In a letter sent today to congressional leadership, a coalition of more than 70 biofuel groups and agricultural organizations called for the immediate passage of legislation to allow year-round nationwide sales of the American-made E15 fuel blend, containing 15 percent ethanol. Year-round E15 would benefit drivers with savings of 10 to 30 cents per gallon and improve markets for America’s farmers.
“The U.S. Department of Agriculture projects a record 16.8-billion-bushel corn harvest in 2025—up roughly 13 percent from 2024,” the groups wrote. “While this demonstrates the strength and productivity of America’s farmers, it also intensifies pressure on corn prices and farm incomes. Expanding E15 access is one of the most immediate and practical ways to address this imbalance. When fully scaled, year-round, nationwide E15 is poised to create new domestic demand for billions of bushels of corn and sorghum, help stabilize markets, support farmers, and deliver consumer savings at the pump.”
The letter was led by Growth Energy, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Corn Growers Association, and the Renewable Fuels Association.
In recent years, the organizations noted, E15 availability during the summer driving season has depended on temporary emergency waivers. While these annual actions provide short-term relief, they are not a sustainable or reliable solution. Year-to-year uncertainty discourages investment in fuel infrastructure, confuses consumers, and undermines confidence among retailers and refiners.
“With a record corn crop filling bins across America, farmers cannot afford another season of uncertainty and negative margins. Markets need consistency and predictability, which requires permanent legislative action by Congress. We respectfully urge you to act this year to pass year-round E15 legislation,” the groups wrote.
A brief, intense workout may do more than boost fitness—it could help fight cancer. Researchers found that just 10 minutes of hard exercise releases molecules into the bloodstream that switch on DNA repair and shut down cancer growth signals. When these molecules were applied to bowel cancer cells, hundreds of cancer-related genes changed activity. The discovery helps explain how exercise lowers cancer risk and hints at future therapies inspired by movement.
Exercise doesn’t just challenge the body; it challenges how the brain interprets effort. Scientists discovered that vibrating tendons before cycling allowed people to push harder without feeling like they were working more. Their muscles and hearts worked overtime, but their sense of strain stayed the same. This brain-body mismatch could one day help make exercise feel less intimidating, especially for people who struggle to stay active.
A large review of studies suggests that exercise can ease depression about as effectively as psychological therapy. Compared with antidepressants, exercise showed similar benefits, though the evidence was less certain. Researchers found that light to moderate activity over multiple sessions worked best, with few side effects. While it’s not a cure-all, exercise may be a powerful and accessible tool for many people.
Scientists have detected a surprisingly hot galaxy cluster dating back to the universe’s infancy. The cluster formed far earlier and burned far hotter than current models predict. Researchers believe supermassive black holes may have rapidly heated the surrounding gas. The finding could force a major rethink of how galaxy clusters grow.
Europa’s buried ocean has made it one of the most exciting places to search for life beyond Earth. However, new calculations suggest its seafloor may be calm, cold, and largely inactive, with little energy to support living organisms. Unlike Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io, Europa experiences weaker tidal forces that fail to drive underwater geology. The ocean may exist, but it could be a very quiet place.
Around the bright star Fomalhaut, astronomers spotted glowing clouds of debris left behind by colossal collisions between large space rocks. One of these clouds was even mistaken for a planet before slowly fading away. Seeing two such events in just two decades hints that violent impacts may be surprisingly common in young star systems. It’s like watching planets-in-the-making collide before our eyes.
Bariatric surgery far outperformed GLP-1 weight loss drugs in a new real-world comparison of more than 50,000 patients. Two years after treatment, surgery patients lost about 58 pounds on average, while those using semaglutide or tirzepatide lost roughly 12 pounds. Even patients who stayed on GLP-1 drugs for a full year saw much smaller results than surgical patients. High dropout rates and real-world challenges appear to blunt the drugs’ effectiveness.
Researchers at TU Wien have discovered a quantum system where energy and mass move with perfect efficiency. In an ultracold gas of atoms confined to a single line, countless collisions occur—but nothing slows down. Instead of diffusing like heat in metal, motion travels cleanly and undiminished, much like a Newton’s cradle. The finding reveals a striking form of transport that breaks the usual rules of resistance.
Tessellations aren’t just eye-catching patterns—they can be used to crack complex mathematical problems. By repeatedly reflecting shapes to tile a surface, researchers uncovered a method that links geometry, symmetry, and problem-solving. The technique works in both ordinary flat space and curved hyperbolic worlds used in theoretical physics. Its blend of beauty and precision could influence everything from engineering to digital design.
Researchers in Japan built a miniature human brain circuit using fused stem-cell–derived organoids, allowing them to watch the thalamus and cortex interact in real time. They found that the thalamus plays a decisive role in maturing the cortex and organizing its neural networks. Signals from the thalamus triggered synchronized activity in specific neuron types, while others remained unaffected. The system closely mimics human brain development and could transform how scientists study neurological disorders.
Researchers have reconstructed ancient herpesvirus genomes from Iron Age and medieval Europeans, revealing that HHV-6 has been infecting humans for at least 2,500 years. Some people inherited the virus directly in their DNA, passing it down across generations. The study shows that these viruses evolved alongside humans—and that one strain eventually lost its ability to integrate into our chromosomes. It’s the first time this long, intimate relationship has been proven with ancient genetic evidence.
Spruce bark beetles don’t just tolerate their host tree’s chemical defenses—they actively reshape them into stronger antifungal protections. These stolen defenses help shield the beetles from infection, but one fungus has evolved a way to neutralize them. By detoxifying the beetles’ chemical armor, the fungus can successfully invade and kill its host. The discovery sheds light on an unseen forest arms race and may improve biological pest control.
