Ready for a Restart: Effectively implementing congestion pricing in NYC
By Mike Flynn, AICP, Senior Principal and New York General Manager, and Melvin Wah, AICP, Senior Planner
In this three-part blog post series, we share our reflections on congestion pricing as New York potentially makes history as the first American city to enact an area-based congestion toll on vehicles. In this post, we share our thoughts on what happened to congestion pricing beyond politics, and what could be improved in the future when we finally decide to implement it.
June 30th, 2024, was a day that many transit riders, advocates, and public servants had eagerly been anticipating; the day that the city’s congestion pricing program was supposed to begin. In the wake of Gov. Hochul’s announcement of an indefinite pause to this bold policy, supporters are back in the familiar position of waiting for leadership to reduce traffic and create a stable funding stream to benefit eight million daily transit riders.
NYC’s ubiquitous traffic congestion has persistently troubled both commuters and policymakers. Taking cues from successful programs in cities around the world like London, Stockholm, and Singapore, congestion pricing emerged as a transformative policy solution that promises to alleviate traffic woes, improve environmental quality, and fundamentally reshape the city’s relationship with the private automobile. At Sam Schwartz, our founder—best known to New Yorkers as “Gridlock Sam”—has been advocating for congestion pricing in New York City for the past five decades. Congestion pricing is the only policy that will be able to provide $15 billion in financing to the MTA while reducing traffic in the most congested parts of the city.
As we lament the decision to pause congestion pricing in New York City, we must ask ourselves: how was it so easy for congestion pricing to be derailed so quickly? According to a Siena College Research Institute poll released in April 2024, about 64% of New York’s residents oppose congestion pricing. A more recent poll conducted after the pause on congestion pricing suggests that forty-five percent of New York voters supported the governor’s decision to put the program on hold and only 23 percent opposed it. These statistics highlight the critical importance of public outreach and stakeholder engagement. Without effectively communicating the benefits and addressing the concerns of the public, even well-intentioned policies can falter.
For New York City to fully realize the potential benefits of congestion pricing, there are crucial details to consider: How can we best communicate the policy to stakeholders and the wider public? How can we further simplify an easily misunderstood and complicated policy so that it is easy for anyone to understand? What additional measures can we implement to ensure fairness and prevent abuse of the system? These considerations are integral to ensuring the long-term success and effectiveness of congestion pricing in New York City.
A comprehensive communications and stakeholder engagement strategy is paramount to communicate the benefits of congestion pricing.
Better communication of congestion pricing’s benefits is essential to ensure widespread support. A comprehensive communications and engagement strategy would greatly aid the rollout and future expansion of controversial policies like congestion pricing. Such a strategy can help to build awareness and foster understanding amongst a wider audience, address concerns raised by commuters and key stakeholders, and concurrently foster partnerships and alliances to support the successful implementation. Transitioning from informing to partnering with stakeholders to co-create policy solutions for a better New York City can help ensure that every New Yorker can shape our collective future.
This means that we need to extend beyond just digital advertising in subway stations. We need to clearly articulate the vision and broad benefits that congestion pricing can bring and how that relates to the wider public. This involves introducing the policy to affected parties, such as drivers and businesses, conducting stakeholder engagement workshops to foster dialogue and understanding among different groups affected differently by the policy, and forming a diverse coalition of business and third-sector leaders to garner broad support for implementation. These key players can play a vital role in raising awareness and providing educational resources.
A City-led communications and stakeholder engagement strategy can serve as the unified, go-to source for addressing both the costs and benefits of a congestion pricing program amidst a backdrop of third-party ad campaigns advocating for or against congestion pricing (i.e. Environmental Defense Fund’s pro-congestion pricing campaign vs. the “Move Your Business to New Jersey” counter ad campaign).
A prime example of effective communication and stakeholder engagement can be seen in Transport for London (TfL)’s approach. In 2023, the agency launched a multi-channel integrated campaign to raise awareness about the forthcoming expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ). This campaign was meticulously crafted to provide clear information to Londoners regarding who would be impacted, where the zones would operate, operating hours, daily charges, and the payment methods for drivers. Campaign content was disseminated across diverse platforms, including television, social media, wayfinding apps and even at petrol pump nozzles. TfL’s efforts proved highly successful, with campaign awareness reaching an impressive 94 percent of the population.
