To finally address the whiplash that is the plan for congestion pricing, I turned to Tribecan and transportation consultant Charlie Komanoff, who by all counts is a proponent of congestion pricing — so if you are not, stop here! (I’ve also included some of my favorite neighborhood traffic photos.)

But first, the plan: the governor announced on Nov. 14 that she would restart the original program, but would reduce the toll to $9 initially, raising it in phases over the next six years to $15. The MTA board approved the plan on Nov. 18. It will start in the early morning hours of Sunday, Jan. 5.

Passenger vehicles will be charged $9 a max of once per day, and would get a discount of 75 percent outside the peak hours of 5a to 9p on weekdays and 9a to 9p on weekends.

Per-ride fees for all trips to, from or within the central business district south of 60th Street would be $0.75 for taxis and black cars and $1.50 for app-based for-hire vehicles.

So, to the analysis.

“The $9-$12-$15 toll trajectory in the congestion pricing program that Gov. Hochul exhumed last week won’t be as immediately effective as the straight $15 toll plan she scuttled in June,” Charlie wrote. “Nevertheless, it will accomplish a great deal in terms of cutting Manhattan and region-wide traffic and financing better transit (which in turn will trigger further cuts in traffic).

“Indeed, the ramp-up ($9 in Jan 2025 going to $12 in Jan 2028 and then to $15 in Jan 2031) has a certain elegance. Had it been proposed it a year ago, rather than the straight $15, it might have staved off some of the opposition that led to the governor’s June 5 political cave-in.

“My modeling indicates that the $9 toll will bring about an average 5 to 6 percent improvement in vehicle travel speeds in the congestion zone (Manhattan south of 60th Street). That’s not particularly impressive, but the speed boost will rise over time from the combination of the toll ramp-up and the completion of transit improvement projects — most notably the accelerated replacement of 90-year-old analog subway track signals with digital signals allowing closer spacing of trains — that will be bonded with the congestion revenues.

“By 2031, when the toll hits $15 and most or all of the transit improvements are in place, the average gain in Manhattan travel speeds will reach 15 to 16 percent, nearly triple the immediate, first-stage gain we can expect in January.”

NB: These speed figures aren’t the MTA’s — they are Charlie’s. “They’re generated by the congestion pricing spreadsheet model I’ve curated for nearly two decades, an earlier version of which was used by New York officials to craft the 2019 legislation that now authorizes the MTA to toll vehicles driven into the Manhattan core.”

You can run the model yourself in Excel here. 

I know neighbors here have been frustrated by the fact that residents of the central business district were not carved out of the tolling plan, as they were in other cities. But I like to remind myself, especially when I walk up Hudson on a Friday afternoon, that we have the most to gain.

“I anticipate an immediate 13 to 14 percent reduction in traffic volumes on the three Brooklyn-to-Manhattan bridges that feed directly into the Lower East Side and Chinatown and the Civic Center,” Charlie said. “By 2031, this ‘attrition’ will reach a whopping 35 percent on weekdays and 25 percent on weekends.