In this episode, I’m joined by Kate Slevin of the Regional Plan Association to discuss the triumphant first year of congestion pricing in Manhattan. We explore how the program defied its critics by boosting business and pedestrian traffic while reducing gridlock, without evident traffic spillover onto adjacent streets. We also cover the money that’s been raised for public transit and what the future holds for the congestion relief zone.
At the beginning of 2025, after more than 20 years of organizing and pushing by advocates, congestion pricing went into effect in Manhattan. It was a close call right to the end. New York Governor Kathy Hochul delayed the program at the last minute and only implemented it — with a $9 charge rather than $15 — under intense pressure. The Trump administration has also tried to kill it, an effort which is ongoing.
Despite how difficult it was to pass and implement, all the ups and downs and chaos along the way, congestion pricing has proven to be an almost unalloyed triumph. Traffic is down in the congestion zone and has not risen outside the zone to compensate. Transit trips are up. Buses are moving faster. Accidents are down. Noise complaints are down. Business inside the congestion zone is up.
Advocates said it would work, and at least so far, it is working.
Kate Slevin
I wanted to talk to one of those advocates about the one-year anniversary, partly to simply wallow in a rare bit of happy news and partly to dig a little deeper into the program’s performance and future. Happily, I have with me the perfect guest: Kate Slevin, executive vice president of the Regional Plan Association, a civic nonprofit that has been involved in this issue for more than two decades.
We are going to talk about the program’s performance, its current political health, and what we can expect in its future.
With no further ado, Kate Slevin, welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.
Kate Slevin
Thank you so much for having me. It’s a real pleasure to be here.
David Roberts
It’s rare and fun and exciting for me, Kate, to be happy for a while. It’s a happy, a happy hour. I’m really relishing it. I think the place to start is maybe I don’t want to assume people have a lot of background knowledge about this. I think people vaguely know that it happened, but insofar as you can condense the history to a reasonable amount of time, it’s a lot of history. Maybe just briefly walk us through the history of this thing. The 5-minute version. I know there’s an hour version, there’s probably a full documentary version, but give us the five-minute version.
Kate Slevin
Sure, sure. New York has always had a challenge in how to pay for its public transit and how to address traffic congestion. This has been a perpetual problem that the city has faced. It’s very expensive to operate the MTA system and over the years, traffic congestion. As the population of the city has grown and more people have come to the city, it’s just become unbearable, especially in our central business district.
These conversations go way back. My organization has been around over a hundred years and we found some materials from the 1940s talking about how to deal with traffic in Midtown.
David Roberts
I wonder how far back the idea of congestion pricing goes. I wonder if anybody knows.
Kate Slevin
It goes way, way back. Decades and decades. And there are, when they first opened some of the East River bridges, they put fees on them for people crossing.
David Roberts
Yeah, I guess any toll bridge technically is a form of congestion pricing, is it not?
Kate Slevin
Yeah, it is. A lot of things we do are more expensive during certain times and less expensive during other times. A lot of our stuff is priced based on how many people are using it and at what time.
The recent history, if you want to call it that, I think it really started in the early 2000s, I would say, because London instituted a congestion pricing program and New York really sees itself as comparable to London. Our populations are similar, we’re global cities, we’re international peers.
Many people in New York started thinking about how we could bring congestion pricing or something like it to the city. At that time, the person in power was Mayor Bloomberg. A couple years later, he hired a number of people to help him develop a sustainability plan for the city that was called PlaNYC. There was talk over months about what would be in that. In 2007, the plan came out and there were 127 initiatives in that plan. One of them got the most attention. Guess which one that is? Congestion pricing. That started the debate at that time.
David Roberts
Died in the legislature at the hand of Democrats.
Kate Slevin
Yep, you are right. Yep. It died in the hands of the Democrats in the state legislature, who didn’t even bring it to a vote. The state assembly didn’t even bring it to a vote. The transit issues and the need to manage traffic didn’t go away. It continued on in New York.
A couple years later, there was a commission that was put together named after Dick Ravitch, who is a wonderful public servant and leader and visionary here in New York, called the Ravitch Commission. They recommended a number of ways to fund transit. One of the ways was through bridge tolls. If you know what New York City looks like, you know that if you put fees on the bridges coming into Manhattan, you are effectively putting in a cordon fee. That part didn’t make it through, but we did get, at that time, a thing called the payroll mobility tax authorized, and that brought a bunch of revenue into the transit system, and it’s still in effect today.
And then around 2015, 2017, there was an increasing issue with traffic, not only in Midtown, but all around the city and declining transit service. People were overcrowded. There are these horrible images of people being stuck in subway cars where the doors wouldn’t open, of overcrowded stations. It really felt unsafe in a lot of ways. There was a lot of urgency to address the situation. At the same time, Midtown was just crawling. It’s always congested, but it just became unbearable.
There were a couple coalitions set up: Fix the Subway and Fix Our Transit. These were coalitions that we were part of, and we set these up to advocate for congestion pricing as a solution, and we were successful. In 2019, it was authorized by the New York State Legislature.
David Roberts
And this was, we should just say, a much more Democratic legislature than the one that rejected the first plan. That Democratic legislature that rejected the first one was the sort of famous Cuomo Democrat, but not really Democrat. I forget all the details, but it was not the same legislature.
Kate Slevin
The legislature had become more progressive. I think that’s fair to say. But Governor Cuomo was the one who advanced congestion pricing and who got it through and who partnered with the legislature to do that. He has since changed his tune a little bit over the past couple years, but he was a champion of it at that time. Interesting political history. And I used to make a joke that if you oppose congestion pricing, you might end up in jail because a number of elected officials who opposed previous iterations at the state level ended up in jail for corruption charges, or other horrible things.
David Roberts
Correlation or causation, who can say?
Kate Slevin
Yeah, yeah. Anyway, then congestion pricing was a little delayed due to the first Trump administration and COVID and a variety of things. But eventually we got it through the environmental review process, and it was authorized in 2023 by the federal government. It had to go through the federal environmental process because some of the tolls affect federal highways.
