By Correspondent
New York has become the first US city to launch a congestion charge in an effort to ease traffic problems and raise money for the local authority.
A congestion charge is an amount of money a driver pays each day in order to drive into a city.
The initiative results in reduced traffic and less congestion.
In New York car drivers will pay up to $9 a day with varying rates for other vehicles.
“The system has been in operation since midnight (Sunday)”, said Janno Lieber, CEO of the Metropolitan Authority (MTA).
Last year New York was named as the most congested city globally by traffic monitoring site Inrix.
According to the site the average New York driver spends an average of 101 hours stuck in traffic.
Harare has also been facing increasing challenges with congestion.
However, the implementation of a similar idea will likely be vehemently resisted by locals.
Last year the Harare Council launched an operation against public transporters to curb congestion.
This included new arrangements on the use of bus ranks and massive deployment of municipal police.
However, little impact has been made and traffic remains a huge challenge.
