Congestion pricing is off to a promising start in the streets of Lower Manhattan, but roadblocks lie ahead, not least of which is the U.S. president-elect, who has vowed to axe it.

The first of its kind in the U.S., New York City’s congestion pricing scheme came into effect Jan. 5. It charges drivers between US$9 and $14 to enter the city’s central business district.

With scheduled increases to US$12 in 2028 and $15 in 2031, the new toll is expected to bring in roughly US$1 billion each year to help the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) refurbish its public transit systems, reports Bloomberg.

Early data from the first week of tolling suggests the scheme is working, with “tens of thousands fewer vehicles entering the busiest parts of Manhattan below 60th Street,” reports the New York Times, citing the MTA.

Some 539,200 vehicles entered the toll zone each day, Monday to Friday, down roughly 7.5% from a weekday baseline for January, Bloomberg writes in a separate report.

Earlier MTA modelling predicted that a year of congestion pricing should reduce traffic below 60th street by roughly 13%, says the Times.

With fewer vehicles on the street, buses are reportedly travelling more quickly, and express bus ridership is up by 6%. Early data is more mixed for cars, with anecdotal reports showing speedier commutes for some drivers but gridlock still a problem for others. Everyone is enjoying, says Bloomberg, the reduction in vehicles honking.

Eighteen years in the making, congestion pricing has proven a tough sell.

“An ingrained pro-motoring ideology that casts any restraint on driving as a betrayal of the American Dream,” along with “exasperation over the region’s balkanized and convoluted toll and transit regimes,” were “formidable obstacles” to the initiative, NYC-based policy analyst Charles Komanoff wrote in an April 2024 op-ed for the Washington Spectator.

Komanoff played a critical role in the development of NYC’s congestion pricing scheme as the creator of a modelling tool called the Balanced Transportation Analyzer. Among other things, it calculates how much revenue a toll will yield and how much time travellers will save thanks to lighter traffic and better transit.

Made law in 2019 by former governor Andrew Cuomo and championed by current Gov. Kathy Hochul, congestion pricing seemed increasingly assured until June 2024, when Hochul abruptly paused the initiative, citing concerns it would hurt working class New Yorkers.

That Hochul pushed ahead with congestion pricing in late November is very good news, say the many proponents of the scheme, because it works. Komanoff made this clear in a February 2023 post on the “unqualified success” of London’s traffic tolling, 20 years on.

Then there are the public health benefits. A 2023 MTA environmental assessment of the proposed program predicted it would lead to a 10.72% drop in carbon dioxide equivalent and fine particulate matter by 2045, reports Grist.

But the success of congestion pricing is by no means a sure bet.

“New York already has a big issue with people obstructing their licence plates, scraping the letters or numbers off and otherwise covering them, in order to try and evade automated tolling and speed cameras,” warns Canadian transit policy enthusiast Reece Martin. Such “ghost cars” could throw a big wrench into the plan, writes the New York Times.

And then there is the president-elect who has vowed to “kill” congestion pricing at the first available opportunity. Possible weapons at his disposal include “rescinding federal approval of the various federal and state environmental assessments that are needed in order for the program to work,” writes the legal firm Holland & Knight in a recent post. “Alternatively, he could require additional ones to take place, which could further create uncertainty surrounding it.”