Congestion Pricing in New York City

Traffic jams are always the side products of busy cities in the world. To tackle this situation, New York City is going to be the first city in US that imposes traffic congestion surcharges. And this measure may be launched by around 2021. If the congestion pricing bill is passed, vehicles need to pay the surcharge when driving their vehicles into the heavily trafficked zones, probably the central business district at a particular period of time. New York lawmakers seem to agree that congestion pricing is necessary to do for the funding for the city’s crumbling transit system and the intense traffic problem. Congestion pricing has once again be touted as a solution to cope with the city’s transportation infrastructure problem.

The scheme is supposed to take place in the busy roads and commercial districts such as Manhattan commercial areas, Broadway shopping districts. NYC proposed the congestion pricing zone should be in the Manhattan south of 60^th Street. Taxis and app-based for-hire vehicles could be charged as far north as 96^th Street. The fee will be implemented through the electronic tolling system. The proposed fee for private cars at peak hours is US$12. For truck, the fee is around US$25. 1 time charge per day with unlimited entry allowed. It would generate US$810 million to US$1.1 billion while reducing congestion by 8 to 13 percent.

The main aim of this measure is to regulate car flow in main roads within the peak hours. And citizens may change to take the public transportation system through train or bus. It can solve the problem of traffic congestion and control the situation of air pollution.

Some of the citizens from US have reacted with negative feeling that it would affect the low income group. In fact, they don’t want to have more burden. Low income citizens have also the right to drive cars. On the other side, it is said that you wouldn’t push people to take the train or bus out of their habit of driving their own cars. However, there are people who support this measure because the roads are too busy currently and they care about the air quality that influenced by carbon dioxide as well.

New York City is not the first place that adopting the ideas of imposing congestion pricing to make more space for the city. Similar congestion pricing surcharges schemes are carried out in Milan of Italy, London of UK, Singapore and Stockholm of Sweden. NYC sees the success in other cities in the world and want to fix the city’s traffic problem through it. If the plan is successful in NYC, New Yorkers would spend less time every day in getting to where they want to go.