Former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed congestion zone pricing in Manhattan back in 2007, though it died in the NY State Assembly. Former NY Governor Andrew Cuomo revived it in 2017 and Biden administration officials gave their approval in 2023.
Other cities in the US are watching closely, as they look to copy the model if it’s successful. London enacted congestion zone pricing in 2003, and it initially saw a 30% decline in traffic, but traffic has since rebounded and is now worse than ever. The initial lower traffic actually wound up enticing more drivers to the congestion zone!
NYC tolling was set to begin in July 2024, but Governor Kathy Hochul suspended those plans in June. She revived them just days after election day in November, with the goal of implementing them before Donald Trump, who has spoken out against congestion zone tolling, is sworn into office.
Barring a last-ditch effort by New Jersey to get a judge to freeze it, the tolling will go into effect this Sunday, January 5th.
There will be a $9 peak hours toll for cars entering Manhattan south of and including 60th Street between 5am-9pm on weekdays or between 9am-9pm on weekends with E-ZPass. If you don’t have an E-ZPass that is linked to the license plate being driven a toll-by-mail rate of $13.50 will be charged.
The MTA says that using an E-ZPass transponder in rental vehicles or borrowed vehicles not associated with the license plate will pay the toll-by-mail rate. You may be able to link your rental license plate to your E-ZPass account, just be sure to remove it when you return the car. NY and out-of-state E-ZPass accounts will pay the same congestion rates.
Vehicles traveling exclusively on the FDR Drive, West Street/West Side Highway, or the Hugh L. Carey connections to West Street will not be charged a toll. You aren’t charged for days that you stay within the zone or exit the zone, the charge is only for entering the zone.
The peak hours E-ZPass toll rate will increase to $12 in 2028 and to $15 in 2031. The toll-by-mail rate will increase to $18 in 2028 and to $22.50 in 2031.
If you enter the congestion zone during off-peak hours, between 9pm-5am on weekdays or between 9pm-9am on weekends, you will be charged a discounted rate of $2.25, which will rise to $3 in 2028 and $3.75 in 2031. The discounted toll-by-mail rate will be $3.30 and will increase to $4.40 in 2028 and to $5.50 in 2031.
If you enter the zone more than once in a calendar day, you will only pay the applicable rate for the first time you enter, subsequent entries won’t be charged, even if you enter during a more expensive time for the 2nd entry.
If you enter the congestion zone with an E-ZPass via the Lincoln Tunnel or Holland Tunnel during peak hours, you will get a $3 discount on the congestion toll, which will rise to $4 in 2028 and $5 in 2031. There is no discount for toll-by-mail users.
If you enter or exit the congestion zone via the Queens-Midtown Tunnel or Hugh L. Carey Tunnel during peak hours, you will get a $1.50 discount on the congestion toll, which will rise to $2 in 2028 and $2.50 in 2031. There is no discount for toll-by-mail users.
There are no discounts if you enter the congestion zone from a tunnel during off-peak hours.
Uber and Lyft rides to, from, or within the zone will be subject to a $1.50 per ride surcharge, while taxis will have a $0.75 surcharge per ride. That’s in lieu of a charge to the driver.
In other news, NYC is lowering speed limits to just 20MPH in hundreds of locations across the city and to just 10MPH in dozens of current and future “shared streets” and “open streets.”
NYC rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars annually from speed cameras.
I assume the next move is to reduce the speed limit to 5MPH so that the city can ticket anything that moves. 😉
We're putting the 20 in 2025. By the end of this year, hundreds of locations across the city will have a reduced speed limit of 20 mph. Learn more: https://t.co/u85i89GAgb pic.twitter.com/5YFoEayDU2
— NYC DOT (@NYC_DOT) January 1, 2025
What do you think of these changes? Will it help reduce congestion or is it just another cash grab? Which other US cities will try to copy it?
