The big jam New York to become first US city to introduce congestion charge

It is America’s most congested city – famous for its incessant, noisy, polluting traffic.

- Wilfred Chan

But soon more than a million drivers a day could be forced to cough up as much as $23 (£19) to enter midtown and lower Manhattan – a toll that planners say will raise $15bn to fund New York public transport while cutting vehicles in the area by up to a fifth.

Among the cars that would disappear from the streets of Manhattan is a white Honda Accord that was parked on East Broadway in the Lower East Side on Wednesday. “If they add even more fees, then that’s it,” said Felicita Mercado as she stepped into the vehicle. “No more car for me.” Instead, the 77-year-old lifelong New Yorker said, she will start taking the bus.

The plan is called congestion pricing, and New York is poised to become the first city in the US to implement it.

Similar policies have long been in place in cities including Singapore, which has had congestion pricing since 1975, and London, where a congestion charge was introduced in 2003. But in New York, a city synonymous with gridlock, the policy struggled to overcome opposition for decades before it was finally signed into law in 2019.

On Wednesday, transportation authorities released a much-awaited environmental assessment for the policy, a major milestone that explains how the plan will affect the city. “Bottom line: congestion pricing is good for the environment, good for public transit and good for New York and the region,” said the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s (MTA) chair and CEO, Janno Lieber, in a statement.