It has now been almost a year since New York City implemented its congestion charge for the area of Manhattan south of 60th Street and, despite all of the critics, the results are overwhelmingly positive. Here are some of the most important data points:
Pollution is down by as much as 22% in the congestion zone area.
Traffic has declined by about 11% in the zone. As a reminder, traffic improved basically immediately following the $9 charge.
An average of 71,500 fewer vehicles entered the zone each day from January through to November 2025, totalling nearly 24 million fewer vehicles.
The congestion charge is forecasted to bring in $548.3 million in 2025, beating the initial goal of $500 million. (This revenue will be used by the MTA for bond issuances that will in turn fund further infrastructure improvements.)
Importantly, foot traffic in the zone is also up year-over-year compared to Manhattan as a whole (3.5% versus 1.4%, respectively).
Storefront vacancies in the zone declined more rapidly compared to Manhattan as a whole and the rest of the city. (Though the vacancy rate is still the highest in this area, presumably because of the higher rents in downtown and midtown.)
New York City's sales tax revenue is also up 6.3% this year compared to the same period last year, outperforming all neighboring counties. This suggests that the congestion charge is not keeping shoppers away.
So, why shouldn't other North American cities follow New York's lead?
Cover photo by ian dooley on Unsplash
Back in the spring, I wrote about a platform called Build Canada. More recently, this same group launched their first "city project" called Build Toronto (which is not to be confused with the city corporation that ultimately became CreateTO). Similar to Build Canada, they publish regular memos and advocate for policies and projects that will help build Canada's largest city.
Their most recent memo is by the CEO of A2X, Jamie McDonald, and it covers a topic that we discuss a lot on this blog: congestion pricing. Jamie talks about the drag that congestion has on the region's economy (upwards of $45 billion every year?), the numerous successes we can point to from around the world, and then lays out the following proposal:
Create a downtown congestion pricing zone
Introduce dynamic highway pricing across the GTA
Guarantee fairness and predictable exemptions
Invest in alternatives before launch
This is the way. And it remains deeply disappointing that we don't have the political leadership to move this forward. Instead, we sit in traffic. But after a decade of writing about it, I think I've said about all I can say about the virtues of congestion pricing. We absolutely know it works. Now we just need to spread the word and continue to apply pressure. I'm glad that groups like Build Toronto are helping to do exactly that.

At the risk of sounding obvious, pricing is fundamental to the functioning of markets. It determines profitability, it allocates resources, and it influences customer behavior, among other things. Take the example of electricity pricing.
In Ontario, we use something called time-of-use (TOU) pricing. What that means is that electricity rates vary according to the time of the day and the time of the year. In the summer, the expensive peak usage period is the afternoon (because of air conditioning) and in the winter it's the morning and early evening (because of heating and lighting when people are generally not at work).
What this pricing strategy does is incentivize customers to change their consumption behaviours. Instead of doing laundry during a peak period, maybe you set a timer and have it run during a low-peak period. In other words, it helps to flatten the demand curve. This is valuable for utility providers because peak periods are more expensive to supply and they also create the risk of brownouts and blackouts. So you worry about peak demand.
With this in mind, let's now switch and talk about highway congestion. The parallels are almost identical, and yet, most highways are free to use, which means we do absolutely nothing to manage peak demand. Instead, we encourage the equivalent of brownouts where demand greatly exceeds supply, traffic crawls, and roads become practically unusable. Why is that? Why should highways be viewed any differently?
In the case of highways, there are even alternatives such as transit (thought not always, of course). But if you need electricity from a monopolistic utility provider, you're paying whatever rates they charge. As you might expect, the answer is not technical or economic. We know with 100% certainty that pricing congestion will reduce it. The reason we don't do it is political. Free roads are preferred to functioning roads.
Cover photo by Hooman R. on
It has now been almost a year since New York City implemented its congestion charge for the area of Manhattan south of 60th Street and, despite all of the critics, the results are overwhelmingly positive. Here are some of the most important data points:
Pollution is down by as much as 22% in the congestion zone area.
Traffic has declined by about 11% in the zone. As a reminder, traffic improved basically immediately following the $9 charge.
An average of 71,500 fewer vehicles entered the zone each day from January through to November 2025, totalling nearly 24 million fewer vehicles.
The congestion charge is forecasted to bring in $548.3 million in 2025, beating the initial goal of $500 million. (This revenue will be used by the MTA for bond issuances that will in turn fund further infrastructure improvements.)
Importantly, foot traffic in the zone is also up year-over-year compared to Manhattan as a whole (3.5% versus 1.4%, respectively).
Storefront vacancies in the zone declined more rapidly compared to Manhattan as a whole and the rest of the city. (Though the vacancy rate is still the highest in this area, presumably because of the higher rents in downtown and midtown.)
New York City's sales tax revenue is also up 6.3% this year compared to the same period last year, outperforming all neighboring counties. This suggests that the congestion charge is not keeping shoppers away.
So, why shouldn't other North American cities follow New York's lead?
Cover photo by ian dooley on Unsplash
Back in the spring, I wrote about a platform called Build Canada. More recently, this same group launched their first "city project" called Build Toronto (which is not to be confused with the city corporation that ultimately became CreateTO). Similar to Build Canada, they publish regular memos and advocate for policies and projects that will help build Canada's largest city.
Their most recent memo is by the CEO of A2X, Jamie McDonald, and it covers a topic that we discuss a lot on this blog: congestion pricing. Jamie talks about the drag that congestion has on the region's economy (upwards of $45 billion every year?), the numerous successes we can point to from around the world, and then lays out the following proposal:
Create a downtown congestion pricing zone
Introduce dynamic highway pricing across the GTA
Guarantee fairness and predictable exemptions
Invest in alternatives before launch
This is the way. And it remains deeply disappointing that we don't have the political leadership to move this forward. Instead, we sit in traffic. But after a decade of writing about it, I think I've said about all I can say about the virtues of congestion pricing. We absolutely know it works. Now we just need to spread the word and continue to apply pressure. I'm glad that groups like Build Toronto are helping to do exactly that.

At the risk of sounding obvious, pricing is fundamental to the functioning of markets. It determines profitability, it allocates resources, and it influences customer behavior, among other things. Take the example of electricity pricing.
In Ontario, we use something called time-of-use (TOU) pricing. What that means is that electricity rates vary according to the time of the day and the time of the year. In the summer, the expensive peak usage period is the afternoon (because of air conditioning) and in the winter it's the morning and early evening (because of heating and lighting when people are generally not at work).
What this pricing strategy does is incentivize customers to change their consumption behaviours. Instead of doing laundry during a peak period, maybe you set a timer and have it run during a low-peak period. In other words, it helps to flatten the demand curve. This is valuable for utility providers because peak periods are more expensive to supply and they also create the risk of brownouts and blackouts. So you worry about peak demand.
With this in mind, let's now switch and talk about highway congestion. The parallels are almost identical, and yet, most highways are free to use, which means we do absolutely nothing to manage peak demand. Instead, we encourage the equivalent of brownouts where demand greatly exceeds supply, traffic crawls, and roads become practically unusable. Why is that? Why should highways be viewed any differently?
In the case of highways, there are even alternatives such as transit (thought not always, of course). But if you need electricity from a monopolistic utility provider, you're paying whatever rates they charge. As you might expect, the answer is not technical or economic. We know with 100% certainty that pricing congestion will reduce it. The reason we don't do it is political. Free roads are preferred to functioning roads.
Cover photo by Hooman R. on
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