Lesly Silva, a New Jersey hospital technician, said she did not like the idea that drivers would have to pay new tolls for congestion in New York.
But recently she saved enough time to commute to Midtown Manhattan, so she stopped on a sandwich with bacon, egg and cheese.
Since the beginning of the toll plan, he has less fears that she will be late. “I take time for work,” said Mrs. Silva (29).
In the long and questionable period before the premiere of the Congeso Congesses in the city of January, one of the main sales points of the plan was to limit traffic to some of the busiest roads in Manhattan. But since the start of the program, the first of its kind in the country, the data and the anecdotes suggest that commuting from places where one of the loudest resistors against the charging of the congress – from the neighborhoods and suburbs outside Manhattan – also recorded the relief from the blocking.
The new analysis found that travel times have accelerated for commuting, such as Mrs. Silva, who rely on some of the most frequent arteries in the metro area.
And yet the overall results are mixed since the program began to charge most motorists $ 9 for access to Manhattan under 60.
The data collected by INRIX, a company dealing with traffic analysts, found that the traveling time of the city and the region actually slowed down at the top – by 3 percent in the morning AO 4 percent in the evening – during the first two weeks of charging congestion. to a similar period last year.
Travel times have improved on highways and main roads in Manhattan during the morning and evening peaks. But slower were in Brooklyn and Staten Island in the morning and Queens and Bronx in the evening.
Times have also increased in some New Jersey districts, including Essex and Bergen, but have improved in Nassau County on Long Island.
Driving time can serve as a scale of traffic jams, with faster rides mean less clogging traffic on the streets and slower rides suggest more. The INRIX gathered data from devices such as mobile phones and GPS navigation systems.
Bob Pishue, a traffic analyst of the company, pointed out other factors except tolls that could affect travel time, including more white collars returning to the office. Operation in January is also usually weak, traffic experts said and do not have to reflect traffic formulas during the rest of the year, especially those in the autumn and holidays at the end of the year, when large congestion can occur.
Samuel I. Schwartz, a former Transport Commissioner in New York, who supports the charge of congresses, warned that changes in travel speeds were small and inconclusive without further data that have so far been preliminary and limited. He also noted other factors that could have influenced data, including the increase in national transport in the last year, partly because of the larger number of trucks that kept a step with the boom of electronic trading.
At the beginning of this month, Metropolitan Transport Authority, which oversees the charging of the Congressions, has published traffic data Showing that constipation was alleviated during the first week of the program when tens of thousands of vehicles entered the overload zone.
The charge of congestion aims to reduce traffic and air pollution by force more people into public transport. It is expected to help you get billions for the dilapidated city metro system, buses and two suburban railway lines.
But the charging program is deeply unpopular, more than half of the New York state voters responded to it SIENA College survey published in December against it.
Some opponents continued to fight the program in court. President Trump recently said he would kill the program and governor Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey was written by the president a letter calling him to act.
Federal road administration officials, which granted the final consent needed to start tolls, refused to talk about the possibility of extinction of the program. Mr. Trump’s spokesman did not respond to the request for comment.
Traffic experts warn that it is too early to know whether the charging of the congestion will achieve its goals or survive its opposition. The clearer determination of its effects could be in years. However, this did not prevent the inhabitants of New York and to offer their opinion on the experiment.
Recently in the morning some buses riders in the Transit Center on Staten Island said that their commuting to Manhattan is not noticeably better. They also noted that buses became more overcrowded because some people switched from public transport.
Judge Rivera, 32, bricklayer, said he picked up his paycheck late because he couldn’t find a place on the bus and had to wait for another. “It’s replacing one bad system with another,” he said.
However, at the Allwood Road Park-and-Ride in Clifton, New Jersey, a group of bus riders said that the charging of Congressions helped to speed up their commuting to Manhattan.
John Apricena, 34, CFO, said he shaved the program for 20 to 25 minutes from his morning trip to work. “I’m sleeping later,” he said.
Nevenka Simonovska, 63, said her trip by bus to her work to clean the house in Manhattan was so fast that her employer asked why she came so soon. “It used to be eternity,” she said. “I’m so happy now.”
New Jersey Transit did not publish any data about its buses serving Manhattan. But one private bus service, BoxcarHe said he was placing commuting at Manhattan stops five to 10 minutes faster on weekdays. Evening commuting back across the Hudson River was 15 to 20 minutes faster, the company said.
“There was no need for fine data analyzes,” said Joe Colangelo, 39, founder and Executive Director of Boxcar, who spoke customers who say they cannot believe how fast their rides are. “Buses are just flying.”
Boxcar has already added six more trips a week to AZ Manhattan in response to an increase in the number of passengers and is considering adding more, Mr. Colangelo said.
The new toll convinced some drivers to leave cars at home. Anthony Frias, 34 years old, surgical technician from Woodland Park, NJ, first tried to ride through the bridge of George Washington, which lies north of the Constitution zone to find itself in operation from the bumper to the bumper.
So he switched to the bus. “Actually, it helped me get to work in time,” he admitted. “The fact that I can rely on a good bus timetable gave me peace during commuting.”
Nevertheless, it remains against charging congestion. “There’s a lot of frustration,” he said. “We feel we’re getting scratch.”
Other commuting, like Peter Philips, said they didn’t mind the new toll because they were getting something for it.
Mr. Philips, 43, lives in Brooklyn and works as a carpenter in Secacus, NJ after he ends up on weekdays in the afternoon, he takes him back to Lower Manhattan and the rest of his way home goes by subway. Mr. Philips, who supports the charge of congresses, pays a toll of $ 9 because his collaborator pays gas.
In less operation, Mr. Philips could recently pass through the door of his apartment 45 minutes earlier on Friday. Instead of having enough for dinner with pizza, he turned on the oven and prepared homemade meals from lemon chicken and potatoes.
“Having back half an hour and 45 minutes of life is another way of thinking,” he said.
