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Six months into congestion pricing, more cars are off the road
- michaelcampbell 1y agoSimilar article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44328032 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44328032
- jampekka 1y agoWould be interesting to see how this has affected number of visits and travel times at different affluence levels. At least in London the less well off started visiting the congestion charge zones less altogether.
- Ylpertnodi 1y agoSo, less cars (good), but businesses may be suffering (probably bad)?
- mayneack 1y agoI haven't seen suggestion of businesses suffering > Others have said it would hurt businesses in the congestion zone. The report, however, says pedestrian activity inside the zone was up 8.4% in May, compared with the same period last year, while outside the zone only saw an increase of 2.7%. And from an earlier post > And just to take a different kind of measure, The New York Times visited 40 storefronts on a stretch of Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village to gauge how businesses felt about congestion pricing. People working in four of those businesses said the change had been positive, 10 said it had been negative — and 25 said it had had no impact. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/05/11/upshot/congestion-pricing.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/05/11/upshot/conges...
- drob518 1y agoSo, do you notice how the first quote doesn’t actually answer the question? Of course pedestrian activity was up. Because cars were taxed. But was pedestrian traffic up to the same rate as cars were down such that overall traffic was unaffected? No, probably not, because the story says vehicles are down 11% but pedestrian traffic is only up 8%. And businesses saying it had a negative impact were more than twice as prevalent (10 to 4) than businesses saying it had a positive impact, with 25 saying no impact. So, overall, a negative impact. You can debate the magnitude and whether it is “worth it,” but it’s definitely a negative impact on commerce.
- rainsford 1y ago> But was pedestrian traffic up to the same rate as cars were down such that overall traffic was unaffected? No, probably not, because the story says vehicles are down 11% but pedestrian traffic is only up 8%. Those percentages are only directly comparable if the number of cars and the number of pedestrians is the same, which I'm guessing it's not. Some quick searching doesn't seem to yield an answer to this question, but in a city like NYC I'd venture to guess there is more pedestrian traffic than car traffic, so it's entirely possible that an 8% increase in pedestrian traffic more than makes up for an 11% drop in car traffic. > So, overall, a negative impact. You can debate the magnitude and whether it is “worth it,” but it’s definitely a negative impact on commerce. I don't think you can conclude that at all because you're missing some key pieces of information, like whether the average positively impacted businesses had a greater positive impact than the average negatively impacted business had negative impact. You also don't know the long term impacts that might change what types of businesses are in the area of how they attract customers. Businesses that optimize for car traffic (like Costco, at the extreme end of the spectrum) might see an initial decrease in customers, but longer term could either adapt to be more pedestrian friendly or be replaced with pedestrian friendly businesses that might generate even more economic activity. Also not to put too fine a point on it, but the "business impact" numbers were based off a reporter going to 40 businesses in one neighborhood and asking "people working there" what the impact had been. I'm not sure that's a very scientific way to draw broad conclusions, as the NYT freely admits.
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- thebrid 1y agoBusinesses may benefit from this move. People driving past in cars are unlikely to stop by a local business in Manhattan. People passing by on foot are much more likely to. The article has evidence of modal shift. Car journeys are down, but both subway ridership and foot traffic are up. Reducing traffic has other benefits in terms of making a place more liveable. If a street is full of vehicle traffic and noisy, it is a place people don't want to be & so pass through quickly. If you make the space nicer, people are more likely to want to dwell and spend money with local businesses & restaurants. Manhattan can be quite unpleasant at times, but it's been really nice to see recent efforts to try to improve that: - Partial pedestrianisation of broadway - The 14th Street busway - New protected bike lanes Baby steps for sure, but better than doing nothing!
- user3939382 1y agoThere’s more to business than retail. People with service and delivery vehicles are screwed under this.
- donohoe 1y agoNot really - unless you have specific info to add on this?
- user3939382 1y agoI have the info of company owners going on the news saying they’re screwed by this.
- thebrid 1y agoIf by "screwed" you mean having to pay a modest fee to access one of the most valuable pieces of land on the entire planet, sure.
- occz 1y agoWith less hindrance from congestion as well, meaning that they get to make more transactions and hence make more money.
- bryanlarsen 1y agoPreliminary results are that businesses is up in downtown New York. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/05/11/upshot/congestion-pricing.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/05/11/upshot/conges...
