[HN Gopher] New York City will charge drivers going downtown
___________________________________________________________________
New York City will charge drivers going downtown
Author : rntn
Score : 185 points
Date : 2023-06-10 14:09 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnn.com)
| shrubble wrote:
| So despite the massive ridership of the subway and the fully paid
| infrastructure and rights of way from 100 years ago, it can't
| throw off enough cash for modernization of its systems?
|
| And instead politicians decide to tax the successful mode of
| transportation, which is cars. Note that given the density and NY
| gas taxes, it is a certainty that cars in this area generate
| surplus cash.
| elijaht wrote:
| Have you been to New York? The subway is the mode of
| transportation for nearly everyone and it works great. I
| wouldn't say cars are the successful mode of transportation in
| New York at all
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Describing the NYC subway as "working great" is an amazing
| twisting of the truth. The only thing good about it is that
| it isn't as bad as public transport in Long Island.
| Otherwise, good luck going anywhere on time without having to
| add 30 minutes - an hour of waste just standing around.
|
| The discomfort and cost of public transportation would be at
| least somewhat tolerable if there was anywhere near as much
| of an emphasis on timeliness as there is in, say, Japan. As
| it stands though, the public transport is the one thing I
| miss least and hate most about the city.
| ricktdotorg wrote:
| > Describing the NYC subway as "working great" is an
| amazing twisting of the truth. The only thing good about it
| is that it isn't as bad as public transport in Long Island.
| Otherwise, good luck going anywhere on time without having
| to add 30 minutes - an hour of waste just standing around.
|
| just to add some real numbers, we can look at the actual
| NYC subway data from MTA's march 2023 report[0] page 12:
|
| * ~3.7m subway riders in march 2023
|
| * 84.7% of riders arrived at their destinations within 5min
| of schedule
|
| * 83.3% weekday on-time performance
|
| * 85.6% weekend on-time performance
|
| [0] https://new.mta.info/document/109346
| dotnet00 wrote:
| I highly doubt the accuracy of that, the ~one time per
| month during weekends that I have to travel to the city,
| the subway and busses were so unreliable with timing that
| it's easier to just take the LIRR to the nearest place to
| my destination, ignore the busses and walk the remaining
| miles.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| Give me p90, p95, etc. While less frequent those are the
| events people remember not the other 3 days it worked.
| estebank wrote:
| Let's say you travel every week day once on each
| direction (480 trips). The average person will be off
| their expected arrival time by more than 5 minutes on 72
| trips. Of those 72, how many are over, let's say, half an
| hour? In Buenos Aires I could say that those kind of
| delays are something that I would experience maybe 12
| times a year. They happen, they stand out, they are
| annoying, but I've also been stuck in traffic for that
| long, about as often.
| shrubble wrote:
| In terms of paying enough taxes to sustain further use, is
| how I should have phrased it. Why can't the subway fund its
| own improvements?
| zip1234 wrote:
| Road user fees don't even cover half of the cost of roads
| let alone make up for all the negative externalities.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| If we're complaining about the costs of negative
| externalities, are we also considering the value of the
| positive externalities?
| zip1234 wrote:
| The benefits are why people would pay the price of the
| negative externalities. If not deemed to be worthwhile,
| there are other means of transportation that have less
| negative externalities.
| nimbleplum40 wrote:
| How much money do freeways make directly? How about local
| roads? Last I checked local roads produce zero revenue. Should
| we get rid of them?
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| I see ads on the LIRR all the time from NYC saying "we love
| having a driver's license for everything but driving". The city
| doesn't hide that it wants to get rid of cars. I don't blame
| them; cars in the business district are a nightmare for
| pedestrians _and_ drivers.
| wussboy wrote:
| Cars don't and can't scale and we waste staggering amounts of
| space and infrastructure on what would be better utilized and
| more profitably spent on walkability.
| bootwoot wrote:
| Pedestrian and bike deaths are climbing [0]. 44% of New Yorkers
| are considered rent burdened [1] and sure as fuck can't afford
| a car in the city. Cars can only be considered a successful
| mode of transportation from a fairly wealthy and elite
| perspective of a car owner in New York. If you have the cash
| for the car itself and off-the-street parking, sure, it's
| probably great. But for everyone else it makes daily life of
| walking and biking in the street significantly more dangerous
| with no clear reciprocal benefit.
|
| [0] https://www.curbed.com/2023/04/its-already-been-a-deadly-
| yea....
|
| [1] https://wherewelive.cityofnewyork.us/explore-data/housing-
| co...
| raldi wrote:
| Driving is hugely subsidized. This proposal is simply to
| slightly reduce that subsidy, which will continue to be hefty.
| MAGZine wrote:
| wut? in manhattan, calling 'cars' the successful more of
| transportation is very weird. the train is almost always
| faster, cheaper, and more consistent. The pitfalls are
| accessibility sucks (most stations are not ADA compliant), and
| frequency drops off later at night, but if you just plan a
| little it's not a big deal.
| lom wrote:
| I'm sorry what? Cars are the most subsidized thing in America
| today, you can't speak of success when they get billions of
| blank checks handed to them in many different ways. See here:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092180092...
|
| Meanwhile public transit: https://www.apta.com/research-
| technical-resources/research-r...
| bequanna wrote:
| From your first link:
|
| > The true scale of social costs is rarely considered...
|
| Yep, that is pretty much what I was expecting. Some hand
| waving and lecturing about qualitative, subjective
| externalities.
|
| This is social commentary and opinion pretending to be
| science.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Nobody really _wants_ to drive or park in that sort of
| congestion. If they would just make public transit better, then
| there would be less congestion naturally.
| paulgb wrote:
| I agree, but it goes both ways -- you need to reduce congestion
| to improve transit. In the past NYC has even suspended service
| around the Holland Tunnel because of gridlock[1]
|
| [1] https://www.amny.com/news/mta-bus-traffic-holland-tunnel-
| con...
| giantg2 wrote:
| Unless they use other methods or restructure the current
| infrastructure.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| * * *
| insanitybit wrote:
| How could it be better?
| giantg2 wrote:
| Cheaper, cleaner, on-time, expanded service (times and
| locations), and better safety (either real or precieved).
| fellowmartian wrote:
| When I moved to NYC from Kyiv, I was actually surprised by how
| chill the traffic in New York is.
|
| Obviously it can get annoying around bridges and tunnels, but
| outside those areas it's pretty easy to get around, and I live on
| the west side of FiDi.
|
| Not against this legislation, I think it's a good idea, but I
| personally spent more time in traffic on Long Island, and upper
| Manhattan.
|
| I don't own a car though, I just rent when necessary.
| bequanna wrote:
| I guess I always thought the two challenges in the city were
| entering/leaving and parking.
|
| There doesn't seem to consistently be TOO much traffic when
| you're just trying to get around Manhattan.
| ghaff wrote:
| It depends a bit on when and where. But, yeah, all the choke
| points in and out and then finding/paying for parking are at
| least among the biggest pain points. I almost never drive to
| Manhattan from Massachusetts even though it would be faster
| from my house and that's driven in no small part by the pain
| of driving into Manhattan from the north.
| fellowmartian wrote:
| Yes, that's been my experience as well.
| dangus wrote:
| This anecdote is basically another way of saying the incentives
| of urban design align and become self-fulfilling prophecies.
|
| Suburban dwellers stuck in the automobile mindset automatically
| assume that big cities must have the most horrendous traffic.
| It's seems like a logical conclusion: if traffic in my 50,000
| person suburb is horrendous, it must be downright horrific in
| the big city.
|
| But that's not really how it works. In NYC one two track subway
| tunnel can handle 15 lanes-worth of car occupants.
|
| Ironically, making transit, cycling, and walking more
| convenient than driving and "punishing" the automobiles
| actually makes traffic and driving more pleasant.
|
| I think a lot of suburban folks would be really surprised that
| a two-lane 25mph road can comfortably handle traffic for
| neighborhoods that have 10x the density of a typical
| automobile-designed connected with large arterial roadways.
| When you design a place to only accommodate vehicles, vehicles
| are what you get.