That was something that took a little bit of time to get through that process, but it succeeded. We got sign-off from the federal government for congestion pricing through NEPA, which is the National Environmental Protection Act. We also got authorization from the federal government through a specific transportation program called the Value Pricing Pilot Program, which allows states across the country to toll federal highways. The federal government authorized congestion pricing twice, and there was a lot of back and forth with the state and the city about implementing it.
David Roberts
And then it was all ready to go.
Kate Slevin
It was all ready to go. And then there was a little bit of a pause in June 2024 by the governor, Governor Hochul, because she had some concerns about implementing it at that time due to an election that was coming up later that year. But the election happened, and in November 2024, she unpaused the program. And it went into effect on January 5, 2025.
And many of us were in Manhattan, watching the program go into effect, and it was pretty, pretty wonderful. There are a lot of advocates, myself included, who have worked on this a very long time. I started working on it in the early 2000s. To see this huge environmental and transit policy actually begin, it was pretty excellent. That’s the history.
David Roberts
It’s a lot. I want to spend just a minute or two. This is the second part I’ve done about congestion pricing. I did it when it first passed, but in that first part, I didn’t take much time to really look at the nuts and bolts mechanics of how it works. Tell me, is this right? There’s a zone, meaning there’s a southernmost street and a northernmost street, and is it the full east-west breadth of Manhattan in that zone?
Kate Slevin
It’s in effect in Manhattan south of 60th Street. South of 61st Street. 60th Street and below.
David Roberts
All the way down below that. Everything in Manhattan below that?
Kate Slevin
Correct. However, if you are traveling on the highways that go on the outside of Manhattan and you don’t come into the streets of the city, then you are not charged.
David Roberts
I see. And when you come in and are charged, presumably this is some sort of widget scanning something on your license plate. It’s automatic, right? How does that—
Kate Slevin
It’s automatic. It’s a bunch of cameras around. It’s E-ZPass.
David Roberts
It’s based off a pass that most people had already.
Kate Slevin
Yeah, most people have E-ZPass. The adoption rate is pretty high at this point. You don’t see anything other than your E-ZPass bill being paid if you have E-ZPass.
David Roberts
I’m curious. If you don’t have E-ZPass, what happens then?
Kate Slevin
You get a bill by mail, you get a fee in the mail. And that is how it is for a lot of our tolls here, whether it is run by the MTA or by the Port Authority or the Thruway Authority. I think most of them have a similar structure at this point.
David Roberts
What happens if I’m on 62nd Street and I drive two blocks south into the zone and then drive back out and then drive back in? Am I charged each time I cross that threshold?
Kate Slevin
You are only charged multiple times if you are a commercial vehicle. If you are a passenger vehicle, you only get charged once per day.
David Roberts
But the commercial vehicles pay each time they cross the threshold.
Kate Slevin
Correct.
David Roberts
And these are all the north-south streets crossing 61st, but then south of that, it’s just the bridges coming in to Manhattan.
Kate Slevin
Right.
David Roberts
All the traffic coming into Manhattan is coming through those bridges.
Kate Slevin
Bridges or tunnels. And I think, if you’re not familiar with New York City, it’s interesting because we have a lot of people who, for decades, have paid tolls to drive into Manhattan. And then there are folks who, because they’re using the city bridges, haven’t ever paid anything. That was one of the potential benefits a lot of people saw in congestion pricing — that many were going out of their way for a cheaper rental ride. This is intended to even the traffic out a little and reduce the burden on communities that host those formerly free crossings.
David Roberts
Interesting.
Kate Slevin
Yeah.
David Roberts
In the particular boundary, how was that determined and who determined it?
Kate Slevin
Yeah, it is seen as our central business district, so it makes sense.
David Roberts
That district has a set boundary. There is a clear boundary.
Kate Slevin
Yeah, it’s — I don’t really know who came up with the concept that that was our central business district. But whenever people talk about our central business district, or whenever there are studies done, or whenever our regional planning organization looks at our central business district, that’s the area they use . Now it’s called the congestion relief zone, by the way.
David Roberts
Congestion relief. A bunch of people, when I threw this out online, that I was going to talk about this, I’m sure, you’ve heard this a trillion times. A bunch of people are saying, “Oh, congestion pricing is the worst term for this. You need to call it congestion relief.” Or people are always thinking of better names, better words.
Kate Slevin
I love that conversation. We’ve been having that conversation for 20 years.
David Roberts
I know.
Kate Slevin
And at some point we did these. We would do these focus groups and these public opinion polls, and what would come back would be that New Yorkers just want it straight. They don’t want any BS. They don’t want it called something it’s not. Once it started to be called congestion pricing, it was really hard to deviate from that because then people would think they’re trying to be duped or something — that the government was trying to play a trick on them and call this thing something else. We kept the term congestion pricing. In fact, the last coalition we had from the past couple years is now called Congestion Pricing Now.
That’s funny. The price level originally was going to be $15. Hochul reduced it to $9. I’m wondering how much science was involved in determining the $15 level, who, what magic went into deciding that. And then in turn, what was the rationale for $9? Were there clear rationales for either number?
Kate Slevin
Yeah, look, we have a lot of traffic here in New York City, and what they studied in the Environmental Review was between $9 and $15. That was part of the study. It was within the parameters of what everyone had been talking about and were expecting. Depending on which side you’re on, you could argue that it’s too high or you could argue that it’s not high enough. I think there’s a case to be made that at some point we’re going to have to increase it. That is the plan — to increase it over the next couple years as congestion grows again, we’re going to return to that.
David Roberts
There’s a certain amount of picking a number out of the air here because it’s hard to know beforehand what exactly will work or what exactly the effect will be.
Kate Slevin
Yeah. I do think it makes sense, though, the $9, and it is similar somewhat to what the other crossings are. It’s not astronomically more. It’s less than some. And that we already have, because we already had tolls on some of our crossings, you could use those to start to develop somewhat of a plan.
