New York’s slow (noisy, polluted) road to congestion pricing

Hi, it’s Rose! I write for Datawrapper’s blog, and this Weekly Chart is about a crazy deal that may soon expire: the right to drive your car to Manhattan for free.

It would be hard to summarize, and maybe hard to believe, the proposals, counterproposals, approvals, reversals, lawsuits, protests, environmental assessments, and general political wrangling that make up the story of congestion pricing in New York City. And all this for a policy that has never actually been in force.

The idea is simple. Manhattan is crowded, and moving people around it in cars is a very inefficient use of space — not to mention noisy, polluting, and slow. To keep the city clean and the roads open for necessary traffic, we should encourage people to travel by subway whenever possible. Meanwhile, the MTA — the agency responsible for public transit in New York — is chronically short of funds, relying heavily on fares for day-to-day operations and frequently unable to complete capital projects when promised budgets fail to materialize.

In theory, these two problems go very well together: Charge a toll to drive into the most crowded neighborhoods and give the toll revenue to the MTA. After all the details and carve-outs, the basic effect would be somewhat fewer cars on the road in Manhattan and somewhat more, and more reliable, money for the subway system.

So why has this plan — theoretically underway since 2007, killed and revived at the state level, approved in 2019, officially ready to go in June 2024 before being “indefinitely paused” by the governor at the last minute — had such a hard road?

When discussing the subject with my colleagues on Monday, several people brought up the fact that New York is quite large relative to its own congested center — that is, the legal boundaries of the city include some areas that might elsewhere be considered suburbs. Luc contrasted this to the situation in Paris, which has passed a number of traffic-reducing measures in recent years. As these maps, which are on the same scale, show, the limits of Paris proper are drawn much more tightly — which has an effect on the constituency for city politics in general.

The flip side of that is that, despite an extensive subway network, many New Yorkers still find themselves facing a long commute by public transit. The entire borough of Staten Island, as well as large parts of Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, is more than an hour from Midtown Manhattan by bus or train. London, which has had a successful congestion pricing program for years, has almost no such neighborhoods, despite being twice the size of New York City in land area.

The topic was raised because, as of Monday, congestion pricing is officially back on the table. The toll, now lowered from $15 to $9, could be rolled out as soon as January — though New Yorkers have learned not to hold their breath.

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That's all from me for today! Come back next week for a Weekly Chart by our head of communications, Lisa.