New York’s Congestion Pricing Cuts Traffic But Raises Equity Concerns

One month into New York City’s congestion pricing scheme, key metrics are trending in the right direction but the city’s poorest borough fears exposure to yet more toxic air pollution as commercial trucks reroute to avoid the tolls.

This mixed outcome offers lessons for Canadian cities like Vancouver and Toronto, where a similar model could ease traffic and fund transit but faces political hurdles.

Figures from New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) suggest that 16% fewer cars entered Manhattan’s Central Business District in January compared to 2024, reports Untapped New York. For comparison, vehicle traffic dropped 18% in the first year of London’s flagship congestion pricing scheme, launched in 2003.

Commutes are also improving, with inbound trips from the Hudson and East Rivers 10% to 30% faster than this time last year, and outbound trips accelerating by a whopping 59% in some places. Buses are also moving faster, with express buses shedding as much as 10 minutes off their routes.

And more riders are on these buses, with the MTA reporting a 6% bump on weekday express buses, 21% on the weekends. Non-express ridership is also up, though in smaller increments: 1.5% on weekdays, 8% on weekends.

Fewer vehicles will likely translate into cleaner air for Manhattanites, with the MTA expecting a decline in all categories of toxic air pollution, from volatile organic compounds to PM2.5 particulate matter.

But not every New Yorker will be breathing easier, writes Inside Climate News. Concern is especially high for residents in the South Bronx.

One of the nation’s poorest neighborhoods, South Bronx has long been overburdened with traffic and corresponding levels of air pollution, especially along the six-lane, east-to-west Cross Bronx Expressway (CBE) that cuts across the northern part of the borough. Five kilometres to the south, Bruckner Boulevard is “another corridor of concern,” NYC transport and traffic expert Charles Komanoff told The Energy Mix.

MTA planners had anticipated that congestion pricing might push more commercial truck traffic onto the CBE, the New York Times wrote in 2022. It was an outcome of concern for the 220,000 people who live along the expressway, the vast majority of them poor and people of colour, who would face higher levels of toxic pollution. The authority briefly considered a flat toll for all vehicles hoping to limit the volume of rerouted trucks, but ditched this strategy on grounds that it would undercut benefits in the congestion zone. Policymakers ultimately landed on upwards of US$14 for trucks, compared to $9 for cars. By MTA figures, worst-case scenarios would see PM 2.5 concentrations around the Bronx expressway increase to 11 micrograms per cubic metre, up from 10.9, remaining just below 12 micrograms, the Environmental Protection Agency’s mandated maximum for long-term exposure to the toxin.

Harvard public health professor Francesca Dominici warned that even such a seemingly small increase would be significant for populations whose respiratory health is already compromised.

“Considering that the South Bronx is an area with already high asthma rates and other pre-existing health conditions, even a small increase in long-term exposure to particulate matter will exacerbate these health outcomes,” Dominici told the Times.

Fast forward three years, and congestion pricing is now in place. But it can’t be advanced on the backs of the most vulnerable, says Mychal Johnson, co-founder of the environmental advocacy group South Bronx Unite that advised the MTA on the program.

“We are for reducing congestion,” Johnson told Inside Climate. “We just can’t be the shoulder-bearers of when they reduce it at other locations. Our community is suffering.”

Even one more truck is one truck too many, Johnson added.

Meanwhile, in notoriously congested Vancouver, transit experts say weak political will is holding the city back from implementing a homegrown version of congestion pricing that would secure the future of its transit system, reports CBC News. A C$3 downtown charge could generate over $1 billion annually and cut congestion by 20%, concluded a 2018 study by the regional transportation authority, TransLink.

Without new funding, TransLink faces service cuts this year. Toronto sees similar resistance, with Ontario’s Doug Ford government opposing congestion pricing citing public pushback and concerns over transit capacity.

London solved that problem by investing in transit capacity for three years before introducing congestion pricing, writes CBC News. Its pricing model reduced congestion by 30% in the core and eventually led to a nearly 40% increase in bus passengers.