Boy, congestion charges are a pain to implement. Back in 2018, I wrote that New York City was considering a congestion charge for drivers entering Manhattan below 60th Street. Then in 2019, about a year later, I followed up with this post saying that the plan could be adopted as early as April of that year!

That didn't exactly happen. But I followed up again with a post in 2022 saying that New York City was still considering a congestion charge. And ultimately, it did finally get approved, even if it did take much longer than expected. It was rebranded a congestion relief zone ("relief" sounds a lot less offensive than "pricing"), and it was set to come into effect on June 30, 2024.

This remained the situation until the first week of this month, which is when NY Governor Kathy Hochul held a surprise press conference and announced that the congestion relief zone would be placed on "indefinite pause." I think that means cancelled. And it happened less than a month before the state was finally set to start collecting money.

There is a legal question around whether she actually had the authority to intervene in this way, but let's put that aside for now. Irrespective of that, this is a disappointing outcome precisely because we know that road pricing works. If you have a traffic congestion problem, price it, and then you will have less of it.

What's even more disappointing about this particular instance, though, is that many of us were looking to New York City to show us the way. We were looking for the most walkable and transit-rich city in the US to show people that, hey, road pricing works, and it won't decimate your CBD.

It is shocking to me that traffic congestion is allowed persist in the way that it does in our cities, and that there remains zero political will to actually address it. Instead of action, we like to preoccupy ourselves with red herrings. If only we didn't have streetcars, Ubers, and so many bike lanes, then there wouldn't be congestion.

So what hope do we have now that even New York won't do what is bold and right? Lots, as always. Cities, now is your chance to do what New York was too scared to do. Who will lead?

I am one of those people that gets annoyed when people don’t follow proper escalator etiquette. The etiquette being: stand on the right; walk on the left. Some cities – London and Tokyo come to mind – are draconian about this.

But it turns out that this is not always the best way to optimize throughput. A recent study conducted in London found that during peak periods – such as the morning rush hour – it is actually better for everyone to stand still.

What they found was that when 40-60% of people chose to walk up on the left, maximum throughput was 115 passengers per minute. But when everyone stood still maximum throughput increased to 151 passengers per minute.

The reason for this is that walking takes up more space than staying put on one step. When demand is low, this has no impact on capacity. But as soon as people start slowing down to avoid the set of legs in front of them, a bottleneck occurs and capacity starts to drop. 

This is not dissimilar to what happens in traffic jams. Imagine if during peak periods all of the cars could separate themselves by only a few inches and travel at exactly the same (slow) speed. That’s not going to happen until self-driving cars hit the road, but it would be more efficient than the current chaos of distracted drivers starting and stopping.

All of this being said, since this finding only applies during very busy times, I plan to continue being annoyed when proper escalator etiquette is not followed.

The New York Times recently argued that self-driving cars can’t cure traffic, but that economics can. Here is the key soundbite:

“Maybe autonomous cars will be different from other capacity expansions,” Mr. Turner said. “But of the things we have observed so far, the only thing that really drives down travel times is pricing.”

The argument here is that capacity expansions – such as additional lanes – never solve the problem of gridlock. Yes lane widening projects increase capacity, but the latent demand is so strong that the problem never gets solved. Even in places like Houston.

We talked a lot about this phenomenon on the blog a few years ago when Toronto was embroiled in debate over the Gardiner Expressway East. But it’s interesting to think about self-driving cars as simply another incremental capacity expansion.

I have no doubt that this technology will make more efficient use of our roads. Carpooling will be a lot easier – as is already the case. Cars will be able to drive closer together. We’ll be able to stop abrupt breaking and swift land changes, which actually create systemic traffic problems for everybody else.  And the list goes on.

But there will still be limits to how many people can be efficiently moved on a particular strip of road. Exactly how there are limits to how many people can be efficiently moved via a particular subway tunnel, streetcar line, and so on.

So if latent demand continues to outstrip available capacity, which has historically been the case, then we are once again back to the politically unpopular idea of pricing away congestion. As much as people criticize it as regressive, I believe that’s where we’re headed.