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Car Tolls Turn on in Manhattan as MTA Waits for Money and Results to Roll In
On the first days, drivers struggled to avoid paying the congestion charge. One even said she’d leave New York because of it.
This story originally appeared in The City.
NEW YORK - As New York became the first U.S. city to toll drivers entering a “congestion relief zone” over the weekend, some Manhattan motorists elected to spin their wheels to avoid paying the 60th Street-and-south charge.
Steven Guerrero, 29, said he circled the Upper West Side for “about 10, 15 minutes” to avoid paying a peak-hours $9 toll before sliding into a parking spot on West 61st Street near West End Avenue.
“It wasn’t an easy task,” said Guerrero, who grew up in the city and drove in Sunday from West Haven, Conn., to visit friends. “So many cars.”
MTA officials said a read on vehicle and traffic data showing the initial impacts of the new toll should begin taking shape this week, with hopes that it can curb congestion and change driver habits. The agency plans to maintain a public online dashboard to highlight what is being learned from congestion pricing.
Congestion pricing, which arrived more than two decades after London launched a similar tolling plan, with Stockholm and Singapore then following suit, is also seen as a way to win converts to New York City’s aging transit system in need of billions of dollars in upkeep.
Just one block outside of the Manhattan zone where motorists now are tolled once-daily as part of the city’s long-delayed attempts to cut congestion and generate billions for transit improvements, many of the parked vehicles on West 61st Street, including Guerrero’s, bore out-of-state license plates from New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts.
MTA officials warned that more than 1,400 plate scanners installed at 110 detection points — at a cost of more than $500 million — are equipped with technology that can flag defaced or fake plates.
“Any plate that is not easily readable is subjected to [manual image review],” said Janno Lieber, MTA chairperson and chief executive. “So you have people looking at it and studying it and using technology to figure it out.
“So don’t do that — don’t subject yourself to fines and potential imprisonment by messing around with your license plate.”
The years-in-the-making tolling plan materialized after multiple failed legal challenges from both sides of the Hudson River and grumbling from motorists who studies show comprise about 10% of those commuting into the core of Manhattan.
“There are other costs you’re already paying and having congestion pricing on top of that will make me think twice about driving,” said Milagros De Jesus, 51, who parked on West 61st after driving in from West Hartford, Conn. “From here on out, I may have to consider using public transportation if I want to come to the city.”
That’s among the hopes of MTA officials after they finally locked in a vehicle-tolling initiative that aims to unclog the most congested streets in the country, where officials said buses in Midtown Manhattan poke along at less than 5 miles per hour.
“If you do drive, if you have to drive, we want you to spend less time stuck in traffic,” Lieber said. “Your time is worth real money.”
The $9 peak-period toll for passenger and small commercial vehicles with a valid E-ZPass applies from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays and from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekends, with overnight rates for all drivers reduced to $2.25 — less than the subway and bus fare.
“My plan is to move out,” said Jazmin Williams, 29, a native New Yorker and motorist who lives on the Upper West Side. “The tolls, the rent, the broker fees, everything is just becoming unbearable.
“I’m a working mom, my partner has a great job, but it’s like we can never make enough.”
The toll for single-unit trucks and some buses is $14.40 during peak hours and $3.60 in the later hours, with multi-unit trucks and tour buses paying $21.60 and $5.40, respectively.
Instead of a once-daily congestion fee, taxis and other for-hire vehicles have a smaller per-trip charge paid by the passenger for each trip to, from, in or through the so-called relief zone. Taxis and app-based services such as Uber and Lyft have, for years, tacked a state congestion surcharge on trips that start, end or pass through another zone that starts south of 96th Street in Manhattan.
A “Final Environmental Assessment” from April 2023 showed that 1.2 million people travel daily into the Central Business District from across the region — with an estimated 90% traveling to Manhattan via mass transit.
“The 130 to 140,000 people who commute by car, we got plenty of room for those people,” Lieber said.
Congestion pricing revenue is tied to more than $15 billion of improvements for the transit system as part of the MTA’s 2020-2024 capital program.
The more than $50 billion capital plan calls for modernizing ancient signals on multiple subway lines, adding elevators to train stations, plus buying new train cars and hundreds of electric buses.
“I am hopeful and I am praying that we can get there,” subway rider Pat Tyrea, 64, of Canarsie, said as she waited for a No. 1 train on Monday morning. “Hopefully, they can get to that point where they will be able to invest a little bit more to keep the subway tidy and safe.”
Then there is MTA’s next five-year capital program, a $68 billion blueprint focused on keeping the system in working order — which does not have funding locked for about half the plan.
The current five-year blueprint for maintaining and expanding the transit system — with projects that include extending the Second Avenue Subway from the Upper East Side to Harlem — faced delays and funding uncertainties after Gov. Kathy Hochul paused the tolling plan in June.
At the time, Hochul cited what was then projected as a $15 toll putting an “undue strain” on those driving south of 60th Street.
But she revived congestion pricing in November, just days after Donald Trump won a return to the White House. Trump had pledged in August to “TERMINATE Congestion Pricing in my FIRST WEEK back in office.”
At a Sunday media briefing in Grand Central Terminal, Lieber said he is “confident” that congestion pricing will stand up to the change in administration, noting that “people don’t pull grant agreements or other agreements between the feds and states and localities.”
He also appealed to Trump as a fellow New Yorker.
“His office buildings — and he still owns a few — are filled with people who take mass transit,” Lieber said. “And I think he understands, living on Fifth Avenue and 59th Street, what traffic is doing to our city.”
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