MTA Declares Congestion Pricing a Manhattan Success, but Drivers and Data Beg to Differ

New York City’s new congestion pricing scheme promises a traffic fix but delivers a complex tangle of data, dollars, and divided opinions.

New Yorkers possess a rare talent for expressing frustration—never more so than when stuck in an endless crawl south of 60th Street. “It hasn’t changed anything,” grumbled Mohammad Haque, a veteran yellow-cab driver, just shy of a year into Manhattan’s pioneering congestion pricing programme. Despite grand claims from the state’s leadership and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) of “transformational” results, many drivers insist traffic remains hopelessly snarled.

Congestion pricing, implemented in mid-2023, was pitched as a double boon: an $9 toll meant to thin the daily swarm of cars entering Manhattan’s most choked streets and, crucially, to fill the MTA’s coffers with half a billion dollars annually. By MTA’s reckoning, the scheme is already exceeding its revenue targets, with projections showing over $500 million flowing in for the first year—welcome news for a mass-transit network perpetually on the brink of financial distress.

Governor Kathy Hochul and Janno Lieber, the MTA’s top brass, have proclaimed early victory. Their figures suggest vehicle entries into the congestion zone have slumped by 11%. Other, less vested, observers are more circumspect. Crossing data from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey tell a cooler story: traffic fell by less than 5% year-on-year for April, the latest period with comparable figures. Differences of method—and motive—abound.

To assemble its celebratory numbers, the MTA compared traffic in the newly tolled zone to what, by its own estimation, would have occurred absent the toll—a hypothetical baseline, imputed through modelling. Critics complain that this approach borders on wishful arithmetic, built as it is on assumptions and a lone October day’s data. “A crude way of doing it, and it hurts confidence in the program,” contends Nicole Gelinas of the Manhattan Institute, echoing a broader unease with the MTA’s analytic rigour.

From a first-principles perspective, any easing of Manhattan gridlock should bring immediate civic benefit. Fewer cars could, in theory, mean safer streets, cleaner air, and less time wasted behind the wheel. Yet the lived experience, particularly for tradesmen and taxis that form the city’s circulatory system, appears less buoyant. The toll’s introduction simply tacks a new cost onto the privilege of New York’s most predictably unpleasant journey. The cabbies’ lament—that nothing has fundamentally changed—resonates across the five boroughs.

For the city’s broader economy, the calculus grows murkier. The $500 million in fresh revenue, earmarked for “generational upgrades” to public transport, offers cause for tempered optimism. New York’s subways, battered by decades of underinvestment, are in desperate need of modernisation. Yet, the city’s business community finds little solace if key arteries remain clogged; worse, there are signs the levy has stimulated an uptick in ride-sharing fares and goods deliveries, with costs likely passed on to consumers—an unintended tax on the city’s own productivity.

Politically, congestion pricing is proving both durable and divisive. Governor Hochul, facing both public skepticism and litigation, insists “the cameras are staying on.” Her administration points to polling (the provenance undisclosed) showing drivers are warming, grudgingly, to the toll. Anecdotal evidence—exasperated tweets and calls to radio shows—suggests otherwise. The MTA’s fixation on its own numbers, combined with imperfect transparency and patchy methodology, has left space for conspiracy, or at the least, informed grumbling.

More broadly, New York enters a global experiment in urban traffic management. London, Singapore, and Stockholm have all adopted various forms of congestion charging over the past two decades, with generally positive outcomes. London recorded a 15% drop in central-city traffic after its 2003 scheme; Stockholm’s pilot fell by near one-fifth. Yet both cities set lower tolls and made data a public good, rather than a cudgel for public-relations campaigns. These international peers offer a cautionary lesson: accuracy in reporting and nimbleness in adjustment matter as much as the toll itself.

Measuring success in a city that thwarts easy counting

What, then, to make of New York’s efforts? On the one hand, the swelling MTA revenue proves congestion pricing can be a reliable funding stream. On the other, the true scale of traffic easing remains contested, with even civil engineers (such as Alison Conway of City University of New York) worrying that measured reductions might be a statistical mirage—too dependent on narrow, non-representative timeframes for comfort.

The city’s unique topology—a thin sliver of land, fed by dozens of bridges and tunnels—complicates any direct comparison. Some drivers, seeking to skirt the toll, may simply shift congestion to adjacent neighbourhoods or alter travel times, further confounding the programme’s stated aims. Early signs suggest only a modest redistribution of flow, not a dramatic transformation of urban mobility.

In sum, the MTA’s scheme appears neither the resounding triumph its architects claim, nor the utter debacle naysayers envisage. What emerges is more prosaic: a hard-nosed exercise in urban tax collection with a modest, if not paltry, impact on traffic thus far. Whether the city’s long-suffering commuters will eventually perceive the upside—quicker commutes, better transit, or simply air less tinged by automotive fumes—will depend on patient measurement and ongoing transparency. On those scores, alas, Gotham has much room for improvement.

Despite the acrimony, we reckon the toll’s financial logic will likely cement its permanence. Traffic in Manhattan, like weather in Britain, will remain a safe and infinite topic for complaint. How the city adjusts its numbers and its narrative in future years—ideally with scrupulous data and less spin—will determine whether congestion pricing becomes a model for the world’s megacities, or yet another New York oddity. ■