Soaring gas prices and higher tolls have helped cut the number of cars clogging the city's streets and push more people to use mass transit, the New York Times said Thursday.

In May, with gasoline at more than four dollars a gallon, traffic at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's bridges and tunnels dropped by 4.7 percent compared with the same month the previous year, the paper said.

Preliminary data for June shows a similar decrease in traffic, and officials were quoted as saying that the change is largely because of "higher prices at the pump."

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has recorded a similar decline in travel across its bridges and tunnels since early March, when it raised tolls, the paper said, adding that the greatest decline was in April, when traffic fell by 4.2 percent.

At the same time, subway, bus and commuter rail use has increased, it said.

"We're at the point where people really are changing habits," Sam Schwartz, a transportation consultant, was quoted as saying.

He said that if gas prices stayed high, the result could be close to the goal set by Mayor Michael Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan, which, if it had been approved, was expected to reduce traffic in much of Manhattan by 6.3 percent, according to the paper.

Throughout the country, rising gas prices have had a broad economic impact, hitting especially hard in many cities and suburban communities where people are more dependent on cars than in the transit-dense New York City region.

"What congestion pricing does is it focuses traffic reduction on the most congested places and times, whereas gasoline prices spread the impact out," said Bruce Schaller, deputy transportation commissioner for planning and sustainability.

Interviews with drivers and transit riders indicate, however, that a change in habits has not come easy -- and might be reversed if gas prices fall, the paper said.