American exceptionalism is over. Well, in one small way.
New York is back on track to become the first city in the United States to adopt a congestion fee on polluting cars and trucks coming into the most heavily trafficked city blocks.
In so doing, it is finally joining many other world cities with similar levies designed to clear up traffic and air pollution.
Many of those fees have been in place for decades. And while in some cities, they have briefly been politically fraught, in most, they have become an ordinary part of city life.
Singapore imposed a fee on all cars nearly 40 years ago. Oslo followed in 1990, with even electric vehicles, which do not spew pollutants from tailpipes, having to pay to come into the city center. Stockholm put the idea of a congestion price to a vote in 2006 — a majority voted in favor — and has had it ever since.
Some cities, like Milan and Amsterdam, charge vehicles entering the city center based on how polluting they are; electric vehicles pay nothing.
And London, having first introduced a fee in 2003, has steadily widened it since. It now covers polluting cars and trucks in the entire city, an expansion that became one of the most contentious issues in Mayor Sadiq Khan’s re-election bid earlier this year. He won with a comfortable margin.
Congestion pricing can have something of a chicken and egg problem.
The fees tend to work best in places that have already invested in mass transit and alternatives to cars and when those alternatives are “high quality, affordable and accessible,” according to an analysis by the consultancy firm Arup.
But once up and running, congestion pricing can be a significant source of revenue. “The money collected helps create better transit service, making the city far easier and safer to get around, for everyone,” said David Miller, a former mayor of Toronto and managing director at C40, a coalition of cities that champions such policies.
How much revenue it brings in depends on the fees set and whether they apply only to the dirtiest, oldest cars.
In London, for instance, many car owners do not have to pay an expanded congestion fee because newer cars, even gas-guzzling ones, comply with new tailpipe emissions standards. By 2026, the city will not gain any revenues from the congestion fee because, city transit officials project, all cars will be clean enough to avoid the tax.
(In New York, it is unclear if the proposed $9 toll on entering parts of Manhattan, lower than the $15 previously proposed, will be enough to help fix an aging public transit system.)
Congestion prices are part of a global trend in urban areas to clean the air, improve public health and encourage more walking, cycling and use of mass transit. City officials have been experimenting with a battery of tools, including flower pots to block off streets to cars, reducing speed limits, raising parking fees and converting some thoroughfares into one-way streets for cars and trucks so that getting around on four wheels takes longer and is more inconvenient.
There have been challenges. Milan’s congestion price was briefly suspended in 2012 after car owners protested and then again, for several months in 2020 to avert overcrowding on public transportation amid the coronavirus pandemic.
In London, opposition to an expanded congestion fee led to street protests and the toppling of traffic cameras in some neighborhoods. In the mayoral election race earlier this year, it became a battleground issue, with Conservative Party opponents saying it would compound the pain of rising costs of living, and even some of Mr. Khan’s Labour Party peers urging caution.
Mr. Khan wasted no time publicizing its benefits after he won a third term as mayor. In July, the city published data showing that levels of particulate matter and nitrogen oxide — which aggravate asthma and other ailments — had dropped significantly in the first six months after London expanded what it calls its “Ultra Low Emission Zone.”
In Stockholm, congestion pricing had reduced air pollution by 5 to 15 percent, as well as the rate of acute asthma attacks among young children, according to a 2018 study. One meta-analysis of 16 studies found a reduction in some cardiovascular diseases. Some studies show a reduction in car accidents, but one showed an increase in cyclist and motorcyclist injuries.
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