you to fix on your own cause you don't know which wire goes where.

> however I still have yet to feel as threatened with a personal vehicle.

There's an old saying that if you can't spot the sucker at the poker table, you're the sucker.

If you've never felt threatened while driving a personal vehicle by all the road-raging, speeding, tailgating assholes--

I truly feels safe on the NYC subway.

You know what's more dangerous than riding the subway? Driving in a car.

I take the bus in to work every day even though I have a car and the ability to WFH. I love the bus. I get to spend some time outside, walking to and from stops. Most days I just read a book or browse my phone for 40 minutes, and then magically I'm at work. Sometimes I get to chat with people on the bus or at the bus stop, though that's pretty rare, most people keep to themselves. I never have road rage. I never worry about parking. I never worry about people damaging my $XX,000 object. I almost never have to care about road construction, the bus just handles it for me. It's pretty neat!

> being in a pod with a hundred people you don't know and who have not been screened for insanity, excessive odor, sickness and general obnoxiousness.

These events do happen, but they're pretty rare. For the most part, people on the bus are just people, who happen to be on a bus. Just like there are crazy drivers, there are sometimes crazy bus passengers. At least the crazy bus passengers aren't piloting 4000 lbs of steel :)

Hi, nice to meet you! I prefer public transit because when I ride it I don't have to drive or find a parking spot! And I believe it to be safer on balance.

Chiming in to say I also prefer public transit. Why focus on the ride at all when I can just read a book and teleport?

And the real danger of motorcycles is to yourself. You could end up living with a feeding tube slipping in a shower let alone a minor scuff at 25mph.

I prefer public transit! No parking, I dont feel nearly the same frustration, I dont have to make decisions, and at the end of the day I can be a little high on the train. Its bliss.

Sounds like you don't live in New York, then? Most people here don't own a car and don't want to.

Well yea, two major advantages of public transit over driving is that it is safer and less expensive. So if you are going to discount people with those opinions, of course the people remaining are more likely to align with you.

I wish my city had better public transit, so I could drive less. Driving sucks!

Motorcyclists generally have some compassion for cyclists in that both share trouble with cars, and both have problems with staying upright. Multiple car drivers have tried to kill me in America; no such thing happened in 10 years in Pakistan, and I've had zero direct problems from motorcycles anywhere. Collision dangers aside—there's probably stats for that somewhere, probably poorly trained, drunk, or road raging folks sitting in cars are by far the main risk—the main problem of motorcycles would be the noise and air pollution from the engines, especially when there are too many of them in too small an area, versus having somewhere you can actually walk, think, and play (these differ not) without all that horrid noise and stench. In America, this is mostly limited to a few tourist island towns where there is only an ambulance and a service truck or two, and the cyclists on vacation are all like "wow, this is so nice! I don't get the Threat Of Death™ I usually do from the American stroad".

"Stroad" is a term invented, I believe, by those crazy folks over at "Strong Towns", who probably also have things to say about congestion pricing, and why it's taken so very bloody long to implement it in a supposedly modern and advanced nation.

I favor public transit, or ideally walking (problematic) or bicycling (even more problematic). Bicycling can be very problematic in America, to the point that a tourist from Florida in downtown Seattle once remarked "wow, the cars here aren't trying to kill me!" as we sat at some stinky car-strewn intersection. Basically you're a second class citizen if you walk or bicycle. Folks in cars will yell at you or throw things sometimes, and I have the correct skin color and sex, so it's strictly worse for others.

Buses? Sure, you can find the spicy runs with all the homeless (why are there so many homeless in America? Money out the ass and yet a nation so poor …), but I've had a lot more and a lot worse direct problems with folks who sit in cars, not counting indirect problems such as the noise, air, and real estate pollution (sometimes called "the high cost of free parking"). Usually the bus crazy will do something evil like offer you a joint, or wacky conversation, and will not do something upstanding like to change into the lane that you are bicycling in, forcing you off the road.

That's because they turned it down[1]. New Jersey has decided that their strategy is going to be to dig their heels in and hope for a supportive administration, rather than plan for the next century of growth in the economic region that powers their state.

[1]: https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2024/12/18/nj-refusing-generous-...

NYS offered, NJ sued NYS, NJ lost

It would be a completely ok thing for NYS to tell NJ $0 get bent, NJ coulda spent turnpike widening money on transit instead of begging from NYS

NJ needs to stop its commuter residents paying NY income tax, particularly those doing WFH more than half the year. They can boost NJT with that pile of money.