If you think car traffic in Manhattan has been worse than usual, you are right.
It turns out that 2023 has been a banner year for road congestion. The number of vehicles entering New York City through tolled bridges and tunnels hit an all-time high at 335 million vehicular crossings, according to the MTA. Whether this is a good or bad record depends on your view.
One of the reasons for the record-breaking figure is the decline in public transportation ridership, which fell during the pandemic, and has not yet bounced back. Subway and Long Island Rail Road ridership is still hovering around three-quarters of pre-pandemic levels and buses around two-thirds, according to the MTA. The Metro-North Railroad, which has fewer riders overall, regained pre-pandemic ridership in early 2023.
Another reason for the boost, according to an email in which the MTA announced the record, is operating efficiencies leading to “greater traffic throughout, road safety, and customer experience, notably through one of its biggest transformations with the installation of Open Road Tolling.”
The agency also said cashless tolling increased daily traffic 7% while also reducing collisions.
The extra tolls collected may be good for the bottom line of the MTA, but advocates for safer streets are not happy about the milestone.
“New York City already has the worst traffic in the nation and these numbers just suggest it’s getting worse and we need to give more options to New Yorkers,” said Danny Harris, executive director of Transportation Alternatives.
Nor are advocates for the environment, as more vehicles on the road means more pollution in the air. It is notable that during the pandemic, when traffic declined dramatically due to the lockdown and the ensuing social changes, air quality improved not only in NYC, but globally as well. Concurrent with that, mortality rate also decreased in correlation to reduced pollution level in many cities.
However, traffic quickly rebounded in the summer of 2021 and regularly hits daily traffic counts higher than before the pandemic.
On a positive note, advocates expect ridership on public transit to return to full capacity, albeit slowly and not in the same way as before the pandemic. While commuter ridership declined as a result of remote work, leisure travel has increased.
“People are traveling not just when they have to, but when they want to,” said Lisa Daglian, executive director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA.
Daglian said MTA data shows more people are buying single-ride LIRR tickets and fewer are buying monthly passes that they might use to commute to work. She said the MTA is constantly breaking post-pandemic ridership records.
“It may be a beautiful day and people want to go out. It may be a day where there’s a great concert, maybe SantaCon,” she said. “It’s not a 9-to-5 world anymore and our travel patterns show that.”
