Categories: Business

Meet the Brothers Who Created New York’s Favorite Congestion Pricing Tracker

Now that New York City has finally activated congestion pricing, the big question is: will it work? And if so, to what extent?

To find out, all eyes have turned to an unassuming new web tool called Congestion Pricing Tracker. Created by two college-aged brothers, the tracker uses real-time traffic data from Google Maps to calculate traffic times for chosen routes and days. The data is presented as a line graph of traffic times before and after congestion pricing took effect on January 5. Compare one line to another to see if traffic times have increased or decreased.

Not surprisingly, depending on the route and time of day, the new toll system seems to be working, perhaps even better than expected. As of January 5, most drivers entering Manhattan below 60th Street during rush hour will pay $9, or $2.25 for nights and weekends. And these fees appear to be accomplishing their intended goal of changing people’s driving behavior and putting millions of dollars toward needed public transportation improvements.

That’s what initially attracted brothers Benjamin and Joshua Moshes to the project. Benjamin, a math and economics major at Brown University, was initially working on a project about taxis when his advisor, Professor Emily Oster, suggested he change the topic.

“She recommended that I also look at this new congestion surcharge that was going to happen this summer, collect data and kind of track how things are going,” Benjamin said. The edge.

Benjamin liked the idea, especially regarding the concept of price elasticity and demand. In other words, the more expensive something is, the less people will want to do it. Historically, driving a car involves very little cost to the driver. In fact, much of it, from road infrastructure to free parking, is actively subsidized by the government. So if you make it more expensive to drive a private vehicle in one of the most congested and transit-rich areas in the country, you might be able to convince some of them to stop doing it. TO DO.

“How long does it take for people to actually change their behavior? » asked Benjamin. “A lot of theories said, you know, $9, people have to get to work, people still have to get into the area, public transportation isn’t going to be enough, people aren’t going to change their behavior. Others have said that people will really change their behavior, that there will be a lot less traffic.

“How long does it take for people to actually change their behavior? »

He roped in his brother Joshua, who was about to start his freshman year at Northeastern University. Together, they began to describe the tool.

The data project was delayed when New York State Governor Kathy Hochul surprised many by abruptly suspending congestion pricing, citing concerns about the affordability of the new tax and the risk to New York’s post-pandemic economy. But the pause would prove only temporary, with Hochul reinstating the toll after President-elect Donald Trump won the November election. The toll was lowered from $15 to $9, and a few weeks later the toll cameras were turned on.

At the same time, the tracker launched – and almost immediately you could find it linked in social media posts from transportation advocates who were excited to see in real time as fewer cars appeared to enter the congestion zone . The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which oversaw congestion pricing, was not expected to release its own preliminary traffic figures for a few weeks. Many people now wanted data, and the brother’s tracker helped meet that demand.

When building the tool, the brothers used the Google Maps API to collect real-time traffic data on 19 routes, using the shortest time to get from point A to point B for each route. Every 15 minutes, the tracker updates the times for each route, generating 1,824 data points each day. Most of the data came from the 13 routes directly affected by congestion pricing, with additional routes coming from outside the area to measure the effect on these trips. And they even included a handful of routes in Chicago and Boston as controls in case there were any national or historical trends they weren’t picking up on.

In the run-up to congestion pricing, one of the methods experts used to measure the effectiveness of the new toll was to cite average speeds in the congestion zone. Slower speeds meant more traffic, and faster meant less. But Benjamin and Joshua chose travel times as the best indicator.

“Oh, now it takes me four minutes to get through the Lincoln Tunnel when it was 10 minutes.”

“The great thing about travel times is that it’s easier to internalize and say, ‘Oh, now it takes me four minutes to get through the Lincoln Tunnel when it used to be 10 minutes'” , Benjamin said. “If the average speed was 19 miles per hour, and now I’m going 21 miles per hour, I think I can also internalize that it’s a little different.”

The brothers were surprised by how quickly the tracer took off, earning it quotes in major media reports from THE New York Times, THE EconomistAnd Bloomberg. Their tool became a definitive source for assessing whether congestion pricing was effective.

“The number of posts on social media, on Twitter, the number of people who visited the website, the people who donated to us, which we are really grateful for, really surprised us in a positive way,” he said. Benjamin said.

The brothers say they hope to keep the tracker online, although there are costs associated with web hosting and data collection. (You can donate to their project here or just buy them a cup of coffee.) They plan to make improvements, improve their data collection methods, and design a better map. Obviously, this is the type of project that would benefit from a lot more data and a much longer lifespan.

“We’re trying to get the website up and running, the data collection, so we can actually see if the averages are going up, going down, if any changes are happening from what we’ve seen over the last few days,” Joshua said.

But one thing seems certain: Benjamin will probably get a very good grade on his thesis.

“I think the project was a huge success in the sense that it provided immediate insight into traffic patterns,” Oster, a Brown economics professor and Benjamin advisor, said in an email . “Ultimately the MTA and others will have this information, but the value of the tracker lies in its ability to provide it immediately. I was so proud that they were able to put this together.

remon Buul