New York city, after much controversy including court actions and postponements, has implemented a system of congestion charging since January this year and early indications are that the $9 per day charge (about €8) for using the city streets is delivering on its stated objectives.

Traffic congestion has eased, traffic speeds have improved, rental charges for off-street parking spaces are coming down and public transport usage has picked up.

Traffic in the zone is down 12%; Google Maps reckons that traffic flow in Manhattan is about 15% quicker; subway patronage is up 8% as is outer suburban rail and bus usage is up 13%. It is too early to say whether cycling has increased.

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The daily toll works like a London-style area charge collected via scanners for use of the street system and applies only on the island of Manhattan below Central Park.

It is additional to specific charges for the use of bridges and tunnels.

The shape of the congestion control area makes things simple, since access and egress is through eight bridges and tunnels on the East and Hudson rivers and scanners below the 60th street demarcation line.

The number of commuting workers in Manhattan exceeds the resident population, who are exempt from the daily fee provided they drive within the zone.

The Trump administration has opposed the initiative and, it being America, there are multiple lawsuits underway, including efforts by some outer suburban politicians to spare their voters from the extra charge.

US President Donald Trump has been no friend of the New York subway, alleging that it is dangerous and crime-ridden.

Built from 1900 onwards, the New York subway is often seen as rather decrepit, but crime has actually been falling over recent years according to the New York Police Department.

Revenues from the congestion charge will accrue to the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) which plans to spend most of the money on system improvements.

The MTA expects to raise about $500m in the current year, coincidentally about the same as the annual revenue yielded by all of the tolls on roads and motorways in the Republic of Ireland.

Ireland’s tolls were imposed, not to manage congestion but to pay for the construction costs of new facilities, mainly under so-called public-private partnership (PPP) schemes.

Some of the motorways are rarely congested and the city with the most serious congestion, Dublin, has just a few stretches that are tolled.

These are the M50 ring road which has a toll at a single point not differentiated by time of day, so not a congestion charge at all; a single undifferentiated point toll on the East Link bridge, the most easterly on the river; and the Port Tunnel, where the tolling scheme is traffic-related since the charge differentiates both by direction and time of day.

The Port Tunnel is the only Irish tolling scheme which is designed to address congestion at all, and has facilitated the removal of port-related truck traffic from the city centre.

Trucks use the tunnel for free but, above a certain size, are otherwise banned from the central area of the city.

Opinion polls in New York had shown majorities against the new charges in the congestion zone but the negative majorities have declined since the system was introduced.

It is early days, but opinion could shift if the early positive outcomes are sustained.

In Ireland, no political support is evident for congestion charging, even though everyone understands that widening city streets to cater for growing traffic volumes would be ruinously expensive.

Even the Green Party has been unenthusiastic.

For Dublin, the favoured urban transport policy has been the promotion of public transport, especially by rail and most notably the support for the MetroLink underground rail link north from the city centre to the airport and Swords.

Politicians who favour this scheme – easily the largest public investment ever contemplated in Ireland with costs six or seven times that of the National Children’s Hospital – are unanimously opposed to congestion charging, where the costs are measured in votes rather than Exchequer billions.

Cities which have long-established underground rail systems, including London and New York, are regularly cited as examples which Dublin might follow.

But both have opted for congestion charging and had their undergrounds built and paid for 120 years ago in New York and decades earlier in London.

In both cities, the construction of underground systems was embraced long before the spread of private car ownership, or the emergence of public concern about carbon emissions and urban air pollution.

In Dublin’s case, the city was relatively compact until the middle of the 20th century but is now a low-density urban sprawl across large parts of Leinster, hugely expensive to reach with fixed-line systems.

The alternative to MetroLink, a single line to a single suburb, is to mimic New York and London, introduce congestion charging and spend the proceeds on the bus system.