Earlier this week, Scioto Analysis released a cost-benefit analysis of New York City’s Congestion Relief Zone during its first full year of operation. We found that congestion pricing in New York City produced $2 billion in net benefits in 2025. Some of these benefits are reduced air pollution, driver time savings, and avoided vehicle crashes.
Cities across the globe have implemented congestion relief zones prior to New York City, including Singapore, London, Stockholm, and Milan. All four of these cities saw reductions in traffic between 11% and 45% during the first year of congestion relief zone operation. This got me thinking: if congestion relief zones are so effective at reducing traffic, then which cities in the United States should be next for congestion relief zones?
Which cities across the United States are most congested?
The easy answer would be cities in the United States that suffer the most from congestion. The table below shows the top ten cities based on 2024 annual hours of delay according to the Texas A&M Transportation Institute’s Mobility Division.
| Most Congested Cities in the United States | |
| City | 2024 Annual Hours of Delay |
|---|---|
| Los Angeles, CA | 1.1 million hours |
| New York, NY | 890,000 hours |
| Chicago, IL | 420,000 hours |
| Miami, FL | 340,000 hours |
| Houston, TX | 270,000 hours |
| San Francisco, CA | 270,000 hours |
| Atlanta, GA | 260,000 hours |
| Washington, DC | 230,000 hours |
| Dallas, TX | 230,000 hours |
| Philadelphia, PA | 220,000 hours |
These annual hours of delay are for the year before the congestion relief zone in New York City began. Using congestion data alone, Los Angeles might be a better candidate for a congestion relief zone than New York City. If anything, it seems like Los Angeles is the obvious next choice for a congestion relief zone: New York City and Los Angeles stand alone in terms of congestion. The third most congested city is Chicago, which has less than 40% the congestion of Los Angeles.
While high congestion is the prerequisite for implementing a congestion relief zone, it certainly isn’t the only factor at play. At its core, a congestion fee charges drivers to enter designated zones during peak hours. The logic is simple: we are taxing traffic because we want less of it.
However, people are entering these zones for a reason: work, recreation, shopping, or something else entirely. A congestion fee won’t be high enough to deter everyone from entering the zone. Some drivers whose destinations lie outside the zone may instead reroute around it, potentially shifting traffic into surrounding areas. But for anyone who still needs to get into the zone and won't be deterred, there has to be a viable alternative form of transportation. Otherwise, congestion pricing places a disproportionate burden on drivers who can’t afford the fee.
Which cities have the best public transit?
One answer to this problem is public transit. If a city has high-quality public transit, then people should still be able to get where they need to go without driving. According to the AllTransit Rankings from the Center for Neighborhood Technology, we rank the top ten cities for public transit in the United States in the table below.
| Best Public Transit Systems in the United States | |
| City | Transit Performance Score |
|---|---|
| New York, NY | 9.6 |
| San Francisco, CA | 9.3 |
| Jersey City, NJ | 9.2 |
| Chicago, IL | 9.2 |
| Washington, DC | 9.1 |
| Boston, MA | 9.1 |
| Philadelphia, PA | 9.1 |
| Newark, NJ | 8.8 |
| Miami, FL | 8.5 |
| Seattle, WA | 8.3 |
New York City ranks at the top of public transit rankings in the United States. New York residents who choose not to drive in designated zones due to congestion pricing can instead take the subway or bus to get where they need to go. Some other cities that have both high congestion rates and high-quality public transit are Chicago, San Francisco, Miami, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC.
One city that is missing from these rankings is Los Angeles, the most congested city in the country. Public transit in Los Angeles ranks 18th in the United States. This means that Los Angeles has a similar quality public transit system to my home city, Cleveland (which has a tenth of the population of Los Angeles).
Which cities have the busiest central business districts?
To create a congestion relief zone, there needs to be an identifiable zone to implement congestion fee pricing in. This means that congestion shouldn’t be widely dispersed across the city; it should be concentrated in a particular area.
One pattern we noticed during our analysis of New York City’s congestion relief zone is that congestion relief zones have generally been created around a city's central business district. If we assume that the next United States city would take the same approach, we can estimate which central business districts suffer from the heaviest traffic.
While neighborhood-level traffic data is difficult to collect, we can use the share of jobs located in the central business district as a proxy. If a large chunk of a city’s jobs are in the central business district, then lots of people have to travel there on a daily basis. Using a 2020 report from Demographia, the table below shows the top 10 cities in the country ranked by the proportion of jobs located in their central business districts.
| United States Cities with Highest Proportion of Jobs in Central Business District | ||
| City | Jobs in Central Business District | Percentage of Total |
|---|---|---|
| New York, NY | 1,900,000 | 20.2% |
| San Francisco, CA | 370,000 | 16.3% |
| Washington, DC | 430,000 | 13.0% |
| Chicago, IL | 570,000 | 12.5% |
| Honolulu, HI | 56,000 | 11.4% |
| Seattle, WA | 210,000 | 11.2% |
| Boston, MA | 260,000 | 10.1% |
| Hartford, CT | 63,000 | 10.1% |
| New Orlean, LA | 59,000 | 9.9% |
| Richmond, VA | 61,000 | 9.8% |
Once again, Los Angeles is missing from this list. Despite being the most congested city in the country, it ranks 49th in the proportion of jobs located in its central business district, with just 2.6% of Los Angeles jobs in the central business district.
Which cities are next for congestion fees?
Based on these rankings, it's easy to see why New York City was the city most fit for a congestion relief zone in the United States. The only remaining cities that have high congestion, high-quality public transit, and a large share of jobs in their central business districts are Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. Based on the success that New York City has seen so far with its congestion relief zone, one of these cities might be next.
