Note that it was snowy in NYC today, so people were likely dissuaded to drive by other factors than congestion pricing as well. It'll be interesting to see what impact there is as we get further along in the year.
The dashboard is based off of Google Maps travel time data which I'm unsure of the exact accuracy. I imagine the city might also have other more direct metrics that can be used, such as the count of vehicles passing through the tunnels into the congestion zone.
I think, at least the way I would approach the problem, would be to look at the speed or flow rate of the phones on a particular road as the primary signal. I believe Google has ways of detecting if the device is in a car/vehicle vs being carried for example so they could filter out "walking" phones. Then looking at the flow of devices alleviates the need to calculate the carrying capacity of a particular road. The speed/flow tells you want you're trying to measure more directly than trying to count phones and decide if that means a road is congested or not, to do that you'd need to develop a heuristic to estimate the capacity of roads which seems like you're unnecessarily ignoring the direct signal in favor of trying to calculate it from a noisier source.
I have a flexible commute that sometimes involves driving a car into the zone and if I see snow in the forecast I'll be less likely to be in the city with a car that day.
I love congestion pricing, I will gladly pay $9 if it lowers traffic during peak hours. I also try to plan trips in the offpeak hours anyway. If you leave at 11pm you can get from shea stadium to Philly in an hour forty-five.
I think it was worse in suburban areas slightly outside of the city, at least on the NJ side. In western Bergen county, I had a bit over 1 inch and had to break out the shovel for the sidewalk.
The dashboard is based off of Google Maps travel time data which I'm unsure of the exact accuracy. I imagine the city might also have other more direct metrics that can be used, such as the count of vehicles passing through the tunnels into the congestion zone.