| cyberax wrote:
| > Suburban dwellers stuck in the automobile mindset
| automatically assume that big cities must have the most
| horrendous traffic.
|
| Have you driven in Manhattan?
| toast0 wrote:
| I've not driven in NYC. But I've driven in LA, SF, San
| Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Milwaukee, maybe a bit in
| Dallas.
|
| Big cities _do_ have horrendous traffic in high density
| areas. Even if it 's free flowing, there are intersections so
| often and pedestrians everywhere and so speeds are
| necessarily quite low. You wouldn't drive through there
| unless you don't have a choice; maybe the ferry lets off
| downtown and you need to get to the freeway from there, but
| usually you're driving through downtown to get to somewhere
| downtown, which means you need to park, which is also
| terrible.
|
| Of course, NYC is bigger than I think, and there might be
| some parts where density is relatively less, but the only
| reasons to have a car there are if you're a cab/limo driver
| or if you're doing the cannonball run.
| sylens wrote:
| To be fair, none of those cities have the transit
| infrastructure that NYC has. In fact some of them (LA,
| Dallas, maybe even Seattle) are cities I would classify as
| "car first"
| CSMastermind wrote:
| I have driven in pretty much every major North American
| city and NYC isn't even in the top 10 of worst traffic or
| places to drive, there are some times and specific areas
| where it can get bad but I'd happily drive in NYC every day
| than have commute in Seattle.
|
| I think at least in part that's due to the fact that bad
| drivers are scared away by New York so don't even attempt
| to drive there, or if they do they give up quickly.
|
| NYC also has the only public transit system in the US that
| I don't mind taking so I'm sure that play a role as well.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| My main concern as NYer is the governments inability to build
| transit, and not for lack of money.
|
| NY will find it relatively easy to institute a new tax on
| drivers, but will the billions collected actually make transit
| better in any tangible way?
|
| NYC is also hamstrung by having its streets controlled locally by
| our DOT, but our transit & bridges controlled by a state agency.
|
| We just caved (again) entirely to the transit unions in the last
| contract negotiation. We have subway lines & trains wired up for
| 1 man operation but run them staffed with 2 due to union work
| rules.
|
| We have for years instead of building elevators, paid 3rd party
| access-a-ride minibus/van drivers to provide Uber-like service to
| anyone in need.
|
| We are planning to spend something like $3B/mile to expand a
| single train line a few stops further north.
|
| The MTA estimates they can put in platform doors like other
| developed world cities in only 1/3 of stations, at an average
| cost of $50M/station.
|
| We spent something close to $10B building an entire new terminal
| for LIRR underneath an existing Metro North terminal when there
| was enough capacity to serve both out of the existing station.
| Bureaucratic squabbles between divisions of MTA serving LI &
| NY/CT were mitigated by spending $10B. Oh and for the average
| LIRR rider, despite having 2 Manhattan terminals they can get a
| train to, the net service has actually been reduced in terms of
| trains per day.
|
| We basically need a modern era Robert Moses to consolidate NYC
| DOT/MTA/Port Authority and whatever other agencies and bring us
| into the modern era.
| agotterer wrote:
| Quite a few of our transit problems today are actually because
| of the choices Robert Moses made. However, he certainly is
| responsible for the rapid growth of the transit system and did
| a great job consolidating power and getting stuff done.
|
| * He had the chance to buy the land and put transit along many
| highways in queens and Long Island but said that people would
| prefer to drive so he passed on the opportunity. Acquiring
| those rights today would be unaffordable and likely impossible.
|
| * Moses didn't want black people going to Jones Beach (his
| pride and joy). To prevent them from visiting he built the
| overpasses on the highways that go to the beach lower so that
| buses from the city couldn't fit.
|
| I highly recommend the book The Power Broker which is a deep
| dive on the history of Robert Moses. The book is very long and
| can be a bit dry at times. But I learned a lot about the
| history of New York and why some things that we enjoy and
| suffer through today are the way they are.
| Reason077 wrote:
| To be fair, London has looked at the platform screen doors
| thing a few times too and dismissed it as unaffordable.
|
| New lines get PSDs but there doesn't seem to be a realistic
| prospect of retrofitting existing ones any time soon.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| And yet NYC having built only a handful of stations in the
| last 40 years, couldn't be bothered to include them even
| there.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| >We basically need a modern era Robert Moses to consolidate NYC
| DOT/MTA/Port Authority and whatever other agencies and bring us
| into the modern era.
|
| Idk about that, maybe a less racist one.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_Broker
|
| https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Yeah, he was a terrible guy and all.
|
| But stuff got built.
|
| The current inability to build anything is almost a direct
| result. They delegated decision making to an alphabet soup of
| agencies at different levels of jurisdiction so it's
| impossible to get anything done.
|
| Because there are so many agencies, you can't for example
| easily put in a busway because you need NYC DOT, MTA, NYS
| DOT, city council and mayor to all be on board.
|
| Too many people have veto, so nothing gets done.
|
| Living in NYC for long, it quickly becomes apparently the
| vast majority of our built infrastructure was built from
| 1930-1960 and has frozen in time since.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Another great example is the fact that the BQE cantilever
| is probably going to collapse before anyone can agree on
| how to replace it and do so.
|
| So far we have reduced a lane to minimize wear & tear,
| reduced max tonnage for trucks going over it, and are
| installing advanced automated ticketing to ticket big
| trucks attempting to go over it.
|
| That's well and good, but salt water corrosion and
| bureaucratic inertia are going to get some people killed at
| this rate. And let's not pretend it can simply be done away
| with. Where do we expect all the goods & services flowing
| in/out of the city via truck to go otherwise.. local roads
| through city streets.. how is this not a significantly
| worse outcome?
|
| Right now we have a lot of vetos with different agendas -
| anti-car degrowrethers, NIMBY rich BK Heights owners
| praying on their lottery ticket if their park expands &
| view improves, and bureaucrats happy to not have to spend
| $BBillions to replace the thing.
|
| Sometimes living in NYC feels like the opposite of an
| headline I once saw re: Japan & Italy, where their strategy
| was described as "Beautiful decline"... for NYC its Ugly
| Decline.
|
| "I don't own a car" is often a mantra of folks who think we
| can simply do away with infra like the BQE for example.
| People live frictionless lives in their apps, clicking
| buttons and goods just magically appear at their doorstep.
| The gritty truth of how those goods get there is another
| story.
|
| On another note, we apparently are incapable of putting
| trash in bins, for many reasons. One of which is that the
| DSNY unions would need to be negotiated with. So for our
| great push to reduce the rat infestation in the city, we've
| done the dumbest, least effective, most costliest stuff
| instead.
|
| Rather than mandating containerized garbage or moving up
| trash collection times to be overnight, what did the city
| do? Mandate buildings put out trash after 8pm instead of
| 6pm. Mind you it's not picked up until 6am. So the rats
| have a 10 hour feast instead of a 12 hour feast, how does
| this make a difference?
|
| And what is the cost? Every single building in the city now
| needs staff schedules shifted or expanded such that their
| super/porter/maintenance guy is around after 8pm to take
| out trash. For the city, it's "free", they don't have to
| budget anything. But for residents, its yet another cost of
| living with really no benefit.
| automatoney wrote:
| For those unfamiliar with NYC, street parking is free basically
| everywhere so the space cars take up is already heavily
| subsidized.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| That's true in the outer boroughs, and on a lot of the streets
| above 59th but it's not at all true for downtown.
| dgrin91 wrote:
| In the city, especially downtown its basically not free
| anywhere. It's always metered. Only free at nights and weekends
| automatoney wrote:
| Maybe I'm oblivious to them, but I don't think I've seen
| meters in Soho/Chinatown/LES and I definitely don't remember
| them in the East Village. Are they more in the Tribeca/Fidi
| area?
| silverlake wrote:
| $4.50 for 1 hr, $12 for 2 hr street parking.
| pests wrote:
| You can continue to buy in one hour increments to save a
| little too if you remember to keep checking the app.`
| marcja wrote:
| The classic meters at every spot are largely gone and have
| been replaced by block-based, app-enabled meters run by
| ParkNYC [https://www.parknycapp.com/].
