Good morning. It’s Tuesday, the second day of a workweek that loomed as the first real test of congestion pricing. We’ll find out how the toll program is doing. We’ll also get details on the crime rate, which fell last year — but felony assaults rose.
Monday was Day 2 of congestion pricing in Manhattan, and the first workday since the toll readers were switched on just after midnight on Sunday. It was an anticlimax.
Now it’s Day 3. Will this be the day when some questions are answered? For example: What happens when it’s not a Monday, because fewer people commute early in the week? And, what happens when snow is not in the forecast or falling, giving Manhattan the Currier-and-Ives look (as was the case on Monday)?
Something was different. When the clock said the morning rush was on, traffic in the tolling zone was “unmistakably Manhattan,” according to my colleague Nate Schweber. The usual taxis and trucks swarmed by.
On second glance, though, something was subtly different. “For whole seconds, stretches of 57th Street were carless,” he said.
It was no day for speed demons.
The average speed in the congestion pricing zone had dropped to 11 m.p.h. at noon, according to INRIX, a transportation analytics company. That was slightly slower than the 11.6 m.p.h. recorded at the same time on Jan. 8 last year.
Some drivers tried mass transit. “Including me,” said Alexei Moncayo, who manages a garage on East 63rd Street near Second Avenue.
After 20 years of driving there before dawn every morning, he took the train from his home in New Jersey. He said he was ready to pay $2.25, the congestion-pricing charge at about 5:30 a.m., when he would have driven into the tolling zone on his usual route from the Lincoln Tunnel. But the toll is higher later: “What about the $9 when I go back?”
He said he had written to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, asking whether he would be charged. He said the response he received did not answer the question, so he opted to take the train — and to ride an electric scooter from Pennsylvania Station to the garage.
His commute did not go well. The train was delayed. The trip took two hours. He said he can drive it in half an hour. Worse, he arrived at the garage at 6:03 a.m., three minutes late.
Others still drove, but found new places to park. To avoid the $9 congestion-pricing charge driving into Manhattan from the Bronx, Marjorie Hirsch parked in a garage on West 61st Street with an “early bird special” of $16.90, not including tax. Until Monday she had parked in one on West 60th Street — just inside the congestion pricing zone and down the street from the Professional Children’s School, where she is a teacher.
Still, she approves of congestion pricing. “As much of a pain as this is,” she said, “I believe in it.”
Some drivers found out workarounds. Jay Beam, who drives an Access-A-Ride van, bypassed the congestion toll zone by exiting the Queensboro Bridge at East 63rd Street.
Asked how his commute had gone, he replied, “Beautiful.”
“But I hate congestion pricing,” he added quickly.
He said he wouldn’t feel the pinch of the program, though. His employer will pay the tolls when he can’t avoid them, he said.
The mayor kept silent. Mayor Eric Adams tweeted about crime on Monday (“We are going to continue taking action to deliver an even safer city”) and the weather (reposting a Sanitation Department message that began “It’s snowing!”).
But he has not commented on the debut of congestion pricing, saying nothing publicly on a major change in the day-to-day life of the city he runs.
Adams counts Gov. Kathy Hochul, who first put congestion pricing on hold and then reinstated it with lower tolls, as an ally. But as my colleague Emma G. Fitzsimmons noted, he might be reluctant to celebrate the plan when he is running for re-election.
Congestion pricing could still be stopped. President-elect Donald Trump, whose electoral victory was certified on Monday, has promised to end congestion pricing after he takes office on Jan. 20.
But that seems less likely now that tolling is underway. And on the legal front, the program cleared a major hurdle late last week, when a federal judge turned down New Jersey’s emergency request to block it before it began.
Weather
Today, expect sunshine and occasional wind gusts with a high near 33. Tonight, wind gusts continue with a mostly clear sky, and the temperature falls to near 24.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Jan. 20 (Martin Luther King Jr. Day).
The latest New York news
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A full-scale legal offensive: Donald Trump’s latest attempt to stave off his criminal sentencing in New York was denied on Monday, but his lawyers asked a New York appeals court to intervene and postpone the sentencing, which is scheduled for Friday, just 10 days before the presidential inauguration.
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Held in contempt: A federal judge held former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in contempt of court for failing turn over $11 million worth of assets to two Georgia poll workers whom he falsely accused of helping to steal the 2020 presidential election.
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Suing to run for mayor: Jim Walden, a former prosecutor who is running for mayor, filed a lawsuit that challenges a law that bans the word “independence” on a ballot line.
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Proposed expansion: Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed a plan that would more than double the child tax credit for some families. The measure is the second in a series of proposals that she is expected to roll out before her State of the State address next week.
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Intentions to unionize: The NewsGuild of New York asked The New York Times to voluntarily recognize journalists from The Athletic, the Times’s sports news website, as part of the newsroom’s union.
The crime rate falls, but felony assaults rise
“We have to deal with the perception,” Mayor Eric Adams said.
This was after he and Jessica Tisch, the police commissioner, had sketched out a reality that was different: The overall crime rate in the city fell again last year, they said.
That was part of a picture that included the fewest homicides since 2020. Shootings fell by 7 percent, and burglaries, robberies and larcenies were also down.
But two categories that cause particular alarm among New Yorkers — sexual assaults and felony assaults — went against the trend. The 29,417 felony assaults last year were the most in 24 years and 5 percent more than in 2023. Tisch said nearly half of the 1,748 complaints of sexual assault were connected to incidents of domestic violence. The number of rapes was the highest since 2020.
But the announcement that overall crime was down comes at a time when the headlines have been dominated by crimes, like the killing of Debrina Kawam, who was burned to death on the F train just before Christmas, and the shooting of 10 people outside a club in Queens on New Year’s Day. Adams acknowledged on Monday that reporting a drop in most crime categories might not comfort New Yorkers who worry about being attacked at random on the subway or the street.
“These high-profile random acts of violence have overshadowed our success,” said the mayor, who made a joint announcement with Gov. Kathy Hochul soon after he took office in 2022 that police officers would step up patrols in the subways. He later announced a “subway safety plan,” and last year directed the Police Department to assign 1,000 more police officers to subway platforms and trains.
“We were successful in our plan of making New Yorkers safe in the subway system,” he said. Now, he said, “we need to make sure New Yorkers are feeling safe.”
METROPOLITAN diary
Standpipes Deliver
Dear Diary:
I have been to New York City to visit family about 40 times over the past 20 years.
I’ve been to all the popular tourist sites at least once and am now content to walk for miles, spending the day crossing the bridges from Brooklyn to Manhattan while the adults work and the children are at school.
On some visits, I decide on a theme for photos to take as I walk. One year it was doors; another it was buildings I found intriguing.
My favorite subject by far has been standpipes, those systems that supply water to a building in case of fire. Without them, firefighters would have to lug their heavy hoses up flights of stairs manually.
Most people pass these ubiquitous stalwarts without knowing what they are called or what they are used for.
Once, about 15 years ago, when I was not yet a grandmother, I was crouching down in front of a standpipe to get a better angle for my photo.
A young man walking by saw what I was doing.
“That ain’t art, grandma,” he said.
I suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
— Anna M. Kealoha
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Good to be back. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Winnie Hu, Sean Piccoli, Nate Schweber, Ed Shanahan and Makaelah Walters contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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The post Congestion Pricing, Day 2: A Period of Adjustment appeared first on New York Times.
