Is congestion pricing actually working? Cornell researchers conducted the first causal evaluation of NYC's congestion pricing program launched in January 2025. They observed substantial pollution reductions within Manhattan's toll zone and spillover benefits citywide, offering crucial insights for other U.S. cities considering similar policies to improve air quality and address environmental inequities.
The Center for Transportation, Environment, and Community Health (CTECH)
In January 2025, New York City launched the first congestion pricing program in the United States, offering a rare real-world test of how traffic policy affects air quality. This Keynote brings together researchers from environmental science, economics, and political science, who used high-frequency monitoring data to conduct the first zone-specific causal evaluation of the policy's PM2.5 impacts.
The study found substantial pollution reductions within Manhattan's congestion zone, with spillover benefits across the city and region. The discussion will unpack methods, results, and implications for urban policy, public health, and environmental justice. As other U.S. cities consider similar programs, these findings offer crucial insights into congestion pricing's potential as a tool for improving air quality and addressing environmental inequities in urban areas.
What You'll Learn:
Intro
Welcome to Cornell Keynotes. On today's episode, we are examining a groundbreaking real world experiment in urban environmental policy that is making headlines.
In January, 2025, New York City launched the first US congestion pricing program, creating an unprecedented opportunity to study how traffic policy directly impacts air quality using high frequency monitoring data. The early results are striking substantial pollution reductions within Manhattan's congestion zone with spillover benefits across the region. As cities from Los Angeles to Boston consider similar programs, these findings offer critical insight into congestion, pricings potential for improving air quality, and addressing longstanding environmental inequities.
For this keynote, we are joined by the Cornell Engineering team behind this pioneering study, Gina Park Haiyan Deng and Tim Fraser from [00:01:00] the Duffield College of Engineering. We're gonna learn about their methodologies, their key findings, and what this means for the future of urban transportation policy and environmental justice.
And now here's our conversation with Gina Park, Haiyan Deng and Tim Fraser.
. So Tim Fraser, I'm gonna start with you. As congestion pricing was put into effect, how much did air quality change in New York?
Well, we saw that in Manhattan, in the congestion relief zone, , called the CRZ. , We saw a 22% decrease. In the amount of particulate matter, pm 2.5, the amount of smog that was being produced, within that zone.
, The Environmental Protection Agency says that we really shouldn't be exposed to more than nine micrograms per cubic meter of pm 2.5. This smog
over the course of what time?
Oh, an annual average exposure. , And because of that. That's what makes , the change from congestion pricing really [00:02:00] significant.
We went from a projected 13.8 micrograms, had congestion pricing never occurred to 10.8, which is a three microgram drop. That's a huge amount of scale. It's still not at nine micrograms per cubic meter. That EPA goal, but that's pretty good. That makes a sizable change in air quality.
Within that part of the city.
So a point of focus is Manhattan. Mm-hmm. What happened in some of the other New York City boroughs? And also let's think about the Cross Bronx Expressway, which is a significant source of congestion. What did you see in some of the outer boroughs?
We also saw a sizable reduction in other boroughs, not just in Manhattan.
The numbers, , are like slightly lower than the main congestion. . Relief zone itself, but , it ranges from 16% to , 10%. And so , it's a pretty good improvement overall. . In terms of the Bronx, expressway, would you like to, , answer?
Sure. Well, we looked at three, [00:03:00] broad areas of New York City.
There was. What was the effect in the congestion relief zone itself inside Manhattan? And then there was, what was the effect within, the five borough area and then also what was the effect in the entire metro area that spans out through Long Island all the way down into New Jersey. And we found that there was a 22% drop within the congestion relief zone, but there was about an 11% drop.
Within the New York City five borough area and in the Bronx specifically, which you're asking about, we saw a 11% decrease, , pretty on par for the rest of the five boroughs. And then moving out beyond that, we still saw a decrease too of about seven, , 0.7 micrograms per cubic meter, which is
a, across the river into New Jersey as well,
across the river into New Jersey.
