Every major city on Earth should immediately do congestion pricing

The evidence from NYC is clear

This coming week will mark six months since the start of New York City’s new congestion pricing program. If you’re unfamiliar with it, the main thing you need to know is that drivers are charged $9 once a day to enter the following zone:

Source: New York Times

The other important background piece of information is that getting congestion pricing enacted was a difficult political fight involving numerous lawsuits, delays and eventually a watering down of the program from the originally planned $15 charge. This fight has not ended, with the Trump administration revoking federal approval and seeking to end the program, but for now the cameras are still on, and the money is still being collected.

It’s a good thing too, since the evidence so far points to the following claim: congestion pricing is simply the best thing ever. Let’s review some of the outcomes:

• Fewer cars are entering the Manhattan CBD

• Traffic delays are down, both in Manhattan and across the NYC metropolitan area

• Public transport ridership is up, probably because delays are down and reliability is up

• Car crashes and car-related injuries are down

• Traffic noise is down

• Public support for congestion pricing is up

• Total visits to the Manhattan CBD are up

• Subway crime is down

• Revenue of around $600M/year, which is so far being used to expand bus services across the city

Some may look at this and conclude that it’s too early to say exactly how much of a success congestion pricing has been. Those people are cowards. These results are incredible. The question we’re asking shouldn’t be “is congestion pricing in New York a success?” but rather “how on Earth did it take New York so long to do this?” and “why isn’t every city over 200,000 people immediately doing the same?”

You could point to the positive outcomes of congestion pricing in cities such as London and Stockholm and say that the successes of New York are unsurprising and add little extra evidence, but I do think it’s quite helpful to have an American case study to point to when shilling this policy to other cities. No, solving traffic is not something only Europeans are capable of. This was always possible, if you had the willpower.

And now, armed with the example of New York, we need to make it laughable to oppose congestion pricing in any other major city. It should be said of any Chicago politician, if they oppose congestion charging, that they are pro-traffic, pro-car crashes, anti-public transport, pro-time wasting, pro-crime, anti-business, and anti-free money.

My worry is that if this opportunity is not fully utilized, people will forget how bad things were in Manhattan pre-congestion pricing, and it’ll become harder to talk about what a difference the policy made. That’s why I think it’s important for the pro-congestion pricing movement to capitalize on this moment right now and make a play for success in many other cities. We shouldn’t feel bashful about it, we have all the facts on our side.

Personally, I’m excited that New Zealand is likely to pass legislation this year that legalizes congestion pricing in local government. We could see Auckland enact this policy in the next several years, and cities such as Wellington and Christchurch may follow suit if the Auckland scheme is a success. If small NZ cities can see the need for pricing congestion, there’s no reason not to have it in a hundred cities across the US, and a thousand cities around the world. It’s just really, really good.