Lesly Silva, a hospital technician from New Jersey, said that she didn’t like the idea of drivers having to pay New York City’s new congestion pricing toll.
But on a recent morning, she saved enough time on her own commute by bus into Midtown Manhattan that she stopped for a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich.
Since the start of the tolling plan, she is less concerned about being late. “I take my time getting to work,” said Ms. Silva, 29.
In the long, contentious run-up to the Jan. 5 debut of congestion pricing in the city, one of the plan’s main selling points was that it would tamp down traffic on some of Manhattan’s busiest roads. But since the launch of the program, the first of its kind in the country, data and anecdotes suggest that commuters from places where there was some of the loudest opposition to congestion pricing — the boroughs and suburbs outside of Manhattan — have also seen relief from gridlock.
A new analysis has found that travel times have gotten faster for commuters like Ms. Silva who rely on some of the most heavily trafficked arteries in the metro area.
And yet overall, the results have been mixed since the program started tolling most motorists $9 to enter Manhattan below 60th Street.
Data collected by INRIX, a transportation analytics firm, found that travel times across the city and region had actually slowed overall at peak rush hours — by 3 percent in the morning and 4 percent in the evening — during the first two weeks of congestion pricing compared to a similar period last year.
Travel times improved on highways and major roads in Manhattan during both the morning and evening rush hours. But they were slower in Brooklyn and on Staten Island in the morning and in Queens and the Bronx in the evening.
Times also increased in some New Jersey counties, including Essex and Bergen, but improved in Nassau County on Long Island.
Travel times can serve as a measure of congestion, with faster trips indicating less road-clogging traffic on the streets and slower trips hinting at more. INRIX collected the data from devices like cellphones and GPS navigation systems.
Bob Pishue, a transportation analyst for the firm, pointed to other factors besides the tolls that could affect travel times, including more white-collar workers returning to the office. January traffic is also typically light, transportation experts said, and may not reflect traffic patterns during the rest of the year, especially those in the fall and over the year-end holidays when there can be major congestion.
Samuel I. Schwartz, a former New York City traffic commissioner who supports congestion pricing, cautioned that the changes in travel speeds were small and inconclusive by themselves without more data, which has been preliminary and limited so far. He also noted other factors that could have influenced the data, including an increase in traffic nationwide in the last year in part because of more trucks keeping up with a boom in e-commerce.
Earlier this month, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which oversees congestion pricing, released traffic data showing that gridlock had eased during the program’s first week as tens of thousands of fewer vehicles traveled into the congestion zone.
Congestion pricing aims to reduce traffic and air pollution by pushing more people onto mass transit. It is expected to help raise billions for the city’s deteriorating subway system, buses and two commuter rail lines.
But the tolling program is deeply unpopular, with more than half of New York State voters who responded to a Siena College survey released in December opposed to it.
Some opponents have continued to fight the program in court. President Trump has said he will kill the program and Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey recently wrote the president a letter urging him to act.
Officials with the Federal Highway Administration, which granted the final approval needed to begin the tolling, declined to speak about the possibility of the program’s demise. A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not reply to a request for comment.
Transportation experts warn that it is far too early to know if congestion pricing will achieve its goals or survive its opposition. A more clear determination of its effects could be years away. But that has not kept New Yorkers and commuters from offering their opinion on the experiment.
On a recent morning, some bus riders at a transit center on Staten Island said that their commutes to Manhattan were not noticeably better. They also noted that the buses had become more crowded as some people switched from driving to taking mass transit.
Justice Rivera, 32, a masonry worker, said that he was late picking up his paycheck because he could not find a seat on a bus and had to wait for the next one. “It’s substituting one bad system for another,” he said.
Over at the Allwood Road park-and-ride stop in Clifton, N.J., however, a group of bus riders said congestion pricing had helped speed up their commutes into Manhattan.
John Apricena, 34, a financial executive, said the program had shaved 20 to 25 minutes off his morning commute. “I’m sleeping later,” he said.
Nevenka Simonovska, 63, said her bus ride to her housecleaning job in Manhattan was so fast the other day that her employer asked why she was early. “It used to take forever,” she said. “Now, I’m so happy.”
New Jersey Transit has not released any data about its buses serving Manhattan. But one private bus service, Boxcar, said it had been dropping off commuters at Manhattan stops between five and 10 minutes faster on weekday mornings. Evening commutes back over the Hudson River have been between 15 and 20 minutes faster, the company said.
“There’s been no need for subtle data analysis,” said Joe Colangelo, 39, Boxcar’s founder and chief executive, who has heard from customers who say they can’t believe how fast their rides are. “The buses are just flying.”
Boxcar has already added six more trips a week to and from Manhattan in response to a surge in ridership and is considering adding more, Mr. Colangelo said.
The new tolls have persuaded some drivers to leave their cars at home. Anthony Frias, 34, a surgical technician from Woodland Park, N.J., first tried driving across the George Washington Bridge, which lies north of the congestion zone, only to find himself in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
So he switched to the bus. “It actually helped me get to work on time,” he acknowledged. “Being able to rely on a good bus schedule has given me peace of mind during my commute.”
Still, he remains opposed to congestion pricing. “There’s a lot of frustration,” he said. “We feel like we’re getting gouged.”
Other commuters, like Peter Philips, said they did not mind the new tolls because they were getting something in return.
Mr. Philips, 43, lives in Brooklyn and works as a carpenter in Secaucus, N.J. After he finishes up on weekday afternoons, a co-worker drives him back to Lower Manhattan and he takes the subway the rest of the way home. Mr. Philips, who supports congestion pricing, pays the $9 toll since his co-worker covers the gas.
With less traffic, Mr. Philips was able to walk through his apartment door 45 minutes early on a recent Friday. Instead of making do with pizza for dinner, he turned on the oven and whipped up a home-cooked meal of lemon chicken and potatoes.
“It’s a different mind-set to have half an hour, 45 minutes, of your life back,” he said.
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