New York motorists pay $9 in Manhattan’s busiest districts

Motorists wishing to enter the busiest districts of Manhattan will now pay up to $9 in tolls as New York’s controversial new congestion charge came into effect on Sunday morning.

New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) confirmed that the Congestion Relief Zone, the first of its kind in the US, launched at one second past midnight on Sunday morning and was “fully operational”. The scheme aims to ease the Big Apple’s infamous gridlock and raise billions of dollars to reinvest in the city’s creaking public transport infrastructure.

The programme has survived vehement local opposition and a last-ditch attempt to block it in the courts by the neighbouring state of New Jersey. Donald Trump, a New York native, has vowed to kill the scheme when he