#transportation

One year since New York City began charging drivers a $9 toll, state officials say the controversial program cut traffic by 11% and raised some $550 million.

The revenue lets the Metropolitan Transportation Authority proceed with $15 billion in construction projects that were at risk under a previous budget gap. Their plans include extending the Second Avenue Subway, buying new railcars, and upgrading signals on the A, C, and F lines to reduce delays for commuters in Brooklyn and Queens.

The toll faced opposition from suburban drivers, Republicans, New Jersians, and the federal government, who all argued that it would hurt the economy by making it too hard to freely enter the city.

But the MTA released data showing that businesses in the congestion zone are thriving. A December 2025 report from the NYC Economic Development Corporation showed that Broadway ticket sales rose by 23%, and the city saw its best year for office leasing since 2002. Empty storefronts in the area dropped, too, and sales tax in New York City rose by more than 6% through November. That local spending grew three times faster than in neighboring Westchester County and six times faster than in Nassau County.

And those who drive still drive into the congestion zone arrive at their destination sooner. Speeds at the Holland Tunnel up by 51% during the morning rush. Queensboro Bridge speeds increased by 29%, and Williamsburg Bridge traffic also moved 28% faster, CBDTP found.

And the neighborhood is also quieter, with traffic noise complaints in the zone falling by 23%. Crime within the transit system also appears to have dropped 5.5% compared to the previous year.

MTA also said the subways and trains throughout the city, Long Island, and the Hudson Valley are more punctual than they’ve been in almost a decade.

President Donald Trump and U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy have tried to stop the program by revoking its pilot status and withholding federal transit grants, arguing that the model punishes car drivers. During a congressional hearing in July, Duffy argued that rising subway violence made public transit a dangerous alternative.

Vendors have taken a variety of approaches to the self-driving problem. Tesla's approach is to allow their "full self-driving" (FSD) system to be used in all ODDs as a Level 2 (hands/on, eyes/on) ADAS.[3] Waymo picked specific ODDs (city streets in Phoenix and San Francisco) for their Level 5 robotaxi service.[4] Mercedes Benz offers Level 3 service in Las Vegas in highway traffic jams at speeds up to 40 miles per hour (64 km/h).[5] Mobileye's SuperVision system offers hands-off/eyes-on driving on all road types at speeds up to 130 km/h (81 mph).[6] GM's hands-free Super Cruise operates on specific roads in specific conditions, stopping or returning control to the driver when ODD changes. In 2024 the company announced plans to expand road coverage from 400,000 miles to 750,000 miles (1,210,000 km).[7] Ford's BlueCruise hands-off system operates on 130,000 miles (210,000 km) of US divided highways.[8]

Disengagement

In 2017, Waymo reported 63 disengagements over 352,545 mi (567,366 km) of testing, an average distance of 5,596 mi (9,006 km) between disengagements, the highest (best) among companies reporting such figures. Waymo also logged more autonomous miles than other companies. Their 2017 rate of 0.18 disengagements per 1,000 mi (1,600 km) was an improvement over the 0.2 disengagements per 1,000 mi (1,600 km) in 2016, and 0.8 in 2015. In March 2017, Uber reported an average of 0.67 mi (1.08 km) per disengagement. In the final three months of 2017, Cruise (owned by GM) averaged 5,224 mi (8,407 km) per disengagement over 62,689 mi (100,888 km).[155]

BYD, a company Elon Musk once dismissed by laughing at their products during a 2011 Bloomberg interview, has overtaken Tesla to be the world’s top EV seller. BYD said on Thursday that sales of its battery-powered cars rose nearly 28% to 2.26 million units in 2025. Vehicle deliveries at Tesla dropped 8% year on year to 1.64 million vehicles delivered in 2025.

A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let’s explore the bad world of Cars!

HENRY GRABAR: Parking is the largest single land use in many American cities. If we were designing society from scratch, would we have placed car storage on the pedestal that it now occupies?

You know, one of the things that immediately jumped off the page for me when I was reading your book is the fact that, by square footage, there is more housing for each car in this country than there is housing for each person. And on its face, I have to say that statement feels incredibly problematic, but is it?

GRABAR: I don't think it's that surprising when you start to think about it. I mean, there are more - we build more three-car garages in this country than we build one-bedroom apartments. Almost every jurisdiction in this country requires parking as a part of every single building type, whether you're building a school, an apartment building or an office or a restaurant, the law requires a certain number of parking spaces. So we have parking minimums in every jurisdiction in this country, whereas for housing, we often have maximums. We say, on this plot, you can only put one unit of housing. You can only put two units of housing. So the fact that we've ended up with a surplus of parking and a shortage of housing is no surprise. In fact, it's by design.