Open Editor's Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favorite stories for this weekly newsletter.
New Yorkers are traveling much faster on Manhattan's bridges and tunnels since their city implemented a long-debated toll plan earlier this month, according to newly available traffic data.
Morning rush hour speeds from New Jersey through the Holland Tunnel, the main route under the Hudson River to Manhattan, nearly doubled to 28mph compared to a year earlier. The evening speed limit over the Manhattan to Brooklyn Bridge has increased from 13 mph to 23 mph.
If these lines are stuck, motorists willing to pay the $4.50-$14.40 toll to enter a congested area in the middle of the busiest US city will save thousands of hours a year now wasted crawling through smoky tunnels or over congested bridges.
New York's congestion pricing scheme, which went into effect on January 5, is designed to reduce traffic and help with $15 billion in revenue. improved local mass transit.
The fee applies to vehicles entering the “congestion relief zone” below 60th Street in Manhattan, the half of the island that includes Midtown, Greenwich Village, SoHo and the area around Wall Street. Most passenger cars entering the area now pay a toll of $9, while trucks pay $14.40 and motorcycles, $4.50. Other vehicles, including emergency vehicles, are exempt.
The scheme means New York joins London, Milan, Singapore and Stockholm in a small club of big cities with congestion pricing. Traffic in London, which introduced its program in 2003, decreased by 14 percent in its place in the first year. Some cities saw declines of more than 20 percent.
The rise of New York The speed is reflected in data provided to the Financial Times by traffic-tracking firm Inrix, and compiled from anonymous GPS in vehicles, mobile devices and traffic sensors. The data contains speeds on different roads around the city, at different times of the day, before and after the tolling scheme started.
“Thankfully Manhattan has very few access points, and they're limited to bridges and tunnels, so you can hear what's going on,” said Inrix analyst Bob Pishue.
Of the eight bridges and tunnels inspected, seven experienced significant speed bumps during one hour of rush hour. The three bridges leading into Manhattan that are not connected to the congested area did not experience the same speed increase.
An FT analysis of hourly traffic data from New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority showed fewer vehicles in the affected tunnels during rush hour. Bridges and tunnels outside the area carry a lot of traffic.
A report this week from the MTA also showed a significant decrease in travel times, including 30-40 percent of traffic entering Manhattan's business district. It also found that city buses run at higher speeds and their journeys are slightly higher.
According to the Congestion Pricing Tracker, a project by college students Benjamin and Joshua Moshes that monitors travel times with Google Maps, peak times through the Holland Tunnel dropped from 20 minutes to nine minutes this week.
“We are sure that we are seeing a big change in those bridges and tunnels that lead to the congestion zone,” said Benjamin Moshes.
Lewis Lehe, an assistant professor of civil engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, found that drivers in some cities with high congestion pricing responded more dramatically to the introduction of tolls than to subsequent price increases — an idea he calls “great intensity in the introduction“.
Lehe was “surprised” by the magnitude of the effects shown in the New York data, but warned that it will take time to fully understand the effects of the new taxes.
At 5:00 on a recent weekday near the mouth of the Holland Tunnel in lower Manhattan, there was only one car waiting in a parking lot that until recently was jammed for blocks. The crossing guards who used to guard the road have disappeared. Speeds in the tunnel have increased by almost 50 percent.