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NYC's Congestion Pricing Has Caused 'Quality-of-Life Improvement' in Just Six Months
After six months, the policy of tolling drivers has reduced traffic and raised hundreds of millions of dollars for the city's transit system. But the Trump administration is still trying to shut it down.
Jul 09, 2025
New York City's congestion pricing program has now been in place for six months as of Saturday, and according to state officials, it has already proven remarkably successful. It has survived despite efforts by the Trump administration to shut it down.
The program, which tolls drivers who drive through designated "congestion zones" below 60th Street in Manhattan has dramatically reduced traffic, which in turn has sped up commute times, reduced pollution, and raised hundreds of millions of dollars for the city's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA).
"Six months in, it's clear: congestion pricing has been a huge success, making life in New York better," Governor Kathy Hochul (D) said Saturday. "In New York, we dare to do big things, and this program represents just that—traffic is down throughout the region, business is booming, transit ridership is up, and we are making historic upgrades to our transit system."
Since the program started, the number of vehicles driving through the congestion zone has decreased by 11%, with a total of 10 million fewer cars having entered compared to last year. In just the first three months of the program, traffic in the congestion zone sped up by 15%.
This has led to reduced wait times for commuters, not just in the congestion zone but in surrounding areas like the Bronx and Bergen County, New Jersey.
The number of crashes is down 14% in the congestion area, while traffic fatalities have reached "historic lows" citywide.
The data has also borne out the predictions from environmentalists and public transit activists who said the program would reduce pollution, both by capping the number of cars on the road and funding long-term investment in the public transit system.
The MTA is on track to raise $500 million from congestion pricing in 2025, as was projected when the policy went into effect. The agency also reports that subway and bus usage have gone up since congestion pricing began, while service speed has improved to "near record levels."
Beyond improving convenience, data shows the program is already improving quality of life in other ways. Early estimates from a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research show that within the first month of congestion pricing, CO₂ emissions from vehicles decreased by 2.5% with other forms of air pollution and soot levels also declining. These numbers will likely continue to rise as public transit usage expands.
Ben Furnas, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, a New York-based pro-transit group that supported congestion pricing, told The Guardian that the program exceeded his already-high expectations.
"It's been even more obviously beneficial than even the most fervent proponents had hoped, and there have been really tangible improvements that are really gratifying," he said. "Reducing pollution is often seen to involve a lot of sacrifices, but this has been different. People can see the improvements to their lives. There was this cynical assumption that this was a bullshit charge and life will stay the same, but that assumption has gone away now."
During the tumultuous year leading up to congestion pricing's implementation, business groups raised fears that charging drivers would bankrupt small business owners. Hochul even blocked the policy from going into effect for months last year, citing those concerns.
Trump's Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, has called the charge a "slap in the face to working class Americans and small business owners."
But the city reports more pedestrian traffic and faster commutes, increasing economic activity.
"Gridlock is bad for the economy," noted a statement from the state of New York. "Commuters are saving as much as 21 minutes each way. Time savings help businesses make deliveries and save costs."
The city also reports increased Broadway ticket sales, hotel occupancy, and commercial office leasing since the policy went into effect, as well as record employment figures.
Despite nearly immediate indicators of the congestion scheme's success, the Trump administration has been attempting to kill it since he returned to office in January.
"We've...fended off five months of unlawful attempts from the federal government to unwind this successful program and will keep fighting–and winning–in the courts," Hochul said.
In February, the White House infamously posted an artificially generated image of Trump wearing a crown. It quoted President Trump saying: "CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!"
That same month, U.S. Transportation Secretary Duffy withdrew federal approval for the congestion pricing pilot program, threatening to pull funding for other state transportation projects if it was not halted.
But a U.S. district judge issued a temporary restraining order in May that has, for the time being, halted the Trump administration's efforts.
Attempts to kill the program may prove more difficult in the future, as it has overcome initial skepticism to grow broadly popular with a majority of New Yorkers. Hochul herself was once among those skeptics, but she has grown to become one of its greatest champions.
"You are seeing in the governor… the zeal of the convert," said Daniel Pearlstein, a spokesperson for the pro-transit Riders Alliance.
"People who had their doubts, they saw it up close. They saw it working," he said. "They are saving New Yorkers and people from New Jersey valuable time every single day. Who would want to rip that away?"
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On Top of All of Israel's Other Bombs in Gaza, Study Reveals a War-Driven Carbon Bomb
"What we are facing is severely impacting all life in Gaza, and also threatening human rights in the region, and even globally, due to the aggravation of climate change," said one United Nations special rapporteur.
May 30, 2025
A group of researchers has released an updated analysis detailing the devastating impact that Israel's war on Gaza has had in terms of greenhouse gas emissions—in addition to loss of human life.
