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New Yorkers are traveling faster on Manhattan’s bridges and tunnels after the city implemented its long-debated pricing plan earlier this month, according to newly available traffic data.
Morning rush hour speeds from New Jersey through the Holland Tunnel under the Hudson River to Manhattan have doubled to 28mph compared to a year ago. The overnight speed limit on the Manhattan Bridge to Brooklyn was increased from 13 mph to 23 mph.
If these trends hold, Drivers Being willing to pay the $4.50-$14.40 toll to enter the congestion zone in the center of one of the busiest cities in the United States can save thousands of hours a year.
New York’s congestion-pricing system, which went into effect Jan. 5, is intended to cut traffic and provide $15 billion in needed funding. Improvements in local mass transit.
The fee applies to vehicles entering the “congestion relief zone” below 60th Street in Manhattan, which is the part of the island around Midtown, Greenwich Village, SoHo and Wall Street. Most passenger cars entering the zone now pay $9, trucks $14.40 and motorcycles $4.50. Some vehicles, including emergency vehicles, are exempt.
The plan means that New York will join London, Milan, Singapore and Stockholm in crowding the small club of big cities. Traffic in London introduced the program in 2003 decreased by 14 percent In the first year in the zone. Other cities saw declines of more than 20 percent.
Add in new york Speeds are based on data provided to the Financial Times by traffic monitoring firm Inrix and collected from anonymized GPS by vehicles, mobile devices and road sensors. The data contains speeds on different routes around the city, at different times, before and after the toll scheme was launched.
“Thankfully Manhattan has very few access points, and they’re limited to bridges and tunnels, so you can get a feel for what’s going on,” said Enrix analyst Bob Pishu.
Seven of the eight bridges and tunnels examined experienced significant acceleration during at least one rush hour. Three bridges into Manhattan that are not connected to the congested zone did not experience the same speed increases.
FT’s analysis of hourly traffic data from New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority also showed fewer vehicles in affected tunnels during rush hour. Bridges and tunnels outside the zone carry more vehicles.
A Report The MTA also saw significant reductions in travel times this week, including 30-40 percent for vehicles entering Manhattan’s business district. It was also found that city buses are running faster and their passenger numbers are slightly higher.
According to Congestion Pricing Tracker, a project by college student brothers Benjamin and Joshua Moshes that tracks travel times on Google Maps, peak times through the Holland Tunnel have dropped from 20 minutes pre-paid to nine minutes this week.
“We are confident that we will see really big changes in the bridges and tunnels that lead to the congestion zone,” said Benjamin Moshes.
Lewis Leahy, an assistant professor of civil engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, found that in other cities with congestion pricing, drivers responded more to the introduction of the toll than to subsequent price increases.Great flexibility at the entranceHe said.
Lehe was “shocked” by the scale of the impact seen in New York’s early data, but cautioned that it will take time to fully understand the effects of the new bills.
At 5 a.m. on a weekday near the mouth of Holland Tunnel in Lower Manhattan, only one car waited at a stoplight until recently, jammed for blocks. Gone are the brave guards who shepherded the crossroads. The speed in the tunnel increased by about 50 percent.
