Honking-mad motorists are laying off the horn in the core of Manhattan since the January launch of congestion pricing, data reveals — with New Yorkers’ beefs about blaring horns plummeting nearly 70% from the same time last year.
An analysis by THE CITY of available 311 data from ZIP codes south of 60th Street reflects a vast quality-of-life gain from the vehicle-tolling program that President Donald Trump wants to terminate by March 21.
“Before, it was too much, there was honking of horns without reason,” said Syed Ali, 49, who works daily inside a halal food cart at Park Avenue South and East 32nd Street. “Now, it’s better for everybody.”
Between the January 5 start of congestion pricing and Thursday March 6, the city’s 311 portal registered just 67 complaints about honking inside the so-called congestion relief zone.
That’s a steep 69% decline from the same period in 2024, when ticked-off New Yorkers in the ZIP codes below 60th Street complained 219 times about honking, according to 311 data.
For all of last year, there were 1,605 complaints about vehicles honking within the ZIP codes in the congestion relief zone.
“One more reason to love congestion relief — less honking,” Juliette Michaelson, the MTA’s deputy chief of policy and external relations, said in a statement to THE CITY. “Turns out it is, in fact, possible to make Manhattan a little more peaceful.”
In addition, between Jan. 5 and March 4, the two Department of Environmental Protection noise cameras south of 60th Street didn’t issue a single horn-honking summons, according to numbers provided by the city agency. In contrast, those two cameras issued 27 summonses for excessive horn blowing during the same time period last year.
The cameras are part of DEP’s network of detection devices meant to turn down the volume on loud vehicles and music. They come equipped with meters activated by noise that tops 85 decibels.
“Traffic is less by a lot, you see it, you feel it,” said Tai Lee, who has worked at a newsstand at the intersection of Canal and Centre streets since 1976. “But the noise, it’s terrible, it’s no good when people hit their horns intentionally.”
Canal Street worker Tai Lee says congestion pricing has lowered traffic, but he still hears honking, March 5, 2025. Credit: Jose Martinez/THE CITY
The 311 numbers about blasting horns also offer more granular insights into how the new tolls are upending the very New York impulse to lay on the horn, which the city’s noise code prohibits unless a motor-vehicle operator is in immediate danger.
“Less congestion means less noise,” Jaqi Cohen, director of climate and equity policy for Tri-State Transportation Campaign, told THE CITY. “But I think horn honking is also a symptom of people’s frustration behind the wheel, so it probably speaks to the fact that people have easier commutes now.”
The drop-off in frustrated motorists blasting their horns has been especially evident on the streets within ZIP code 10019. Extending west to the Hudson River from Fifth Avenue at the southern edge of Central Park, it drew 11 noise complaints since January 5 — down from 47 during the same stretch in 2024.
Within the zip code 10011, which includes Chelsea and a slice of Greenwich Village, there have been five honking complaints since the start of congestion pricing, down from 25 over the same time period last year.
A little further north in ZIP code 10001 — which includes the Lincoln Tunnel and cuts across much of 34th Street into Midtown — the number of honking-horn complaints since the onset of the new tolls has stayed steady at two, the same as in 2024.
“I look right down at the Lincoln Tunnel coming out into Manhattan and it seems to be flowing, it seems to be good,” said Karen Lindstrom, 64, who lives in a building above the tunnel. “From my window, I don’t see as much traffic on 43rd Street or hear a lot of horns.”
Short-Lived Silence?
Designed to unclog the most congested streets in the country, cut vehicle emissions and raise billions of dollars for mass-transit upgrades, congestion pricing has been hailed as an early success by its supporters.
According to data and MTA officials, its initial benefits include cutting into travel times on river crossings and speeding bus service on express and local routes.
Congestion pricing also generated $37.5 million in net revenue during its first 27 days in January, MTA officials said last month, a figure that is on par with what the agency is targeting for the program’s first full year. The MTA will then be able to borrow more money through bonds.
The dollars are geared toward transit upkeep and expansion efforts that include buying new trains, modernizing signals, extending the Second Avenue Subway and installing station elevators as part of the MTA’s 2020-2024 capital plan, which faces a funding gap of more than $15 billion.
But for all its success, the vehicle-tolling plan faces an unclear future.
After an August campaign pledge to “TERMINATE Congestion Pricing in my FIRST WEEK back in Office!” Trump made a move last month through the Federal Highway Administration to spike the vehicle-tolling plan. In 2019, New York lawmakers approved the tolls, which also received the green light from the administration of President Joe Biden.
The MTA has sued to stop Trump, who gloated “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD” and “LONG LIVE THE KING!” on social media posts. Gov. Kathy Hochul made the case for the first-in-the-nation tolling scheme days later during a Feb. 21 sitdown with Trump in the Oval Office and then by tweaking the president during her appearance at the February meeting of the MTA board.
“One thing we’ve established, New Yorkers do not back down,” said Hochul, who paused congestion pricing last summer just weeks before its original June launch date. “It’s not in our nature, it’s not in our DNA.”
Outside his Sixth Avenue office building near the Canal Street connection to the Holland Tunnel, Tony Berkman said he has noticed changes since the tolling system took effect.
“The craziness that’s here on Thursday or Friday hasn’t been nearly as crazy, just in terms of the crossing guards and the number of cars and everything everywhere,” Berkman, 57, told THE CITY. “I’ve definitely felt that’s declined and I would imagine noise is a part of that, too.”
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The post Honking Complaints Plunge 69% Inside Congestion Pricing Zone appeared first on THE CITY – NYC News.
