The cost-effectiveness of competing congestion pricing plans in New York city

Abstract

ObjectivesAs nations urbanize, novel ways are needed to manage increasing automobile traffic in city centers. One innovative and efficient way of reducing traffic congestion is to charge automobiles when they enter congested areas of a city, a strategy referred to as congestion pricing. A number of cities worldwide have adopted congestion pricing with great success. To varying degrees, congestion pricing has lowered congestion, increased revenue for public transportation systems, reduced pollution, and increased residents’ levels of physical activity. New York City is also adopting congestion pricing, and considered a large number of models for doing so. MethodsWe compare the costs and health benefits of two competing congestion pricing plans, Fix NYC (a higher-cost but geographically-focused proposal) and Move NY (a lower-cost city-wide proposal focused on equality), that were considered by the municipal and state governments. We use a Markov model to estimate the effects of these two congestion pricing plans in 2019 over a period of 10 years. ResultsWe find Fix NYC's and Move NY plans produce similar cost savings and gains in life relative to the status quo. Fix NYC would save about $24,805 and Move NY would save about $24,777 per capita. Each would result in a gain of 0.10 QALYs per capita, with the only differences notable at 4 decimal points of rounding error. ConclusionsImplementing congestion pricing in New York City would save both money and lives. Both of the plans we evaluate are roughly equal in value, and this is likely true of the plans that fall in-between these two plans in design. These findings suggest that congestion pricing is highly cost-effective, but that the program components do not matter much from a health standpoint.