It’s been a winding road for congestion pricing in New York City, but after a pause — and now unpause — of the program by Gov. Kathy Hochul, there’s movement to start the tolling system in the new year.
The details are mostly the same since the delayed summer launch: But the base price is 40% lower. And there are exemptions, different tolls for day and night and alterations to how cabs will be charged.
Here are answers to some of THE CITY’s reader questions on congestion pricing.
What is congestion pricing, exactly?
It’s a mandate through the state legislature’s 2019 MTA Reform and Traffic Mobility Act to raise billions of dollars for transit upgrades while reducing vehicle use in the most gridlocked parts of the city by charging motorists a toll to enter Manhattan’s “Central Business District.”
Where is this happening, and where is it not happening?
The Congestion Relief Zone starts at 60th Street and extends south, including all local streets and avenues. It does not include the FDR Drive, the West Side Highway/Route 9A or the connections to the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel at the southern tip of Manhattan.
When will the system turn on, and how?
On Sunday, Jan. 5, tolling infrastructure — including license plate readers and cameras at gateways to the CBD — should begin detecting when motorists enter the central business district and charging once-daily tolls.
Drivers with E-ZPass linked to license plates will be able to pay tolls as they already do at bridges, tunnels and on other roads. Registered owners of vehicles that do not have E-Z Pass will receive tolling bills by mail.
The status of any E-ZPass issued by New York State can be checked here.
What will motorists have to pay during the day?
The price varies by vehicle class and time of day.
During the peak hours — 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays; 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekends — these are the planned rates under the latest iteration of the plan formally known as the Central Business District Tolling Program:
- Passenger vehicles: $9
- Motorcycles: $4.50
- Small trucks and non-commuter buses: $14.40
- Large trucks and sightseeing buses: $21.60
What will the tolls be at night?
During off-peak hours (9 p.m. to 5 a.m. on weekdays and 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. on weekends) tolls will carry a 75% reduction from what is charged during earlier hours. So, the $9 toll for passenger vehicles, for example, would be $2.25.
How will this affect cab drivers and app-based drivers, like for Uber and Lyft?
Question submitted by reader Frank A.
In the newest version of the congestion pricing plan, traditional taxis and black livery cars will play a per-ride fee of $0.75 for “all trips to, from or within the CBD.” App-based for-hire cars like those working for Uber and Lyft will pay double that, with a $1.50 congestion charge in the zone.
That’s on top of Taxi and Limousine Commission surcharges already in place for a special congestion zone south of 96th Street in Manhattan, implemented years ago, that adds $2.50 for medallion-holding cabs and $2.75 for all other cabs.
Who is exempt from the fee? How do I apply to have reduced tolls on day one?
As the governor unpaused the congestion program, the MTA announced exemptions, which are all listed here. They include:
- A discount for drivers who earn no more than $50,000 a year in federally adjusted gross income. Here’s how to apply.
- An exemption for people who have disabilities or conditions that prevent them from using public transit. Here’s how to apply.
- An exemption for organizations who drive people with disabilities. Here’s how to apply.
- Emergency vehicles as defined by state law.
- School buses, commuter buses and TLC-licensed vans.
- Publicly owned vehicles “specifically designed to perform public works other than general transportation,” according to the MTA.
The governor said tolling rates may change over time. How will that work?
Questions submitted by Aditya M. and Dawn S.
Director of State Operations Kathy Garcia on Thursday said the governor does not want the rates to go up for “at least three years.”
But officials have also said that they will be closely monitoring the results of the program from day one and make changes accordingly.
How will the toll be recorded? Do I have to have an E-ZPass?
Tolls will be paid similarly to how many tolls in the city and region are handled: by E-ZPass.
License-plate readers will track those without E-ZPass and send them a toll by snail mail later, the MTA has said.
The Tennessee-based company TransCore, which the MTA contracted to build out the congestion pricing system here, are required to detect and identify vehicles entering the tolling zone by their class and size, according to “request for proposal” documents previously obtained by THE CITY.
Scanning infrastructure has been on the streets of New York and ready to go since at least last summer.
How much will this reduce traffic, really?