, Let's talk about pm this recurring, , index that we're gonna be using throughout. Can you explain a little bit about what it means and help us understand it, make it a little more palatable for us that don't [00:04:00] work in this space?
Yes, absolutely. So, PM is a very fine particulate matter. , you can't smell it. You can't feel it, but it's very small and if you're exposed to this for a very long time, then it could actually be very detrimental to human health. And so it's one of the main air pollutant that we want to. Make sure to decrease it. . And so it is highly related to, all, many different, emission sources.
But when it comes to transportation, it is, contributing a lot , and it creates a lot of smokes. And if that goes on, for a long time, that could create asthma or, , any long-term mm-hmm. Respiratory diseases. And so it is really important for us to make sure that.
, We have low or non, .
Well, you might wonder who is vulnerable to changes in, air quality. And, I usually say it's, young kiddos with asthma. Mm-hmm. Um, well, young kiddos, , anyone with asthma, , the elderly, but it also affects just anyone who's [00:05:00] out. , About their day doing vigorous exercise.
, If you're jogging in Central Park, this affects you.
Mm-hmm. Got it. Haiyan Deng, I want to pivot over to you. I want you to tell me why cities might consider congestion pricing.
Congestive pricing is working as, market mechanism to regulate, traffic. To solve the problem of over consumption of property of goods.
So from the economics point of view, if, the road is a limited resource, and if it is the people who are using the road is not bearing the full social cost, then they tend to overuse it. So in that case, that will cause a lot of problem. Gridlock and pollution and health problem.
As, , my colleagues just mentioned, , this is also a classic example for us, the common of tragical, common in system Dyna point of view. So, , we have seen that, in the world and we will talk about that, more later.
Good. I have some question about the [00:06:00] factors that go into congestion pricing.
Some that are mentioned are public transit ridership would be a factor, traffic time, maybe overall projected revenue from the program. How do you draw the connections between all those different things? When we arrive at,, a congestion pricing policy?
So tho this is a, . Deeply interconnected system.
When there's a toll pricing, then people driving behavior will change. So they have multiple choices they can avoid driving, take the transit bus, they can drive, into the city. By carpooling or they can still bear the cost drive into the zone, or they can debate, they can go to the peripheral area and go to their destination.
So therefore, we connected all those factors into this system. We try to tackle the structure. Beneath , the ocean level, to tackle the iceberg structure and to see, , what are the quantitative relationship between [00:07:00] them. So this is the cause of diagram that I connect all those factors together instead of their just individual, observations.
Then we asked, we was going to use the, some simulation and to test the simulator result.
Thank you. So congestion pricing, Gina, I wanna turn to you is not entirely unique to New York City. This isn't the first time. There are other examples. Can you speak to where else this might have been implemented around the world and what maybe what the results were?
As you said, it's a long established policy. It's not New York City is the first one who adopted it. , we know that, especially the European cities, like, , Milan for instance, they experienced about like 17% reduction in terms of particulate matter. 10. Actually, that's a little bit of the, , detail that I wanted to share with you.
We. Observed a particular matter PM 2.5, which is the size of the diameter of the matter. It's very fine. But these other cities that I was just mentioning, Milan or London for instance, , they had reduction of 10%. They [00:08:00] all had PM 10, which is slightly bigger than PM 2.5, which means that New York City actually has experienced even stronger impact in terms of air quality because it's 22%, but it's also 22% of pm 2.5.
The worst kind of smog.
Exactly. Yeah. So, uh, New York City has, experienced especially stronger impact, , compared to these other cities that I was just mentioning. And the reason why I think that might have happened is because, New York City is more. Dense, there is such a high density , and these Manhattan and, , congestion relief zone.
Especially if you think about it, transportation and traffic is one of the biggest source of air pollution compared to other cities that we perhaps have mentioned, , compared to density and so we believe that maybe that's why it had bigger impact than these other cities.
.
