Congestion Pricing Hits the Streets

Recently, a new system for raising money for the MTA has been introduced in New York City, known as Congestion Pricing This is a system that requires citizens  to pay  nine dollars to enter Manhattan anywhere south of Central Park between the hours of 9am to 9pm, outside of these times fare will be 2.25 dollars. It’s intended to lower traffic, and lower carbon emissions by getting cars off the streets, while all money and profits will be used to help improve the general quality of the MTA.

This system has been met with mixed reviews. It does seem to be accomplishing its purpose of lowering traffic, but New York City residents are extremely  unhappy with having to pay more money to move around the city. Many people believe that the money made through congestion pricing could also be made in alternative ways, potentially lowering fare evasion on subways and buses. Considering that fare evasion on subways alone is projected to lose just as much money as congestion pricing is making, according to an article by CBS news, this leaves many people upset, especially residents of Manhattan who now have to pay money to re-enter their place of residence. Margaret Ordukhanyan, a member of the Tribeca Neighborhood Association and a Manhattan resident, argues that the main issue of congestion pricing is that it hurts people who live in congestion zones, she mentioned that “In London, people living in congestion zones have the option to just pay a heavily discounted annual fee instead of paying congestion tax every time they leave their homes”. Later in the interview she brought up that “It just seems like people living in these congestion zones are being punished for where they live”.

Although some people are annoyed about the system itself, it does seem to have served its purpose of lowering traffic around the city. Travel times have gone down by 34% and there’s been a 7.5% drop in traffic overall (streetsblog).The misconception that people hold is that it’s not just there to get cars off the streets because they frustrate and inconvenience certain groups of people, it’s because of their general carbon emissions. Transportation accounts for about 47% of New York’s annual emissions (cbcny), and congestion pricing is doing its part to combat that. On top of that, in the same interview from earlier, Margaret Ordukhanyan mentioned that “...because I live next to the Holland Tunnel, it’s basically impossible for me to drive after five on Fridays or long weekends, but recently Holland Tunnel traffic has cleared up a lot”. It’s clear that congestion pricing has the right impact, but there might be a few ways to do it better.

The issue that a lot of people hold with congestion pricing, particularly people that live in congestion zones, is that this makes them have to pay very frequently for potentially short trips, and just getting back to their house on a regular basis. A good way to fix this is to follow a system similar to what they follow in London, England where people living in these congestion zones can pay a discounted annual fee to avoid having to pay congestion tax every time they leave and re-enter their house. Margaret Ordukhanyan also argues that “it would be helpful to see how the money made is being spent”, and this holds true with a lot of people. They can’t see how their money is being put to use, so they in turn are left guessing about what improvements to the MTA are actually going to be made.

In the end, congestion pricing seems to be a good concept, that definitely seems to be doing it’s job, but because of the issues mentioned in this article, it does need some changes before we can consider it a sustainable plan in the future.