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NYC congestion pricing cuts air pollution by a fifth in six months
- 1970-01-01 11mo agoThe fact that tolls are now directly useful to the entire public must not be underappreciated. This is good news for everyone.
- RhysU 11mo ago[flagged]
- ch4s3 11mo agoIt’s a tariff on DRIVING in Manhattan, the place in America you least need to drive.
- RhysU 11mo agoYou have never tried to leave the city for the suburbs after 9 pm. Driving is still immensely useful, as I sit in my Uber on the way home.
- jonesetc 11mo agoThe $9 toll made it worth your money to Uber instead? Seems like your suburb isn't very far. Maybe a train could help you out.
- _bohm 11mo agoHow are you crashing out over a $9 toll while using a mode of transport that's (conservatively) 3x more expensive to commute just one way? Good grief lmao
- ch4s3 11mo agoIt sounds like the problem is living in the suburbs.
- anonymars 11mo agoShouldn't there be less traffic now?
- eutropia 11mo agoBuses got significantly more reliable as a result of reduced traffic, more ridership on subways allowed for more police presence at stations, reducing crime. Public transit got better.
- RhysU 11mo ago[flagged]
- afavour 11mo ago> Remember kids: congestion pricing is nothing but a tariff on transportation. On driving. And it actually makes driving more appealing, there’s much less traffic so you can get where you’re going much quicker. > Instead of making public transport more appealing through competition Like having multiple subway systems? NYC did that already.
- RhysU 11mo agoIt makes driving more appealing if one discounts the best alternative use of the funds, which humans are irrationally likely to do. That driving seems better is because people suck at thinking about what else they might do with the money given compound returns on its investment.
- itissid 11mo agoThis is also quantitatively correct because for two people coming in from afar you might change two trains or a bus and train and each ticket is at least 3.00$(bus/path from NJ) which is 24$ minimum both ways, with more than two it would make even more sense to take the car. Congestion pricing brings in a toll above the 16$ you pay throu the tunnel. I think it's 18, So 34$ total? So you are incentivized to get more than 2 people by car. Less traffic.
- jeffbee 11mo agoIn American English, tariff always means a fee that applies to international imports and exports. It doesn't apply here.
- scubbo 11mo ago> why isn't congestion pricing a tariff? Because tariffs are imposed on trade between countries. That was easy!
- Dylan16807 11mo ago"There is no such thing as a free lunch" is a very strong argument for tolls, I hope you realize. > everyone paying the tolls who now needs to engage in additional pollution-causing economic activity merely to offset the costs of government-mandated congestion pricing I don't think that's how economics work. People are already doing their best to generate money. Also even if that did happen, the thing you're describing as "pollution-causing" is GDP growth, which is overall desirable. > tariffs Whether a tariff is good depends on what the goal is (and whether it works toward that goal).
- RhysU 11mo agoIf people aren't working harder to offset the tolls then they're strictly poorer as a consequence of the toll.
- Dylan16807 11mo agoYou can say that about any tax. Which makes it extremely unconvincing as an argument against any particular tax, since in the long term money not collected from tax A will be collected from tax B. (And they have the option of not driving, too.)
- 8note 11mo agonot strictly. the pollution has gone down, for instance, reducing future health costs, and improving quality of life.
- Hammershaft 11mo agoPigouvian taxes are genuinely one of the few policies that really are nearly a free lunch in economics.
- RhysU 11mo ago[flagged]
- fwip 11mo agoA tariff is a tax on imports. Driving is not an import.
- smileysteve 11mo agoIronic that with a headline measuring a negative externality of driving that wasn't being priced in and you think transit got the artificial leg up.
- tomhow 11mo agoPlease don't fulminate or engage in ideological battle here. The topic is fine to discuss and disagree about, but HN is for curious conversation not indignation, and the guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. You've posted several ragey comments in a short space of time, and that's not the way HN is meant to be used. Please have a read of the guidelines and make an effort to observe them when participating here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- 8note 11mo agoits not a tariff because tariffs are taxes on imports. you arent paying a tax related to the value of the goods being brought over, and to the extent that new car buyers are importing cars, its neglible compared to what youre trying to draw equivalence to, trump's 30% or so tariffs. instead, its a toll or a usage tax. but also, you want the economic activity of having people in the city, not the cost of supporting their light trucks. people coming from outside of new york are very costly in terms of pollution, road maintenance, and losing real estate to parking spaces.
