Since the start of the Central Business District Tolling Program (CBDTP) on January 5th, 2025 the program has reduced traffic not only in Manhattan’s congestion relief zone (CRZ) but on roadways across the region. These time savings seem to be stable — remaining consistent and undiminished over the analysis period, which ends April 26th, 2025.

Data : ​“Jams” from MTA Bridges & Tunnels Waze Partner Portal

Waze maintains a database of traffic ​“alerts” that warn app users of accidents, jams, weather hazards, and road closures based on a combination of official and user-reported data. Within these alerts, ​“jams” are determined based on the GPS location-points from Waze users using the app while on the road. The delays are further validated by reports from Waze users who encounter traffic jams. The actual speed and the average speed within time-slots is compared against the free-flow speed measured for the road segment.

Each record of a ​”jam,” thus indicates an instance when the traffic speeds dipped below the baseline free-flow speed for that street segment, resulting in a ​“delay.” This definition casts a wide net. For some records in the dataset, delays were as little as one second — likely imperceptible to the user. However, the inclusion of both marginal differences and severe jams in the dataset allows us to properly assess total time travelers saved since the program started across a common baseline — whether traffic was good, bad, typical, or unique.

From CBDTP’s implementation on January 5th through the end of April 2025, far fewer jams occurred compared to the same period in the prior year. Due to holiday traffic, with or without the CBDTP, fewer jams occurred in the period of implementation compared with the months prior. However, based on the prior year trends, the data show a significantly larger than expected decrease.

Year-on-Year Comparison

Given the trend from 2024, and without congestion pricing, we expect a minor reduction (3-4%) in traffic in Manhattan due to background dynamics or unobserved factors. The 3-4% is the difference between the pre-implementation period from November 10th, 2024 to January 4th, 2025 and the equivalent period in the prior year. However, in the weeks following CBDTP implementation, we instead see a 28% decrease in delays in Manhattan between the study and comparison control period, larger by a factor of over 8. This would imply that CBDTP has an additional effect of at least 25% on reducing delays from traffic jams. (See chart below.)

Continuous Timeline

After the holiday travel season last year, the average daily delay during non-holiday weekdays decreased by 21% between the period from November 12th, 2023 to January 6th, 2024 and the subsequent period from January 7th to April 27th, 2024. Based on this trajectory, in a business-as-usual scenario without CBDTP, we would expect to see a similar 21% decrease during the parallel sixteen week range from January 5th to April 26th, 2025. However, the average daily delay instead decreased by 40%, double the expected value.

Year-on-Year Comparison

Very similar to Manhattan, our findings show a minor reduction in traffic (3%) in the period before CBDTP implementation from November 10th, 2024 to January 4th, 2025 when compared with an equivalent period in the prior year (i.e. from November 12th, 2023 to January 7th, 2024), suggesting a decrease in hours of delay related to background dynamics, or unobserved factors. Thus, in a scenario without CBDTP, we would expect a similar delay when comparing traffic with the equivalent dates in the prior year. What we observe, instead, is a much larger reduction in the year-on-year comparison by almost 12%, demonstrating that the CBDTP implementation has had an additional 9% impact on delay reduction. (See chart below).

Continuous Timeline

We expect November and December traffic to be anomalously high due to holiday travel, and we see a large traffic reduction from the period in November to December 2024 to the period of January to April 2025. The data show a similarly large but substantially smaller decrease in the period November/December 2023 to January-April 2024 –both periods that pre-date the implementation of the CBDTP. Using these time periods allows us to compare seasonal differences prior to program implementation. During the transition between the preceding holiday season in 2023 to the same season in 2024, we observe a 9% reduction in hours of delay on non-holiday weekdays. Without CDBTP, we would also expect to see a similar decrease in hours of delay, however, with the implementation of CBDTP, we instead see a 17% decrease in hours of delay on non-holiday weekdays.

Special cases - Bronx, Staten Island, Bergen and Hudson Counties

The 2022 environmental impact assessment for the CBDTP predicted possible trip diversions and related increases in personal vehicle and commercial truck traffic in the Bronx, Staten Island, and Bergen and Hudson Counties in NJ. These areas have instead largely shared in the benefits of reduced congestion. Ultimately, the program did not divert traffic onto Bronx highways or the South Bronx neighborhood streets. By contrast, the hours lost to traffic jams decreased by 17%, of which 10% can be attributed to CBDTP. Bronx drivers saved 10 minutes for every hour drivers spent in traffic in 2024. CBDTP had little to no negative impacts in Staten Island, with the time lost to jams decreasing as a whole by 5%, or 3 minutes for every hour in traffic.

New Jersey counties adjacent to Manhattan have also had substantial decreases in traffic since the implementation of congestion pricing. For the nine municipalities in Bergen County included in the extent of the Waze data, the time lost to jams was reduced by 25% during the first eight weeks and by 21% across the first sixteen weeks, of which 14% can be attributed to CBDTP. These would be equivalent to reclaiming 12 to 15 minutes for every hour a driver would have spent in traffic in 2024. For Hudson County, the hours lost decreased by 13.2% or 8 minutes for every hour in traffic in 2024, of which 12.8% can be attributed to CBDTP.

In total, the time lost to jams decreased by 15 - 16%, earning back 9 to 10 minutes for every hour in traffic in 2024. Of which about 12% can be attributed to CBDTP. As demonstrated through the examples above, these dramatic improvements to traffic are shared well beyond Manhattan to the outer boroughs and adjacent counties in New Jersey. Over the course of this spring, these savings allowed drivers, bus riders, and truckers to make trips faster, with less hours stuck on the road translating to more hours with families, colleagues, or friends.