Despite New York's reliance on public transit, roads are a defining feature of the city. Manhattan's
street grid plan greatly influenced the city's physical development. Several of the city's streets and avenues, like
Broadway,
Wall Street and
Madison Avenue are also used as shorthand or
metonym in American vernacular for national industries located there: theater, finance, and advertising, respectively. In Manhattan, there are twelve numbered avenues that run parallel to the
Hudson River, and
220 numbered streets that run perpendicular to the river. An advanced convergence indexing road traffic monitoring system was installed in New York City for testing purposes in May 2008. To keep roadways, tunnels, and bridges safe for pedestrians and drivers, New York City has made efficient use of timers to regulate traffic lighting and help conserve energy.
Bridges and tunnels , one of the world's most recognizable structures, connects Manhattan with
Brooklyn , the start of the
Long Island Expressway With its Gothic-revival double-arched stone towers and diagonal suspension wires, the
Brooklyn Bridge is one of the city's most recognized architectural structures, depicted by artists such as
Hart Crane and
Georgia O'Keeffe. The Brooklyn Bridge's main span is , and was the longest in the world when it was completed. The
Williamsburg Bridge and
Manhattan Bridge are the two others in the trio of architecturally notable
East River crossings. The
Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge, which links Manhattan and Queens, is an important piece of cantilever bridge design. The borough of Staten Island is connected to Brooklyn through the
Verrazzano–Narrows Bridge. The
George Washington Bridge, spanning the
Hudson River between New York City and
Fort Lee, New Jersey, is the world's busiest bridge in terms of vehicular traffic. New York has historically been a pioneer in tunnel construction. Most carry rail lines, but there are four exceptions. The
Lincoln Tunnel, which carries 120,000 vehicles per day under the
Hudson River between New Jersey and Manhattan, is the world's busiest vehicular tunnel. The
Holland Tunnel, also under the Hudson River, was the first mechanically ventilated vehicular tunnel in the world and is considered a National Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers. Two other notable tunnels connect Manhattan to other places; one is the
Queens Midtown Tunnel, and the other is the
Hugh L. Carey Tunnel. At 9,117 feet (2,779 m), the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel, formerly known as the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, is the longest underwater tunnel in
North America.
Expressways A less favored alternative to commuting by rail and boat is the New York region's expressway network, designed primarily by city planner
Robert Moses. The city's extensive network of expressways includes four primary
interstate highways,
Interstate 78,
Interstate 80,
Interstate 87, and
Interstate 95. Interstate 78 and Interstate 87 terminate in the city, I-78 in lower Manhattan and I-87 in the southern Bronx. Interstate 95 passes through Manhattan and the Bronx, and Interstate 80's eastern terminus is in
Teaneck, New Jersey.
I-278 and
I-287 each serve as a partial beltway around the city; Interstate 278 in Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, and Interstate 287 in Westchester County, Rockland County, and
North Jersey.
I-495 begins at the Queens Midtown Tunnel as the Queens-Midtown Expressway, becomes the Horace Harding Expressway between Queens Boulevard and the Nassau County limits and finally becomes the Long Island Expressway into the Long Island suburbs. The 'LIE' moniker is commonly used by denizens of the city to describe the entire length of highway. New York's limited-access
parkways, another Moses Project, are frequently congested as well, despite being designed from the outset to only carry cars, as opposed to commercial trucks or buses. The
FDR Drive (originally known as the East River Drive) and
Harlem River Drive are two such routes that run along the eastern edge of Manhattan. The
Henry Hudson Parkway, the
Bronx River Parkway and the
Hutchinson River Parkway link the Bronx to nearby Westchester County and its parkways; the
Grand Central Parkway and
Belt Parkway provide similar functions for Long Island's parkway system.
