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First, what is congestion pricing?
It's an added fee sent to drivers when they drive on certain roads, at certain times, in order to dissuade people from using the road when they don't need to.
The initiative aims to cut down on needless overuse, leading to slow roads.
Congestion pricing, in New York, acts as a sort of redistribution:
Because people pay to get into Manhattan, fewer go in, and the payments that would go to paid parking lot owners are effectively redistributed to the city government.
Congestion pricing can improve land use!
Congestion pricing should also increase the use of public transit, like the subway and buses and such.
This also helps with the redistribution from inefficient land users in Manhattan to the city government, and it's fine because transit has lots of excess capacity.
The way congestion pricing was evaluated was by using a "synthetic control".
The data from NYC was compared to the data from a counterfactual NYC based on data from other, comparable cities.
The estimate is New York (real) vs New York (projected without congestion pricing).
Some of the data underlying this model looks like this.
In this example, we can see average daily speeds within New York's Central Business District (CBD) in red and in comparison cities in gray.
Notice the jump around congestion pricing being introduced?
With that data, we can compare real New York to the ensembled New York and get this result, our treatment effect of interest.
On average, road speeds went up by a whopping 16%!
But here's something interesting:
Speeds on highways went up 13%, arterial road speeds went up by 10%, and local road speeds increased by 8%.
None of that's 16%, and that's important: This means congestion pricing sped roads up, but also sorted people to faster roads.
In response to having to pay a toll, people not only got off the road, they also made wiser choices about the types of roads they used!
Now let's look at the times of day, as a check on the model
It works: Congestion pricing just boosts speed when it's active and shortly after:
As another check, let's look at the effects by location.
In the CBD, trips are faster. Going to the CBD, trips are faster. Leaving it, trips are faster, but not much. And outside of it, where congestion pricing is irrelevant? No effect.
This policy has economic benefits and incentive benefits, but it also helps residents of New York who aren't directly paying the fee.
This is because vehicle emissions are down!
They're down the most in the areas with the highest rate exposure (co-occurrence), too.
The policy is also fair: The impacts do not fall on particularly low- or high-class neighborhoods, and the distributional impacts are thus pretty much neutral, with some regional differences.
The big effect is really just that people are able to get into the city more reliably.
In short, congestion pricing, though only briefly in place, has been a rousing success.
But New Yorkers don't seem to mind if the policy goes. They seem to prefer being able to freely waste time in traffic, even though it's inefficient and boring.
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Crémieux
@cremieuxrecueil
Support for congestion pricing in New York City jumped after it was implemented and people discovered that it made driving easier and more enjoyable.
But, curiously, few people care enough for that to impact their view on Trump and net impact is positive!
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Convincing the public to care about this policy and support it will be key to its future re-implementation, not just in New York, but nationally
Getting people to understand that a small fee actually improves how cities operate and aligns incentives is going to be a big project.
Best of luck to anyone working on this.
Source:
As an added note, subway ridership was increasing and, more interestingly, with congestion pricing, more people were choosing to take the express service buses.
Because of the reduced traffic, those buses were also making their trips much faster.
Wins everywhere!
Another interesting set of datapoints:
1. Foot traffic went up. That's the type that's relevant for businesses.
2. Broadway ticket sales? Also up.
3. Honking complaints? Went down by two-thirds.
Every sign points to benefits.
And I think signs should generally point to benefits, because I believe New Yorkers are smart enough to adjust in response to a little toll.
Some links:
bloomberg.com/news/articles/
amny.com/news/broadway-
nyc.streetsblog.org/2025/02/05/win
Is there any evidence there was uptick of public transportation?
Could be net economic loss.
Yes!
Foot traffic also went up, Broadway ticket sales got better, noise pollution declined. Congestion pricing seems to have delivered better times all around.
Perhaps forthcoming, but an average increase in transit speeds should've been good given how easy it is to preserve total volume.
Look for Almost Daily Grant's after the New York close of trading—almost daily.
How can you just measure average speed on the road and declare it a success? If I have to take a route that's 10 miles longer in order to avoid/minimize tolls, and that doubles my driving distance, I don't care about driving 16% faster. My drive is still taking longer and I'm
It's a great disappointment to me that the Republicans so aggressively lined up against this. It's an excellent strategy for efficiently using limited transportation capacity.
I am perfectly fine with the argument that this policy works. But this is a very aristocratic approach to determining its success. In theory, I have no problem with this. It’s just best to be upfront about that.
We are taxed to utilize a public roadway that was paid for with tax revenue when built, and maintained with gas taxes and other tax revenue generated daily. How many layers of taxation should there be?
Yes, regressive policy works in favor of those with money.
I tend to prefer progressive solutions that all seem to be non-starters in our regressive political system.
:(
Are more, fewer, or the same amount of people coming into the city? What about loss of revenue from municipal parking ramps, lots, and meters? What about the revenues from parking and moving violations? The fact that it’s easier to drive in the city is not necessarily indicative
was firmly against CP. but I live on 7th ave where holland tunnel traffic piles up and the decrease in rush hour traffic and honking has been beyond what I thought possible. love CP now for purely selfish reasons (not proud of it!)
Ya, tax the crap out of something and get less of it.
So? Be clear - this loon thinks this is "good" in part cuz it redirects money people would pay to private parking to the NYC govt.
