Is Congestion Pricing Working? The MTA’s Revamped Data Team Is Figuring It Out

For nan New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s information and analytics team, January 5, 2025, felt a batch for illustration kismet.

Three and a half years earlier, New York authorities legislators had passed a law requiring nan MTA to merchandise “easily accessible, understandable, and usable” information to nan public; by January 2022, MTA chair and CEO Janno Lieber officially announced nan caller team’s formation. Meanwhile, New York City’s arguable congestion pricing program, which tolls cars entering Manhattan’s busiest streets, officially kicked disconnected successful 2019 but was chugging done a lengthy setup process, pinch nan transit agency and authorities fighting lawsuits, politicians, and vocal naysayers on nan way.

So erstwhile nan programme yet started successful January, nan MTA’s information and analytics squad had prepared. They could spot nan infinitesimal nan tolling started correct successful nan spreadsheets. “The time that it turned on, 1 section changed from ‘no gross collection’ to ‘revenue,’” says Andy Kuziemko, nan lawman main of nan information and analytics team.

A fewer days later, nan squad was pumping retired information connected conveyance entries into nan area successful 10-minute increments, and posting nan information connected its website, truthful that New Yorkers themselves could determine whether nan congestion programme was really reducing postulation connected metropolis streets. The agency has been doing it since. You—yes, you—can position and download nan MTA’s information right here.

The online web pages aren’t flashy, but they correspond a uncommon and broad nationalist transit triumph for open-data advocates, who reason that entree to well-maintained nationalist datasets is important to authorities transparency and efficiency.

Since 2022, nan MTA’s information and analytics squad has grown to 26 full-time employees, who walk their workdays centralizing accusation that was erstwhile scattered done nan full MTA. The agency, to beryllium clear, is big. The nation’s largest, it carries immoderate 5.9 cardinal riders connected subways, buses, commuter railways, and done tunnels and bridges each day. That’s a batch of numbers to track.

Really a lot; MTA now publishes much than 180 datasets. Recent additions see much than a decade's worthy of data connected nan clip MTA labor walk connected “productive tasks,” a new dataset connected subway-delay-causing incidents; and autobus speeds connected Manhattan’s most crowded downtown roads. Kuziemko says 30 much datasets are becoming publically disposable “in nan adjacent future.”

Counter Intelligence

In an interview, Kuziemko and MTA main of strategical initiatives Jon Kaufman credited a caller civilization of intra-agency information sharing for nan renewed program. In 2023, activity encouraged managers crossed nan agency to let their information to beryllium ingested into nan MTA’s “data lake,” which tin beryllium refined, stripped of identifying information, and yet published openly. (Some of nan MTA’s information contains nan personally identifiable accusation of commuters; nan agency says this circumstantial information is not published for nan public.) The agency has besides started utilizing caller in-house package and tools, which springiness them method capabilities they didn’t person before. “We person paid for zero hours of consulting time, which is simply a point we’re really proud of—that we really built in-house expertise successful nan nationalist sector,” says Kuziemko. “It’s really cool.”

“It’s uncommon for a authorities agency to stock this level of information granularity,” says Sarah Kaufman, who directs nan NYU Rudin Center for Transportation and erstwhile led nan agency’s open-data program. In fact, it’s thing for illustration an about-face for nan MTA, which before 2009 made a wont of legally pursuing developers who scraped strategy timetable and way information to build rider-friendly apps.