Traffic snarl-ups are a fact of life for New Yorkers, but maybe not for much longer. A plan to tackle both congestion and pollution by introducing road charging is in the final stages of review and could be implemented within a year.
An initial proposal to charge private vehicles a fee to enter Downtown and Midtown Manhattan during business hours was passed back in 2019, but the Department of Transportation refused to approve it when the Trump administration was in office. Now that a new government more receptive to the idea is holding the country’s reins, the project is gathering momentum again, just like the traffic might if the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) gives it the green light later this spring.
TransCore, the company chosen by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to design and operate the charging system, will have 310 days from the scheme’s approval to get everything up and running, meaning New Yorkers could be paying tolls to use Manhattan’s roads before the end of the year.
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Regular passenger car drivers would be charged somewhere between $9 and $23 to use the roads to meet 2019 legislation demanding the scheme raise $1 billion per year. The exact toll amount hasn’t been set and depends on who gets exemption from paying higher tolls, Yahoo News reports.
Modelling by transportation analyst Charles Komanoff predicts that the introduction of congestion pricing will cut New York’s carbon dioxide emissions by 1 million metric tons annually, which would be the same as removing 216,000 cars from the city’s roads. Many drivers are expected to switch to New York’s ageing subway system, which could get much needed funding from the toll fees, but only if the scheme survives opposition from politicians and residents unhappy with the prospect of paying to drive on their own streets to get the go-ahead.
New York wouldn’t be the first city to charge people a fee to drive on its streets. London introduced a congestion zone for its central area in 2003 and has recently expanded its Ultra Low Emissions Zone boundary that charges people a fee to drive older, more polluting, vehicles in a much bigger portion of the map.