When the Covid-19 pandemic introduced “social distancing” to Americans’ vocabulary, many people took it as a cue to ditch public transit in favor of personal cars. New Yorkers were no exception, taking the wheel in large numbers and leaving the Metropolitan Transit Authority, North America’s biggest public transit network, starved for riders.
New York’s distancing guidelines are now far in the rearview mirror, but traffic on the roads has not subsided. People are driving a lot more than they were five years ago in every large metropolitan area in the state, including New York City, Buffalo, Rochester, Albany, Syracuse, and Poughkeepsie, according to a new report from the transportation data firm StreetLight. And those drivers are moving more slowly than they used to, as road congestion has gone up.
All six metropolitan areas have seen an increase in “vehicle miles traveled” — a measure of total driving — since 2019. Buffalo has seen the largest increase in the state, with a 24 percent increase in driving, putting it among the worst of the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the country. Syracuse, Albany, Poughkeepsie, and New York City are in the middle of the pack, with increases of 10 to 15 percent.
All of these areas have seen among the biggest increases in road congestion in the country. Buffalo has had the second highest congestion increase of the cities surveyed, and Syracuse had the sixth highest. Downtown New York City, specifically, has seen the biggest spikes in both driving and congestion of any downtown in the country’s 25 largest metro areas.
The new data comes as New York’s climate plan prescribes a sharp decrease in overall driving in order to meet legally binding emissions targets. Transportation is the state’s second-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for just over a quarter of New York’s climate pollution as of 2021. The state’s 2022 climate plan aims to cut those emissions by nearly a third over this decade — by moving toward electric vehicles, but also through “historic investments” to reduce dependence on cars.
The state’s single biggest policy to achieve that goal, congestion pricing in downtown Manhattan, is still in limbo after Governor Kathy Hochul “indefinitely paused” it in June.
Traffic engineer Sam Schwartz, who helped popularize the term “gridlock” while serving as New York City’s traffic commissioner in the 1980s, was not surprised by the report’s findings.
“Across the country, we’re seeing fewer people taking public transportation and more people taking cars,” Schwartz said. “We probably will eclipse the record [for vehicle miles traveled] in the United States.” (He was not involved with StreetLight’s research.)
Schwartz said the pandemic-driven rise of personal cars, decline in transit and carpooling, and boom in e-commerce have all contributed, as has people’s reliance on rideshare apps. The effects have been especially pronounced in New York City, he said: “We’re moving slower than we’ve probably moved since the introduction of the horse as a form of transportation.”
The governor’s office, when asked about the report’s findings, pointed to Hochul’s track record of funding transit, including $7.9 billion allocated to transit systems across the state in this year’s budget.
“After saving the MTA from the ‘fiscal cliff’ in last year’s budget and overseeing the largest investment in MTA history, Governor Hochul remains committed to funding the MTA Capital Plan, and she is working with partners in government on funding mechanisms while congestion pricing is paused,” spokesperson John Lindsay said in an email.
He did not answer questions about whether Hochul wants to reduce driving overall, as the climate plan says is necessary.
Despite the trends of the last five years, New York remains one of the least car-dependent states in the country. New York City residents travel an average of 17 miles per day, fewer than in any other large metropolitan area. Buffalo ranks just behind, and Rochester is also in the top 10. (The figure for Nashville, at the other end of the list, is twice as high.)
But New York City’s density also means that, even if only a small share of residents drive on a regular basis, the streets are clogged. And it doesn’t take many more drivers to bring traffic to a near-standstill.
“New York’s roadways are taxed to their limits. So an increase in vehicle miles traveled is having a really big impact on congestion,” said Emily Adler, director of content at StreetLight.
The firm found in previous studies that the number of walking trips dropped significantly in the first few years of the pandemic, in New York and across the country. The number of bike trips, on the other hand, exploded. But, even in New York, cycling still represents only a tiny fraction of commutes overall — hardly enough to counterbalance the shift toward cars.
Kate Slevin, executive vice president of the Regional Plan Association, said the trends on display in StreetLight’s latest report mark a worrying departure from the standards that have made New York City one of the most climate-friendly cities in the country.
“For years, New York’s economy was growing on the backs of the transit system,” she said. “If we’re starting to see trends like this, it means that we’ve moved away from the sustainable growth model and have reverted back to a model that’s over-reliant on cars.”
With the increase in driving have come more deadly crashes. Statewide, deaths on the road climbed from 938 in 2019 to 1,100 last year, according to an official database, reversing a decline seen over the previous five years.
A bill pending in the state legislature would require New York to reduce vehicle miles traveled by one-fifth by 2050. The clean energy research group RMI found that the measure could cut emissions by close to 9 million tons per year. It could also prevent close to 600 crash deaths per year, and save even more lives by promoting active modes of transportation like walking and biking, the group found. (The bill did not make it out of committee during this year’s legislative session.)
StreetLight’s report leaves some key questions unanswered — in particular, why certain cities departed so sharply from the trends seen in New York and much of the country.
Six out of the 10 California cities included in the survey saw decreases in driving, as did Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and Memphis. Los Angeles saw a 17 percent drop in driving since 2019, with other California cities following close behind.
Experts noted that any number of factors could be driving those declines: a lasting shift toward remote work, for example, or an overall economic slump. But Adler said transportation policy plays a key role.
“I think there’s no question that public transit use and public transit investment … can help stabilize or bring down vehicle miles traveled,” she said. She pointed to Los Angeles, which has poured billions into expanding commuter rail and bus lanes.
New York City’s ever more clogged streets will be on international display next week, when world leaders convene for the United Nations General Assembly. A scorecard from the global traffic data firm INRIX ranked the city dead last among its international peers in congestion delays, with 101 hours per driver per year lost to traffic. According to Schwartz, the gridlock expert, average midtown traffic speeds during last year’s General Assembly dropped to just 3.2 miles per hour — about the pace of a walk.
Not long ago, Hochul was touting a bold solution to change that. At a June 2023 press conference, she painted a vivid picture of the toll that traffic was taking on New Yorkers.
“I walk the streets of this city almost every day,” she said. “I know the anxiety people have when you’re at the intersection. … The delivery trucks are jammed up, they can’t make their deliveries … the cars behind them are all beeping because they can’t get through. It is chaos. It is chaos.”
Congestion pricing, she vowed, would change that.
“Less noise, less honking, less gridlock,” she said. “How about less air pollution, lower carbon emissions, lower speeds, fewer crashes? I don’t mind losing that.”