So there are also other cities that have the congestive pricing. The earliest one is Singapore. They started in 1975 and [00:09:00] upgraded, , to automatic system in 1998. Mm-hmm. , They see when they started the program, they see immediate reduction in traffic, 30%. And then, , London, which is regarded as a good, successful example, launched the congest pricing in 2003 and they have seen 30% traffic time, reduction. And , they raised, the money from the, congestion pricing from the fee and reinvested back to the transplant public transit, which is a good, successful example for other cities. And then, stockholm. Mm-hmm. After they imposed the.
Congestion pricing. They have seen reduction of asthma related hospital visit by 50%, which is a huge success. Wow. Yeah.
And so I think what's exciting about this is although congestion pricing has been implemented in, , several other cities throughout the world, this is the first time it's ever been implemented in North America. Certainly in the United States. Mm-hmm. And so there was kind of this [00:10:00] question hanging out there for a while. Will it work? Is congestion pricing just for Europeans, and that really does not appear to be the case. We saw environmentally speaking and in terms of health impacts, it's had a rather substantial effect in New York City.
So the tagline I like to think about is congestion pricing, not just for European cities anymore,
I wanna get back to the measurements, the PM 2.5. The study focused on the daily maximum. Versus, , like an average or hourly. What does that mean , when we talk about the daily maximum, what does that mean for health impacts?
Why would you look to that?
Sure. Well, the daily maximum, , is that point, where the air is at its worst quality, and so if you have a health condition, if you have asthma, if you're an elder, if you're an infant, or if you're doing vigorous activity, if you're working construction, any of these things and you are exposed at that point, that's not great,
, That's where it's gonna impact your health the most. , And so we wanted to see did congestion pricing bring down those points, , that , would [00:11:00] have the worst impact on human health. But I should mention, we redid the study, , again using the daily average. As well. So the average amount of PM 2.5 and the results , are fairly consistent.
, I want to ask you how you separate pollution from transportation versus other types of pollution. You had a, upwind monitor, situation going on there. Explain how that worked.
, For that, we call that , the background concentration. That's the idea that Gina was referring to.
What does that mean?
That means that. Even without cars on the road, your city is still going to be producing PM 2.5. , From all of the buildings and all of this that, that are doing heating. And so we need to account for that.
We need to make sure that, , we wean out of our statistical models any trace of the background concentration so we can find the true effect. Of the congestion pricing policy on air quality. So we were able to look at, monitors that were upwind. Of the monitors that we are assessing. , [00:12:00] Thanks to this huge, , set of monitors, , deployed by the, , I believe it's the New York City Community Air Survey, , as well as air now.gov.
A federal operation for air quality monitoring. , And these were able to, tell us, hey, in this area where, that's upwind, . What's a good approximation of, , the air quality, without taking into account transportation levels in your current area?
, To add on just a little bit more scientific details, is that particular matter is essentially, mixture of different. , Particles together. And so it is created by chemically reacting to each other in the air. And so, just like how Tim has mentioned, even though we don't do anything, it exists on the ground. So there's a ground level and there's also, up in the air level, , that we also have to measure.
, Because of that reason, it's very important for us to take that into account that we separate that. Baseline [00:13:00] impact from the existing PM 2.5, as opposed to what exactly has increased after adopting or decreased, like what is the change after the policy adoption?
Gina, , I do wanna stick with you. The study reports that. PM 2.5 reductions inside the congestion relief zone. The CRZ actually grew over time, so the reductions kept going in that direction. Why did that effect grow? How do you think that happened? How do you account for that?
, We believe that there has been a compounding effect, as we mentioned. , There are so many different factors that are, , impacting, especially when we look at the, , traffic, for instance, after CRZ. After, , congestion pricing has been adopted, people have changed their behaviors to, different timeline or they were taking more metro public transit.
And so there is a behavior adaptation and also overall traffic has decreased. , By, what was the number? Was it, , 11%? I think it was, overall, , traffic. Decreased [00:14:00] after congestion pricing was adopted. And so all of these different factors had, , compounding impact. And so it has. , Contributed to the fact that the effect has been increasing.
These, , different aspect, 11% of the traffic, it's not one to one ratio. Just because the traffic has decreased 11% doesn't mean the air quality has decreased 11%. . Because again, there are different factors are, coming into play together. And so we believe that these, , behavioral adaptation and also, .