| tarikjn wrote:
| This 100%. Free public parking in NYC is the elephant in the
| room that no one wants to address. Tolls won't fix that. In
| some areas of the outer boroughs, 40% of the traffic at any
| given time are people looking for a spot. The city also still
| hasn't figured out utilization of the curb for deliveries and
| drop offs resulting in normalized double-parking almost
| everywhere. Curb space need to be efficiently priced and this
| would fix a host of issues -- same goes for outdoor dinning,
| otherwise its value will be captured by landlords anyways.
| macNchz wrote:
| I anticipate the rollout of congestion pricing will wind up
| accelerating some changes to the way parking works: areas on
| the margins of the congestion zone will likely see a surplus
| of commuters looking to park where they can avoid the toll,
| which will have the effect of making proposals like paid
| resident parking permits much more palatable to car owners
| who currently oppose them.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| They really need to eliminate free street parking, especially
| in dense neighborhoods like midtown.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| We should just ban private vehicles in the city as well, bringing
| back more cyclists, walkers, and generally increasing metro
| usage.
| RobinL wrote:
| Banning is equivalent to an infinite price. Better off setting
| a very high price, such that the revenue is far higher than the
| negative externality
| rightbyte wrote:
| For practical reasons I guess you want to be able to move
| furniture etc. That is about the only time you need a motor
| transport in dense cities?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Banning means you don't need to maintain the infrastructure.
| You can let people walk all down the street. The pavement
| doesn't need to withstand thousands of pounds of vehicles.
| And so on.
| hnboredhn wrote:
| I sorta hope they find some streets or avenues to convert to
| bike lanes. I do sorta feel like having a congestion fee
| without much added ways to get around for pedestrians leaves
| the typical person unchanged from this.
| tacticalturtle wrote:
| Why did the federal government have to sign off on this?
|
| Assuming the tolls aren't on federal highways, shouldn't a state
| be free to decide where to enact tolls on its own roads?
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Because there are Federal highways in the impacted zone.
| jffry wrote:
| AFAICT there are highways affected by this congestion charge.
| Federal Highway Administration's Value Pricing Pilot Program
| [1] is the means for state/regional/local governments to
| institute programs like this. The specific signoff was for an
| environmental assessment [2] showing that the proposed program
| complies with relevant environmental laws.
|
| [1]
| https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/congestionpricing/value_pricing/ind...
|
| [2] https://new.mta.info/project/CBDTP/environmental-assessment
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| First we had segregated roads for the rich, then airports and and
| terminals, and now it's full on cities. Welcome to dystopia.
| coin wrote:
| The part about airports is valid
| digbybk wrote:
| You're allowed to come to New York. Just leave your car at
| home.
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| You're allowed to drive on the $10 a mile toll road, just use
| your credit card.
| nimbleplum40 wrote:
| Ironically, public transit (which congregation pricing
| encourages!) is way less segregated, at least in NYC. Subway
| cars into Manhattan are filled with everyone from low-income
| workers to high paid investment bankers. Moms with kids,
| elderly. Immigrants from all kinds of countries speaking many
| languages.
| DirectorKrennic wrote:
| [flagged]
| thx-2718 wrote:
| " At the same time, cities should develop bike stations and
| tramways for people to move around quickly in car-free areas,
| paid for by gas taxes, which should be raised, and road tolls,
| which should also be raised."
|
| Huh? If no one is driving who is paying gas taxes? Road tolls
| everywhere?
| raldi wrote:
| If no one is driving, we can take the unbelievable amount of
| public spending currently going into subsidizing automobile
| traffic and redirect it to fund public transit.
| thx-2718 wrote:
| I don't have a problem with doing that. Of course how you
| get public transportation into rural communities is a
| bigger challenge but we don't have to have society be based
| around the car.
|
| My issue is that the previous post said they would pay for
| public transportation and walkable carless cities through
| increase gas taxes and road tolls.
| raldi wrote:
| An increase in gas taxes and road tolls would make people
| drive less, requiring less road maintenance, traffic
| policing, etc, and allow buses to move more efficiently,
| freeing up funding that can then go into improving
| transit.
| thx-2718 wrote:
| If your over all take home is lowering though eventually
| you don't have money to repair the sidewalks and the bike
| racks and so forth because no one is driving anymore to
| pay for it.
|
| Or you raise the cost to ride public transportation or
| pay for those things from somewhere else (like property
| taxes).
| raldi wrote:
| You seem to think the government makes money when someone
| drives a mile, but in fact it loses money --
| significantly more than if that person had taken transit
| instead.
|
| The fewer miles people drive, the more money the
| government has available for other things.
| thx-2718 wrote:
| > The fewer miles people drive, the more money the
| government has available for other things.
|
| Yes if everything else is kept the same. People's income.
| Business profits. Etc.
|
| However you're overlooking the point spending on
| transportation infrastructure which is to get resources
| from one location to another.
|
| People drive to work where their income is taxed.
| Businesses have things delivered to them to sell and have
| ways to get customers to them. So now the business is
| paying taxes. And people use that income they earned to
| pay for rent or own a home so there's property taxes.
|
| Now let's just remove the way people get about to doing
| all those things because that would save the government
| money from spending money on transportation.
|
| Oh great no one is going in to work. No one is going to
| business or shop. No one is paying taxes. But hey we
| saved a bunch of money by not building roads.
|
| Please read that I am not opposed to changing our society
| to be less car dependent (obviously for the environment
| it is better)
|
| I am objecting to the notion that you can pay for a
| carless society by just not paying for roads or by
| imposing taxes on cars more without raising taxes or fees
| elsewhere.
| raldi wrote:
| > Now let's just remove the way people get about to doing
| all those things
|
| No, congestion pricing removes the obstacles slowing
| people down from doing all those things. Take for
| instance a plumber who still has to drive around. Yes,
| they have to pay the congestion charge, but they also
| spend way less time stuck in traffic and can probably
| bill an extra job or two that day. Same for UPS drivers,
| etc.
|
| > No one is going to business or shop.
|
| Actually, studies from all over the world consistently
| show that when you make driving less attractive, it's a
| net positive for merchants:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-13/every-
| stu...
| thx-2718 wrote:
| Except those plumbers are not going to get anywhere
| faster now because there's pedestrians and bikes
| everywhere but I digress since it's not relevant.
|
| Regardless what you're saying completely ignores my
| actual objection here. Which is paying for infrastructure
| through something that you just eliminated.
| raldi wrote:
| It's paying for infrastructure through cost reduction.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| People will still drive, just not in downtown areas.
| thx-2718 wrote:
| If you raise the price of driving higher the the number of
| drivers lower. Will the increase revenue from the pricehike
| overshoot the loss in revenue from less drivers on the
| road?
|
| You've also effectively eliminated owning a car in the
| city. So now you're asking rural residents to pay for more
| expensive gas and more expensive toll roads while giving
| all that money to people living in the city.
|
| I have a feeling politically that would be rather
| unpopular.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| There's not a single state in the country where tolls and
| taxes pay for all road upkeep expenses. There's not a
| single state in the country that raises taxes and tolls
| automatically when revenue drops.
|
| Very few people drive in the NYC area anyway. I think 30%
| of people? It's not a big deal.
| thx-2718 wrote:
| But we want to pay for tramways and bike stations and our
| nice carless city through raising taxes on automobile
| transportation (which just plummeted because of above
| policies).
| elmerfud wrote:
| Yes I agree let's fundamentally eliminate the right of free
| travel from place to place through the public thoroughfares on
| the conveyance of your choice. Because it's that pesky
| fundamental concept that we have of freely moving about through
| cities through county borders through state borders without
| being stopped and harassed that's actually the fundamental
| problem of it all. So instead of just pissing around and
| banning cars from using the roads that their taxes pay for
| let's just eliminate the entire concept of allowing people to
| move from place to place without permits and papers. Because
| that is a great model for a country to have.
|
| But we're talking about New York city so you've already granted
| the port authority wide latitude and restricting your movements
| and controlling the population.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| This is a gigantic strawman. Having some limited car free
| areas like downtown cores has nothing to do with free travel.
