Site visitors in Midtown and decrease Manhattan was down almost 8% after the primary full week of congestion tolling, in line with preliminary site visitors information launched Monday by the MTA.
“It has been a very good week here in New York,” stated Juliette Michaelson, MTA’s deputy chief of coverage and exterior relations and a chief architect of the company’s congestion pricing plan. “Just look out the window — there’s less traffic, quieter streets, and I think everybody’s seen it.”
Whereas anecdotal proof has abounded within the 9 days since New York began charging drivers to drive on Manhattan’s floor streets at or under sixtieth St., Monday marks the primary time the MTA has launched information obtained by the tolling community.
In response to the info collected final week, 499,016 automobiles entered the congestion tolling zone final Monday, the primary weekday since tolling started. These numbers steadily rose via the work week, with 561,604 automobiles getting into the zone on Friday.
On common, that’s 539,217 automobiles a day — 7.5% fewer automobiles than the company stated would sometimes enter throughout a piece week in January.
Congestion pricing cameras on Central Park West and Columbus Circle. (Barry Williams/ New York Day by day Information)
“These are significantly lower volumes than we would have expected without the program,” Michaelson stated.
For many who do drive — or journey on the MTA’s buses — the info exhibits that the discount in crossings has had a large affect on most commute instances.
Evaluating final Wednesday to a mean Wednesday in January 2024, journey instances improved throughout the board in any respect river crossings within the congestion zone.
A drive into Manhattan via the Lincoln Tunnel Wednesday was 39% sooner than final January, in line with the info. The Queens-Midtown Tunnel sped up 39%, and the Brooklyn Bridge sped up 28%. The smallest enchancment was on the Manhattan Bridge — which nonetheless had 10% sooner journey instances than in January final 12 months.
“For one day of data, to see such consistently high trip-time reductions is just very, very significant,” Michaelson stated.
Equally, east-west streets throughout the congestion zone noticed speeds improve. Excluding westbound site visitors on forty second St. and twenty third St., crosstown site visitors instances fell between 6% and 36%.
North-south journey instances remained largely the identical, nevertheless. Site visitors on Third Ave. and Eighth Ave. sped up by greater than 20%, however Second, Fifth and Ninth Aves. noticed 1% longer journey instances.
Michaelson and different MTA officers emphasised that the info is preliminary, and that the journey time information specifically relies on simply in the future of congestion pricing.
“This is still preliminary data,” Michaelson stated. “Travel patterns, we expect, will change.”
The MTA has not but crunched the numbers on what the info means for tolling income — an earnings stream that’s meant to again $15 billion in bonds to fund a number of the company’s largest enlargement and restore tasks.
John McCarthy, MTA’s head of coverage and exterior relations, instructed reporters to count on early income income information in “weeks, not months.”
The information comes as members of New York’s Republican delegation traveled to Mar-a-Lago over the weekend and reportedly mentioned plans to kill the congestion toll with President Elect Donald Trump.
Trump has been a longtime opponent of the plan, and vowed early in his presidential run to undo it if elected — although it stays unclear what authorized paths he must up-end a toll that’s administered by the state and has already been accredited by federal regulators.
Requested about Trump’s menace previous to the MTA’s Monday information launch, Mayor Adams stated he needed extra data, and didn’t wish to “throw more hysteria into this law of the land.”
“If the president decides an action such as that, I don’t control it,” he stated.
