A steady stream of cars and trucks cruised under toll gantries at 60th Street and Lexington Avenue early Monday afternoon, undaunted by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s new congestion toll on most motorists driving on to Manhattan’s busiest streets.
Aside from newly-installed signage warning drivers they’re about to cross into the MTA’s Congestion Relief Zone, the scene along the northernmost border of the district was unremarkable — in spite of what some breathless tabloid reports would have you believe.
As of noon, the average travel speed in the congestion zone was 11 miles per hour, according to real-time data from INRIX, a transportation analytics company. That’s slightly slower than the average traffic speeds on the first non-holiday Monday in 2024, which came in at 11.6 miles per hour.
The program’s anticipated reduction in traffic is not expected to materialize overnight, and the day’s snowy weather and slick conditions may have been a factor as well.
More than 1,400 cameras are now monitoring 110 entry points into the zone, and so far, the launch has “all gone smoothly,” said MTA board chair and CEO Janno Lieber.
Whether New Yorkers agree, of course, depends on who you’re talking to.
Kaitlyn Johnson, 36, who rode the 6 line to her job as a Midtown bank clerk from the Pelham Bay area of the Bronx, said she was pleased to see drivers paying what she called their fair share.
“There’s too many cars on the road,” she said. “If they want to drive where there’s plenty of trains, they should pay for the privilege.”
Others expressed wariness of riding the subway after a recent spate of violent crimes, including a woman who died after she was set on fire on a F train in Coney Island and a man who was critically injured after he was shoved in front of a 1 train in Chelsea.
“I personally feel less safe,” said Pete Davis, 52, who took the subway into the city to run some errands instead of driving from Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn. “But I’d rather take the train than pay the toll.”
On neighboring 61st Street between Second and Third avenues, a traffic jam formed behind a driver determined to Tetris his car into a snug parking spot to avoid the congestion toll.
“I have a doctor’s appointment three blocks into the zone and like hell am I paying $9 for that,” said Gerry Schwartz, 68, who drove to Manhattan from Forest Hill, Queens. “They get you coming and going.”
A few blocks away, on 60th and York Street, UPS truck driver Ramon Mendez unloaded packages onto a handcart to deliver within the zone.
“It’s just the cost of doing business now,” he said. “No way to avoid it.”