| There are already plenty of areas you aren't allowed to
| drive. And car-free areas can make a downtown area so much
| more pleasant, for example Mountain View closed down just a
| few blocks on one street in its downtown and that alone makes
| it 10x better to visit.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| weird take
|
| I am free to move across borders, it's my car that requires
| paperwork and requires that I submit to detainment and
| harassment by any cop I happen to pass by.
|
| Having a car is great for doing your own thing on your own
| schedule, but it's also an expensive liability. I'd rather
| live in a world where I'm not compelled to take on this
| liability just to get across town.
| pierat wrote:
| Common American reply. It's turned into "freedom".
|
| Public transit can easily be 1st class transit with freedom,
| as long as it's prioritized as such. When transit has to
| fight with vehicles, it's strictly worse, and discourages
| usage.... Unless you're in the poverty class and have to.
|
| Roads are high speed infrastructure to get from 1 area to the
| next. We call them highways and interstates. WE NEED THOSE.
|
| Streets are the downtown, slow speed where human scale stuff
| happens. It's also where transit should be. These are also
| needed.
|
| Those 2 or 4 lane highish speed abominations where businesses
| are loosely connected by asphalt oceans are "stroads". They
| do both a street and a road terribly, induce sprawl, and are
| terrible for anyone not in a vehicle.
|
| And sheesh, with your polemic, depriotizing motor vehicles
| doesn't cause you to lose freedom... AS LONG AS OTHER MODES
| OF TRANSIT ARE EASIER/BETTER.
| MrMan wrote:
| [dead]
| digbybk wrote:
| Years of auto and oil industry propaganda has deluded people
| into equating freedom of movement with car ownership. My
| freedom of movement is violated when the subway isn't moving.
| For people on a bus stuck in traffic, their freedom of
| movement is violated by a government that incentivizes car
| ownership and creates gridlock. As a cyclist, my freedom of
| movement is violated by reckless drivers putting my life at
| risk, supported by a government captured by the auto
| industry, failing to build real infrastructure that enables
| that freedom the way it does for car owners. Not only car
| owners pay taxes, by the way. Particularly in Manhattan.
| wussboy wrote:
| Your free travel is free only because its true cost is
| heavily subsidized and carefully hidden. Pay what it costs
| and you can travel all you want. I'm done with my tax dollars
| paying for your bad habits. "Free" my ass.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Given "using the roads that their taxes pay for", OP seems
| to be under the impression that gas tax just about covers
| it. Difficult to find an unbiased source but iirc gas tax
| covers 30-50% of whats spent on roads
|
| Of course, like other infrastructure, its not necessarily
| meant to pay for itself directly, so long as economic
| growth makes up for it, but I think there's many cases
| where adding another lane to thr highway costs more than it
| enables. Frankly a lot of the road construction seems like
| a grift to me - how many hours can we take to resurface
| this section of the interstate ? Easy place to pour money -
| the roads always need repair, and yet, with all the bridges
| and tunnels failing with inadequate upkeep, one wonders if
| the money ever touches the ground.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| The real cost of roads is in the space you take up that
| other cars cannot (at least in any area with significant
| population density). And that's not paid for at all.
| pierat wrote:
| How are motor vehicles subsidized?
|
| ----------------------
|
| Loosely enforced speed limits
|
| Arbitrary setting of speed limits
|
| Free, off-street parking mandated in building codes
|
| Low Housing density induced sprawl and car requirement
|
| Exempting pickup trucks and SUVs from emissions laws
|
| Lack of vehicle safety laws to protect pedestrians and
| cyclists
|
| Aftermarket products exploit a lack of regulations
|
| Mandatory Insurance law: payout requirements
|
| A mortgage interest deduction drives suburban sprawl
|
| Tax laws favor car ownership
|
| Tax formulas favor car commuting over public transit,
| biking, and employer van pools
|
| Pedestrians have limited ability to sue drivers
|
| Pedestrians can't sue car makers for defects
|
| Hit and runs are rarely prosecuted
|
| Out-of-pocket car expenses don't cover the cost of roads
|
| .... Is this a good start, wussboy?
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| I would say the two factors of free parking and free road
| use far eclipse the rest.
| nkrisc wrote:
| But you're still free to travel there as often as you like,
| for however long you like, any reason you like, and you don't
| have to tell anyone about it.
|
| I'm not allowed to drive my car on sidewalks or bike paths,
| but that doesn't mean we live in some dystopian nightmare
| where the right to free travel is restricted and I have to
| show papers everywhere I go.
| kodah wrote:
| > The first step to rid ourselves of our, dare I say,
| enslavement to our car-centric way of life is to make car
| ownership as expensive and inconvenient as possible. I hope
| more cities follow. Start closing off entire areas to cars.
|
| I'm pretty sure GP is responding to this, which while I
| appreciate the transparency, is atrocious. Creating
| negative incentives just makes people angry, and generally
| surfaces a lot of inequality.
|
| I just went on a long haul train ride with my dad who is
| heavily disabled. The people on the train were nice but
| trains are very clearly built around the concept of able
| bodied people. There's a single bathroom for disabled
| people and it's _inside_ one of the sleeper rooms. He
| basically had to sequester himself in his room for 24
| hours. Meanwhile, my dad _can_ drive a car.
|
| Maybe before we go making hyperbolic statements that are
| sure to encourage decision making that results in gross
| inequality we should think about the basics of a problem
| first.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| I think cars have a lot of advantages like the one you
| mention (and others, eg much less crime risk). But we can
| pull back on the car obsession a little bit, we've gone
| kind of crazy the past 100 years and made some awful
| cities. I think cars should be an option, they just
| shouldn't be the only reasonable one.
| kodah wrote:
| I agree. I walk, take the train, ride my bike, or ride
| the bus whenever possible. I've adapted a good portion of
| my life to that thinking, including buying a more
| expensive house that I could do those things.
|
| But a lot of folks in this thread came to defend someone
| who analogs cars to enslavement and championed making
| them so expensive people can't afford them.
| alexwennerberg wrote:
| > But we're talking about New York city so you've already
| granted the port authority wide latitude and restricting your
| movements and controlling the population.
|
| This is a bizarre argument. Cars are heavily policed: they
| must be registered and licensed. The state tells you where
| you can park it, and your ability to operate it is completely
| controlled by the state and can be taken away from you. In
| order for car infrastructure to function, there is a huge
| increase in police presence in people's lives to enforce
| traffic rules, parking, etc. None of this is true of, say,
| walking, biking, or taking transit, all of which are pretty
| unregulated, even in New York City.
| [deleted]
| metalforever wrote:
| What about people with disabilities.
| robin_reala wrote:
| Put an exemption in place: see
| https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/congestion-
| charge/discounts...
| jmclnx wrote:
| I do not know about London (UK), but there is a lot of
| corruption here in the US with handicap plates. So I can
| see a lot of people (like politicians and maybe
| police/fire) families getting this special exemption.
| occz wrote:
| People with disabilities thrive in areas with reduced car
| traffic. Many people with disabilities are unable to drive
| and as such benefit from prioritized public transportation,
| and many small electric vehicles that are appropriate for
| people with disabilities can use bicycle infrastructure. This
| covers the vast majority of the needs of people with
| disabilities - the small remainder can be granted exceptions.
|
| No yank-tanks are required to accommodate people with
| disabilities - quite the opposite, car-oriented
| infrastructure limits their agency in society.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| What about them? Many of them can't drive, how are you
| working to address the inequalities caused by that? Because
| of regressive asset cap laws many of them can't own a
| personal vehicle that suits their needs without losing access
| to their critical health care.
|
| Disabled people have lots of current issues with the
| _current_ system. It 's possible you're already working to
| address those but if not this doesn't seem like an honest
| concern.
| ericmay wrote:
| Exceptions are a thing. Also how do people with disabilities
| live in other countries and move around? These are easy
| scenarios to address.
|
| We also shouldn't force _everybody_ to drive a car everywhere
| they need to go just because some tiny percentage of people
| may need a car to drive around. Frankly, we 'd probably have
| fewer disabled people in the first place if they had to move
| around more.