The study, first reported on by The Guardian and posted to SSRN on Friday, found that the projected planet-warming carbon emissions of "direct war activities" over 15 months of Israel’s military assault on Gaza were greater than the individual annual emissions of 36 countries and territories.
According to local health officials in Gaza, over 54,000 people have been killed in the enclave following October 7, 2023, when a deadly Hamas attack on Israel spurred a devastating military response.
"For over 600 days, Israel has been saying it's targeting Hamas, but it is civilians who have been corralled, bombed, and killed en masse every day," said Bushra Khalidi, policy lead in the Occupied Palestinian Territory for the anti-poverty group Oxfam, on Wednesday.
According to the study, 15-months of war, a period from October 2023 to January 2025, resulted in an estimated 1.89 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions. According to The Guardian's write up of the study, 99% of that 1.89 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent was generated by Israel's ground invasion and aerial attacks on Gaza.
In January 2025, a cease-fire went into effect, but Israel ended the cease-fire in mid-March.
The estimated tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent increases to 32.2 million tonnes when the study accounts for "pre-conflict and post-conflict related construction activities."
The pre-conflict emissions include the construction of security-related concrete infrastructure in both Israel and Gaza over the past 16 years, including Hamas' network of tunnels and Israel's "iron wall." Post-conflict relates to the future reconstruction needs of Gaza following extensive Israeli attacks.
"This updated research evidences the urgency to stop the escalating atrocities, and make sure that Israel and all states comply with international law, including the decisions from the [International Criminal Court] and the [International Court of Justice]," Astrid Puentes Riaño, U.N. special rapporteur on the human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, told The Guardian.
"Whether or not states agree on calling it a genocide, what we are facing is severely impacting all life in Gaza, and also threatening human rights in the region, and even globally, due to the aggravation of climate change," she added.
The study, which according to The Guardian is under peer review by the journal One Earth, follows a study released last year authored by some of the same researchers who tackled this same question of the climate costs of the war on Gaza.
"These calculations point to the urgent need for increased visibility and mandatory reporting of military emissions for both war and peacetime through the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change," the more recent study states, referencing a treaty ratified by nearly 200 countries in the 1990s to combat "dangerous" human interference with climate systems.
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'Alarming' Report Shows Billions at Risk From Historically Low Snow Melt in Himalayas
"The steadily declining persistence of seasonal snow is a warning bell for an emerging water crisis," according to the report.
Apr 21, 2025
A report released Monday found that snow persistence in the Hindu Kush Himalaya region, sometimes called the "third pole" because of its water resources, was at its lowest level in 23 years during the 2024-2025 winter, or 23.6% below normal—a concerning water security development for nearly two billion people who rely on river basins that are fed by the region's snowmelt.
All told, snowmelt from the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region contributes about a fourth of the total runoff of twelve major river basins in the region, on average. Snow persistence has been below normal across all twelve major river basins, per the report.
These findings come from the Hindu Kush Himalaya Snow Update, an annual report put out by the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), which provides yearly analysis of snow persistence in the region—the snow that usually stays on the ground between November and March.
"The steadily declining persistence of seasonal snow is a warning bell for an emerging water crisis," according to the author of the report. "Continuous deficit of meltwater from snow would mean lesser river runoff in dry months and early melt season, highlighting the urgent need for adaptive water resource management strategies in mitigating forthcoming impacts of water shortage, especially for downstream communities facing intensifying summer extremes."
The HKH region stretches multiple thousands of miles long across eight countries—Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Nepal, Myanmar and Pakistan—according GRID-Arendal, an environmental nonprofit based in Norway that works closely with the United Nations. It is the biggest volume of ice and snow outside of the Arctic and Antartica.
"While below-normal snow persistence has occurred before in this region—between 2003 and 2025 the region experienced thirteen below-normal snow years—the increasing frequency and intensity of such occurrences in recent times is a growing concern," according to the report. The 2024-2025 winter was the third consecutive year of below-normal snow persistence.
Sher Muhammad, a remote sensing specialist at ICIMOD who was the lead expert for the report, said in a statement published Monday that the deficit situations occurring in continuous succession is an "alarming trend."
ICIMOD's director general Pema Gyamtsho highlighted the need for policy solutions to address the problem over the long term in a statement published on Monday. "Carbon emissions have already locked in an irreversible course of recurrent snow anomalies in the HKH," said Gyamtsho.
Rising temperatures and water scarcity in the region has already created climate refugees.
Research from ICIMOD published in 2023 found that glaciers in the HKH region are melting at an accelerated rate and could lose up to 80% of their volume by century's end absent ambitious action to slash planet-warming emissions.
In March, a United Nations agency found that, worldwide, 2022-2024 saw the largest three-year loss of glaciers on record.
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