NYC congestion pricing: the hours, the toll, and the zone

• Peak, weekdays 5am to 9pm
• Peak, weekends 9am to 9pm
• Car, E-ZPass $9 peak / $2.25 overnight
• Charged Once per day

The hours, which are the whole question

Most people arriving at this page want one number and one time window, so here they are first. The peak toll applies from 5am to 9pm on weekdays and from 9am to 9pm on weekends. Every other hour is the overnight rate, which the MTA sets at 75% below the peak rate for that vehicle. The toll does not switch off at the weekend, and it does not switch off on Sunday: Saturday and Sunday simply start four hours later than a weekday. No separate public-holiday schedule is published.

What it costs, by vehicle

These are the E-ZPass rates. Passenger vehicles and motorcycles are charged once per day, not per entry: the tolling day runs midnight to 11:59pm, and you pay whichever rate was in effect the first time you entered, so an overnight entry followed by a noon re-entry is billed overnight. Trucks and buses are charged per entry.

If you are the passenger rather than the driver, you are not paying any of the above. A taxi, green cab or black car adds $0.75 per trip; a high-volume for-hire vehicle, which means Uber and Lyft, adds $1.50 per trip. Both are flat, with no peak and overnight split.

Where the zone actually is

The Congestion Relief Zone is the local streets and avenues in Manhattan south of and including 60th Street. Three roads run through or along it and are excluded, which is the part that catches people out: the FDR Drive, the West Side Highway / Route 9A, and the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel connections to West Street. Stay on those and you are not tolled. Exit them onto a zone street and you are, though a trip that entered through a tolled tunnel earns a crossing credit against the zone toll. That credit applies only in the peak period and only with E-ZPass.

How you pay, and the two discounts worth knowing

There is no booth and nothing to buy in advance. Cameras read the plate. With an E-ZPass linked to that plate you pay the rates above; without one, or with a plate the account does not list, a Tolls by Mail bill goes to the registered owner. Those bills cost more: the MTA's own phrasing is that E-ZPass rates are “generally 50% lower than Tolls by Mail rates.” We are not printing a Tolls by Mail dollar figure here, because the MTA does not publish one we could verify and the numbers circulating elsewhere disagree with that sentence.

Two ways to pay less, both requiring an E-ZPass NY account. The Low-Income Discount Plan takes 50% off the peak toll for passenger vehicles, starting after your first 10 trips in a calendar month; you qualify with a previous-year federal adjusted gross income of no more than $50,000, or by being enrolled in a qualifying government assistance program. Separately, New York State offers a tax credit for the tolls paid by people who actually live inside the zone and whose state adjusted gross income is under $60,000. Exemptions also exist for qualifying emergency, disability, commuter-bus and school-bus travel.