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New York to pilot cordon-based congestion charging

From 2009, if all goes to plan, New York will run a three-year cordon-based congestion charging pilot - the first in the US. Upon accession, US Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters signalled her intention to continue her predecessor Norman Mineta's initiative to specifically target road congestion. And, with initiatives such as the US Department of Transportation's (USDOT's) Urban Partnership Program actively promoting tolling as a part of a compound solution to the problem, the way was opened for the co
March 16, 2012 Read time: 7 mins

From 2009, if all goes to plan, New York will run a three-year cordon-based congestion charging pilot - the first in the US

Upon accession, US Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters signalled her intention to continue her predecessor Norman Mineta's initiative to specifically target road congestion. And, with initiatives such as the 324 US Department of Transportation's (USDOT's) Urban Partnership Program actively promoting tolling as a part of a compound solution to the problem, the way was opened for the country's state and local authorities to access federal government funding and experiment more freely with congestion management concepts. The cordon charging scheme proposed for New York's Manhattan Island, which is due to start trials for three years in 2009, is currently the subject of significant national interest.

Expressions of interest

The New York City Economic Development Corporation has announced that it has received a total of 30 responses to a Request for Expressions of Interest. The following companies responded openly: 1971 Booz Allen Hamilton, Inc.; 4034 Consulting Stream; 4033 ConSysTec (Consensus Systems Technologies Corporation); 529 Diamond Consulting Services Ltd; 4032 FlexToll AB; 4036 HopStop.com, Inc.; 62 IBM Corporation; 1981 KPMG Corporate Finance LLC; 4037 Liberty Imaging, LLC; 4086 Macrovision Corporation; 4039 MajescoMastek; 4087 Mark IV IVHS, Inc.; 4040 PA Consulting Group; PBS&J; Remington 2207 Elsag Law Enforcement Systems, LLC; 189 Siemens Team (in association with 4042 Greenman Pedersen, Inc., 37 PIPS Technology, 2073 VESystems, 4043 Howard/Stein Hudson, 4045 KLD Associates, 4044 DGD Associates); 767 Skymeter Corp.; 4090 Speedinfo; 4046 Steer Davies & Gleave Ltd; 139 Transcore, L.P.; and 4047 Wilbur Smith Associates.
Responses from the following were marked business sensitive: 4080 3M, 4049 CSE Global Ltd, 4050 MSI Global Pte Ltd; 1968 Accenture, 596 Thales, 17 American Traffic Solutions (ATS), 4051 Gedeon GRC Consulting, Vertex; 4054 Alcatel-Lucent; 1813 Autostrade per l'Italia; The 4055 Boston Consulting Group; The 4056 Capita Group Plc; The Congestion Solutions Group (4057 Northrop Grumman, 13 ACS, 4089 Parsons, PIPS Technology, 5683 Transdyn, Rafael Viæoly Architects, 4059 Halcrow); 81 Kapsch TrafficCom AG; and 110 Raytheon Company.
"HOT and HOV lanes are now in the mainstream," says Tyler Duvall, USDOT Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy. "Policy-wise, we're now amenable to pricing on roads that have previously been unpriced, and area-wide charges.

"New York's proposed scheme is regarded as the boldest put forward under the auspices of the Urban Partnership Program and that led to the city being awarded over $350 million in Federal grants." This was the largest single grant of five; a total of US$853 million was awarded to the five Urban Partners (Miami, Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York City, San Francisco and Seattle) finally selected from a preliminary list of nine.

In reality, most of the money awarded to New York will be spent on transit and bus facilities (see Sidebar, 'New York and the Urban Partnership Program') and legislative approval for the scheme is needed at the local level by the end of March. If that fails to occur then the grant money goes back whence it came; the funding is discretionary and may not be available later.

Nevertheless, Duvall remains ebullient.

New York's integrated approach is, he continues, "a powerful mix of ideas" and the boldest scheme put forward under the Program.

As in Stockholm, congestion pricing will be piloted in an attempt to give citizens a better feel for what is involved and garner wider support. New York's trial will last significantly longer than that in the Swedish capital, however. It is scheduled to run for three years.

It has been suggested that the barrierfree congestion zone might be based on the E-ZPass electronic toll collection system, which is in use on the US's Eastern Seaboard from Virginia to Maine, and automatic license plate recognition.

