Congestion pricing for drivers entering lower Manhattan went into effect on Sunday, January 5th, charging most motorists entering New York City below 60th Street $9.
The plan, intended to raise revenues for the struggling MTA and reduce traffic, is being celebrated by some and maligned by others.
WAMC’s Lucas Willard spoke with David Banks, a lecturer of Globalization Studies at the University at Albany’s Department of Geography and Planning, about how congestion pricing has been used – and received by the public – around the world…
Congestion pricing relies on a really simple economic theory that if you want less of something, you charge money for it or you increase the price, right? Simple supply and demand curve. And a little bit behind that is also that you want the price to capture the cost of driving, and so congestion pricing is also supposed to capture a lot of those costs that economists call like, you know, externalities, right? Things that you know, things like pollution and noise. You want to put a price on that so people make the full choice right about their actions. Where did people come up with this? Well, it's actually a pretty well-established scheme. The first one, first time it was implemented, was in Singapore in the 70s, that that was before electronic tolling, and it was a little dicey. It spread traffic elsewhere, but they eventually got the hang of it. London, Stockholm, Milan, all have congestion pricing. Those last two being smaller than New York City, but London's is one of the largest congestion pricing programs. They saw, I think it was somewhere between 30 and 40% reductions in a cars going into the congestion zone, and that's even though, like 40% of people can get some sort of discount on the congestion pricing. So, it's a very effective means of reducing traffic.
Now, one of the main arguments from opponents on congestion pricing in New York is that the areas that have the least amount of public transit options will be most affected, like in Orange County and Rockland County, New York. The public officials say, ‘Hey, We're underserved by trains and other ways to get into New York.’ How does the New York City metro area then compare with some of these other communities that have been using congestion pricing, maybe for decades, with regards to public transportation and allowing people to get in and out of the city?
Yeah, that's fair. I would kind of say to two things, really, you know, one, it's not a new phenomenon that the MTA needs funding, right? And this congestion pricing scheme is going to enable about $15 billion worth of loans so that the MTA can modernize, and that's absolutely necessary to solve that exact problem that they're talking about. Now, if they were concerned about that before, then we should have been working on this for a long time, right? And we haven't. And sometimes, maybe you need a little kick in the butt. You know, that's an industry term, to get that off the…to make that happen, right? And so that, I think that's really the answer there.
So, have you been keeping an eye on then how New York's rollout has been going over the last few days?
You know, big asterisk. I think it's too early to tell sure, you know, we're in the first inning. But, you know, I just, I mean, videos of, like, friends and other stuff I've seen…the streets are dead. I know Monday there was like threats of, like a winter storm, I think so that that kept people away. And it's still, like, kind of a quiet time of the year, right after the holiday. So, I think it's too early to say anything, but I mean, so far, I mean, there's, there's been no five alarm fires, you know?
So, do you think that this is something that New Yorkers might come around to? I think that there's a lot of skepticism about this. People don't want to pay a toll, $9 and it's set to go up from there in years down the road. But do you think that this is something that gradually New Yorkers will come around to?
Yeah, so I do. Case in point. I think it was Stockholm when they were putting this together, it was pretty unpopular, but then they need to do a referendum…and they only did a pilot right, and then they had to do a referendum in order to keep it. And it won that referendum after people saw how nice it was to have less congestion in the downtown. So, I get it right. No one wants to just keep, you know, prices are going up all over the place for all sorts of things, but 90% of commuters to the congestion zone already use transit, right? So, it's a fairly small group of people that are going to have to pay this, and its usually people that can afford it. The it's estimated that somewhere around $150,000 a year is the salary of people that commute into Lower Manhattan by car. So, I think they can afford it. And sometimes it's not even $9 it's gonna be $6 because they get some credits from other tolls on the bridges and tunnels. So, I think, I think people can afford it, and I think once they see the benefits of it, it'll become pretty popular pretty quickly.
What are some of the benefits besides the streets being quieter?
Yeah, so there, I mean, sound pollution is a big one, right? But the other one is air pollution, right? The traffic is one of the largest producers of air pollution. Another one is pedestrian safety. You know, when Obama changed the CAFE standards, that's the formula that automakers use to decide, like kind of how energy efficient their cars should be. That's what has led to today, having much, much, much larger cars on the road like no US automaker makes a sedan anymore, right? They're all SUVs, crossovers and trucks. Every state in the country you know, just kind of expand out here, right, the most popular car is a truck. Right? And so pedestrian fatalities all across the country have gone up in the last couple years in that, and New York City is included in that. And so, it’s my hope that we also see a reduction in fatalities for pedestrian deaths when there's less cars on the road. The other thing we can, we could possibly see is, you know, in New York City's already been doing this for about a decade, is reclaiming a lot of the that road space for pedestrians and for transit and for bikes, right? And I think that's going to be a lot more doable now. And I think people really like it. Once they get it, they really like it. They don't want to give it up.