| Jemm wrote:
| What if you live in the toll area? Do you have to pay everytime
| you drive?44
|
| Toronto has considered putting in a congestion tax, but no one
| wanted to way in on how that tax would affect people living
| downtown.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Living in the part of Manhattan that's covered by this, I'm
| absolutely looking forward to paying $17 to drive a quarter-mile
| to the FDR early on a Sunday morning /s.
|
| The thing that's interesting is that the average vehicle on the
| roads in lower Manhattan (in my experience) is not a luxury car.
| It's a taxi or a ride share or a delivery truck (or other
| commercial vehicle: contractors etc) or what is essentially an
| economy or mid-tier private vehicle.
|
| EDIT: not a popular observation apparently.
| tlogan wrote:
| So rich people (who really do not care about few dollars) will be
| able to drive to downtown just for fun. while poor people who
| truly need to come to downtown by car will struggle.
|
| This is an unfortunate reality of life: wealth equates to more
| available time.
| jupp0r wrote:
| Not sure how familiar you are with the realities of driving a
| car in Lower Manhattan, but as somebody who has visited the
| place a few times, I can assure you that poor people cannot
| afford parking there on a regular basis already.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Midtown when I was there had free street parking (maybe it
| still does?), and it made more sense financially for my
| girlfriend at the time to drive rather than grab a train from
| Harlem to Hawthorne (north of white plains, the office wasn't
| near the train station so that last link wasn't really
| covered). I was honestly surprised driving was...so
| convenient in that part of NYC at least, but midtown is
| definitely not Manhattan, and also a reverse commute.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| This "poor people will be affected more" is a tired refrain.
| That is always obviously true, given the consequences of being
| poor.
|
| Not every solution can or has to solve the wealth/income gap.
| Solve congestion with one solution, solve wealth redistribution
| with another.
| paganel wrote:
| > is a tired refrain.
|
| Only non-poor people can say something as reactionary as
| that. Or people who are not friends or relatives with poor
| people. A populist backlash that will bring some of the
| middle-class egoism down is long over-due, and not only in
| the States.
| ethanbond wrote:
| I grew up quite poor in rural Arizona, now live in NYC, and
| I think they should congestion charge the absolute
| daylights out of anyone driving through Midtown. "This will
| hurt poor people" is a very very bad argument in this case.
|
| There you go, point disproven.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Also, at least with congestion pricing, those wealthy drivers
| will be funding the public transit system for the rest of
| society.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Trickle down?
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Quite the opposite, I'd call it a tax on the rich.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| It's obviously true though, isnt it? Poor people cant afford
| the ~$20 toll like a rich person can.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| If you're poor, you probably aren't driving in Manhattan in
| the first place.
|
| And in all honesty, if you _are_ driving in Manhattan, you
| should probably stop doing that.
| rileymat2 wrote:
| Rationing by payment is only one strategy though. Choosing
| that strategy brings in wealth disparities. So it is fair to
| bring it up when that is the chosen strategy.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Everything brings in wealth disparities, except for
| redistributing wealth. That's an inherent part of one
| person having more wealth than another, it allows them to
| buy more.
|
| It is a waste of time to bring it up every single time. We
| know being poor sucks, but that is its own issue with its
| own solution separate from solving too many vehicles in
| certain parts of Manhattan at certain times.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| How does increasing free parking bring in a wealth
| disparity? Or increasing capacity or lowering the price
| of public transit?
| grumpy_coder wrote:
| The actual dollar amount also matters. London's charge has
| tripled since it was introduced. The unforeseen consequence
| of this type of charge is it becomes a lever to reduce
| traffic by forcing poorer people off the roads everyone
| pays for.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| How could this toll be anything of not that?
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Setting the price based on income can help prevent the
| problem without disparaging the poor. It works for traffic
| tickets in vaeious countries so it may just as well work in
| anti congestion systems. That's just one approach. You can
| also use monthly quotas that you can't buy your way around or
| other restrictions.
|
| Of course I don't expect such approaches to be a very popular
| approach in America, but there are ways to do it. All you
| need to do is let go of the idea that anything can be gained
| through purely monetary means.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That is needlessly convoluted and leads to many
| externalities and unintended consequences.
|
| Straight forward, simple, easy to implement and audit
| solutions are best for society.
|
| Sure, let's take wealth from richer people and give it to
| poorer people, but handle that via taxes, not via the road
| congestion pricing in certain parts of Manhattan.
| sigstoat wrote:
| if you're rich enough you just pay somebody else to run the
| errand or drive you around in an even larger vehicle.
|
| stop freaking out about rich people being able to get something
| nice. they can already afford nice things. look at the overall
| costs/benefit analysis of the policy.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| You bring up a good point. It makes door dash even more
| expensive and even more a luxury for well off people.
|
| Also, the argument was never that rich people cant afford
| nice things. So while concluding they can is easy and
| correct, its not accomplishing anything.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Every time I go to NYC, I say F### the traffic, I'm taking the
| subway.
|
| Traffic is horrible, subway is more than usable. Just walk.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| If you are so poor with a car but can afford gas that a few
| dollar toll will wreck you, you really should just take public
| transportation. There will be rare legit cases but when was the
| last time they made everyone happy with decisions?
| paulcole wrote:
| Yes, rich people do things for fun. Poor people struggle.
|
| It's not a particularly deep or useful insight.
|
| What do you think should happen here instead since you're so
| disappointed with the current plan? No charge for drivers going
| downtown? A dynamic charge based on social status/wealth?
| BoorishBears wrote:
| > A dynamic charge based on social status/wealth?
|
| That's one I like actually, maybe something like the blue
| book value of the car?
|
| I recently moved out of NYC but I remember looking forward to
| the congestion charge because I loved taking my greyhound to
| the union square dog run, which was driving distance for me.
| 20$ wasn't enough to affect my plans to do that, and less
| traffic would actually make my life way easier when I took
| him there.
|
| There were plenty of people like that: totally unaffected by
| whatever a reasonable toll is, and actually more likely to
| drive if they enact it.
|
| -
|
| At the end of the day I don't buy that in a city like NYC
| we'll see the type of effect congestion pricing has had in
| other less connected cities. Here owning a car is already
| expensive, parking already cost more than people pay in rent
| in some places, etc. It's like stacking a regressive tax on a
| regressive tax, it doesn't really have the same effect.
| wcarron wrote:
| > That's one I like actually, maybe something like the blue
| book value of the car?
|
| Suppose two people make the same amount of money. One
| chooses to buy a cheaper car and pays higher rent for a
| nicer apt. The other, the opposite. Under your pricing
| scheme, you're unjustifiably charging two persons of equal
| means different rates.
|
| You can adjust this many ways. One person gets a cheaper
| car but spends more on luxury vacations or invests more
| aggressively or spends large sums eating at nice
| restaurants often or buys expensive clothes or or or etc.
|
| Edit: Lastly, why should we be charging expensive cars
| more? A BMW M4 is, by all measures, much less irritating to
| have to share the road with than a large SUV or Ford F-250
| (god forbid it's also lifted). Tolls should scale with
| vehicle size and weight and when vehicles have poor fuel
| efficiency, not the sticker price.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| You'll always be able to imagine cases where a broad toll
| doesn't perfectly align with a narrow goal, why even
| waste energy listing them out?
|
| Instead consider how you get the toll to actually do
| something: in the case of a congestion charge it's by
| making driving in Manhattan expensive enough to reduce
| how much it happens _for as many people as possible._
|
| Regardless of the corner cases you can imagine, there are
| more people who drive an M4 that would be unaffected by a
| $20 charge rate than there are people who drive an 430i.
| So increase the cost for the people with M4 and you've
| made your toll strictly more effective... even if there
| are people who can afford M4s and chose to drive a 430i.
| wcarron wrote:
| One could also just make the base rate $150/day and then
| you'll definitely make it untenable for as many people as
| possible, which is apparently the goal. This leads to an
| outcome which is you think is an unfair distribution. But
| luxuries are necessarily for those who can afford them.