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72 Comments On "Manhattan Congestion Zone Tolling Begins Sunday, Here’s How It Will Work"
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More theft by NY State & NY City – only furthering the dumpster fire that is this state.
Continuing to drive businesses out of the area, hurting regular people so that the MTA can waste more money
The reason they need this is because there are too many people in NYC.
Dumbest thinks I’ve ever heard. They want NYC to be an attraction state and people at one point loved it. And when covid hit everyone got the hell out. NYC is a crap hole
If enough people hated it enough, rents would be trending down and congestion would ease, obviously that is not the case. NYC is as hot as it ever was.
Bizarre cash grab, played on and off depending on the political benefit$… Vote her OUT!!!
Agree. We need to save this city instead of driving everyone out
This city can’t be saved
Agreed
Can trump suspend it once he gets into office ?
Probably will go to court. But Hochul correctly figured that it will be harder to get the courts to halt it if it wasn’t yet implemented, which is why NJ is still trying to have it halted.
Don’t think so.
If NJ can successfully get a stay for a few days, until new administration reverse, then congestion toll is dead.
Buy VRRM stock to make back some of your speeding ticket costs.
Your explanations of the rules are, as usual, clearer and by far more comprehensive than what the city provides (or anyone else, for that matter).
Do uber vehicles pay the full peak entry charge, and then just recoup it with the surtax?
Thanks 🙂
Ubers/Taxis don’t pay a surcharge. Only passengers get hit with it, and that applies even in scenarios where they wouldn’t get hit with it in their own car, such as trips within or exiting the zone.
Aka – another money grab
It will be interesting to see what happens to a suburb uber that comes into the city.
Westchester/Long Island Ubers are just regular cars. System won’t have a way to know they are functioning as uber
“Ubers/Taxis don’t pay a surcharge.” Is that constitutional?
What’s your source about London rebounding?
The bolded paragraph is most interesting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/02/nyregion/new-york-congestion-pricing-london-stockholm-singapore.html
“But the early success eroded in later years as traffic crept back. The streets became clogged with taxis, Ubers and other ride-hail cars and delivery trucks carrying more packages as online shopping surged. New bus and bike lanes also took road space from cars.
By 2016, it was being widely reported that journeys in London were taking longer than in the horse-and-carriage era. Last year, a report commissioned by the city’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, concluded that vehicle congestion had risen to prepandemic levels, leading to more gridlock and air pollution.
Public support has also wavered somewhat as the congestion fee has steadily risen. London records vehicles entering the congestion zone by snapping photos of license plates.
Drivers are charged a flat $18.95 a day for driving in the congestion zone on weekdays and part of the weekend, no matter how often they go in and out. That is triple the $6.32 fee that was charged when the program began.
An expansion of the congestion zone in 2007 was later scrapped in the face of public opposition.
London’s experience shows that congestion pricing is not a silver bullet, said David Metz, an honorary professor at the Center for Transport Studies at University College London. By reducing traffic and delays, he said, it created more favorable road conditions that, in turn, attracted back drivers “so from this perspective, congestion is essentially self-regulating.””
I shall once again thank GD that I don’t own a car, and hope to not own one until the day I move out.
What if I come into Lincoln tunnel and go to West Side highway VIA 34th st
You would pay the congestion toll.
And this is why the Bronx and Staten Island will see more traffic
Drivers entering through the tunnels just to go to the highway. Are they going to be charged for those few blocks they drive through the city? With all the money they had given to migrants, they had now found another way to squeeze. They put it on hold during the elections because it’s so unpopular.
Yes, the only exception is in the post.
Crazy. Then they should have made a way to go from a NJ tunnel straight to the West Side Highway. I mean, all I want to do is pass thru the city to get to Brooklyn. Not visit, not congest, just pass thru. AARGH! Next they’ll charge you for breathing the pure 42nd st. air!
You may not WANT to congest, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen.