- tlocke 1y agoThe least well-off don't have cars at all, but suffer from their ill-effects the most. So the least well-off benefit the most from congestion pricing.
- 1116574 1y agoThose "least well-off" that happen to live in the zone, which is less and less each year due to gentrification
- bryanlarsen 1y agoPeople outside the zone benefit too -- from the tax revenue, the reduced pollution, and every time they visit.
- hnlmorg 1y agoPublic transport in London is world class. Most people don’t even drive into London, let alone inside the congestion zone. And this was true even long before the congestion zone was created.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- transcriptase 1y agoHas the median net worth of those driving gone up? Vancouver did all sorts of “make having a car really expensive” moves like removing parking lots and making the remaining ones prohibitively expensive for the working class. Must be nice for all the supercar drivers to have fewer poor people clogging up the roads!
- october8140 1y agoSome countries handle this kind of thing by making it a percent of income.
- transcriptase 1y agoEven better in the Vancouver case. Most are “students” and “homemakers” with $0 declared income!
- jonstewart 1y agoDriving a supercar in lower Manhattan is a great way to devalue it.
- lmm 1y agoThe only way to reduce congestion is to have fewer cars on the roads, so someone's got to stop driving, and the rich will find a way to make it not them. You can either charge an honest price and spend the revenue on public services, or you can adopt worse policies. (E.g. some cities make it so different cars are allowed in the city on alternate days - so rich people own two cars and alternate).
- transcriptase 1y agoSounds an awful lot like the reason the IRS and CRA use for going after a waitresses tips and not tax fraud by HNWI.
- lmm 1y agoI don't see the similarity.
- nla 1y agoCongestion pricing is manufactured to create a new tax class. First they let over 100k Ubers on the roads where there were only 32k taxis. Then they added bike lanes. Then they added two bus lanes. Then they closed streets. Then they added more bike lanes. Then they added 'floating islands. Then they added 'pedestrian walkways' in the street -- next to the sidewalks. Some avenues are down to one lane. Viola! Congestion. All of the money goes to the bankrupt MTA. The Democrat supermajority in NYS/NYC wins again.
- gonzalohm 1y agoPublic services like public transport shouldn't be seen as for-profit entities. For some reason Americans don't seem to understand that
- abe_m 1y agoBut the current state of a lot of public transport being money losing entities indicates their costs are out of control. Public services shouldn't just help themselves to endless taxpayer money rather than put their house in order and provide value.
- PaulHoule 1y agoIt's routine for transit systems to run at a loss in the sense that the ticket prices don't pay 100% of the costs. The idea is that transit has benefits beyond what it gives to the riders. If a bus takes 20 cars off the street that's a huge boon to the other cars. In Ithaca, for instance, Cornell doesn't have a lot of space for parking, if you do get a parking space it is probably far enough away that you'll ride the bus in anyway. Employees get a free bus pass and even though it means I have to fit my schedule to the bus, it drops me off right by the door of a building that's connected to my building so it's as convenient as can be.
- spwa4 1y agoEvery second reply here is "yes, congestion pricing is bad but it could be compensated by X" The problem with every one of these posts is the same: IS it compensated by X? No. Why not? Because X is not happening, and the city is certainly not paying for it with the extra income. You talk about a free bus pass, but you might as well talk about free use of a Star Trek transporter. I would argue that'd be more honest, because if you talk about a nonexistent transporter technology at least it's clear that it's not happening. Also: this is New York. The bus service would need to be improved as well. That too is not happening. Nobody would be complaining in the first place if there was cheap (you even say "free"), fast and good public transport. There isn't.
- amelius 1y agoDriving is becoming a hobby for the rich. A more fair approach would be rationing, not just for driving but for every naturally scarce resource. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing
- gonzalohm 1y agoAt least the fees are invested back into public transport (for non rich people)
- gruez 1y ago>A more fair approach would be rationing, not just for driving but for every naturally scarce resource. How would that even work? If there's only enough road for 10% of the cars in Manhattan, does everyone just get "hall passes" for driving 36 days a year? Ironically that'd make driving even more "a hobby for the rich", because nobody but the rich are going to spend $30k+ on a car, for the privilege of driving it for 36 days a year. Even if the ratio was closer to 50% (which is doubtful, given how congested Manhattan is), only the well off can afford a car that's sitting idle half the year. If you make the passes tradable, you basically reinvented congestion pricing.