|
| The 'cost' of the action is the same. A vehicle in the
| city is a vehicle is a vehicle and therefore the toll
| should be flat, unless _that type of vehicle in
| particular_ causes more damage to roads or empirically
| worsens outcomes like traffic or pollution relative to
| other types of vehicle. Charging people more because they
| are wealthier is unfairly discriminatory.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Their goal isn't to make it impossible, it's to reduce
| it. They want you to really need to drive, not just do it
| because it's convenient.
|
| It seems you might not familiar the actual toll to start,
| it carves out a lot of special cases for that reason:
| people with certain incomes are exempt if they already
| live in the area, ride-shares have special rules, they
| excluded corridors around the edges of the city, etc.
|
| You're also confused on cost here. It's not cost to the
| city they're trying to change with a toll (that'd be
| nonsensical) it's cost to the _driver_. If cost is hard
| for you to follow, think of it as "attractiveness".
|
| They want driving to be unattractive, not impossible, not
| untenable... just unattractive.
| TheCleric wrote:
| > regressive tax
|
| I don't think that word means what you think it means.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| It does, but if you'll elaborate on your incorrect
| understanding I'd be happy to educate you: https://ops.fh
| wa.dot.gov/publications/fhwahop08040/cp_prim5_...
|
| > most forms of transportation finance--fuel taxes, sales
| taxes, and tolls--are regressive forms of taxation in
| that they burden the poor more than they do the rich.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| It is literally this. Decongesting the streets for rich people.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| Where are these poor people who truly need to come downtown by
| car parking?
| MengerSponge wrote:
| I imagine there are literally thousands of them (/s)
| krasin wrote:
| > So rich people (who really do not care about few dollars)
| will be able to drive to downtown just for run while poor ones
| which need it will suffer.
|
| The first part is true, the second part not necessarily so, if
| combined with improved subway. Theoretically, it should be even
| possible to setup the system, where these taxes on cars to
| downtown directly fund subway expansion and modernization.
| kepler1 wrote:
| What's your point?
|
| _Everything_ with a price is unkind to poor people.
|
| So you can't do anything that affects poor people? What
| rule/principle are you suggesting then, to get anything done?
| aqme28 wrote:
| Public transit has always been the cheaper option. This just
| makes the difference a little larger.
| tharne wrote:
| > Public transit has always been the cheaper option.
|
| Only if don't value your time.
| [deleted]
| mgbmtl wrote:
| There are also rich and poor people using the subway. Improving
| it will improve the situation for everyone.
|
| I'm (sincerely) curious though, who are the poor people
| affected? Parking downtown is crazy expensive, and there are
| already expensive tolls around Manhattan.
|
| There are easy solutions though: charge by the weight/size of
| the car (the weight should already be on the car registration).
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > There are also rich and poor people using the subway.
| Improving it will improve the situation for everyone.
|
| Exactly. Just like more parking would improve it for
| everyone.
| okennedy wrote:
| NYC, and Manhattan specifically, is one of the rare places in
| the country where having a car is almost virtually unnecessary.
| In downtown, cars are already playthings of the rich: Just
| parking the car during peak hours can run you hundreds dollars
| of per month.
|
| The core of NYC has walkable infrastructure and an amazing
| public transportation infrastructure (at least compared to much
| of the rest of the country). For those commuting in from
| suburbs, park-and-rides are already a far more cost-efficient
| option.
| fooker wrote:
| >NYC, and Manhattan specifically, is one of the rare places
| in the country where having a car is almost virtually
| unnecessary.
|
| As long as you are okay with spending all your time in the
| city.
|
| The medium to long distance public transport for going out of
| the city is horrible.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Greyhound Buses and Amtrak don't count? I take the Amtrak
| to visit friends update and Maryland all the time. There's
| boat loads of stuff on long island as well, LIRR get you
| out there but it's not very walk friendly but awesome for
| biking.
| dml2135 wrote:
| Compared to the rest of the world maybe, compared to the
| rest of the US, I struggle to think of anywhere better.
| insanitybit wrote:
| > The medium to long distance public transport for going
| out of the city is horrible.
|
| Airports are far, but we have tons of buses and trains that
| take you out of the city (including a train that takes you
| to the airport).
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| It is now over a thousand per month for a dedicated space in
| Manhattan, and that seems to be about the right price.
| _rs wrote:
| There are plenty of garages in Manhattan with monthly rates
| around 500. It really depends on neighborhood
| jcranmer wrote:
| A parking space takes up about 200 ft2 (not counting things
| like the width of the travel lane between parking spaces),
| and office rent in Manhattan runs about $7-8/ft2 each
| month.
|
| Chances are, even at well over $1000/month, the parking
| infrastructure is _still_ effectively below the cost of the
| space it takes up.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| On the other hand, a parking space is a bare concrete
| slab, or even a lift holding several cars over a bare
| concrete slab; and an office building is ... not.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Good move. London has done this for many years with its
| congestion charge zone (and, more recently, the T-charge for
| high-emissions vehicles). Helps cut down on traffic congestion,
| reduces air pollution, _and_ helps raise funds for transport
| projects.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Hopefully this money goes to policing the subway too, people have
| a lot of valid safety concerns leading them to take their car or
| a cab.
|
| In India, you have to pass through a metal detector to ride the
| metro. It seems like in US, we are trending towards needing to do
| the same thing.
| o1y32 wrote:
| Sorry to break the news, that's not going to happen in the
| foreseeable future.
| itsmartapuntocm wrote:
| I feel safer riding MARTA here in Atlanta than driving with the
| other lunatics on the highway.
| woodruffw wrote:
| It's hard to imagine a scenario in which a metal detector on
| the NYC subway is useful in a way that isn't _extremely_
| annoying to the millions of people who carry their laptops,
| phones, etc. with them to work each day.
|
| (My only experience with a "metal detector" on a metro system
| is Bangkok's metro. The detector was unplugged at the first
| station, and everybody was waved past it at the second
| station.)
| insanitybit wrote:
| What would a metal detector accomplish? There's something like
| 5-10 murders on the subway per year and those numbers are
| fairly stable, with small spikes around the pandemic when
| ridership went down drastically.
|
| I'm all for a safer subway but your tone seems to imply that
| this is some out of control thing whereas it's extremely
| unlikely, statistically, that you will have any problem
| whatsoever on the subway.
| brailsafe wrote:
| I would assume you're right in NYC, but I feel like this claim
| is made A LOT to sort of excuse car driving in many cities with
| different degrees of transit availability and threat risk. I
| feel like most of the time it's more accurate to say "people
| fear for their safety" rather than that their concerns are
| actually valid.
|
| Fear can be driven by only a few extreme examples that get a
| lot of coverage, meanwhile a lot of the time it would be much
| more likely to be concerned for the likelihood you'll get into
| a terrible car accident.
|
| I'd doubtful that there's some sufficient level of policing
| that would make fearful people change their mind, because
| they're not jsut overcoming what they perceive to be extreme
| risk, but also overcome what they perceive to be very
| comfortable travel. Much like how to lose weight, you can't
| just go and do a bicep curl once in a while, you have to
| totally change your diet and habits for the long-term.
| dangus wrote:
| There's an important concept to the success of city planning: the
| alignment of incentives.
|
| When transit is faster and cheaper than driving, people don't
| drive as much. The individualistic personal freedom of the
| automobile doesn't outweigh those practical aspects of getting
| around. People generally make pretty logical decisions about what
| they want to do.
|
| I'm definitely in favor of congestion charges in certain areas of
| NYC. If you're downtown in a car you are taking up some
| incredibly valuable real estate that could be alternatively
| dedicated to space for human beings.
|
| I think about cities that have implemented taxes for disposable
| plastic bags. I find it somewhat hilarious how many people
| consider these policies to be anti-freedom government money-
| grabs. They make a libertarian's blood boil!
|
| Even assuming those folks are correct, it doesn't really matter,
| because these taxes are incredibly effective. It's eye-opening to
| see how a nearly insignificant tax (literal pennies per bag)
| changes the behavior of _everyone_.
|
| In cities with bag taxes, cashiers don't default to throwing your
| stuff in a bunch of bags, they ask you what you want first.
