Preliminary traffic data is giving promising if occasionally mixed signals for the early days of congestion pricing’s impact on Manhattan’s busiest streets, with travel times down at Hudson River crossings but speeds within the zone slightly slower at key times of day year over year.
Four days after the toll’s launch, New Yorkers are waiting with bated breath for a clearer picture of its impact on the flow of traffic below 60th Street in Manhattan. On several Midtown stretches the typical midday crush of taxis, SUVs and trucks so far this week appears to have thinned out. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the city say they’re still sorting through data that’s come in from toll scanners over the past four days, but an early snapshot is emerging from other sources.
Vehicles are moving faster over bridges and through tunnels, but speeds are relatively constant — and sluggish — on the street’s of Manhattan’s core, according to real-time traffic data.
For example, on Wednesday at 8 a.m., it took about 12 minutes to get through the Holland Tunnel between New Jersey and Lower Manhattan. That’s roughly six minutes, or 33%, faster than it took at that hour on Wednesdays before congestion pricing. A similar figure has emerged for the same travel period on the Lincoln Tunnel, where it took 5 minutes to traverse the crossing — 2 minutes, or 28%, faster than the same time before the tolls took effect.
Indeed, some New Jersey drivers and bus travelers who hit the road during rush hour this morning could hardly believe near empty routes into the city.
Driving around parts of the congestion zone is still slow going. It actually took a little more time to get from Hell’s Kitchen to Midtown East on both Wednesday and Tuesday at 8 a.m. compared to past Wednesdays and Tuesdays at the same hour. It took basically the same amount of time in the early morning for motorists heading from Tribeca to the Lower East Side than it has on past Tuesdays and Wednesdays before the toll.
The data is thanks to the Congestion Pricing Tracker, which is derived from real-time traffic data from Google Maps. Students at Brown University and Northwestern University, with oversight from faculty, crafted the data-tracking website.
The tracker’s data is somewhat supported by transportation analytics company Inrix reporting that the average travel speed in the congestion zone as of Tuesday at 8 a.m. was 12 miles per hour — barely moved from the 12.1 miles per hour traffic speed at the same time last year (Wednesday’s data is still being compiled). The same was true on Monday, with vehicles traveling at an average rate of 12.5 miles per hour at 8 a.m., slightly slower from the 12 miles per hour speed the same time the year before.
But if you take a more granular look at some individual corridors, traffic is moving notably faster.
On the west side take 42nd Street between 8th and 9th avenues by Times Square, where at noon on Wednesday vehicles were traveling at 16.1 miles per hour — way up from the road’s historical average of 6.8 miles per hour. Traffic was similarly sped up at the same time over on the east side, just below Grand Central Terminal, on 42nd Street between Madison and Park avenues, cruising along at 8 miles per hour up from the historical average of 6.2 miles per hour.
It’s early still, but the data that’s publicly available now hints at positive traffic outcomes likely on the horizon as travelers continue to adjust and the metrics trickle in.