Simultaneously, TFL prioritized stakeholder engagement by consulting with motoring organizations, freight and logistics industry groups as well as advocacy groups focused on transport and the environment. Together, they co-created the expansion details of the ULEZs. TfL and the Greater London Authority also formed a coalition involving a wide array of stakeholders, such as individual NHS trusts, unions, professional bodies, advocacy groups for disabled and older adults, local communities, and faith groups. This coalition aimed to address the risks associated with poor air quality and health impacts due to traffic congestion. Not only were TfL’s communication efforts effective, but it helped to foster a sense of collaboration and shared responsibility in addressing environmental challenges within the community.
Keep it simple!
Simplifying the policy is essential as a complicated toll framework will present challenges in communicating the policy and conveying its impact to drivers. Following are several ideas to consider in future adjustments to the program. Firstly, toll rates should take into consideration not just the budget deficit within transit agencies, but also consider the economic and health ramifications of greenhouse gas emissions from congestion and air pollution. This will help the public see the alignment between congestion pricing and broader environmental and societal goals, promoting sustainability and healthier communities while also addressing the critical funding needs for transportation infrastructure.
Toll rates should also only be differentiated by vehicle duty classes, instead of use. Vehicle duty classes categorize vehicles based on their size, weight, and emissions, and provide a fair and transparent basis for linking tolls directly to the externalities these vehicles cause. Doing so will ensure equitable treatment between cars and taxis, since taxis can pass on toll costs to their customers. This helps to eliminate potential disparities between different types of vehicles and encourage commuters to consider transit or walking and cycling as their preferred mode to get around. Such an approach is similar to how congestion pricing has been rolled out in Singapore, where vehicles pay a flat fee to enter the CBD based on their different duty classes.
Another recommendation is to standardize all existing tolls into the Manhattan CBD to ensure uniform costs for all entries, even with the introduction of congestion pricing. This approach eliminates the need for crossing credits and avoids the perception of unfair treatment towards New Jersey residents. Collaborating closely with the Port Authority of New Jersey and New York can help ensure equitable tolling at all entry points, regardless of the vehicle’s point of origin. Equitable tolling across all entry points promotes fairness and policy consistency, laying the groundwork for a clear and transparent road pricing policy that is straightforward and easily understandable for drivers.
Our final suggestion is to reassess the practice of limiting tolls to once a day. Limiting tolls to once a day does not fully harness the potential of congestion pricing to effectively manage traffic demand and reduce environmental impacts. Collecting tolls every time a vehicle enters the cordon zone streamlines the operational process and removes an unnecessary layer in road management. This approach provides a more accurate understanding of usage patterns, valuable for transport policymaking, without compromising the original intent of congestion pricing. Discounts and exemptions for low-income drivers to address equity considerations could also be retroactively provided, but a blanket limitation of tolls to once a day hinders the transformative potential of congestion pricing.
Safeguard the system against abuse.
Ensuring the integrity of the congestion pricing payment system is paramount to maintaining the program’s effectiveness and fairness. To achieve this, New York State, New York City, MTA, and the Port Authority of NY and NJ need to work together to crack down on motorists employing fake, obscured, or covered license plates to evade toll payments. There have been broader efforts to tackle the evasion of tolls, but coordinated law enforcement efforts must persist at the state and local levels to address toll evasion comprehensively. This is a broader challenge within transportation governance and affects not just congestion pricing but other tolling programs in place all over the country.
It would be worthwhile to explore how other cities and countries are combating the evasion of tolls and what alternative tolling and enforcement technologies are out there. For example, Singapore’s Electronic Road Pricing 2.0, which is progressively being rolled out throughout 2024, uses satellite-based technology to detect whether a vehicle is in a congested area. Studying the innovative approaches employed elsewhere can provide insights as to how we can uphold fairness and effectiveness in managing traffic congestion and promoting sustainable transportation practices.
Conclusion: We are at the starting point, there is no way but forward from here
It is disappointing that congestion pricing was paused right on the verge of its implementation, after nearly two decades of advocacy and deep technical and policy analysis. But now is not the time to move on from it; rather we can build on the momentum created by the hard work of the policymakers, civil servants, advocates, and key stakeholders who recognized the necessity of equitable contributions from drivers to mitigate traffic congestion and air pollution. There is more work to be done to demonstrate why congestion pricing is the best available intervention to reduce traffic congestion, fund transit, support the economy and lower-income New Yorkers, and improve the region’s quality of life.
As the eyes of the nation turn towards New York City, there is significant work ahead to unlock congestion pricing’s transformative potential and demonstrate its effectiveness. Every example of major new policies with diffused benefits around the world show that public support drops up until implementation and then climbs dramatically once people see the benefits of the new policy. However, it is still crucial to do as much as we can to address concerns and prove that congestion pricing is a pragmatic and effective solution with real benefits for the city, the region, and the state as a whole. Let’s get it right and let’s get it done.