He added, “We cannot sit idly by and watch it get worse.”
In New York, many details of a congestion pricing plan — including how much drivers will be charged — are still being worked out. The plan was the
culmination of a campaign that started 18 months ago and drew transit groups as well as prominent business, civic and labor leaders, who saw no other way to tackle gridlock.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo staked his name on it and wielded his political power to push it forward, making it a
centerpiece of the $175 billion state budget after past efforts had unraveled. Even Mayor Bill de Blasio, who had been lukewarm about congestion pricing and has had a frosty relationship with the governor,
threw his support behind it. They had made the case that it was crucial for raising the money needed to modernize the city’s crumbling subway system.
And city transit officials, facing a growing financial crisis, warned repeatedly that the alternative would be
huge fare increases.
Congestion pricing’s moment follows decades of failed efforts to unclog roads around the country. Historically, cities responded to congestion by building more roads or widening existing ones — only to find that those, too, became jammed, said Matthew Turner, an economics professor at Brown University.
As a result, America’s roads are carrying more traffic than ever. The number of people driving to work climbed to about 130 million in 2017, up from 121 million in 2012, according to an analysis of census data by
Social Explorer, a research company. Of those, more than 116 million drove alone, and only 14 million car-pooled. Just 8 million workers took public transportation.
The increasing traffic has been accompanied by concerns over health, safety and environmental implications. The number of pedestrians killed in traffic in the United States is approaching
a three-decade high.
Traffic woes have emerged as the underside of successful cities: The boom leads to an influx of new residents, businesses and construction. More than two dozen major American cities, including New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Austin, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle, have more congestion now than a decade ago, according to an annual
global traffic scorecard by INRIX.
The most recent scorecard found that congestion left American drivers sitting in traffic an average of 97 hours last year, up from 82 hours in 2015. That, in turn, cost the economy roughly $87 billion in lost productivity last year, up from $74 billion in 2015, according to INRIX.
“It only takes one car that doesn’t get through an intersection to block two lanes of traffic,” said Trevor Reed, an INRIX transportation analyst.
In Seattle, Amazon’s relentless rise has helped to turn the city into a major tech hub. Now, major infrastructure and development projects are expected to lead to even more gridlock.
“As we build a city of the future, we must reduce our reliance on cars,” Ms. Durkan said. “My goal is to make our downtown core a healthier place for all with fewer cars, a more equitable transportation system and less climate pollution.”
Road pricing has been used on some American
highways since the 1990s, with tolled express lanes — or
so-called Lexus lanes — built alongside regular lanes, offering a faster alternative to drivers who are willing to pay for it.
Cities are trying to figure out how to make it work on streets. “There’s a critical mass forming where people are saying, ‘enough is enough,’” said Stuart Cohen, the founding director of TransForm, a California-based group that released a
recent report on congestion pricing. “They’ve tried everything else and nothing’s working.”