I also just want to mention the lowering of speed limits from 30 to 25 miles per hour. That's something that’s sort of catching on, including here in Albany, where we're speaking, Kingston. Where do you see sort of the ripple effect of these traffic measures, congestion pricing being one of them, but because New York City is a bit of a trendsetter, do you think that these ideas will catch on in other cities across the country?
Yeah, so this is where I'm a little less optimistic, only because you have to include design of the street in your decision to lower speeds in cities that implemented congestion pricing, some of them actually saw an increase in the in how fast cars went in the congestion area, because there's less cars, right? You're not stuck in traffic, so you go faster. And so it's really important that you know, you not only just like, post us a speed limit, because, you know, we've all broken the speed limit, I think in our cars.
Not me, never.
Okay, yeah, me, me either. But you know other people, right? And you know you may go 510, over, right? You that's because you're just like, you know, paying attention to your gauge, the design of the street is actually what will slow people down much more effectively. And so we also need to make sure that we're doing what's called road diets right? bumping out the sidewalk at cross streets and an intersection, so that the distance that pedestrians need to travel is shorter. You need to maybe, you know, raise the actual road bed in those intersections, so that you have to go, you know, it's kind of like a big speed bump, right? You have to do, you have to do stuff like that. Bring in street trees, anything that brings in stuff closer to the right of way where people are driving makes drivers notice how fast they're going, right? Because if you see something really close to you, and it goes by really fast, it feels like you're going faster, so you want to do lots of different things to make, to signal to drivers how fast they're actually going, and that will keep the speed low. Speed limits alone aren't enough.
OK. So right now, back to congestion pricing. President-elect Donald Trump has said he will kill congestion pricing. There are lawsuits that have been filed. This is something that New Jersey tried to stop as a last-minute last-ditch attempt before the implementation. This past Sunday, they asked a judge for an injunction to prevent it from going into effect. That judge did not side with Jersey on that case. But is congestion pricing in danger, and if it is killed, do you think that there will be a move by some, maybe people who have felt that it's beneficial already to keep it in place? Or do you think that this is something that, if you had a crystal ball, will be going away soon after it was implemented.
Congestion pricing throws out of whack every kind of political position and orientation you could imagine. I can't imagine anything else where Donald Trump and the United Teachers Association would agree right, because they both want to kill it, right? And I, you know, UTA, that's the union that represents teachers in the city, right? That's a division of NYSUT and AFT. I, as a professor at SUNY, I am in those unions also, I respectfully disagree right with my union siblings on that, though I'm only speaking for myself here, right, and, and so, you know, they could possibly win out on a lawsuit like that. I really hope not, because that would be, I think, friendly fire to other unions, right, particularly the cabs. The yellow cabs are unionized, and they actually get a discount compared to Uber and Lyft right on this congestion pricing. And I think that's actually less talked about, an important aspect here. It also means that the money that is going to be raised for the MTA, a lot of that goes to pensions and salary and health insurance for working people that make the MTA work. And I think those things are really important. I think it's misguided for other unions to prevent that. So, I do see this as a union issue, and I think congestion pricing is good on the whole right for union folks, for working folks, I'm now going to switch to the exact opposite political spectrum and say that I think Donald Trump is also wrong for things that he cares about too, right? A street, right, that cars drive through isn't making money, right? We have to pay money to keep streets working for cars to go through all the free parking is costing us money, insane amounts of money, right? That money, that opportunity costs that were foregoing. I don't know if anyone's ever calculated it, but it would be in the millions, if not, maybe the billions of dollars that is space used in downtown for cars that's not making any money. So, if we can free up that space parking, do those road diets that I talked about, right, and reduce how much space is used for traveling and parked cars, that's so much money that can that can be made either in, like, tables out and, you know, remember, over COVID? We, you know, they're like restaurants that put tables out in parking spaces. All that can happen again and be permanent and make and make people money, right? Let's, let's do that, right? So, I don't, I think a lot of the detractors are kind of, you know, fighting their own politics here. Because I don't, I don't think they fully understand how much we can really do well by getting cars out of the densest part of North America, right? Cars just don't belong there and this is just the beginning of trying to really, really push them out of where they don't belong.
David, thanks for coming in. Appreciate it.
Thank you so much for having me.
