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New Yorkers are moving much faster along Manhattan's bridges and tunnels since their city implemented a long-discussed congestion pricing plan early this month, according to newly available traffic data.
Morning rush hour speeds from New Jersey through the Holland Tunnel, a major thoroughfare under the Hudson River to Manhattan, nearly doubled to 28 mph from the previous year. Evening speeds over the Manhattan Bridge to Brooklyn increased from 13 mph to 23 mph.
If these trends continue, Car drivers Being willing to pay a fee of $4.50 to $14.40 to enter the congestion zone in the middle of the busiest U.S. city would save thousands of hours a year that they currently waste crawling through smog-filled tunnels or over clogged bridges.
New York's congestion pricing scheme, which took effect on January 5, aims to reduce traffic and help fund $15 billion in much-needed aid. Improvements to local mass transit.
This number applies to vehicles entering the “congestion mitigation zone” below 60th Street in Manhattan, a part of the island that includes downtown, Greenwich Village, Soho and the area around Wall Street. Most passenger vehicles entering the area now pay a toll of $9, while trucks pay $14.40 and motorcycles $4.50. Some vehicles, including emergency vehicles, are exempt.
The scheme means New York joins London, Milan, Singapore and Stockholm in a small club of major cities with congestion rates. London Traffic, which introduced its program in 2003, It decreased by 14 percent In her area in the first year. Other cities saw declines of more than 20 percent.
The increase in New York The speed is evident in data provided to the Financial Times by traffic tracking company Inrix, which was compiled from anonymized global positioning system (GPS) in vehicles, mobile devices and road sensors. The data contains speeds along different roads around the city, at different times of the day, before and after the start of the toll system.
“Fortunately, Manhattan has very few access points, limited to bridges and tunnels, so you can really feel what's going on,” said Bob Pecheux, an analyst at Inrix.
Of the eight bridges and tunnels examined, seven experienced significant acceleration in at least one peak hour. Three bridges in Manhattan that are not connected to the congestion zone did not see similar speed increases.
A Financial Times analysis of hourly traffic data from the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority also showed fewer vehicles in the affected tunnels during peak hours. Bridges and tunnels outside the area carried more vehicles.
A a report This week's MTA also showed a significant reduction in travel times, including 30-40 percent for vehicles entering Manhattan's business district. I also found that city buses were moving faster and had slightly higher ridership.
According to Congestion Pricing Tracker, a project by college student brothers Benjamin and Joshua Moshes that monitors commute times via Google Maps, peak times through the Holland Tunnel dropped from 20 minutes before toll collection to nine minutes this week.
“We're pretty confident that we're seeing really big shifts in those bridges and tunnels that lead into the congestion area,” Benjamin Moshes said.
Louis Leahy, an assistant professor of civil engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has found that drivers in other cities with congestion pricing respond more to tolling than to subsequent fare increases — an idea he refers to as “Great flexibility at the front“.
Leahy was “blown away” by the scale of the impacts shown by early New York data, but cautioned that it will take time to fully understand the effects of the new fees.
At 5 p.m. on a recent weekday near the entrance to the Holland Tunnel in lower Manhattan, just one car was waiting at a stop sign that until recently was crowded with buildings. The rude crossing guards who manned the intersection were gone. Speed through the tunnel increased by approximately 50 percent.