Private automobiles The city's traffic lights are controlled from a Department of Transportation center in
Long Island City, with frequent adjustments to alleviate the city's chronic congestion. Around 48% of New Yorkers own cars, yet fewer than 30% use them to commute to work, most finding public transportation cheaper and more convenient for that purpose, due in large part to
traffic congestion which also slows buses. To ease traffic, the Mayor,
Michael R. Bloomberg, in 2007 proposed
congestion pricing for
motor vehicles entering Manhattan's business district from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. However, this proposal was defeated when
Sheldon Silver, Speaker of the
New York State Assembly, announced that the bill would not come up for a vote in his chamber. The number of
gas stations in Manhattan is 40 and falling, causing congestion around them. Due to the lack of competition and high cost of operations, fuel is often more expensive in Manhattan compared to state and national averages. Although the rate of
electric vehicle ownership in New York City is low compared to the rate of ownership of traditional gas vehicles, there were over 3,000 electric vehicles registered to New York City and
Westchester residents between 2011 and 2014, out of almost 300,000 total vehicles registered during this time.
Congestion pricing Congestion pricing in New York City is a traffic congestion fee for vehicles traveling into or within lower and midtown Manhattan. The congestion pricing charge was one component of Mayor
Michael Bloomberg's plan to improve the city's future environmental sustainability while planning for population growth, entitled
PlaNYC 2030: A Greener, Greater New York. However, it was not approved then, as it was not put to a vote on the
Assembly. It was approved in March 2024 and implemented on January 5, 2025.
Delivery trucks Since the beginning of the 21st century, the growth of
e-commerce companies such as
Amazon has resulted in an increase in delivery trucks within New York City, with 1.5 million packages being delivered per day by 2019. Several logistics hubs and warehouses have been built within the city to more quickly distribute packages in the New York City area. In 2016, NYCDOT commissioner
Polly Trottenberg said that 90% of goods transported into New York City arrived via truck. The influx of large motor vehicles on the already constricted city streets has had a considerable effect on the flow of traffic. In the most congested areas of Manhattan, vehicle traffic in 2019 moves 23% slower than in 2010, and for the bridges and tunnels funneling traffic to and from the city, traffic has slowed down even more considerably. Though it is legal for delivery trucks to
double park in most locations while making deliveries during off-peak hours, this often leads to congestion on the surrounding streets when double parking occurs during peak hours. There are often complaints that delivery trucks take up bike lanes and parking spaces. In 2018 alone, four delivery companies (
UPS,
FedEx,
FreshDirect, and
Peapod) were fined a combined $27 million due to parking and traffic violations. Further, the city's Stipulated Parking Fine Program allows drivers to eliminate their previous double-parking violations by paying a predetermined fine without challenging it in court. As a result, in 2019, the NYCDOT started enforcing rules to restrict deliveries in the midtown zone during peak hours, impose a time limit on deliveries, and ban commercial double-parking on streets with one lane of traffic. To reduce peak-hour traffic and truck emissions, the NYCDOT also operates the Off-Hour Deliveries Program in Manhattan's midtown zone, which requires deliveries in that zone to be made between 7 pm to 6 am.
Taxis drops passengers off inside the yellow zone, where taxis are not allowed to pick up new passengers, in
Midtown Manhattan. There are 13,237 taxis operating in New York City, not including over 40,000 other for-hire vehicles. Their distinctive yellow paint has made them New York icons. Taxicabs are operated by private companies and licensed by the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission. "Medallion taxis", the familiar yellow cabs, are historically the only vehicles in the city permitted to pick up passengers in response to a street hail. In 2013, a new type of street hailed livery vehicles called "
boro taxis" in "apple green" color are permitted to pick up passengers in the
outer boroughs and the northern part of
Manhattan. The average cab fare in 2000 was
US$6.00; over
US$1 billion in fares were paid that year in total. Since 1999, 241 million passengers have ridden in taxis in New York City. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, of the 42,000 cabbies in New York, 82% are foreign born: 23% from the Caribbean (the
Dominican Republic and
Haiti), and 20% from South Asia (India,
Pakistan, and
Bangladesh). Additionally, a large number of American citizen taxi drivers in New York are Puerto Rican or of Puerto Rican descent. In 2014, 23.1% of taxi drivers were from Bangladesh, 13.2% from Pakistan, 9.3% from India, 6.5% from Haiti, 5.9% from the U.S., and 4.4% from Egypt. In 2005, New York introduced incentives to replace its current yellow cabs with electric hybrid vehicles then in May 2007, New York City Mayor,
Michael Bloomberg, proposed a five-year plan to switch New York City's taxicabs to more fuel-efficient
hybrid vehicles as part of an agenda for New York City to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions as well as surging fuel costs. In 2010, Nissan won a contract to provide the New York with a design based on their NV200 minivan model.
