The first data for New York City’s new congestion pricing program shows that gridlock lessened in its initial week as fewer drivers traveled into the core of Manhattan, though traffic continued to be heavy in parts of the tolling zone.
In the first six days of the program, officials estimated, there were tens of thousands fewer vehicles entering the busiest parts of Manhattan below 60th Street, which includes some of the city’s most famous destinations like Times Square, the Empire State Building and the High Line.
Congestion pricing aims to lure people out of their cars and onto mass transit. Most passenger cars are now charged $9 a day to enter the tolling zone at peak hours, with additional fees for trucks and other vehicles as well as overnight discounts.
The program started on a Sunday, which typically has light traffic, but the real test came the next day as many workers returned after the holidays. The average weekday entries into the zone and the highways that surround it fell by 7.5 percent compared with an estimate of an average workday in January before the program, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. On Sunday, entries fell by about 18.5 percent, when compared with the same base line.
“There’s so much evidence that people are experiencing a much less traffic-congested environment,” said Janno Lieber, the chairman and chief executive of the M.T.A., which is overseeing the program. “They’re seeing streets that are moving more efficiently, and they’re hearing less noise, and they’re feeling a less tense environment around tunnels and bridges.”
The drop in traffic represented an average of 43,800 fewer vehicles per day, or 219,000 fewer vehicles per week, entering the zone and its surrounding highways, according to the authority, which calculated the estimates using data from previous years. Traffic was the lightest at the start of the week as frigid weather settled into the city, but gradually increased throughout the week, following typical traffic trends.
With only one week of data, it is far too early to know definitively whether the program is working. M.T.A. officials said that the data is preliminary and reflects the very early days of a major policy shift. There is no historical data on the number of vehicles that entered the zone daily before the program, so perfect comparisons are not yet possible. The numbers provided by the M.T.A. were calculated using a small sample with many variables that have not been thoroughly studied.
It is also unclear how much driver behavior can be directly tied to congestion pricing, or other factors such as the subfreezing temperatures that gripped the city when the tolls began on Jan. 5, possibly keeping many motorists at home.
Yet the data released by the M.T.A. is the first hard evidence that the congestion pricing plan, the first of its kind in the nation, had a promising start toward its ambitious goal of reducing gridlock. The program also aims to raise much-needed funds for transit improvements.
Opponents of congestion pricing have argued that the tolling program will do little to reduce traffic while punishing drivers from outside Manhattan, many of whom do not have convenient and reliable transit options. These critics have called it a money grab by a transit agency with a history of financial problems.
Samuel I. Schwartz, a former city traffic commissioner who supports congestion pricing, said the first week was a crucial test. “New York’s a tough town,” he said. “Any show that opens and gets panned the first week usually closes. We have survived the first week.”
Before the tolls were implemented, M.T.A. officials had predicted traffic would be reduced in the congestion pricing zone by about 13 percent over the course of a year.
The data seemed to confirm what some New Yorkers have said they have already noticed: fewer traffic jams, less honking and more curbside parking on some blocks in and near the congestion pricing zone.
Traffic moved faster through most major bridges and tunnels connecting Manhattan with the other boroughs and surrounding suburbs, according to the M.T.A. On Thursday, vehicles heading westbound on the Williamsburg Bridge traveled 45 percent more quickly than on Thursdays in January last year.
Some drivers and bus riders have already seen shorter commutes. It usually takes Josh Castro, 28, a construction project manager from Montclair, N.J., an hour and 15 minutes to reach a parking garage on East 63rd Street via the Lincoln Tunnel. Last Monday, he made it in just 40 minutes, he said.
But Tony O’Reilly, 62, who takes the bus twice a week from Freehold, N.J., said Thursday that he was skeptical the clearer roads would last. “There’s only a lull now because it’s after the holidays and it’s cold out,” he said.
Traffic improved along some streets within the congestion zone, but remained snarled in other areas like the length of West 42nd Street and Ninth Avenue between West 60th and 14th Streets.
It was unclear whether more drivers had turned to the city’s subway system and local buses. Ridership in the transit system has increased by about 6 percent over the past year as the city recovers from the steep drop in passengers during the worst of the coronavirus pandemic.
The M.T.A.’s Express buses, however, saw a significant increase in riders last week. The buses were able to cut down on commute times and sped across bridges and tunnels. Ridership was up by 6 percent compared with January 2024, from 67,000 riders to 71,000.
The SIM24 bus, which connects Staten Island to Manhattan, saved seven minutes while traveling through the Lincoln Tunnel compared with last year. Over its entire route, the bus had a travel time reduction of nearly four minutes.
Buses that cross the East or Hudson Rivers into Manhattan had similar gains, especially during the morning rush hours. The B39, which often gets stuck in traffic on the Williamsburg Bridge as vehicles line up to reach Manhattan, had trip speeds that were nearly four minutes shorter compared with last year, a travel time reduction of 28 percent.
Transit officials said that it is unlikely that overall ridership data of subways and buses will immediately reflect any significant changes related to congestion pricing, because the number of people who typically drive into the zone is dwarfed by those who use mass transit.
Of the 1.5 million people who work in the tolling zone, about 85 percent take mass transit, according to the M.T.A. Only 11 percent drive — about 143,000 drivers before congestion pricing was implemented.
New Jersey Transit officials said that they had not seen a notable increase in transit users last week, but noted that it was “too early to see how commuter trends may shift due to congestion pricing only a few days after implementation.”
Michael Ostrovsky, a professor at Stanford University who studies congestion pricing, said the early statistics were encouraging and could offer lessons for other American cities that want to reduce traffic and expand mass transit options. Mr. Ostrovsky said that there was probably less improvement in traffic on local roads because Ubers, taxis and commercial trucks were still circulating within the tolling zone.
“The results are showing that the congestion pricing can be very effective,” Mr. Ostrovsky said.
The new $9 toll has already made some drivers think twice about heading into the city.
Cleber Lliguicoda, 48, a construction worker from Hackensack, N.J., usually drives to work in Manhattan. But on Thursday, he and a co-worker arrived by bus. “It’s very expensive now to get to work,” he said. “My boss doesn’t cover it, so we’re taking the bus.”
Ivan Ortiz, 43, a sanitation worker in Weehawken, said that he would now ask his relatives in Manhattan and Queens to visit him in New Jersey.
“It’s going to have me going to the city less,” he said. “But you know what, hopefully it alleviates traffic and everybody starts hopping on buses and trains. I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy.”
Sean Piccoli, Makaelah Walters and Wesley Parnell contributed reporting.