David Roberts
$9 is in the neighborhood, at least, of other tolls. It’s not. It’s not some outlier.
Kate Slevin
Correct.
David Roberts
Let’s then talk about the effects, how it has gone. My first question about that is, who measures how it’s gone? Is the New York City government set up to count cars, measure how fast they’re going, et cetera, or is this something that outside groups have to do?
Kate Slevin
A lot of people have been measuring it, and the MTA has been measuring it, the city has been measuring it. Some of the big tech firms have been measuring it. A number of external civic organizations have been measuring it.
David Roberts
A lot of people paying attention.
Kate Slevin
Academic institutions have been measuring it. We have a lot of data, and it’s pretty positive. It’s really incredible looking at the past year and to see some of the benefits.
David Roberts
My impression, and tell me if this is wrong, but my impression, reading everything around, is that even the most enthusiastic proponents have been a little bit surprised at how instantly it worked. Yeah, I guess I’m so used to things going wrong in politics that I was bracing. I was bracing for something, but it really started working almost immediately.
Kate Slevin
It did. The MTA staff who worked on this did an exceptional job of implementing this program because we were expecting, “ Oh, they would get something wrong, there’d be a mix-up with some cameras, there’d be this or that.” There’s been none of that . They just did an exceptional job. Jano Lieber is a head of it. But Juliet Michaelson, Allison DeCerreño, John McCarthy, and dozens of people have done a really fabulous job of communicating this program and doing the nuts and bolts behind the scenes to make it effective.
David Roberts
Right. Tell us what we found here.
Kate Slevin
It was overnight. I couldn’t believe it. I was at the entrance to the Holland Tunnel a couple weeks after it went into effect, and there was no traffic. I could hear myself and talk to my friend. I could hear my friend talk, and I could walk across the street without having cars everywhere. It was really visible. People said, “Oh, man, this is amazing.” Even some people who were opposed started to support it.
David Roberts
Because they saw it is so rare for a public policy to work so clearly that even normal, normal people aren’t reading the news every day, they’re not following politics. For a policy to work so well that it thrusts itself into the daily experience of normal people. That is rare.
Kate Slevin
Exactly. The funniest thing I thought was that a few weeks after the program went into effect, there was a public opinion poll done by the Partnership for New York City. One of the things they found was that the people who supported it most were the people who were paying the toll and driving into the congestion relief zone frequently.
David Roberts
Because there was less traffic inside it.
Kate Slevin
Yes, yes, exactly.
David Roberts
What do you know?
Kate Slevin
Exactly. And the people who were the most opposed were still the people who rarely drove into the congestion relief zone. A lot of them didn’t even own a car or didn’t even live in an area where they would be driving into the zone. Either they’re sitting on the subway thinking, “One day I might have to pay that and I’m not going to want to pay it,” or they’re somewhere else entirely.
David Roberts
A lot of this is ideological. I suspect the less direct experience you have with it, the more ideological your opinion about it.
Kate Slevin
Absolutely is.
David Roberts
Just in terms of the effects, the obvious thing is there are fewer cars inside the zone.
Kate Slevin
Yep.
David Roberts
I forgot to ask when I was talking about the mechanics, but this is 24 hours a day?
Kate Slevin
Yeah. But it’s different rates, so it goes down.
David Roberts
Oh, so it is dynamic.
Kate Slevin
It’s dynamic. It’s just a different price. It’s $9 during the day, and then it goes down overnight to a couple of dollars.
David Roberts
Interesting. Okay, but there are fewer cars in there.
Kate Slevin
Yep.
David Roberts
There’s less traffic inside it. The cars that are going in, as you say, are the most enthusiastic supporters of this because when they do go in, they are now moving faster. The buses are moving faster, transit ridership is up, which I guess was predictable, but I guess I’m surprised that that effect is so clear and immediate. Did you expect that? I guess if fewer people are driving in, more people are subwaying in, I guess it makes sense, but I found that delightful. Is that something people expected?
Kate Slevin
Yeah, I think so. That’s the whole purpose of it — to grow transit ridership and to make transit better. But I just want to narrow in on a couple statistics here, because it’s amazing. First, you have to consider that New York City, the MTA region here, has 40% of the country’s transit ridership.
David Roberts
Yes, I know, it is crazy.
Kate Slevin
We have to make transit work in New York. This affects a lot of people. What you have seen over the past year is transit ridership grow. You have seen over $400 million raised through congestion pricing.
David Roberts
We’re going to get to the money in a minute. I got money, questions about the money.
Kate Slevin
But 20 million fewer vehicles have entered the congestion relief zone than in 2024.
David Roberts
And that is having all the knock-on effects you would expect, which is that the people in there are going faster, buses are going faster, crashes are down, injuries and deaths are down.
Kate Slevin
I think that’s really one to think about and focus on. The traffic safety has improved dramatically in the zone. That’s because there are 80,000 fewer vehicles per day coming into the congestion relief zone.
David Roberts
I was very interested in this. Noise complaints are down as well. Manhattan is less loud.
Kate Slevin
Yep. And they’re down 45%.
David Roberts
Yeah. That’s striking. I always think that noise pollution is kind of a, I feel like people overlook it in the pollution discussion. But like when I took some time to actually read about noise pollution, like it’s really deadly, like it causes heart disease, it causes like mental issues, like noise is really bad. So very striking. Very striking effect.
Kate Slevin
Yeah. And you can feel that physically, you know, you feel that in the zone now that it’s just, like I said, like that it’s just quieter.
David Roberts
It’s a lower stress response too, right?
Kate Slevin
Whenever you’re on a street in the city where there isn’t traffic, it’s a totally different experience.