- afavour 11mo agoThe run up to their implementation was so deeply frustrating. The sheer number of disingenuous objections. And they’ve all been proven false.
- JumpCrisscross 11mo ago> sheer number of disingenuous objections This is unfair. Nobody wants to pay more for anything. And many of the objections resulted in policy adjustments that made the programme better.
- afavour 11mo agoI didn’t say every objection was disingenuous, just that there was an incredible number of objections that were.
- tux1968 11mo agoI'm sure you're being honest about your intent, but a glancing read of your previous comment sounded categorical, to my ear at least, "And they've all been proven false."
- GreymanTheGrey 11mo agoAll of the disingenuous objections. The intent of the OP is very clear, imo.
- 5kh 11mo agoIt’s hard from reading what is written how it is intended. Written communication is hard since it doesn’t encapsulate tone, emphasis, and other cues. I read “all” in this case to mean: “most of the commonly espoused objections”.
- Hammershaft 11mo agoWhich objections lead to better policy?
- hammock 11mo agoThey better be. No one’s rooting for the smog, but a congestion tax is pretty regressive (hurts poorer people more)
- ashleyn 11mo agoWell, Mamdani wants to make transit free. Car taxes can probably help a lot to pay for that.
- jkaplowitz 11mo agoPartial correction: he wants to make buses free, but not subways.
- lmm 11mo agoNot in NYC where less than half the population has access to a car.
- knollimar 11mo ago2.90 is pretty accessible
- jkaplowitz 11mo agoThe 2.90 is even capped at $34 per week. Then there's the 50% discount for low-income NYC residents who qualify and apply for the Fair Fares NYC program, or for anyone regadless of residence who qualifies for reduced fares through age or a qualifying disability. Both of these numbers are changing in early January to $3 and $35 respectively, but same idea. Still, some European countries like Germany offer far cheaper than this, while others like the UK are probably pricer. NYC public transit gives very good value for the US at least.
- seanmcdirmid 11mo agoThis mostly commuters and tradesmen. You aren’t going to get your tools on the train, snd you are driving into the city from white plains or somewhere similar.
- csomar 11mo agoNo it’s not. NYC transit is already one of the most expensive in the world and quality is suspect. Pushing money into a dysfunctional structure doesn’t make it functional and might make it worse. A money grab from the public that goes through a maze of expenses. The solution was to re-structure the MTA. But that’s hard work. Politicians would rather blame the other side and just raise taxes. The people like it because they are grabbing money from what they consider it to be their oppressors.
- jpalawaga 11mo agoThe quality is not suspect. It is one of the world’s few 24/7 systems, and there are many capital improvements happening constantly. For example, making more stations accessible and improving switching equipment to improve reliability and volume. This comment is typical HN “government bad can do no right” fodder. The MTA is truly a marvel in the service it provides. The only advantage it has is age, which is why it is so expansive.
- Invictus0 11mo agoThe MTA is billions in the red because it overpays the union workers and fails to commercialize the stations
- jjj123 11mo agoI simply do not care if my public services are “in the red”. Let’s make them entirely in the red, please.
- rayiner 11mo agoThe point is that the MTA is deeply in the red even though it still charges significant fares. Meanwhile, systems like the London Tube manage to recover at least their operating costs without charging fares that are much if at all higher.
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- hammock 11mo agoWhat did it do to GDP? (Sincerely asking)
- dataviz1000 11mo agoI wonder myself this too. Would people have to say "If NYC was a country would its GDP be 11th largest in the world compared to being the 12th largest GDP in the world like in 2024?" What we can quantify is the economic impact the San Antonio River Walk has or the impact the Atlanta Beltline has which is billions of dollars in added economic activity. Based on those examples, likely it will increase the NYC GDP by millions if not hundreds of millions. We can prove with dollar amounts getting rid of cars in these cases increase the GDP by billions but in NYC they are only decreasing them so probably won't have the positive impact completely getting rid of cars does.
