Congestion Pricing Drops Holland Tunnel Delays by 65 Percent

New York City’s congestion pricing program continues to show undeniable success. According to a Curbed article by Christopher Bonanos, “The Holland Tunnel, at rush hour, has 65 percent fewer delays than it did before, and the time it takes to get through is down 48 percent. In those 100 days, 6 million fewer cars drove into lower Manhattan than had done so a year earlier.”

An unexpected side effect: complaints about excessive honking were 70 percent lower in January and February than in the same period last year.

When it comes to revenue, the MTA received roughly $100 million from the toll program through the end of February. “That is something like half of what it would have been under the initial version of the plan — before Governor Hochul reset the toll from $15 to $9 — but it is very much not nothing, and a bunch of capital improvements have already been paid for and green-lit: subway elevators at Delancey Street–Essex Street that will be part of an affordable-housing construction project, a couple of contracts for the next leg of the Second Avenue Subway, more electric buses, and so on.”

The future of the program, of course, remains unclear as a lawsuit against the Trump administration, which tried to kill the program, continues into the summer.