David Roberts
It’s something that’s slightly puzzling. I think a lot of people expected when traffic declined inside the zone that it would increase a little bit on the streets outside the zone, the streets that allowed you to bypass the zone or the streets near the zone, that a bunch of traffic would be shunted to those streets. But as far as I can tell, that has not happened.
Kate Slevin
No, it hasn’t. And that was one thing that was identified in the environmental review documents — the potential that traffic might go up in a couple isolated areas across the city and across the region. But at RPA, my colleagues Rachel Weinberger and Will Kao found that traffic delays are down 25% within the congestion relief zone. We used Waze data to look at that, and they’re also down 9% region-wide. This includes parts of New Jersey and Staten Island and the Bronx too. It has really benefited not only the congestion relief zone, but the area surrounding it.
David Roberts
Right. If anything, it’s lowering traffic in the zone around it, which is, if you’re another city looking at this and thinking about it, that to me is just huge. That’s a huge, incredibly significant finding because that’s the thing that people wave around when they’re scared about this always. Especially people who live on the periphery of the zone. I’m curious, has there been any effects on housing? I thought maybe it might be too early to tell because housing moves a little bit more slowly. But I just wonder, has there been any discernible effect on housing, housing density, housing prices?
Kate Slevin
I don’t know that we’ve looked at that. A lot of people have left the five boroughs of New York City, as we know, because of our lack of affordable housing, especially families, especially middle income and working families. We have a lot of data about where people have moved to and why. That’s been a perpetual challenge in the city. Half of the households in New York don’t own a car. A lot of people are on public transit anyway. I think the priority is really getting better public transit so you can support more housing and support more reliable commutes for people.
David Roberts
I will be curious if this thing can run for London’s five years, 10 years. I’d be really curious to see if there are discernible housing effects in that zone. That would be super interesting.
Another thing that people worried about was people obscuring their license plate to avoid these charges. I know in New York City, this is a big thing with people doing it to avoid parking tickets and when they park in bike lanes and all this. I know there’s a whole low-level guerrilla warfare in New York City about this. Has this increased in the wake of all this? Is that a substantial problem? Are there a substantial number of people avoiding this or is it even possible to avoid it?
Kate Slevin
There’s a whole group of people who are out there who will catch you if you do this. For anyone listening, I would not recommend it. The fees are high. The MTA has a whole part of its organization that is focused on collecting the money from toll cheats. Not recommended for anyone listening.
David Roberts
Also, I guess just as a citizen of Manhattan, that is someone who is literally taking money out of your transit. Even, I would imagine, ordinary people are not particularly sympathetic to doing those.
Kate Slevin
No. And it has been a problem. I don’t know that I would call it a substantial problem, but the MTA has worked really hard and continues to work really hard to try and bring down the evasion rates. Many people are using E-ZPass. It does help. But of course there’s always going to be the people who try and cheat the system. Those folks do exist, unfortunately.
David Roberts
Before we move on past the effects, are there any others that you’d like to call out? I know there are some weird artifacts here and there. Someone sent me a chart showing that AM rush hour traffic in the Lincoln Tunnel has slightly increased, which they had no explanation for. Are there any weird effects that you have taken note of or don’t quite know how to explain or that puzzle you?
Kate Slevin
I don’t know that there’s anything that puzzles me that much. I will say some things that we didn’t think about have happened. School buses are moving 5% faster compared to last year and are on time 72% of the time.
David Roberts
Oh, right.
Kate Slevin
Versus 58% of the time last year. And bus speeds have increased within the congestion relief zone. One other thing is that the — I should have mentioned this sooner — retail sales are on track. There was a lot of worry that this was going to kill the economy and stop people from coming to New York. That has not been the case at all.
David Roberts
And this was true. I saw also in the New York Times about pedestrian traffic in the—
Kate Slevin
Correct.
David Roberts
In the zone, pedestrian traffic has not declined. Visits to businesses inside the zone have not declined. They’re still as robust as ever.
Kate Slevin
Yep. As of this summer. That’s right. Yep.
David Roberts
One question I had is how to think about what’s going to happen in the long term here. Because if you told me a story where traffic and population naturally increase over time, and that increase will affect the congestion zone too, and thus congestion zone revenue will increase over time, I would find that believable. But then if you told me as people get more and more accustomed and understand that this one zone is expensive, more people will avoid it, avoid driving into it, and thus revenue will decline over time, I guess I would also believe that. I guess I just don’t have strong priors on how we expect this to evolve over time. I guess we can draw on experience from London somewhat for this.
How do you — absent any price increases, let’s say if we just had the same zone, same price for 10 years — how would you expect things to change over time?
Kate Slevin
I will say first that the toll is supposed to go up. I think starting in a couple years, it will slowly go up to $15. That is not for 2026. It will stay the same next year. But I think you can look at London. They did increase the toll over time. They expanded the zone, they laid over other policies like they have a low emission zone, they have redesigned their streets to accommodate cycling and bus transit and done a lot of other things to continue to bring the benefits of congestion pricing to the people of London.
The next challenge for New York is, now that you have less traffic, you have to maintain that and you have to continue to make the transit system better and make the city more vibrant and easier to get around for New Yorkers and for everyone visiting there. That is, I think, the next challenge and the challenge that the mayor has said some wonderful things about. We’re very excited about the next couple of years in that regard.
David Roberts
I guess what’s informing my question is it seems to me there’s a tension or a trade-off. On the one hand, the goal of the program is to reduce traffic in the zone, but if you accomplish that, you thereby reduce revenue. The other goal of the program is to raise revenue for — yeah, for transit. If you’re succeeding in raising revenue, that means you’re failing at reducing the traffic in the zone. How do you think about that trade-off?
Kate Slevin
Look, there is this inherent tension in most transportation revenue. It’s true for tolls, it’s true for the gas taxes. It’s an interesting conversation. Ideally we would have a system where you would have more resources for public transit investment and you wouldn’t necessarily need to lean on all these outside revenue sources.
