Congestion charging in NYC: a dream that died

New York City was on the cusp of reinventing itself for the 21st century, said Justin Davidson in New York Magazine, but governor Kathy Hochul has just ordered “a screeching U-turn into the distant past”. 

At the end of this month, the city had been due to bring in a congestion charge that would have imposed a $15 toll on vehicles entering the traffic-clogged heart of Manhattan. The toll, proposed by then-mayor Mike Bloomberg in 2007 and approved by the state legislature in 2019, would have made streets safer, less polluted, and more pleasant for pedestrians and cyclists, while raising an estimated $1 billion a year to update the city’s ageing public-transport infrastructure.

Cities with similar congestion-charging plans – London, Paris, Stockholm – have seen 20% drops in traffic, improved air quality, and fewer traffic deaths. But the New York plan is very unpopular with suburbanites and outer-borough residents who prefer to drive into Manhattan to work, eat, or go to the theatre. In the face of opposition, Hochul got cold feet, placing an “indefinite pause” on the controversial scheme. 

‘Unintentional consequences’

Sorry, but “Americans do not much want to pay $15 to drive their cars anywhere” – even in New York City, said Kevin D. Williamson on The Dispatch. Hochul explained her decision by saying the toll “risks too many unintended consequences”. No kidding. Don’t all progressive, big-government projects have unintended consequences?

Introducing an onerous new toll at this time would be “lunacy”, said Andrew Stuttaford in National Review. In New York, post-Covid hybrid working schedules have devastated commercial real estate (the office vacancy rate is around 50%), as well as the thousands of local businesses that cater to commuters. “New York City… needs to avoid doing anything that might discourage people from coming to work (or to play or to shop) in Manhattan.”

‘A non-starter’

It’s a shame, said Megan McArdle in The Washington Post. In theory, congestion charging is a great idea. It uses the price mechanism to create more efficient use of a scarce resource – road space – that is otherwise rationed only by people’s tolerance for wasting time in traffic jams.

If it could work anywhere in America, it would be NYC, the country’s densest and most walkable city, the place for which the word “gridlock” was invented. The scheme would have inspired some drivers to carpool and others to take public transport or shop closer to home, reducing jams and leaving residents as a whole better off.

But there’s no getting around the fact that it would also have left a lot of existing drivers worse off – and people objected to that. Polls show that two-thirds of New Yorkers oppose the plan, in a city where less than half of households even own a car. A “less democratically responsive government might have been able to ram it through”, but in fractious America, congestion charging is “a non-starter”.