- tonymet 11mo agoand downtown activity. i know NYC rebounded better than most us cities, but nearly all of them still ended lower than pre-Covid
- petesergeant 11mo agoNo city has reliable data on this for a fleet of reasons. The high quality data tends to show little effect on retail foot traffic, slightly more reliable commute times, and then the wealth of health benefits. Linking this to output seems to be beyond economists for cities that have done something similar (London, Stockholm, Milan, etc)
- hammock 11mo agoIs this an AI assisted answer?
- petesergeant 11mo agoNot every comment that disagrees with you was written by a computer
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- khannn 11mo agoRegressive tax keeps the poor out of area with their older vehicles that pollute more than people who can afford to pay a $9 fee per day. News at 11.
- nickv 11mo agoYou act like driving in NYC is free even without the congestion price. You realize how much it costs to park in Manhattan right? $50/day? And if you are coming from the Jersey side, you realize how much the toll is for the tunnel? $17-27. So yea, if you're poor, you're not driving your beater to SoHo and parking in a lot for $50 daily.
- seanmcdirmid 11mo agoMost people driving into the city aren’t parking in Manhattan. When I was living in west Chester county, I would drive in into midtown and always find street parking near Columbia, free. I was surprised how easy it was to drive into the city because I heard lots of stories that it wasn’t. No tolls either.
- nickv 11mo agoI'm confused, if you lived in Westchester and were parking by Columbia why would you be in Midtown? Mind you, it's still like $14-$22 to cross the GWB and if you parked by Columbia after driving down from Westchester you don't have a congestion charge to worry about.
- seanmcdirmid 11mo agoI’m not sure, I’m a bit hazy about the names, it was a dormitory, I never actually saw the school. The dormitory wasn’t on campus. We were interning at IBM Hawthorne at the time and my friend was living at a Columbia dorm and commuting. Sometimes when I took the train the nearest train line stop (to get back to Hawthorne) was Harlem.
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- Pooge 11mo agoI live in Europe so it's still very much considered pedestrian-friendly, but cars and roads scale so bad. Especially with population density going through the roof in bigger cities. I wonder how it's going to look like in 50 years.
- masterphai 11mo ago[dead]
- frankest 11mo agoEV self-driving shuttles you can take on demand so nobody needs to keep a car
- milesskorpen 11mo agoEVs help with air pollution & congestion, but a huge part of the AQI impact of cars is tires, and I don't think there's a solution for that yet short of "fewer cars"
- d_sem 11mo agoelectric bicycles have significantly less tire waste.
- amanaplanacanal 11mo agoHow do EVs help with congestion? They take up the same amount of space as an ICE car.
- crazygringo 11mo agoEV shuttles will come in lots of capacities. Vans, buses. But you won't need to worry about schedules or preset routes because it's all dynamic. Wherever there would be the most congestion is precisely where the app will give you the biggest discount to switch from your private vehicle into a bus, then switch back into another private vehicle for the last 5 minutes of your trip.
- weird-eye-issue 11mo ago"average daily peak concentrations of PM2.5 dropped by 3.05 µg/m³. For context, background pollution levels in the region typically hover around 8-9 µg/m³, making this reduction particularly significant for public health." I think that the numbers are already low enough that the drop is actually not very significant, at all. Is there any data that shows better health outcomes at 8 vs 13 for PM 2.5 levels? From my understanding adverse health outcomes come at exposure over the long term to higher levels like 30 minimum For context I have several air purifiers in my home and I'm all for better air quality but the percentage difference makes it sound like a much bigger drop but when these numbers are already so small I just am skeptical it really makes a difference...
- Forgeties79 11mo ago> I think that the numbers are already low enough Is that low? I don’t know what is considered high or low here.
- hn_throwaway_99 11mo agoThis is not accurate. The WHO (which recommends lower levels than US authorities) recommends an annual PM 2.5 level below 5 µg/m³: https://www.c40knowledgehub.org/s/article/WHO-Air-Quality-Guidelines?language=en_US https://www.c40knowledgehub.org/s/article/WHO-Air-Quality-Gu... But more importantly, when it comes to PM 2.5 levels, there are really no safe levels, the risks are just dose dependent, so lower is always better. In a city the size of NYC, lowering air pollution by 20% means a significant decrease in effects. To give a good analogy, driving a car on the US is still quite safe, most of us take that risk, but still, thousands die annually from car accidents. A one fifth reduction in deaths from car accidents, even from its current low level, would be a major deal. In NYC, around 1 in 20 deaths is linked to air pollution.