But there is a real policy reason to ensure that you have a good balance in terms of traffic on the streets. This is a scarce resource — our streets in the city are a scarce resource. If you have too many people trying to use them, it becomes a total mess. There is a real reason to price people driving into the city, and that has been one of the reasons we strongly supported it. I do think this conversation around the traffic is going to start to grow at some point, and then what happens? Then you have to bring the toll up. You have to try to use some other policy choices to balance it out.
David Roberts
What I would worry more about is traffic declining and then revenue declining. And insofar as you’ve made plans for MTA improvements premised on this revenue.
Kate Slevin
Yeah.
David Roberts
Can you plan around it?
Kate Slevin
They have been planning around it for a long time because they have had toll revenue from their bridges and tunnels for many years. The Port Authority, another transportation agency that collects the tolls on the Hudson River crossings, is in a similar situation where they rely heavily on the tolls to invest in the PATH system, the airports, and maintaining those bridges and tunnels. Both agencies have managed to balance that trade-off and ensure the toll was the right price. It is also New York, and there is always going to be traffic for all of us who live and work here. That is just the case.
David Roberts
Let’s talk about the money, then. The point of this is to raise money for transit. My first question is, legally speaking, how secure is this money? How tied to transit is it? Because one worry, obviously, for anything that raises money like this is that some politician is going to come on at some point, is going to want to raid the money for other things. I’m just curious, in terms of the letter of the law, what does it say about the revenue?
Kate Slevin
It is in the legislation that was authorized, that all of the revenue coming in, which is supposed to raise $15 billion over five years, will go to public transit. And that is written in the law. And they even—
David Roberts
Period?
Kate Slevin
Period. Not only public transit, but specifically the capital program of the MTA. They even identified how much of that money would go to each part of the system, with 20% going to the commuter rail systems and 80% going to the subways and buses of New York City Transit.
David Roberts
You’re not concerned at all about that fund getting raided? You think people can be confident that this is absolutely going to transit?
Kate Slevin
Yeah, for the time being. I don’t. That’s not on the list of worries right now.
David Roberts
Okay. How much has been raised and invested so far? I know we are very early in the game here, but are there visible impacts of those investments in transit? Is there something that the mayor can point to and say, “this is what congestion pricing gave you”?
Kate Slevin
I have to correct you there, because this is a common misconception. The MTA is controlled by the Governor of New York, that is Kathy Hochul. The New York City mayor does not control the MTA.
David Roberts
That is crazy.
Kate Slevin
They can appoint a few people to the MTA board, but they do not control the agency. It’s a state agency. And it’s a state agency because it not only operates the system within the city, but it also operates the commuter rail system that goes to Westchester and the Hudson Valley and Long Island.
David Roberts
In that case, even more so, Hochul, who took a—you know, I’ve given her lots of guff over the years, but she did take a chance and do this. She really needs to be able to point to something and say, “congestion pricing bought this.” Is there evidence on the ground yet?
Kate Slevin
Yes. There is. First we talked about the traffic benefits and the visible benefits.
David Roberts
To us all, but specifically in transit.
Kate Slevin
The MTA has already advanced projects, so they will be on track to generate about $500 million in 2025.
David Roberts
In the first year.
Kate Slevin
In the first year. And then they bond that out to pay for capital projects, and capital projects, for those who aren’t familiar, they are the actual things, the physical infrastructure. It is things like station upgrades, track maintenance, accessibility improvements, new rail cars, new buses, all that physical infrastructure. It is not going to the operating budget, it is just going to the capital improvements. But they have already bought new subway cars, the new rail cars that, you can actually see through the rail cars into the other ones, open system. They have bought those. They have purchased new LIRR locomotives.
They are installing new signal upgrades on a number of lines so they can allow trains to run closer together. They have advanced those signal upgrades and brought ADA accessibility upgrades to about 23 stations.
David Roberts
Crazy.
Kate Slevin
Yeah.
David Roberts
And now is someone in Hochul’s government being smart enough to hang some signage next to all this saying “congestion pricing did this”? Is someone making sure that the public understands that congestion pricing did this?
Kate Slevin
Yeah, the governor has been a great champion on this. She’s tried to explain the benefits and what has been advanced because of congestion pricing in terms of MTA projects and upgrades. But it’s a pretty hectic and busy media scene. I think that is a point that we all need to reiterate more and more, that the money is not just going into the general funds and — or a random place in the State of New York’s budget. It is all going to investing in the infrastructure that allows the city to run. That’s a point we’re going to be making over and over again.
David Roberts
Yeah, I’d love for somebody to put some money into, I—I think about federally, the Inflation Reduction Act, of course, is haunting me. Great piece of legislation that no one ever really found out about and no one ever knew that the benefits were the benefits. Ever since then, I’ve been pounding the table about this. You gotta tell. You really have to tell people.
Kate Slevin
Absolutely.
David Roberts
In unmistakable terms.
Kate Slevin
Absolutely. There are ads now and more visibility around this, but I couldn’t agree more with you about that point.
David Roberts
In terms of how this program is going to evolve. You say that the plan is to slowly raise the charge back up to the original $15. Yep. When you say that’s the plan, is that written down somewhere, legally part of the plan, or is that just what people expect?
Kate Slevin
It’s what the MTA board approved. Legally, that is the plan.
David Roberts
And in increments, or just jump up to $15 one day?
Kate Slevin
It’s a couple increments and it will go up to 15 over several years, I think by 2031.
David Roberts
2031?
Kate Slevin
Yeah.
David Roberts
It’s funny because someone sent me a study on public opinion on the Swedish — there are two cities in Sweden that have congestion pricing and they were showing public opinion. And it’s really funny. Public opinion is negative right before you do it. Then after you put it into place, approval grows over time. But when you change it, when you boost it, the whole cycle resets. Opinion goes back down and then starts creeping back up again. It really does seem like it’s not so much the fee that people don’t like, it’s just change of any kind that bugs the public. I wonder, it’ll be very interesting to watch and see what, if any, effect that has on public opinion when it rises.