| Without the bag tax, some people who don't even have a strong
| preference to receive bags will end up with them just because the
| cashier put their items inside automatically. Then, customers
| start bringing their own reusable bags, use their existing
| backpacks and totes that they already own, and/or people will
| just carry a few items without a bag. The end result that the tax
| was going for has occurred regardless of how mad the
| individualists get: thousands of single-use disposable items stay
| out of landfills.
|
| This is the same idea for congestion charges: people in NYC who
| might default to taking an Uber or taxi to get somewhere that's
| often the same speed or faster to get to on a subway or bus are
| going to think twice, because there's the psychological knowledge
| that their behavior is being punished, even if only by a few
| dollars or cents.
| ghaff wrote:
| >Even assuming those folks are correct, it doesn't really
| matter, because these taxes are incredibly effective. It's eye-
| opening to see how a nearly insignificant tax (literal pennies
| per bag) changes the behavior of everyone.
|
| Yep. People have discovered that it's pretty easy to make it a
| habit to carry a small bag if you live in a city and just keep
| some bags in the car if you're driving to the store--and it's
| generally a lot nicer tote than a pile of thin plastic bags.
| Yeah I forget every now and then if I'm walking in a city, but
| I still don't need plastic 95% of the time and it's a better
| experience once you get used to it.
| bdw5204 wrote:
| Or you just don't bother shopping in stores and just order
| from Amazon instead? Or you take the train/drive to somewhere
| where they still have free bags?
|
| Since the area where I live put in a paper bag fee and banned
| plastic bags a few months ago, I make far fewer shopping
| trips and I definitely don't go on a random shopping trip
| while I'm out walking because I'm not paying the bag fee as a
| matter of principle. Every single additional barrier you put
| up to people shopping in physical stores whether it's a bag
| fee or "you must wear a mask to shop in this store" or
| whatever just drives more people to online shopping and
| accelerates the death of physical stores.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| That nice bag also accounts for >300x more CO2 than the
| plastic bag it replaced.
| ghaff wrote:
| Well, that's not the only metric. But, yes, cotton bags in
| particular are generally considered to have the most
| impact. (Somewhat ironically my nicest ones come from an
| environmental organization I belong to.)
|
| It probably, in general, falls into the category of
| performative environmentalism even if it led me to change
| behavior in a way I personally prefer most of the time. (It
| doesn't apply immediately around where I live and mostly
| use recyclable bags out of preference.)
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Yeah, I'm not sure cities should be legislating you to
| behave in a way that you personally prefer. They should
| be legislating things that are beneficial for the city
| and aren't preferable to people.
|
| Also, cotton bags emit about 7000-10000x as much CO2 as
| plastic bags, while the re-usable bags made from recycled
| plastic are in the hundreds - you can actually break even
| on CO2 with those bags if you are careful with them and
| make sure they don't break before the ~300th use.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Do cotton bags (not the only option but you seem to enjoy
| this example) end up being thrown away after a single
| use? Are they often blown away by the wind and get stuck
| on trees? Do sea turtles mistake them for food?
|
| We've been using the same bags (less than 10) for at
| least a decade.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| If you're the kind of person who throws away plastic bags
| and doesn't re-use them as trash bags, please have the
| decency to cut the handles.
|
| Do your cotton bags have over 5000 trips to the grocery
| store over the last decade? If not, you may be carbon
| negative compared to single-use plastic bags (not
| counting the re-usability as trash bags).
| George83728 wrote:
| Pros and cons for cotton bags:
|
| Pros: Never spills my groceries onto the sidewalk when
| I'm walking home. Looks nice.
|
| Cons: The CO2 emissions of producing... one square yard
| of cotton cloth. (Btw, how many pairs of pants do you
| own? Probably more than you need, I bet.)
|
| Yeah, looks like I'll be sticking with my cotton bag.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| You do you. Just don't try to force people through
| legislation to adopt your style. Nobody wants to ban your
| cotton bag.
| estebank wrote:
| In a lot of places, the push for alternatives to single
| use plastic bags go beyond their carbon footprint at
| manufacture. Disposable bags end up littering cities,
| which can block drains and cause other issues. Is banning
| them heavy handed? Maybe. Does it work? I'd say so.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| If only that sort of littering weren't already illegal...
|
| How about we enforce that law?
|
| Where I live now, plastic bags are very common at the
| grocery store, and yet none of them end up on the street.
| I have also seen police pull someone over for throwing
| trash out their car window. When I lived in New York
| City, even the cops threw their trash onto the street,
| and practically nobody gets a ticket for littering. That
| is why there is so much litter. It's not the bags.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| > I think about cities that have implemented taxes for
| disposable plastic bags. I find it somewhat hilarious how many
| people consider these policies to be anti-freedom government
| money-grabs. They make a libertarian's blood boil!
|
| > Even assuming those folks are correct, it doesn't really
| matter, because these taxes are incredibly effective. It's eye-
| opening to see how a nearly insignificant tax (literal pennies
| per bag) changes the behavior of everyone.
|
| I am a libertarian-minded person who takes issues with these
| taxes and related plastic bag bans. My gripe is that the
| alternatives to plastic bags are pretty much universally less
| green, and both plastic pollution and total CO2 spent on
| grocery bags go up when a bag tax/ban enters. Flimsy plastic
| grocery bags get re-used as garbage bags. Paper bags, and god
| forbid reusable cotton bags, emit much more CO2 per use than
| single-use plastic bags, even if you re-use your paper bags a
| few times and re-use your cotton bag 100 times. They make no
| sense, from an environmental perspective.
|
| They are effective at changing behavior, which could be what
| you mean by "effective," but they do not change behavior in an
| environmentally positive direction.
| wizofaus wrote:
| I never thought reducing emissions was the reason for trying
| to reduce disposable plastic bag usage, though I don't doubt
| many might believe it does.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The messaging I saw in NYC when the ban was coming in was
| all about carbon footprint. Do you think the reason is
| reducing plastic pollution? Because it went up in Australia
| after their plastic bag ban, since those plastic bags were
| replaced by heavier plastic bin liners:
|
| https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/retail/plastic-
| bag-...
|
| I think the "bailey" of plastic bag ban proponents is the
| sea life that gets stuck in plastic bags, but there is no
| way they would have gotten a ban passed on the back of the
| impact to sea life.
| wizofaus wrote:
| I wouldn't exactly pay to much attention to news.com.au
| as a reliable source for whether a pro-environmental
| policy has been effective. I'm personally skeptical about
| the likely overall effectiveness of plastic bag bans, but
| I've seen no evidence that increased use of bin liners
| has somehow made plastic pollution worse here- and for me
| it is absolutely the blight of seeing loose bits of
| plastic ending up in the natural environment (both in and
| out of the ocean) that I'm most keen to see reduced.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Libertarians are usually much more in favor of taxes to on
| externalities rather than outright bans. So I dispute your
| characterization.
|
| I agree with the rest of the post though, I think taxing
| externalities is the right thing to do. Cars have gotten a
| gigantic subsidy for far too long. A car is allowed to take up
| 140 sq ft of land for free in one of the most expensive places
| on earth.
| dangus wrote:
| In my experience people who claim they are libertarians are
| against all forms of government regulation and taxation.
|
| But it doesn't really matter to me if my characterization of
| libertarians isn't 100% accurate because I have no respect
| for anyone who calls themselves libertarian in any way.
|
| That ideology is a swirling bag of contradictions and people
| who claim to be libertarian usually just circle back around
| to being anti-regulation, pro-laissez faire capitalist, pro-
| consumption, anti-worker conservatives who don't want to
| admit that they share a bed with the more ugly side of that
| ideology.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| > In my experience people who claim they are libertarians
| are against all forms of government regulation and
| taxation.
|
| > But it doesn't really matter to me if my characterization
| of libertarians isn't 100% accurate because I have no
| respect for anyone who calls themselves libertarian in any
| way.
|
| Tell me you've never spoken to a libertarian without
| telling me you've never spoken to a libertarian.
| kazinator wrote:
| Charging drivers for going downtown is effectively a thing in
| most cities everywhere due to parking. The only drivers not
| paying to go a downtown just about anywhere are ones just going
| for a cruise, without stopping to do any business for any length
| of time.
|
| Here is a better idea: ban driving from downtown entirely, except
| for certain service vehicles.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Placards.
| Slava_Propanei wrote:
| [dead]
| superseeplus wrote:
| A big proportion of the opposition is coming from New Jersey
| where former Governor Chris Christie systematically diverted
| public transit funding to constructing more roads leaving NJ
| Transit with a maintenance backlog, inadequate infrastructure and
| unhappy workers who were poached by the MTA. This resulted in a
| mismatch where the infrastructure is designed to favor driving on
| one side of the river and a fee designed to discourage driving
| and encourage public transit on the other side.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The opposition from NJ is the double dipping of already high
| bridge and tunnel tolls along with the new congestion toll.
| They also have a really meager fixed discount for motorcycles
| which has diminished in value as the tolls have risen over the
| years.
| Jolter wrote:
| Why should motorcycles have a discount? How big should it be
| in your opinion, and why?