Compounding effect has, put into that, growing effect.
I have a question for you. I wanna talk about methodology, here. . Why did you elect to build a model instead of using something like a simple year over year comparison? Explain that to me.
Yeah. , This is the big question and, , we love this , as statistical modelers.
If you compared year to year. Which some studies have done, out of an effort , for data transparency, it's, very approachable to do, the average one year versus the average the other year. [00:15:00] But, , each day if you take Monday, . In January of 2024, and a Monday in January of 2025.
There are different factors that were also shaping air pollution on those two days, and we need to account for them. So the weather was different. Temperature, humidity causes PM 2.5 to either stick in the air a little bit more or not. , We also need to, , adjust for things like, , literal daily differences.
, The effect of a Monday versus a Tuesday versus a Sunday, we also need to adjust for that background concentration we talked about. Mm-hmm. But, we also need to account for things like the wildfires. The Canadian wildfires, which have impacted, yes, air quality in the Northeast so much.
And so, each of these, , dynamics, , can be, we call it controlled for, in our statistical model so that we can create a, what we like to call an apples to apples comparison. , Can you show me [00:16:00] what would air quality have looked like had congestion pricing not occurred? Over time. And then what did it look like in actuality?
And so that way we're able to create this, this counterfactual is what we call it. And compare the two.
Well, I want to ask you then, how certain are you about the findings, as it relates to the effects of congestion pricing?
Any uncertainty? How do you account for it? How do you describe it?
Well, I guess , there are two types of uncertainty , we could be talking about here. One of them is the estimates. So as you can see on that graph, if you look really, really closely, there are teeny tiny error bars, , around each of those bars.
And that is describing, the 95% confidence interval for these effects. And that is great news. That means that we drew from a huge sample of air quality monitors and our estimates have very, very little uncertainty. , The other kind of uncertainty, , that you might be thinking about is, this study looked at the first six months, [00:17:00] what happened after that?
That's still a little bit, , unclear and. Our team is working on it. And, we've got, , more results coming soon, but we are hopeful based on that time trends mm-hmm. That we saw before that things are getting better. Haiyan Do you want to add anything?
Yeah. So thanks to, , Tim that for tiny, tiny little air of our, so we, based on the foundation they built and then.
Carefully calibrate our new system dynamic model. So to make our model, and then validate through, , other methods and so to simulate from 20 20, 20 23 to 2031. So use the calibrate model to predict what's gonna happen when the toll pricing goes up from nine to 15 to 18. So using the system, diamond model, that interconnected holistic system.
So that will compliment our [00:18:00] current, publication.
When can we anticipate seeing the results for , the next six months, months? I don't wanna have preliminary results. Now, but I Coming soon. Coming soon. So, yeah. Okay. Good. All right. We'll stand by for that. , I wanna return to a statistic that was cited earlier.
I can't remember where it came from, but congestion pricing, reduced vehicle entries into the, , congestion relief zone. By 11%. . But the PM two, , 2.5 was reduced, , to 22%. Sorry, staggering statistic there. How do you account for that? What happened?
, As I was previously mentioning, there are different.
, Effects that are coming into play and had a compounding impact. , And so small reduction, , from, , traffic, 11%, I might not, I shouldn't say small, but 11% of traffic, , that is likely to contribute to, , nitrogen dioxide, which is another pollutant that contributes to overall particulate matter.
. Typically accounts for 30 to 45% according to some studies to overall particular matter level. [00:19:00] And so there has been that, 11% of traffic has , impacted an overall particular matter level. Hmm. But there is also other, types of, , reduction impact. As I said, people are more, , traveling at different times so that there's less congestion.
They're taking more public transit and so all of these other behavior adaptation and traffic changes had a bigger impact later on. So, as I said, it's not one-to-one ratio. Yeah.
