The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has published a set of statistics concerning the first week since the implementation of its congestion pricing programme.
A brief report, Congestion Relief Zone Tolling: Week One Update, has detailed findings thus far on how the program has changed traffic in the Central Business District (CBD), travel times for drivers, bus journey travel times and the increase in transit ridership.
The report has found that since the programme’s introduction, there has been an overall reduction of 219,000 vehicles entering Manhattan below 60 Street, a decrease of nearly 8% as part of an estimated January weekday baseline.
Travel times for drivers have been improved throughout the CBD, with significant improvements seen during both the afternoon peak period and morning commute times on river crossings into the CBD, with inbound river crossing travel times cut by approximately 30-40% across the board, and 20-30% on a large selection of crosstown streets and excluded roadways.
Improvements include a 65% reduction in travel times for those travelling into the CBD using the Holland Tunnel (EB), a 39% reduction using the Lincoln Tunnel and a 28% reduction using the Brooklyn Bridge (WB).
Data was provided by TRANSCOM, a non-profit coalition of transportation and public safety agencies in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
Bus journeys are also seeing improvements in travel times, with most found in peak morning commuting times.
Routes most affected by the programme’s implementation include those that cross the East or Hudson Rivers into Manhattan, with the M50 seeing a reduction of 1.3 minutes (5%) of its overall runtime.
Public transit ridership has seen a wave of above-average increases, including on key services from Brooklyn via the Hugh Carey Tunnel, Staten Island and Queens via the Queens-Midtown Tunnel.
The full report can be found on the MTA website.
