Manhattan drivers will now have to pay new toll to access busy city area

New York’s new toll for drivers entering the centre of Manhattan debuted on Sunday 5 January, meaning many people will have to pay $9 to access the busiest part of the Big Apple during peak hours.

The toll, known as congestion pricing, is meant to reduce traffic gridlock in the densely packed city while also raising money to help fix its ailing public transit infrastructure.

“We’ve been studying this issue for five years. And it only takes about five minutes if you’re in midtown Manhattan to see that New York has a real traffic problem,” Janno Lieber, Metropolitan Transportation Authority chair and CEO, told reporters late Friday after a court hearing that cleared the way for the tolls.

“We need to make it easier for people who choose to drive, or who have to drive, to get around the city.”

The cost to drivers depends on what time of the day it is and if drivers have an E-ZPass, an electronic toll collection system that’s used in many states.

Most drivers with E-ZPasses will get dinged the $9 fee to enter Manhattan south of Central Park on weekdays between 5am and 9pm and on weekends between 9am and 9pm. During off-peak hours, the toll will be $2.25.

That’s on top of tolls drivers pay for crossing various bridges and tunnels to get to the city in the first place, although there will be a credit of up to $3 for those who have already paid to enter Manhattan via certain tunnels during peak hours.

President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to kill the programme when he takes office, but it’s unclear if he will follow through. The plan had stalled during his first term while it waited on a federal environmental review.

In November, Trump, whose namesake Trump Tower is in the toll zone, said congestion pricing “will put New York City at a disadvantage over competing cities and states, and businesses will flee”.

“Not only is this a massive tax to people coming in, it is extremely inconvenient from both driving and personal booking keeping standards,” he said in a statement. “It will be virtually impossible for New York City to come back as long as the congestion tax is in effect.”

Other big cities around the world, including London and Stockholm, have similar congestion pricing schemes, but this is the first in the US.

The toll was supposed to go into effect last year with a $15 charge, but Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul abruptly paused the program before the 2024 election, when congressional races in suburban areas around the city — the centre of opposition to the program — were considered to be vital to her party’s effort to retake control of Congress.

Not long after the election, Hochul rebooted the plan but at the lower $9 toll. She denies politics were at play and said she thought the original $15 charge was too much, though she had been a vocal supporter of the programme before halting it.

Congestion pricing also survived several lawsuits seeking to block the programme, including a last-ditch effort from the state of New Jersey to have a judge put up a temporary roadblock against it.

A spokesperson for New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, Natalie Hamilton, said in an email Saturday, that they would” continue fighting against this unfair and unpopular scheme”.

For more travel news and advice, listen to Simon Calder’s podcast