Kate Slevin
Yeah, that moment before it goes into effect when there is a lot of negative attention. A lot of people call that the valley of death. Yes, we went through it and came back out the other side.
David Roberts
But I’m just wondering if changes will be little mini valleys of death along the way.
Kate Slevin
Look, it’s always a big discussion and public debate whenever the fares or tolls are raised, and I think that will certainly be contentious. At the same time, I think people are appreciating the traffic reduction benefits and are understanding why we need it, and more and more people are supporting it. I think the more you can predict and provide regular, smaller incremental changes to tolls and to fares, rather than a big shock to the system one day, I think that’s a better approach to go as a government agency than not putting any increases in and then getting yourself in a big problem in a couple of years where you haven’t been responsible. We’re very supportive of growing it up to 15 over a number of years and will be publicly saying so and supporting it as that advances.
David Roberts
One of the policy arguments you see around this, some people will point to possible benefits of more dynamic pricing. They’ll say “the charge should be higher on a particularly congested day or on a particularly bad air quality day or something like that.” The fee should change in response to circumstances. And then of course, on the other side, you have people saying “that’s annoying as hell. People are just going to be annoyed by that. Don’t do that.” Has that discussion — have you been through that discussion?
Kate Slevin
Yeah, we, a lot of us have debated that. I think from a policy perspective, it would be great to have dynamic pricing. But in the political realm in New York, and just from a day-to-day person who travels around the city, it would cause a lot of problems, I think, to not know how much it would cost for a trip.
I think there are places to improve in terms of maybe charging even more during the peak periods of the day, the very busy periods of the day, and not making it $9 all the way across the entire daylight hours and going to 9 o’clock at night. Maybe there is some room for modification there, but I do think it has to be predictable for people. I don’t think we are ready for dynamic pricing on this yet.
David Roberts
If people’s reaction to Uber’s dynamic pricing is any indication, I don’t think people like it much.
Kate Slevin
Yeah, and also, think about how much that charge would have to be. You could probably see days when it’s very expensive. I support that idea in getting there in concept someday. I don’t think we’re quite ready for it anytime soon.
David Roberts
And in terms of the geography, you say the zone is going to be expanded or might be expanded. Is that also written into the plans or —
Kate Slevin
No, there are no plans to expand the zone. I was just saying that’s what London did.
David Roberts
Got it.
Kate Slevin
And I think, I do think there are areas around the city that are very congested and there is a reason to consider that in the future. But there are no plans right now to expand the congestion pricing zone. It is in effect in Manhattan, south of 60th Street, and it will be for many years, I expect.
David Roberts
Which would you—this is pure speculation, obviously, but if you were purely speculating, which would you think is more likely? That another different congestion zone is born somewhere in the region, in a different congested area, or that this zone just expands?
Kate Slevin
That’s a good question. I think that the big highways in our region that are very congested, they’ve always seemed to me some of the places where it doesn’t make any sense that we have so much congestion on them and that they are as poorly maintained as they are. Maybe it would be some of the big interstates that really run through our region and are massively congested. A lot of them are already tolled, New Jersey Turnpike’s already tolled. The Thruway is already tolled. That would be an extension of a system we already have. Again, there’s no plans to do any of that right now. There are very congested areas. In New York and the surrounding zones, Jersey City and downtown Brooklyn or Long Island City are almost as congested as Manhattan.
David Roberts
I’m sure they’re all watching. Let’s talk briefly about opposition to this.
Kate Slevin
There’s no opposition. No one. No one’s opposed.
David Roberts
The opposition has vanished. It vanished like a puff of smoke once they implemented it. I’m curious if you’ve seen a change in either the tone of opposition or the composition of opponents over the course of this year. Is it fair to say that opposition has fallen off, it’s much quieter, it’s been tamped down? Or are all the same people still saying all the same things? What’s your read on the political valence of the thing within the New York region?
Kate Slevin
Oh, it’s way lower. It’s just incredible how much has changed from a year ago. There are some pretty relevant points on that. During the past year, one of the biggest opponents has been the state of New Jersey. The current governor opposed it.
David Roberts
A lot of New Jersey representatives were very loud about it.
Kate Slevin
They were not happy about it. The bus riders coming from New Jersey are some of the biggest beneficiaries in the entire region of congestion pricing. But that’s not my point. The gubernatorial race that just happened last month, everyone thought congestion pricing would be a big issue in that race and that it would be something that every candidate would weigh in on and use in their campaign. We really didn’t see that at all.
David Roberts
Interesting.
Kate Slevin
I think that just shows you that it was more popular than a lot of people expected it would be once it was implemented and people started seeing the benefits. You certainly see that in the media, it has totally, totally shifted. The public opinion polls show the same thing as well. It is a totally different environment today than it was one year ago. Way, way, way, way, way more support. I think a lot of the opposition that we’re seeing now is from people totally outside the region who are, as you said, ideologically opposed, for sure, and they’re weighing in on that.
But locally, much more support.
David Roberts
Just curious, you do have a new mayor. Has he weighed in on this?
Kate Slevin
Yeah, he’s supportive.
David Roberts
He’s supportive. I guess — as you say, he doesn’t control it, so I guess it doesn’t matter that much.
Kate Slevin
He does have appointees on the MTA board, so that’s important. But he’s a supporter, and I expect he will continue to be.
David Roberts
One prominent opponent is Donald J. Trump. Bad-talked about it before it went into effect, threatened, blah, blah, blah. Launched a lawsuit a while back. There was some judgment in favor of New York, but it didn’t seem to really end the thing. Just what is the — how realistic of a prospect is it that Trump could get to this thing and hurt it?