Go through Staten Island to avoid the Manhattan toll. It’s a little crazy that people were ever incentivized to drive through one of the most densely populated areas in North America in order to get from New Jersey to Brooklyn.
Are you aware that Staten island has varazanno tolls ??
No, it’s actually not so crazy when rt. 440 in Staten Island is so backed up to the Verazanno and Brooklyn that it would actually take LESS time to go through the city.
Dan, why do you care about speed limits in NYC? You aren’t a local. Don’t you want safer roads for New Yorkers?
I’m not advocating either way, I just find 10MPH and 20MPH speed limits humorous. I assume that 5MPH limits will make the streets even safer?
But I’m just happy not to have those speed limits where I live. Tolling, traffic, searching for parking, paying for parking, paying for parking tickets, and speed cameras are thankfully not something I encounter in my daily life, which certainly adds to my quality of life!
I think the speed limit situation is just cruel. I work in construction which is all about safety standards and the road entering the site is 20mph. It is painfully slow, and very hard to consciously maintain. I can only imagine what 10mph feels like. The e-bikers will be going faster than that. SMH!
FYI, there is virtually no speed limit enforcement on city streets, except where there are speed cameras – but by law they don’t issue tickets unless the vehicle is traveling at over than 10 mph above the speed limit. So a speed limit of 20 mph won’t earn anybody any tickets if they’re traveling below 31 mph.
In London they ticket you for %10 over speed limit, so when they lowered the speed limit to 20 MPH by 24 MPH you get a ticket.
How do these speed limits change anything? If the issue is too much congestion then it means that traffic is anyway moving slower than the speed limit. I would think that they would INCREASE the speed limit along with the new toll.
Because it’s BS that doesn’t actually make the roads safer, just puts more money in the pockets of local governments. There are several-mile-long sections of the Garden State Parkway with 45 MPH speed limits – please explain to me how that increases safety when everyone has to slam on their brakes when they see a cop?
Speed limits were originally signed into law by Nixon to, you guessed it, slow people down so they would use less gas. Safety did not figure in. Localities realized there was money to be made, so they came up with every excuse they could think of to spread them everywhere.
That’s silly. The roads won’t be any safer no matter what speed limit they set up now you’ll have more road rage and the drivers who are unlicensed will still be speeding and wreaking havoc. This is all a money grab exactly the same as the cameras which nine out of 10 times are nowhere near schools which is how they got put in in the first place.
What’s missing in most explanations of how taxing will work is the fact that many streets don’t have license readers installed. Instead, they will be using an approximation of reasonable time to enter and leave the zone, such as time to travel from Lincoln tunnel to Battery tunnel or Brooklyn Bridge, and if you traveled without a stop you won’t get charged, but if you stopped for a prolonged time somewhere on the west side highway, you will still get charged.
I haven’t been able a more detailed explanation yet, but I suspect if you go to the city from NJ, swing by some local street to pick up someone, and go back to your route you also won’t be charged. However if you enter the city, take the wrong turn on the highway within the zone, drive for a while until you realize you’re heading in the wrong direction, U-turn, and never enter the zone, you might still get charged.
Only experience will show what gotchas people will discover the hard way, and what loopholes are there.
I was wondering the same, as I saw no license readers installed.
This (if true) will open a flood of disputes for Ez pass.
Not true, Plate readers were already installed at every entrance to the CBD before the original June date.
@ Bob — not true. For example there is a plate reader on the West Side Highway going south at 60th (there are NO plate readers coming off the West Side Highway).
That one plate reader at 60th is catching every car. If you stay on the West Side Highway you should not be charged a toll.
There are other readers on the West Side Highway that need to read your tag AGAIN in order to not get charged. If it doesn’t see your car (either because it took to long to get there or because it didn’t read you) it will assume you took a left off the West Side Highway in the zone.
You’re right I was mistaken
It seems from the method that they are using that the slowest drivers on the FDR and the West Side will be charged the toll
This must be why Uber drivers need a special discount
(≧▽≦)
Just more theft by NY state.
