
N.Y. is using this controversial idea to fight traffic, fund transit and bring life back downtown. S.F. can, too
Five years after the lockdown, San Francisco is still sick with the lingering symptoms of COVID-19. The city has a hollowed-out downtown and a bloody streak of traffic violence that has yet to abate. To make matters worse, BART, Muni and Caltrain — like many other transit operators across the country — are facing major budget shortfalls that could result in devastating service cuts.
The only thing fully back to normal, it seems, is vehicle traffic — making life miserable for commuters.
No single policy reform will turn things around, but members of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, who are also on the Board of Supervisors, recently revisited one idea that could come close: congestion pricing.
The case for congestion pricing is simple. When people drive into a highly trafficked area, they impose costs on the people around them. Each additional car adds to congestion, degrades noise and air quality, and worsens the risk of harm for pedestrians and cyclists. Congestion pricing forces drivers to mitigate these costs by paying a fee to the public that compensates for the added nuisance, pollution and risk.
Proposals for congestion pricing have popped up in San Francisco every few years for decades. But this time is different for two reasons.
First: Bay Area transit operators desperately need a cash infusion, and Gov. Gavin Newsom recently spurned transit advocates' pleas for assistance in his May budget revision. Congestion charges could potentially keep the buses and trains running.
The second reason is that we have new, real-world evidence of congestion pricing's efficacy; San Francisco policymakers can now look to New York's program for inspiration.
New York is much larger than San Francisco, but it's still a useful test case. Like in San Francisco, New York's transit system has been slow to recover from a pandemic-era crash in ridership. As in downtown San Francisco, storefront vacancy rates in Manhattan remain elevated. And like the Bay Bridge, car entrance points into Manhattan, like the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, were highly congested — despite the availability of transit options for commuters.
New York's congestion pricing program was approved in 2019, but it remained tied up in public bickering and environmental review for years. Then, when the switch was finally ready to flip last year, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, in a legally dubious move, imposed a last-minute delay on the program. Hochul and other critics argued that congestion pricing would effectively erect an economic barrier around the city, locking out middle-class motorists at a time when the central city was already starved of foot traffic and patronage.
Hochul eventually allowed the program to move forward. New York is now five months into the experiment, and we can see that the critics were wrong.
Since New York began charging a $9 fee for private vehicles to enter Midtown and lower Manhattan, that part of the city has rapidly become less congested, safer and more vibrant. The New York Times recently tabulated all of the high-level data on the city's congestion pricing program thus far, and the benefits have been astounding.
To start, the program is reducing congestion: compared to the historical baseline, there are now 2 million fewer car trips per month into the city's central business district. But people aren't simply staying home; transit ridership is up on city buses, subways and regional commuter rail. Reduced vehicle traffic and greater transit ridership, in turn, are making the city safer. Subway crime was down 36% in January 2025, compared to the same month last year, and the tolled congestion zone had fewer than half as many crashes in early January 2025 as it did during the same period in 2024.
Despite the predictions that fewer cars would lead to less commercial activity, business seems to have improved in the relief zone. Broadway attendance, restaurant reservations and retail sales have all risen in the central business district since congestion pricing was implemented.
Meanwhile, New York's congestion fee raised $159 million in the first three months since its implementation. The city's transit agency projects half a billion dollars in revenue over its first year. That money will largely go toward shoring up the city's struggling public transit network and closing its $3 billion deficit.
San Francisco needs a similar program to jumpstart its long recovery from the pandemic.
Getting people out of their cars could boost foot traffic in commercial areas and help tame the city's spike in traffic violence. And the revenue could go toward supporting Bay Area transit systems.
In fact, congestion pricing revenue could do even more than just save Bay Area transit. New York is using congestion price revenue to implement sorely needed transit improvements: bus electrification, subway station renovations and the extension of the Second Avenue Subway into Harlem and East Harlem.
Imagine what a similar funding stream could do for San Francisco.
No doubt, congestion pricing would face fierce resistance in San Francisco, just as it did in New York. But even drivers who revolt against the program would ultimately benefit from less traffic on the road and a quicker, safer commute. Despite the fears of some local businesses, they too would end up better off thanks to increased pedestrianism and the new customers that would come with it.
Every so often, policymakers are lucky enough to find a rare win-win that makes everyone better off. Congestion pricing is one of those ideas. Few American cities stand to gain more from its implementation than post-pandemic San Francisco.

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