Kate Slevin
Let me tell you first off that there have been 12 cases brought seeking to stop New York’s congestion pricing program, and now a few of them are still pending, but not a single court has ordered the MTA to halt implementation of the program and to do anything of that nature. The courts have largely been on the side of the MTA.
There is a case right now. This was something that the older lawyers—I know I’m not a lawyer, but older lawyers I know could not believe something that happened. Last year, the federal government filed a case to stop the MTA from continuing congestion pricing, even though, as I said previously, the United States has approved congestion pricing twice. But the actual legal counsels for the USDOT leaked an internal memo by accident stating all the reasons why the USDOT’s case to stop MTA’s congestion pricing program was bad, and they didn’t have legal standing. The older lawyers I know couldn’t believe that. They said, “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. This is just ridiculous. This is a big mistake.” I’m sure they’re very embarrassed. I don’t know. That’s a very strong case.
David Roberts
That’s a Tuesday, I’m sure the public is on to new screw-ups.
Kate Slevin
Yeah.
David Roberts
Yeah. That’s amazing. They don’t have particular faith in their case.
Kate Slevin
They don’t.
David Roberts
One thing that we all have to be scared about, I feel these days, is something going up to the Supreme Court, and those guys don’t seem to care about anything but giving Trump whatever he wants. Is there any, are you nervous at all about this lawsuit as it currently stands?
Kate Slevin
The USDOT sent a letter saying that the MTA had to stop. I should correct myself, that the MTA then filed the case against the USDOT.
David Roberts
Oh, right.
Kate Slevin
For that letter. I have to make sure I’m clear on that because it’s confusing because it’s the MTA versus Duffy is the name of the case. But I think the MTA’s got a great legal argument. The judge, when he had the hearing this spring, was very clear that the MTA was on strong legal standing. He was not allowing any of the shenanigans that the USDOT was trying to do, withholding federal transportation funds from New York. The judge said, absolutely not. You can’t do that. We’ll proceed with the case, but you can’t take any punitive measures against the MTA for this.
I think MTA is on very strong legal footing in this case. Most people do. The case is still pending. We’ll see what happens when a final verdict is released. My organization doesn’t do much in terms of filing lawsuits or filing amicus briefs, but we did in that case because it was clear that the MTA was in the right.
David Roberts
Yeah, this is—unfortunately, this is the—a characteristic of many of these Trumpian legal pursuits is no one thinks the cases are any good. It really is just, do you find the right crazy judge? Do you find the right Trumpy judge who will do it anyway? Even though the case sucks, it sounds like it’s hard to predict these things, but it sounds like it’s pretty safe.
I guess, then, final question. Obviously, a huge piece of this is that lots of other cities in America and the world are thinking about this and have their eyes on this. When other cities call you, what are the lessons that can be learned from New York? The obvious lesson seems like it works, like it worked in London. It seems to be working in terms of reducing traffic in the affected zones.
Kate Slevin
Yep.
David Roberts
Wherever it’s done. But are there other lessons that you feel other cities can take from not just the success of the program, but the whole 20-year fight to make it happen? What do you counsel other places?
Kate Slevin
I think it shows that big policy change is still possible and it’s necessary in the time we’re living in. Often we as a society debate some of these smaller policy changes. If we’re going to have all of these battles over a small change, you might as well go big and try to win something that’s transformational. This is, I do think, something that is less talked about in New York. I’m obviously biased because I worked both in government and in a civic group during the 20 years that we’ve been debating this.
But having an outside coalition of supporters and making it a diverse coalition and ensuring that you have the government and an external group of real civic entities and community voices and business leaders who are working for something is really necessary. When we talk to other regions, the business communities are not coming along.
David Roberts
You think that is the key pivot point here — that you got some business on your side in this fight.
Kate Slevin
I think it made all the difference in New York to have the business community and some of the big employers supportive of this. And in other places, when we talk to people, their business communities and business leaders are much more fearful to get involved. Transit is good for everyone. Less traffic is good for everyone. Cleaning the air is good for everyone. We didn’t really talk about that. But the air quality looks like it’s improving.
David Roberts
Forgot to mention that bit.
Kate Slevin
We need a couple more years here to ensure that it’s an improvement. But the numbers look really good so far in terms of air quality and public health.
David Roberts
But I do think business not declining inside the zone is important. That’s the thing you realize when you work in urbanism and these issues for a while — every time they pedestrianize or otherwise reduce car traffic around a business, the business people have the same fear. And it never plays out ever, ever, ever. I’ve never seen an instance yet where a business can come say, “See, I told you this would happen.” It never happens. And yet no accumulation of evidence seems sufficient to convince the next set of business people. It’s a little wild to me. I do think it is important that business specifically is both benefiting and supporting this.
Kate Slevin
Absolutely. And I, there are a lot of lessons that we have in New York, and if anyone listening wants to reach out and talk to me or anyone else involved in this, we’d be happy to chat. Because I think we’re excited about the possibility of these ideas and big climate and transit policies working in other places and advancing in other places. And we’ve taken a lot of inspiration in our work from other cities, not only in the US but across the world as well. Happy to share with anyone who wants to talk more.
David Roberts
Awesome. All right. We will leave it there. Thank you, Kate. This is a little lantern in the darkness here. Thank you for coming and walking us through this and good luck in the next few years.
Kate Slevin
Thanks. It was my pleasure. And thank you so much for everything you do and for your support of this program. We really appreciate it. We should talk again after to see what’s next on the legal front, because I think that’s the next thing.
David Roberts
Indeed.
Kate Slevin
Take care.
David Roberts
Thank you for listening to Volts. It takes a village to make this podcast work. Shout out, especially, to my super producer, Kyle McDonald, who makes me and my guests sound smart every week. And it is all supported entirely by listeners like you. So, if you value conversations like this, please consider joining our community of paid subscribers at volts.wtf. Or, leaving a nice review, or telling a friend about Volts. Or all three. Thanks so much, and I’ll see you next time.
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