- rainsford 1y agoIt's even worse than that, because rationing makes driving an unreliable solution at any price point. Sure, a rich person can afford a car they only use part of the time. But if they regularly have a need to go into the city, they still need an alternative solution the rest of the time when they can't drive into the city for any amount of money. And having the ability to drive only some of the time is even more unhelpful for non-rich folks for exactly the reason you outlined. The idea of rich people commuting by driving into Manhattan from their mansions in Connecticut while average people live closer and take public transit might bother some egalitarian sensibilities, but it's probably a better outcome than driving being so unavailable to everyone that the only people who really benefit from it are tourists or those who otherwise don't really need to drive into the city at all.
- donohoe 1y ago
- dofubej 1y ago[flagged]
- thebrid 1y agoYou mean the poor who disproportionately take transit into Manhattan rather than drive and/or suffer the adverse consequences of traffic?
- dofubej 1y ago[dead]
- bryanlarsen 1y agoThere are roughly zero poor people in Manhattan who own a car. Heck, many moderately well off people in Manhattan don't own a car.
- astura 1y ago"Poor people who used to drive but now can't afford to due to congestion pricing" is not a population that exists in Manhattan.
- dylan604 1y agoDidn’t POTUS sign something to invalidate congestion pricing and liberate New Yorkers from this? I haven’t paid close attention not being from NYC, but I remember some self congratulating from POTUS about this. Did it get knocked down? Edit: Saved, not liberated was the quote from POTUS
- meagher 1y agoThe Federal Highway Administration tried to revoke its approval for the program (some federal roads in the congestion relief zone). Still being litigated last I checked.
- donohoe 1y agoIt was ignored because he didn't have legal authority to do it. And can't tell if you were being a little sarcastic of not but majority of New Yorkers want congestion pricing and would not feel "liberated".
- gruez 1y agoLike most things Trump did, it's being fought in court https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congestion_pricing_in_New_York_City#Reactions_and_revocation_of_federal_approval https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congestion_pricing_in_New_York...
- buckhx 1y agolol at liberate New Yorkers? This has been a godsend as a car owning New Yorker who takes public transit 10+ times a week as well. Less traffic and all the externalities associated.
- donohoe 1y agoNYC has 0.6 vehicles per household, and in Manhattan it’s closer to 0.25. This isn’t LA (1.6) or even Chicago (1.0). Congestion pricing is aimed at those who drive into the city - often with solid public transportation alternatives. The revenue goes toward improving transit—something the vast majority actually use. These upgrades take time. Six months of data means very little in a system this complex. If you're offering deep takes on this, it’s only fair to say whether you actually live in NYC or nearby. Most of the loudest critics seem disconnected from the day-to-day reality of getting around here.
- PaulHoule 1y agoTo be fair I have a friend who lives in Brooklyn who thinks congestion pricing is a scam and this is a person of moderate means who has a car. She's inclined to blame traffic problems on Uber. One point she has which is good is that the transit system is not good if you're going perpendicular to the major routes. A 20 minute car ride from Queens to the Bronx turns into an hour and 30 minutes on transit. Of course, it does take funding to improve the service and NYC has a hard time of it because funding for the subway is not controlled by NYC but rather by the state so a lot of upstaters like me who just ride it a few times a year or don't ride it at all have a say in it.
- meagher 1y agoDoes she pay for parking or benefit from the over 2M free parking spots?
- donohoe 1y agoYour friend’s frustration is understandable, but calling congestion pricing a scam ignores the actual problem it's solving: too many cars in a dense area where most people don’t drive. Blaming Uber/Lyft is a distraction. Congestion existed long before it, and they’re being regulated too. As for the Queens-to-Bronx example, it’s a fair critique of the transit network, but it’s not even relevant to the congestion zone. Congestion pricing targets the lower core of Manhattan, not cross-borough driving. If anything, the funds raised could eventually help fix exactly those kinds of transit gaps. For background: I live in Brooklyn and work in Downtown Manhattan (in congestion zone). I take the subway. I used to own a car but sold it over 10 years ago because the public transportation made it obsolete. I don't bike.
- xnx 1y agoCan any NYC bikers weigh in on if congestion pricing has had any positive or negative side effects? Are motorcycle-class "bikes" the biggest issue for bikers now?
- CHUCKEESH 1y ago[flagged]