I'm thinking about that plot that we had up here, up in the upper right hand corner. Shows, the change from January to June in how many multi-unit trucks entered the congestion relief zone. And you can see it's, there's a quite steep decline now. Anyone who's been behind an 18 wheeler, , on the highway knows that. Not great for air quality,
not great. So imagine if you can take one of these off the road. That has a huge impact, but if you can take several of them off the road [00:20:00] concurrently, as Gina said, that affect compounds, , plus ideally we want to change the number that are on the road, but. Even if we change when they're going on the road, that matters too.
. If we can do anything to reduce , the big clumps of 18 wheelers all on the same road all at the same time, if we can spread them out. That seems to be happening right now in New York City. There's a lot of anecdotal evidence that, , truckers are driving through late at night, , so that they can avoid, , impacts from the toll.
, And that way you're able to, just by adjusting the when of your delivery timing. Businesses are able to help contribute to the, benefits of congestion pricing on air quality.
I want to pick up on the point that Tim was mentioning that time matters.
Because PM 2.5, this particular matter during the day, it changes, the level changes, and so it matters. When PM [00:21:00] peaks, during the day. So is it the morning time, is it the afternoon time? Is it nighttime? So because of that difference too, it matters a lot that when we have this congestion, is it going to be during the day and the night?
That's another thing that I wanted to add.
If we can bring down the congestion, if we can just change when cars are entering, that makes a big difference. And if we can reduce the total number of vehicles and encourage people to use public transit, or to carpool, great. Both of these are levers that we have, open to us, to improve air quality.
Haiyan I wanna think about behavioral economic impacts, some of the tradeoffs and congestion pricing, , we use terms like equity. , How do we think about the impacts of this and what do we mean by equity in this context?
Okay. Before I dive into that question, I give you some numbers.
, Before London, . Launch their congestion pricing. 43% of the citizen in London opposed, and after they impose , the fee within a few months, that number goes down to 31%. So [00:22:00] you can see, because the effect is immediate and also in, , . Stockholm, and that number was below 40%. So when New York City, the contest pricing goes, into effect.
There are huge debate, , about this congested pricing. People are talking about, , equity unfairness, and so that's why
but it seems to historically resolve itself. Yes. As people start seeing the benefits
, They're saying that some of the people twice going into the Manhattans.
Island and go into the, , CZ zone. So, , that's why we need to understand this problem with a complete picture or with a view that we can connect all the things together. So you can see there are, , balanced loops here. Most of them are balanced loops, but when the balanced loops, the feedback loops work together.
, To another chain. Sometimes they work as a reinforcing loop. So therefore, when [00:23:00] we collecting the fees from the toll, we can use that money to, improve the infrastructure, to invest the public transit, therefore, make it more accessible to the. Low income people and also more reliable.
So, which is a good, it's a reinforcing loop for the congestion pricing. So , when we look at this, interconnected system, when people understand the structure and also understand the benefits, I think, this will help people to make, better decisions and make better policies.
The big question is, well, if you're gonna implement this big policy, how is it gonna affect me as a resident? , Am I going to see the, , immediate impacts? And the nice thing about this study is that it showed that some of those, impacts you do see immediately, the air quality impacts, , picked up after the first week and, progressed over time.
We know that the stated [00:24:00] goal of the National Pricing Policy is to help fund, , the Metropolitan and Transit Authority, , to improve public transit. , I think there's also that concern that, , even if it benefits, residents, it's not gonna benefit. Residents in certain parts.
I think folks in New Jersey were concerned. , Folks in the Bronx were concerned about the expressway, and at least based on that first six month picture, we can say that there are. Immediate air quality benefits, , coming to, , both of these, groups that were worried about the impacts.
Yeah, I wanted to add a little bit on that. , Some folks were very worried about. Whether there has been a spillover effect, whether these traffic decrease and congestion, has it moved to these other areas? Mm. And we didn't see that from our study. Yeah. And so we don't necessarily believe that this, has, resulted in,
, You know, it's not a trade off between , the decrease in Manhattan doesn't mean it is, increase in other boroughs like Bronx and New Jersey area close to, , New York City.
And that wouldn't be good [00:25:00] environmentally had that happens, right? If you just, exported all of the traffic Yeah. Down into New Jersey. Mm-hmm. And then it blows across, across the river and here we are then. Then no one would be happy, right?