"Redistribution" he calls it.
the way I think about it is that traffic is the transportation equivalent of breadlines: when the government artificially sets the price of a scarce good at zero (be it food or road space), demand will outstrip supply and people will pay with their time instead of money
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So let me get this straight. New York politicians are paid by the tax payers to fix, maintain, and develop the transportation system and maintain its use. Roads built by tax payer dollars and maintained by tax payer dollars. Under the care of these same politicians, the
I think it is still far too early to tell the impact on businesses. Although the streets are much nicer to walk! Hopefully it works out.
Anecdotally the city has been much easier to drive in than before congestion pricing went into effect.
HOWEVER, the lights seemed to be timed to speed up traffic on the avenues. Just like De Blasio timed the lights to slow traffic as part of his Vision Zero push, I think
If I agree with your logic, conclusions, and that your objectives are sound, then why not make congestion charging 2x or even 5x more expensive? Just punish the negative behavior more, if you believe that's the goal.
Less interested in traffic and more on impact to business. Is there clear data on that yet?
Is there a reason the graph doesn’t show YOY by month? I mean, if you live in NYC you know it gets crazy busy during holiday season and slows down early in the year. How does Jan 25 compare to Jan 24? Also, they would get roughly the same income by stopping fare evasion. Why
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Wow - read the whole thread, seems like a home run! Anecdotally, far fewer cars in midtown, much easier to jaywalk during the work week IMHO 
That may not be the actual outcome that’s important. It’s worth asking “how is this making Manhattan better”? And all what we’d measure to see how that’s going.
Thank you as always. Remember that the measure of "need" here is how much someone is willing to pay or how ready to use a different time, route, or means of travel.
"If we charge people money to do something that used to be free, less people will do it, and the people that pay will have a better time!"
They've rediscovered exclusivity.
Mixed elasticity of demand has been studied for decades. There’s no groundbreaking revelation in these figures.
As others note, success hinges on how well it balances costs and benefits across different sectors.
Yes. Heavily taxing things (like access to workplaces for middle and working class people) causes these same people to buy less of them. Correct.
Is there any evidence of there just being overall less people in the area hurting the businesses in said area?
Congestion pricing is one of the more agreeable taxes as long as all revenues fund roads and pricing is dynamic based on demand.
Why did this need real data from NYC compared to synthetic data?
What other “comparable cities” comprised the “counterfactual NYC”?
Ideally, you want tolls to dynamically vary such that it keeps traffic moving at the speed limit.
The goal was to raise money... less traffic means they will not raise money.
This incentivizes the government to keep roads congested.
Why widen the roads if it costs money and decreases revenue? Charge the tax payer for maintaining the roads, and then tax them again so you don’t have to widen them.
From who's perspective? The state? How about suburb employees and their families. What's their perspective?
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A must-read for data enthusiasts & economists. Dive into how data insights can shape your understanding of the economy.How has it affected small business revenues in the congestion pricing zones?
I'm curious about the claim that it's been fair and affects people of all socioeconomic brackets equally. My main concern with CP was always that it would affect the working class the most: the further out in the Burroughs, the less access to mass transit.
You fans of this never get it.
That is selection bias and survivorship bias.
Those who could afford it, had shorter commutes.
Vast majority who could not, did not commute at all.
No foot traffic, sales down, vendors impoverished.
All so you can B&T faster.
Pricing generally works 
I don’t know why people want to make everything complicated.
Global CO2 Price would solve climate change in no time. No need for anything else.
I don’t know why people want to make everything complicated.
Global CO2 Price would solve climate change in no time. No need for anything else. is this thread about nyc congestion pricing working true
Their stats match well experience on the ground.
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nj4rfk
@nj4rfk
#NYCHwyRobbery Since NYC congestion pricing was enacted, drove to Midtown 3 times via Lincoln tun.
No traffic in nor out, on NJ side as well. 1.5 hrs *roundtrip* vs normally 1.5+ one-way. Plenty of same block street parking vs barely any within 4+ blocks radius.
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Maybe worked for New York... Most definitely did not work for New Jersey
Sounds like you agree. Rare miss for you.
Speed and Broadway ticket sales are not the metrics we should be focusing on. As someone who owns NYC property, it works for me but not for business owners and the poor who need to work here.
Congestion pricing and the high efficiency of rail and bikes is actually good policy that is pushed by the left and somehow demonized by the retard right. When it comes to stopping illegal migration, it is the other way around.
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“Redistribution” is another word for theft, which you later guise as “fair” because it impacts all income brackets and forces people to use filthy public transportation.
They have turned streets that were funded by middle class taxpayers into private parkways for the wealthiest 1%ers. All of these roads belong to taxpayers but now they can't afford to use them.
Did they compare the Jan-Mar traffic to the same timeframe in previous years? Otherwise you're just looking at seasonal variation.
Simply banning cars would have worked better, if that's what you call "working."
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Yeah, and it excluded any undesirable people too lowly to afford its insane costs…
Who would have thought that possible eh?
This correlates with a significant reduction in migrant population. Not sure where everyone went, but a LOT of people seem to have self-deported or relocated simultaneous to congestion pricing.
Congesting pricing is awesome if you're rich. Another way for Dems to screw over the poor.
really need to undo Obama allowing the government to use propaganda domestically
