In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

The question becomes how critical is X and is there a close alternative. In this case I'd say for 95% of people yes driving is easily substituted by NYC's public transit options.

They're probably enjoying the reduced traffic their trucks have to deal with?

The truck carrying $10k in sushi can afford and justify the daily $9 fee.

Im not sure this fits, they saw a much larger drop (18%) in heavy duty trucks entering the city, and a smaller drop (9%) in passenger cars. I am not sure the public transit options are close alternatives for heavy duty trucks.

What percentage of the road traffic do you think they constitute? How much of the value of the truck full of expensive seafood do you think the congestion charge represents? How many extra deliveries can a single driver make when they spend less time stuck in congestion?

Reducing the number of cars on the road helps everyone: we tend to focus on the enormous quality of life and health benefits to residents but it also helps everyone who doesn’t have the option of not driving, too. Ambulances getting stuck in congestion less is a win. Deliveries which can’t be done using cargo bikes similarly benefit from reducing the single greatest source of delay: cars.

Do we know that those heavy duty trucks were formerly used to do things you need heavy duty trucks for? It seems more likely that 18% (or more!) of the usage was by people who think heavy duty trucks look cool and wanted to show off theirs.

For many people, the thing being substituted for an alternative is not "transportation into Manhattan", but more broadly "engaging in commerce in Manhattan"

I suspect that this is due to the elimination of toll shopping/avoidance. Per [0] and [1], the only way to avoid a toll entirely is to drive from the West Side Highway or FDR Drive to the Brooklyn Bridge, but commercial vehicles are prohibited on FDR Drive and the Brooklyn Bridge has weight restrictions [2], so heavy trucks don't have a legal way to dodge the tolls anymore.

If you need to reach Long Island, the incentive to avoid the (tolled) Throgs Neck, Whitestone, Verrazzano, and RFK bridges are gone; now you're paying for the privilege of sitting in Manhattan traffic.

[0]: https://congestionreliefzone.mta.info/faqs

[1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/nyc-congestion-pricing-...

[2]: https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/motorist/parkway-restricti...

If you're engaging in commerce, those few bucks are negligible..

Can they not afford to pay $9 per truck per day? Seems like a bad business plan that can't manage to pay such a minor fee. That's the design of the congestion charge it disincentivizes optional trips but is small enough for any money making business to absorb.

What business or shopping trip into Manhattan is small enough that 9 dollars is a significant hurdle or increase in cost? It's there to disincentivize taking a car for no reason when you can use transit while being small enough to absorb if you have a reason to actually use a car.

With reduced congestion, delivery companies will find marginally increased productivity (maybe 1 more delivery stop is possible per shift, for instance) that will likely make the fee worth it

That's the difficulty with the Light/Medium/Heavy Duty categories. It doesn't tell you a huge amount about what the vehicle is being used for but most of them heavy duty mean commercial or utility. There are a handful of popular models that tip into the Heavy duty class and those are usually 3/4 ton pickups. Not sure how popular those are in NYC though.