Well, as I said, there is interconnected system, so there might be some diversion to the other areas, but we want to make the policy that direct people to make decision to take the public transit instead of deviating so that the toll schedule is important, like when and which truck, which kind of car, that kind of thing.
And also I want to add is that the cost. The traffic, and also the health, the cost to the traffic congestion to Americans is high. So in 2024 data, the average American people lost 102 hours annually in. Traffic jam and the 2018 data that 87 billion, , GDP were lost because of traffic [00:26:00] jam.
And think about what that translates to , in people's lives. That's time with your kids. That's time. I don't know. Out on a date. That's time. , Time to yourself. Time for mental health to do work, time for all kinds of things. Yeah. , And we also know that, time you spend in stressful traffic jams, that impacts you, that raises your overall stress level for the day.
So there are a bunch of reasons why we would want to change this as a society,
and shrewdly, you would think, oh, that's time that you could otherwise be productive. If we, if we had to think about it that way, companies might think about it that way.
Yeah, that's what I'm getting at. Yeah. Speaking of which, , congestion pricing. , Gina, I want you to talk about this a little bit. How do you think or what have you observed? Congestion pricing affects things like freight, logistics, supply chains, delivery firms a huge part of what it means to do business in New York.
I think it has impacted huge on these, , freight and, , logistics industry because,. They have a very tight margin in terms of their pricing. And so this toll is a huge impact on [00:27:00] the overall pricing. And so they probably have, changed the delivery schedule of course, because of that impact and, this,
which is inconvenient. But probably , a good thing because otherwise there's no pressure, there's no pressure to, keep New York residents safe, so to speak. From the impacts of traffic.
Yeah. And, this matters a lot in terms of the air quality too as a result because these trucks, when they are delivering, , they don't turn off their engine, they are actually idling.
. And so while they are making the delivery, the emissions continue to be emitted in the air.
There is a huge impact on overall air quality. Yeah. That's good.
What did you observe among different types of vehicles as it relates to PM 2.5? Can you tell us a little bit about that? I'm sure it figured into it.
Yeah. So overall, we told you about that overall traffic has decreased by 11%.
Especially the trucks, the delivery, no multi-unit trucks, they have decreased about 18%, and that means, just like how I was saying, they chose not to. [00:28:00] Drive during that time. They have decreased the overall, quantity and so that has impacted a lot.
Yeah. I'm remembering that , the Metropolitan Transit Authority recently published some,, statistics that said that the overall number of trucks that were on the road in New York City hadn't, , fluctuated much in the past year, but within the six month period that we were looking at, we did see very large changes using their own data, using MTA data.
, And so what I'm gathering is that maybe their analysis looked at different sections of the city or, , a bigger picture. It could be that these trucks are. Rerouting within the city, to avoid, or it could be that, , because that was about trucks in general, that doesn't,
closely capture the behavior of the. Most highly polluting trucks. The big 18 wheelers, the big multi-unit trucks, and those are the ones that we saw a big decrease in.
That's really important factor, , that is related to vehicle type two. , Just like how Tim has mentioned these trucks, they are usually diesel engine trucks and their emission [00:29:00] factor is so much higher than other passenger cars, and so it
it is a huge impact just by looking at the heavy duty and, , multi-unit trucks, , whether they have decreased or not in overall air quality Yeah.
And so it's neat because this gives us, a number of different levers that New York City can continue to adjust over time.
I know there are some cities who implement, a version related to congestion pricing, where they just price, , entries for trucks. And I imagine if you are another city in the United States and you think you want to try out congestion pricing, but you're not sure you can, do it for all cars, what if you can do it for trucks?
That can make a, huge difference. , There are a number of different styles, , that you can use. , I think of this as an exciting moments for experimentation, , throughout the country. , Ways that we can make, policy work for the public, ways that we can convert transit systems
to add that you just said about the, , certain [00:30:00] type of vehicles, I think in Milan.
