Lessons From New York’s Congestion Fight

“Car brain” is part of a broader syndrome, which we can’t ignore

Traffic hell is other people. Surely nobody can deny that when someone decides to drive into an already congested urban area, they make traffic worse for everyone else, imposing large costs in wasted time and fuel.

OK, this is America in 2025, so there are inevitably exceptions — wealthy, powerful exceptions — to any statement beginning “nobody can deny.” Elon Musk hasn’t exactly denied that traffic causes traffic jams, but his ludicrous assertion that subway crime is responsible for bad traffic in Manhattan comes close.

Still, traffic congestion is as clear an example of a “negative externality” — a cost people impose on other people — as you’re going to find.

There are, alas, many Americans who still deny that climate change is happening, or if it’s happening, that it’s caused by greenhouse gas emissions. After all, to take climate change seriously you have to take scientists seriously, and what do they know? (In case you’re wondering, I believe that they know a lot.)

But we’ve all had personal experience with snarled traffic. So there are, I hope, few people denying that it’s hard to get around lower Manhattan by car on a weekday, and that the reason it’s hard is that so many other people are trying to use the same streets.

And if you’ve ever been in a major traffic backup, and thought about your own role in worsening that backup — I tend to think in terms of trying to get into the city via the Lincoln Tunnel, but choose your own adventure — it’s really easy to believe estimates that commuting into lower Manhattan on a weekday imposes $100 or more in costs on other drivers, delivery trucks, and so on. And it’s essentially crazy for people to imagine that they’re entitled to impose those costs without paying a fee for the privilege. As I wrote back in 2023, it’s

like arguing that some people should have the right to dump trash on their neighbor’s land because they don’t feel like paying the fees for garbage pickup.

Yet it has taken years of political struggle to get to the $9 congestion fee New York finally imposed over the weekend — and neighboring jurisdictions, notably the state of New Jersey (I got a problem with that), are still pursuing lawsuits in an attempt to block this really modest step toward getting drivers to bear responsibility for their decisions.

Charles Komanoff, who is responsible for much of the crucial work estimating the costs of traffic congestion, has said that I and other long-term advocates of a congestion fee should be taking a “victory lap” over the fact that it has finally happened. And it’s true that this is a victory: Even a modest fee will help, and the money raised will be used to improve mass transit, which will also help. Furthermore, it’s important to establish the principle that those who choose to add to traffic congestion should pay for the burden they’re imposing, and this may eventually lead to pricing that gets closer to reflecting the real costs involved — especially if people begin to see benefits from reduced congestion.

Yet what strikes me is how hard it was to get to this point, despite the fact that Manhattan’s central business district is by far the least car-centered, most transit-intensive place in America:

What does the fact that it has been so hard to do something so obviously right tell us?

Komanoff attributes it to “car brain.” It’s true that a significant number of people, some of whom I know, feel a sense of control when driving that makes them reluctant to take mass transit. (I’m the opposite: the great thing about taking the train is that I can read.) Such people aren’t necessarily conservatives, but some conservatives really seem to lose it over any suggestion that maybe people should drive less. Back in 2011 George Will wrote a column titled “Why liberals love trains” in which he declared that

the real reason for progressives' passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans' individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism.

To progressives, the best thing about railroads is that people riding them are not in automobiles, which are subversive of the deference on which progressivism depends. Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables. Automobiles encourage people to think they—unsupervised, untutored, and unscripted—are masters of their fates. The automobile encourages people in delusions of adequacy, which make them resistant to government by experts who know what choices people should make.

Personally, I don’t want people to ride trains to weaken their resistance to the Elders of Zion collectivism; I just want their cars off the damn streets. But Will’s bizarre rant does illustrate Komanoff’s point that there’s something about people’s attachment to their cars that all too often makes them irrational.

Yet while cars may be special, there’s a broader syndrome — change rage? — in which a significant number of people go wild at any suggestion that they should change their behavior for the common good. The change doesn’t have to involve major cost or inconvenience; seriously, even masking up during the pandemic wasn’t that big a hardship. It’s more the principle of the thing: How dare you tell me how to live my life?

Like it or not, anger over any hint of social engineering is a potent political force. It tends to fade once new rules or restrictions have been around for a while, and become part of the background scenery: There would be a huge backlash if we were currently trying to implement the policies that reduced smoking, but at this point everyone takes those policies for granted. If other cities’ experience is any guide, New York’s congestion charge will eventually be seen as a normal fact of life, which is why it was important to get it in place even at a low rate.

But change rage is real, and trying to argue people out of it rarely succeeds. Which is why fighting negative externalities should, where possible, leave the way people live more or less untouched. Outside New York and a few other dense urban areas, Americans aren’t going to stop driving to work. But subsidizing electric cars and renewable energy may be a workable strategy, precisely because it has so little visible effect on how we live.

Still, sometimes we really do need to persuade people to change their behavior. So yes, I am taking a subdued victory lap over New York’s congestion fee.

MUSICAL CODA

Sad to say, I almost never take the A-train. Usually the 1, 2 or 3, and sometimes the E to visit friends in Queens.