They can limit traffic without a tax, but they are choosing to tie the cash grab to congestion to have some excuse to get as much cash as they can.
Coming soon is a tax just to breathe clean oxygen. you are generating c02 with every breath.
Traveling out from Brooklyn to upstate you will be forced to use the GWB. (no discount on outbound)
Interesting to see what added congestion this is going to add to the GWB approaches.
Take the Whitestone especially if it’s on a Friday. I’ve been doing this for a few years now and it’s saved me quite some time gridlocked on the FDR. Avoid the city, especially on Fridays, at all costs( I guess pun intended if this congestion toll goes into effect)
Instead of focusing to enforce that riders should actually pay when they travel the subway, they are taking a ride of the good people that do pay.
The people of NYS only have themselves to blame for electing this incompetent governor
Prepaid tolls from Hertz/Avis etc now look like a much better deal if crossing back into NYC via Manhattan especially on one-way rentals to JFK/LGA.
Will Hugh L. Carey connections to FDR be charged a toll?
Money power they don’t care about you but it will back fire
Does anyone know if there are gaps in the toll coverage from the west side highway onto other city streets, or have cameras been put up at every block?
No gaps because of the way they set it up. They set up cameras that catching all cars – including those that shouldn’t be charged a toll.
In order to NOT be charged a toll, a subsequent camera needs to catch you again. If you aren’t caught again within a period of time, they charge you
Another reason to cash grab. Time to leave.
I assume that they will eventually expand the congestion zone to all of Manhattan. In all its a good thing as more people and business will exit NY.C. Hopefully causing the city to hit rock bottom. Maybe then we will get the city fixed.
it boils down to another Tax . Call it what you want . They have figured out though that they can even tax out of state. Along with the speed cameras that are somehow for school safety even during the summer legal holidays or at 3 AM. also parking meter ticket which brings in half a billion a year.
Is there a way to go from the Lincoln tunnel up to the UWS without paying the extra toll?
“If you enter the congestion zone with an E-ZPass via the Lincoln Tunnel or Holland Tunnel during peak hours, you will get a $3 discount on the congestion toll, which will rise to $4 in 2028 and $5 in 2031. There is no discount for toll-by-mail users.
If you enter the congestion zone via the Queens-Midtown Tunnel or Hugh L. Carey Tunnel during peak hours, you will get a $1.50 discount on the congestion toll, which will rise to $2 in 2028 and $2.50 in 2031. There is no discount for toll-by-mail users.”
I’ve seen this reported with the rates reversed $1.50 for Lincoln and Holland and $3 for HCT and QMT
My version is correct.
Source?
If I use the Hugh L Carey Tunnel and then use the Lincoln Tunnel will I get both discounts?
If this was strictly a “congestion” play why the need for a “reduced fee” @3AM?? Call it as it is … a total money grab. If the weed smell all over nyc didn’t keep people out maybe this will. Glad I don’t have a business in Manhattan.
I am an invalid with an invalid licence#
Can I get an exemption
Are you *the* Mahir Reiss?
NYC residents keep voting them in so no pity on those ppl
why does anyone live in NY? can someone please remind me?
You need to be a very big Lamdan to understand this.
Any update whether congestion pricing applies if going from the Brooklyn Bridge/Carey Tunnel to either the Holland or Lincoln Tunnels (i.e. in the direction FROM Brooklyn TO New Jersey), since you have to (or can) get off the highway to get to the Holland/Lincoln tunnels?
Working class people are paying this on the back of their hardwork. Pretty shameful but not surprising from NY Gov
The changes suck big time!
Of course the number one cause of congestion are the million Ubers and not private drivers, but because “car owners bad!” this insane thing is being introduced. If they actually wanted to control congestion they could just limit the amount of Ubers allowed in Manhattan and done. But it’s all about the cash and optics in New York. So glad to be out of there.
Kathy Wokul