Manhattan Shows Huge Reduction in Car Crashes After Instituting Congestion Pricing

Congestion pricing gets results.

Wheels Up

The wins keep coming after Manhattan initiated its congestion toll on cars early this month. Now, the latest data is showing a massive decrease in crash related injuries.

New data from the first 12 days of congestion pricing shows that total injuries below 60th street — the zone where congestion pricing takes effect, charging drivers up to $9 to enter — dropped 51 percent compared to the same period in 2024. Total crashes, meanwhile, dropped 55 percent.

The analysis comes courtesy of outspoken transit advocate Gersh Kuntzman and his team at Streetsblog NYC. He cautions that it's too early to take a victory lap, given that the figures do not account for variations in weather between 2024 and 2025, but they are promising. This is the latest indicator that the congestion pricing is working as intended — kids are getting to school faster, the city is quieter, bridges and tunnels are seeing significantly less traffic, and the air is becoming a bit cleaner. And these are just the knock-on effects of traffic reduction.

The real winners are New York City's public transit riders, whom the congestion toll is meant to directly benefit via station improvements, critical infrastructure repairs, extended bus routes, and a resumption of the much-needed 2nd avenue subway extension project, which had been stalled for years.

In other words, if the good news keeps coming, the initiative could become a compelling proof-of-concept for other areas of New York and more crowded cities around the country.

Cutting Edge

That's in a perfect world, of course. While adding friction for cars is looking like a major win for New York so far, it comes at a time when common-sense transit projects across the country are flailing. Some are way overbudget, outsourced to pie-in-the-sky tech startups, or falling to a busted legislative process.

And that's even if a city ponies up the will to make affordable, car-free transit a priority at all.

Going forward, there's very little evidence that investments in crucial infrastructure will be coming from the federal government — Trump has already cut Biden's Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in favor of his Stargate gamble — making state and local policy like the Big Apple's congestion pricing all the more crucial.

While other cities spend taxpayer money to beautify parking lots, New City is leading by example and showing the rest of the country what people-first transit policy can do for their communities. In a country dominated by cars, this rare win for public transit is worth imitating.

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