In January, New York City finally launched congestion pricing, charging drivers a $9 toll to use the busiest streets in Manhattan during peak hours. The program is meant to reduce traffic both by discouraging people from driving into the city and by using the revenue from the toll to invest in improving public transportation.
Congestion pricing is good for low-income residents
Why New York’s new traffic policy is the opposite of elitist.
Abdallah Fayyad was a correspondent at Vox, where he covers the impacts of social and economic policies. He was the author of “Within Our Means,” a biweekly newsletter on ending poverty in America.
The early data suggests that congestion pricing is working just as it should, improving commute times and raising nearly $50 million in its first month. But from the start, the program has faced fierce opposition, ranging from Republicans in New York to the Democratic governor of New Jersey to the teachers’ union. And now, the Trump administration has joined the chorus.
Last month, the Department of Transportation moved to block the program by rescinding federal approval of the tolling scheme, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority swiftly filed a lawsuit in response. The program’s fate is uncertain.
Congestion pricing opponents say that the toll is too steep and therefore unfair to working class and poor residents. But the opposition has struggled to offer tangible alternatives for investing in public transit, which is what would help working-class and poor residents the most.
The reality is that the state of public transit in many American cities is abysmal and requires a lot of money. And the best solution to those transportation woes isn’t to make driving more affordable; it’s to make public transit more accessible for everyone.
People in poverty need better public transit
Driving isn’t cheap. Car prices, insurance rates, and leasing options are often expensive and out of reach for many people. Maintenance and necessary repairs can also set people back. That’s why lower-income people are less likely to have a car. (In 2022, for example, 30 percent of low-income households didn’t own or lease a car. For households making over $245,000, that figure was only 3 percent.) So a good, and financially wise, alternative mode of transportation for many commuters is public transit.
But there’s a problem: While wealthy residents have plenty of options to get around — cars, cabs, buses, and trains — it is often the case that poor neighborhoods have fewer public transit routes, despite the fact that lower-income commuters rely more heavily on public transit.
All of this adds up to longer commute times and a transportation cost burden for low-wage workers. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, lower-income households spend up to 30 percent of their post-tax income on transportation costs, whereas the average household spends about 15 percent.
So while it might seem like the opposition to congestion pricing is concerned with costs for lower-income commuters, the truth is that improving public transit access while making it more affordable is much more likely to benefit working class families than removing tolls from the roads.
America needs to double down on public transit
Inequality in transportation has tangible consequences on people’s lives. Fare increases, frequent delays, and traffic congestion result in people missing important life events, be they job interviews or doctor’s appointments.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. And as it so happens, investing in public transit can create a virtuous cycle: The better service a city provides, the more likely people are to ditch their cars for trains or buses, improving traffic and increasing fare revenues for struggling transit agencies. As I wrote last year, the public transit agency in Washington, DC, is a perfect example of this: The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority spent the boost in cash it received from federal pandemic aid on improving service and reducing fares. As a result, it successfully lured more riders back than many other cities.
More cities should take that approach — adding new transit routes, creating bus lanes to get people around faster, and maintaining affordability. The problem is that there’s often not enough political will to raise taxes or allocate taxpayer dollars to further subsidize public transportation. That’s why congestion pricing in New York City is a big deal: It’s the nation’s first experiment of redistributing money from drivers to transit riders, which, if spent well, could disproportionately benefit low-income residents. And if it succeeds in New York, then other cities might follow suit.
Lawmakers might be averse to doubling down on public transit because prioritizing buses over cars or train tracks over roadways tends to come with a loud backlash from drivers. But as the congestion pricing model in New York has shown so far, good transit policy only becomes more and more popular over time. Even though a majority of New Yorkers opposed congestion pricing before it went into effect, now 60 percent would like the tolls to stay.
So cities big and small should double down and get creative with how they raise revenue for public transit. Low-income commuters, who stand to benefit most long-term transit investments, deserve nothing less.
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