- weird-eye-issue 11mo agoThat's the strictest "policy" I've seen and I was asking about any specific health data not WHO guidelines "In NYC, around 1 in 20 deaths is linked to air pollution." A difference between 8 and 12 PM 2.5 levels won't change that
- listenallyall 11mo agoThe article says "average daily peak concentrations of PM2.5 dropped by 3.05 µg/m³. For context, background pollution levels in the region typically hover around 8-9 µg/m³, making this reduction particularly significant for public health." But 8-9 was already considered a safe level: "Most studies indicate PM2.5 at or below 12 μg/m3 is considered healthy with little to no risk from exposure. If the level goes to or above 35 μg/m3 during a 24-hour period, the air is considered unhealthy." (https://www.indoorairhygiene.org/pm2-5-explained/ https://www.indoorairhygiene.org/pm2-5-explained/) So, good job on reducing pollution, but you already had very safe levels (well, the article doesn't tell us what the old "peak concentrations" were). Since the levels were "little to no risk", the claim of "significant health benefits" (i.e. reduction in disease or death) should be challenged.
- energy123 11mo agoThe hidden risk of round numbers and sharp thresholds in clinical practice: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-025-02079-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-025-02079-y Smaller doses of a poison are better than less small doses. Using coarse linguistic categories to argue otherwise is an abuse of the purpose of categories as a linguistic tool.
- listenallyall 11mo agoKinda irrelevant, since 12 isn't really a round number (like 10 would be). Further, the article is essentially saying that there is far less difference between 11 and 13 than might be assumed by a categorical model that says one level is inside the "safe" level and one is outside of it. But that isn't the issue here - 9 was already quite safe, the risk is very close to zero, so going lower doesn't reduce risk much - because the existing risk can't get much lower. > Smaller doses of a poison are better than less small doses Since 1996, the EPA has mandated that unleaded gasoline must be below 0.05 grams of lead per gallon. While the elimination of lead up to this point was a massive benefit to public health, is there any significant health benefit to reducing this further below 0.05? If so, who's claiming that and why haven't the standards changed in 30 years?
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- tootie 11mo agoIt's frustrating how poorly most people understand economics and the distinction between price and cost. Everybody in the world is being asked to blithely accept the massive unpaid costs of motor vehicle usage. This is a tiny step towards recouping some of this costs. Roadways, parking, collisions, pollution, noise have all be costs born by all of us. And in NYC that's a load of non-drivers. We should be adopting all sorts of policies to pass those costs on to drivers. People panic over the thought of free buses when we have millions of miles of free roads.
- apparent 11mo ago> we have millions of miles of free roads. Are you familiar with the gas tax? Vehicle registration fees?
- adgjlsfhk1 11mo agoThey don't begin to cover road construction costs (not even mentioning fair market rent for the amount of area they take up)
- postflopclarity 11mo agoare you familiar with how negligible a fraction of the costs that car-dependent infrastructure imposes on society those two taxes represent
- rcpt 11mo agoRoads are very expensive. Those taxes are never high enough to pay for the roads.
- CGMthrowaway 11mo agoThere was a study published about how much air pollution dropped in NYC during the COVID lockdown. PM2.5 was found to have dropped 36%. However with more robust analysis, this drop was discovered to not be statistically significant. I would caution anyone reading this who is tempted by confirmation bias. Source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7314691/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7314691/
- johnnienaked 11mo agoWFH anyone?
- foruhar 11mo agoI couldn't find anything more recent that this but apparently it has made the streets safer for pedestrians too. "Traffic fatalities in the Congestion Pricing zone are down 40% from last year." This is from July 2025: https://transalt.org/press-releases/new-data-from-transportation-alternatives-and-families-for-safe-streets-shows-vision-zero-works-should-be-expanded-congestion-pricing-has-made-streets-safer https://transalt.org/press-releases/new-data-from-transporta...
- _jzlw 11mo ago[flagged]