Charging structure

Charges will apply between 06.00hrs and 18.00hrs.
The proposed fees are $8 for cars/commercial vehicles and $21 for trucks entering or leaving the zone. Travel within the zone will be priced at $5.50 for trucks and $4 for other vehicles. Vehicles will be charged once per day.
As with other cities around the world which operate cordon?type schemes there will be exemptions: transit buses, emergency vehicles, taxis/for?hire vehicles, those with handicapped license plates.
Several other solutions have been suggested in the responses to the Request for Expressions of Interest (it was announced in mid-November that 30 such responses had been received, see Sidebar, 'Expressions of Interest').

"In fact," says Patrick DeCorla-Souza, Team Leader of the 831 Federal Highway Administration's Value Pricing Pilot Program, "we remain neutral on the technology at present, preferring to defer the final choice to local officials.

"We're asking for a 6.3 per cent reduction in Vehicles Miles Travelled in the Congestion Priced Zone. That's going from a baseline average on a weekday of 4,478,000. With an $8 Congestion Charge for passenger vehicles and $21 for trucks, we estimate that the total VMT would fall by 301,000 miles.

"That 6.3 per cent limit is lower than that set by New York's Mayor. However it corresponds to a significant reduction in congestion, because the relationship is not linear. We expect about 1.4 million vehicles trips per day in the congestion charging zone." The trial, notes DeCorla-Souza, is expected to start at the end of March 2009.

New York and the Urban Partnership Program

New York's proposed congestion pricing programme was first unveiled on 22 April 2007 when Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced PlaNYC 2030, his vision for the city's long?term sustainability out to 2030.
PlaNYC included 16 proposed transport initiatives, of which congestion pricing was the only one which had to be approved by the State Legislature.
The city applied under the USDOT's Urban Partnership Program, which was looking to allocate money to cities willing to enter into Urban Partnership Agreements in order to fight congestion through the 'Four Ts': Tolling, Transit, Telecommuting and Technology. In June this year, Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters said that of the nine cities applying for money under the initiative New York was the farthest along in its planning, and on 14 August it was awarded US$354 million.
This was the largest of the five grants awarded cities, however only $10.4 million is allocated launching the congestion charging programme. A further $2 million is allocated for research and rest will fund transport infrastructure and services.
The pilot is intended to run for three years, decision at the end by the City and State as to whether to make it permanent; that could happen within 18 months of final legislative approval.
Geographically, the congestion zone is defined Manhattan Island south of 86th Street. There are number of exempted roads and drivers who use toll crossings to pass into or out of the zone will be charged the difference between the toll and the charge.
"We need to demonstrate the concept in order to gain public acceptability. There is a precedent - on SR91 back in 1995, demonstrations in the express lanes led to HOT lanes being adopted across the US.
Had those demonstration lanes not been put in place we'd have struggled to get past public resistance. "New York, Seattle and San Francisco will all price existing lanes in order to prove that significant improvements in travel times are possible in combination with other initiative such as mass transit.

"To put that in context, Manhattan," he continues, "has the single largest transit system in the US. It carries over 50 per cent of transit riders in New York; over 80 per cent of those who travel in and out of Manhattan do so using public transit." DeCorla-Souza's point highlights the classic chicken-and-egg situation of value pricing or demand restraint: public transport improvements are essential if such schemes are going to be publicly acceptable and therefore politically viable.

USDOT has just pledged $1.3 billion to the $4.9 billion project to build the Second Avenue Subway line. Big improvements to the bus system are also planned.

The building of the long-awaited Second Avenue subway project will be going ahead regardless of the congestion pricing pilot, according to officials from the USDOT's 2023 Federal Transit Administration. But the city has also identified a broader need for 300 new buses to absorb the effects.

The overall intention with the pilots, says DeCorla-Souza, is to create "exemplary" reference projects. They will show just what is achievable in ideal circumstances. That improvements to public transport are being funded up front is perhaps evidence of this.

"New York's solution will be a cordon scheme," he adds. "The need or solution elsewhere might be different. As the technology matures, for example, we might look to price more than just access routes and migrate charging onto arterials. There's a $16.5 million study funded by Congress which is currently looking at distance-based charging. With the Highway Trust Fund due to go into deficit in 2009, we're looking 20 years ahead and trying to deal with the effect that high-efficiency and alternatively powered vehicles will have."
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