Why New York City’s Traffic Congestion Plan Crashed and Burned

The governor of New York recently announced the dissolution of the city’s congestion pricing program after years of planning and hundreds of millions of dollars of investment. This program would’ve initiated a $15 toll on vehicles entering certain parts of Manhattan, and it was partly established to help support reinvestment in the transit system. It was shut down less than a month before it was supposed to start operating — after all the tolling infrastructure was already installed.

In this episode of Upzoned, Chuck and Abby discuss how this debacle shows a fundamental misunderstanding of congestion pricing, the politics underpinning this decision and how the city could’ve handled things better.

• “17 Years, $700 Million Wasted: The Stunning Collapse of New York’s Traffic Moonshot” by Jimmy Vielkind and Joseph De Avila, The Wall Street Journal (June 2024).

• Abby Newsham (X/Twitter).

• Chuck Marohn (Twitter/X).

• Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.