Did that. They started to just for the heavy, I think that they have the toll for the very old car because the pollution. So then people started to get rid of the old car buy the new car, less pollution, and later on they transferred it into old cars. . So when the city started to consider, , congestive pricing, they can do some experiments Yeah.
Based on their situation. Absolutely. Yeah.
Haiyan I wanna follow this up with, , I want to ask you, are there other US cities that may follow New York's example, either based on your study or otherwise?
There are many, , big cities that is, watching closely, , the typical one I'm going to talk about is Boston.
They publish their white paper December, 2025. It's just a month old. So they have this hypothetical, , zone. They want to charge the traffic, the zone toll. , They. Do this simulation so the blue line is the decrease in traffic. The red line [00:31:00] is increase in traffic.
The thickness is the magnitude, how much increase or decrease. So we can see that, through the simulation that around this zone, they don't wanna control traffic. , The traffic volume decreased a lot. So the result is that they look at two different scenarios.
If they impose $9 or $15, what's the impact? So , the vehicle travel decreased by about 20, , 12% to 18%, and the vehicle miles traveled, decreased by 26 to 31%. And vehicle hours traveled, which means you gain , your time back, , decreased from 37 to 43%. And the PM 2.5 decreased by , 1.3% or double if you increase , the total.
And there are other cities like Chicago, like San Francisco, like Los Angeles, they are all, doing similar researches, in earlier years in 2020 and [00:32:00] 2022.
I mean, just those numbers you're referring to about Boston. It makes me think as a former Boston resident, I didn't want to drive in the city as much as I could.
Because of how much traffic there's , a moniker, , for people who drive on, , the Boston, highways, mass holes, because it's tough. It's really, , hard and it's really stressful. And so imagine if we see those changes, what a, a 26%, , projected drop in vehicle miles traveled.
, Imagine what a change that could make. For your experience driving through these cities.
Yeah. Your speed is, goes up. You can get to your destination earlier. I drive to Boston a lot because of hockey tournaments. So when there's a game, I'm like a rush and all the traffic on the road makes me so stressed.
. Can other American cities, US cities, anticipate similar results as New York City? I mean, New York feels like a special example, but we did just mention la, right? Very different than Boston, very different than Chicago. Completely different layout transportation scene. Can they [00:33:00] anticipate seeing results that are as impressive as this?
I think the first thing is that you need to look at the. Your local area, whether you have a reliable, public transit system. Whether it's accessible, because if you increase the traffic, , the congestive price, the increase, the toll. But if the public transportation is not accessible, that is.
A equity problem. So people who are, has low income, they are hit twice and it's hard for them to get to where they are. So you have to have a reliable public transportation system. Another thing it's very important to use that collective money back to the public. Mm. To promote the public transportation system to improve the infrastructure that will also help to alleviate the equity problem concerns.
It makes me think about what are good candidate cities for this and, just like Haiyan said, , it's [00:34:00] cities with. A public, transit system that routes inwards to a, , highly congested area. So I think of places like Chicago, San Francisco, mm-hmm. Boston, Philly, , even Pittsburgh.
, And as long as you have those routes , for people to take in and you have congestion. Might as well try. If New York City, one of the most congested places, , in the world , can pull this off and see benefits from its, that seems exciting to me.
, You mentioned that some of your studies were done in partnership with the Metro Transit Authority. Do they have something similar going on as it relates to user adaptability as it relates to congestion pricing?
Our studies were done using some of their publicly available data. Okay. So not in partnership with, they did a one year summary study of NYC air quality and congestion pricing, , that I encourage you to check out. They did use the comparison of annual averages, which is why we encourage people to take a look at our methods and, try to use those kinds of methods when [00:35:00] making these comparisons because, , we would say that 2024 and 2025 were fundamentally incomparable.
, And that you really need, , these kinds of statistical models , to do a good, clear comparison.
I want to thank you for listening to Cornell Keynotes. For more information about this study and the work of Cornell Center for Transportation Environment and Community health, be sure to check the episode notes for links and resources.
I want to thank you for listening, and as always, please subscribe to stay connected with Cornell Keynotes.