Pedicabs, pedestrians, and bicycles Cycling in New York City is another means of transport in New York City. In 2009, an estimated 200,000 city residents bicycle on a typical day, and make 655,000 trips each day, greater than the number of the ten most popular bus routes in the city. The city annually hosts the largest recreational cycling event in the United States, the
Five Boro Bike Tour, in which 30,000 cyclists ride through the city's boroughs. More than 500 people annually work as bicycle rickshaw, or pedicab, drivers, who in 2005 handled one million passengers. The City Council voted twice, including an override of Mayor Bloomberg's veto due to the market cap, in 2007 to license pedicab owners and drivers and allow only 325 pedicab licenses. Neither the limit on pedicabs nor the law itself went into effect due to a successful New York City Pedicab Owners' Association lawsuit over permit issuance. Ultimately, 943 pedicab business owners permits were issued in November 2009 after a second law was passed to address shortcomings of the 2007 law. Today, pedicabs meet market demand in midtown for both ecological transport as well as quick trips within the central business district during afternoon rush hours when motor traffic moves cross town at an average speed of 4.5 miles per hour. In 2019, New York City had a higher modal share of walking than any other city in the United States at 31% of all trips. By way of comparison, the next city with the largest proportion of walking commuters,
Boston, had 119,294 commuter pedestrians, amounting to 4.1% of that city's commuters. Research conducted by Quinnipiac University showed that a majority of New Yorkers supported the initiative. Throughout the first year operations, there were more than 100,000 registered members who rode over , including 70,000 members in the first three months alone. In 2014, Citi Bike announced that it would expand its operations by 6,000 bikes and add 375 new docking stations by 2017. In November 2018, a further, five-year expansion was announced, which would double the bike-share system's service area to . In addition, the number of bicycles would more than triple, from 12,000 to 40,000. Stalls would be installed in the remainder of Manhattan, as well as parts of Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. A "
green wave" refers to the programming of traffic lights to allow for continuous traffic flow (a series of green lights) over a number of intersections in one direction. In New York City, this “green wave” prioritizes bikers by timing traffic lights around the average biking speed, in addition to mitigating the negative effects of heavy automotive
congestion. After a series of bicyclist deaths in 2019, the highest death toll for cyclists in two decades, the city decided to retime traffic lights, so that vehicles would have to travel an average of between consecutive green lights. Transportation commissioner Polly Trottenberg has pushed for increasing bike lanes to demonstrate the city's progress and commitment to
transportation safety. However, with the expansion of cycling in New York City, there has been pushback from motorists. For example, in 2019, motorists and
Upper West Side residents objected after two hundred parking spaces along Central Park West were eliminated to allow bike lane expansion.
Dollar vans , one of several
Chinatown bus companies New York City has many forms of semi-formal and informal public transportation.
Dollar vans in the New York metropolitan area serve major areas in Brooklyn, Queens, and
the Bronx that lack adequate subway service. They pick up and drop off anywhere along a route, and payment is made at the end of a trip. Similar to dollar vans, Chinese vans serve predominantly Chinese communities in
Chinatown;
Flushing;
Sunset Park, and
Elmhurst. Jitney buses also provide transport to parts of
Hudson County and
Bergen County in New Jersey. Of particular note is the frequent Interstate express service offered along
New Jersey Route 4 between the
George Washington Bridge Bus Terminal and
Paterson, New Jersey, provided by
Spanish Transportation. Highly competitive
Chinatown bus lines operate routes from New York City's Chinatowns to other Chinatowns in the Northeast, with frequent service to major cities, including Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. These companies use full-size coaches and offer fares much lower than traditional carriers like Greyhound and
Coach USA, who in turn have gone after the Chinatown carriers by offering online fares as low as $1 on
BoltBus, NeOn, and
Megabus services. == Airports ==