While the $15 tolling plan estimated a 15-17% drop in street traffic within the congestion zone, the new plan at $9 is estimated to bring down traffic by only 13%. That’s still a significant change, bringing an average of 100,000 fewer cars into central and downtown Manhattan every day.
But the environmental review included estimates that the tolling plan may actually increase traffic slightly in some areas outside the CBD as drivers seek alternative routes around Manhattan.
Those places include the South Bronx where heavy traffic and other factors have driven up asthma rates and air pollution for years. As part of the congestion pricing plan, the state has committed to spending more than $100 million on mitigation efforts in so-called environmental justice communities, including in The Bronx, where many residents contend with high asthma rates and air pollution.
How many commuters enter the Central Business District daily — and by what modes of transportation?
According to a Final Environmental Assessment from April 2023, 1.2 million people travel daily into the Central Business District from across the region. An estimated 90% of those commuters travel into Manhattan by mass transit, according to the MTA, with drivers making up about 6 to 10%.
“A couple of those are walkers or cyclists, but they ain’t drivers,” Janno Lieber, MTA chairperson and CEO, said Thursday as Hochul announced plans to restart congestion pricing.
How much money will this bring in, really?
Hochul and her budget team have repeatedly insisted that the tolling system will bring in the same amount of money that congestion pricing always intended to bring in: $15 billion in funding for the MTA’s 2020 to 2024 Capital Program, the agency’s more than $50 billion blueprint for transit upkeep and expansion.
That’s because the 2019 state law that approved congestion pricing made that dollar amount a condition of the legislation. In short, whatever revenue brought in by the tolls simply allows the MTA to borrow — via municipal bonds — $15 billion to spend on projects that include the purchase of new subway cars and buses, the extension of the Q line from 96th to 125th streets and signal upgrades along multiple subway lines.
Garcia summed it up this way: “We are required to give the MTA basically a $15 billion credit card…” she said. “It just may mean that it takes longer to pay it all back.”
Could the new president just shut this off after he takes office in January?
Question submitted by reader Michael C.
That remains to be seen. President-elect Donald Trump is notorious for operating outside the bounds of political norms, and has said explicitly that he will do everything he can to nix congestion pricing — perhaps as soon as his first week in office.
But if the system is operating already by the time he takes office, underpinned by approval from the Federal Highway Administration, experts say it will be hard for the president to unilaterally decide to shut it down without a protracted legal battle.
“Once it’s turned on, it becomes very difficult to turn off,” Julie Tighe, president of the New York League of Conservation Voters, told THE CITY on Thursday.
However, Republicans in Congress have already vowed to come after congestion pricing legislatively, promising to pass laws that would make it illegal to operate as federal lawmakers did for a different tolling plan in the 1970s, Gothamist reported.
What is the MTA doing to accommodate new transit riders who opt out of driving?
As she unveiled the new congestion plan, Hochul ordered the MTA to boost the frequency of bus service on 23 routes outside of Manhattan. The MTA notes it has also previously increased weekday and weekend frequency on many subway lines.
Even with the money coming in from congestion pricing, the MTA could struggle to make ends meet on its operations budget — which means running more buses will be tough.
In addition, the MTA plans to use some of the billions it can raise through the tolls to move forward with the second phase of the Second Avenue Subway project into East Harlem and improve signals on the A/C and B/D/F/M lines.
Other key capital projects include adding elevators at 23 subway and Staten Island Railway stations, early work on the Interborough Express, the proposed light-rail link between Brooklyn and Queens and installing new turnstiles designed to reduce fare evasion.
If those projects come to fruition, they stand to improve service for millions of commuters. But the fixes could take years.
Could more court cases be coming as a result of congestion pricing’s revival?
Yes. There are already multiple lawsuits tied to the vehicle-tolling plan — from across the Hudson River, from the teachers union and over the June pause — and more appear likely.
“I’m in the middle of nine [lawsuits] right now,” Hochul quipped on Thursday. “We’ve been sued every day of the week, it seems. This whole issue has been a growth industry for lawyers.”
Have more questions about congestion pricing? Write to our newsroom at ask@thecity.nyc.
