Jan. 5, 2025, 8:42 a.m. ETCongestion pricing used to be first proposed within the Fifties to control crowded roads and subways.Credit score…Karsten Moran for The New York TimesCongestion pricing has unfold around the globe to towns together with London, Stockholm, and Singapore. However the thought used to be born in New York Town within the Fifties.William Vickrey, an economics professor at Columbia College who received the Nobel Prize in 1996, has been referred to as the “father of congestion pricing.” He proposed the usage of financial incentives to higher set up crowded roads — in addition to the packed subway gadget.As early as 1952, Mr. Vickrey really useful charging upper fares at the New York Town subway for essentially the most crowded instances and sections. “Identical to lodges fee extra throughout Christmas, and planes fee extra for longer flights, he stated the subways ought to do this,” stated Samuel I. Schwartz, a former town visitors commissioner and an established proponent of congestion pricing.However congestion pricing for the subway didn’t catch on. Town leaders “regarded as it dangerous, and the generation used to be now not able,” in line with a 1997 record within the Columbia College Report.Mr. Vickrey later grew to become his consideration to the town’s perpetual gridlock. He referred to as for various street tolls to cut back congestion throughout top instances and stay visitors flowing.Within the overdue Seventies, Mr. Vickrey used to turn up at public conferences and push for congestion pricing, stated Mr. Schwartz, who used to be an assistant town visitors commissioner again then. “He pestered me,” Mr. Schwartz stated. “He saved pronouncing numerous our method to visitors congestion wouldn’t paintings — and that we had to make use of pricing.”Regardless that Mr. Vickrey died in 1996, his thought has lived on. Mr. Schwartz and lots of others — together with trade, civic, and transportation and environmental advocates — have fought for many years to convey congestion pricing to New York’s streets.In 2007, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg proposed a congestion-pricing plan as a part of his efforts to fortify the surroundings. However the plan faltered the following yr in Albany amid staunch opposition from state legislators.A decade later, going through a breakdown in subway carrier, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo resurrected congestion pricing to finance maintenance to the growing old subway gadget. “Congestion pricing is an concept whose time has come,” he stated at the moment. (Mr. Cuomo has since wondered whether or not it’s the proper time to begin congestion pricing.)It used to be some other two years ahead of congestion pricing used to be in spite of everything licensed by means of the State Legislature in 2019 as a part of the state price range.Display extra