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| For motorcycles, London gives 100% off the congestion
| charge. The NY thruway is half off but PANYNJ tolls are
| just $1 off.
| RhysU wrote:
| Motorcycles don't cause congestion. Motorcycles can travel
| through congestion when permitted to lanesplit.
| acdha wrote:
| They're not as bad as cars but they still take up a fair
| amount of space and pollute (noise, fumes) heavily. A
| modest discount seems appropriate but they definitely
| should still cost more than transit.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| Less wear on the roads (due to dramatically lower weight).
| Less space taken up, more efficient in urban scenarios.
| Tolls, especially bridge tolls, should scale with the
| weight of the vehicle.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Not OP but: mcycles don't contribute as much to congestion
| given their smaller size and maneuverability. Also they get
| about 50mpg.
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| Motorcycles should be charged according to the decibel
| volume of their engine.
| acdha wrote:
| That's lower mileage than the car I bought 25 years ago,
| and it made far less noise pollution.
| bilalq wrote:
| There's more reason for NJ residents to take issue with this.
| In central jersey, it costs at least $20/person for a round
| trip ticket. If you go with your family or a group of friends
| filling a 5 seat car, the train costs $100 just to get into the
| city and then get hit with whatever additional costs you have
| for the next few subway rides. Gas, parking, and carpool
| bridge/tunnel toll prices don't add up to anywhere near that
| amount.
|
| The reality is that this ends up being a regressive plan where
| high income earners benefit and everyone else just has to deal
| with increased burdens.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| that would be true if it was all of New York City and not
| just part of Manhattan and only during certain times.
| jasonpbecker wrote:
| Managing to leave out parking costs, which could easily be
| $50 in a garage is very convenient.
|
| Also, I'd eat my shoe if more than 5% of cars entering
| Manhattan had 5 people in them. I'd guess the number is sub
| 0.5%.
| paulgb wrote:
| Yep. I used to work next to the Holland tunnel and the
| vast, vast majority of cars leaving the city at rush hour
| have exactly one occupant.
| superseeplus wrote:
| But if there are 5 people in a car, the congestion pricing
| ends up costing each person less than it would cost someone
| driving alone. In a way, this discourages people using the
| road space inefficiently in favor of people like you and your
| friends who are using it more efficiently.
| woodruffw wrote:
| In addition to what others have said: everything you've said
| is a reason to lower end-user public transit costs, not lower
| car tolls. A well-structured scheme here would simultaneously
| disincentivize individual car traffic _and_ use some of the
| funds from that disincentivization to subsidize public
| transit.
| np- wrote:
| You really think traffic is filled with 5 people in a car?
| Try looking around in a traffic jam, it's like 95% 1-2 people
| occupancy. At 5 people, just paying the congestion charge
| starts to make sense. Also you could always split the
| difference, driving some of the way and parking along the
| PATH line, ie at Harrison parking is $10-15 per day and PATH
| fare is $2.75 per person, it's still possible to get in
| cheaper and faster by public transit even in contrived
| situations like this.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Heyyyyyy!... It should be $100 minus $20 per extra person
| in the car.
| comte7092 wrote:
| Regressive if you ignore all of the other costs associated
| with driving.
|
| Drivers always love to make this argument, but it presupposes
| that everyone already owns and insures a car.
|
| At the end of the day it's car dependence that is regressive.
| ericmay wrote:
| Yea it also ignores that if everybody stopped riding the
| $100 train then you'd never actually be able to drive into
| the city, let alone park anywhere for under $100.
|
| Also, this is a deliberate choice. They can improve train
| services and lower costs. Idk why people who ostensibly are
| market oriented are so fixated on current prices and
| assuming they can't change or be improved upon. Germany is
| an example $49 for a ticket for all (I think) transit.
|
| Another thing while I'm at it - how much does your car,
| insurance, gas, maintenance, tires, and other things cost?
| How much money per month are you paying to pay for the
| roads and highways? Etc. It's hard to do a fair apples to
| apples comparison here either way.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Yeah, everyone also ignores that public transport can be
| supported through taxes and operated at a loss.
|
| In the US, we have a weird obsession with all public
| goods/services paying for themselves. We should ditch
| that, operate at a loss, and pull the difference out of
| progressive taxes.
|
| There's no reason your CEO or office shouldn't foot part
| of the bill to transport you into work.
|
| Heck, were I king I'd fund public transport 100% from
| taxes and do away with ticketing. Imagine how much less
| money we'd pay on road maintenance, police doing traffic
| duty, running ticket stands/etc. Not to mention the air
| quality improvements and environmental impacts.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| The weirdness of the obsession is even stranger when you
| compare it to basically any other public service. Like,
| are schools supposed to pay for themselves? Airports?
| City infrastructure like streets, parks, and rec centers?
| The military?
|
| No, of course not. All of these things are essentials for
| the which the benefits are felt across the economy, but
| those benefits are far too diffuse to be individually
| tallied up and toll-boothed-- which is of course why they
| are (generally) financed out of the general tax base
| rather than by private industry.
| jrockway wrote:
| I've heard an argument that schools are supposed to pay
| for themselves. The idea is that people who go to school
| end up in a higher tax bracket, so it's an investment,
| not merely public good. Similar arguments are made for
| parks and recreation; more open space, less noise, so
| less stress-induced heart attacks, which means more years
| being a taxpayer.
|
| I think this is a toxic way of thinking of things, but I
| guess it allows even the most greedy politician to live
| with himself for not opposing schools.
| [deleted]
| mrkstu wrote:
| That doesn't address the underlying issue of family groups
| being priced out of transportation options altogether.
| superseeplus wrote:
| NJ Transit allows kids under 11 to travel free with a
| fare paying adult on weekends and holidays. MTA charges
| them $1 but makes the discount always available.
| speakfreely wrote:
| > Drivers always love to make this argument, but it
| presupposes that everyone already owns and insures a car.
|
| Have you ever been to New Jersey? The entire state is set
| up to make it as difficult as possible to live without a
| car.
| comte7092 wrote:
| That's the point.
|
| Why does New York have to accommodate New Jersey and not
| the other way around?
| SSLy wrote:
| Excuse my European understanding, but isn't it the
| state's right to make such policy, and isn't it NY's not
| to care about it too?
| knorker wrote:
| And that's the problem. Not any fees NY may introduce.
| lwhi wrote:
| Congestion charges work.
|
| They discourage journeys taken by car; reducing traffic,
| easing pollution and improving health.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| [flagged]
| deepsquirrelnet wrote:
| Until primaries are over, primary candidates of national
| parties mostly attack their opponents... (hint: their
| opponents are other candidates in their primary)
| hooverd wrote:
| That just sounds like recency bias. Plus before announcing
| they're more likely to have not been in the news.
| insanitybit wrote:
| > Nobody was talking about Christie at all for years
|
| I've been hearing about Christie for absolute ages, no clue
| at all what you're on about.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| It is entirely explicable why anyone is talking about
| Christie this week and not last week.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| You are being paranoid.
|
| If nobody was talking about Christie, it's because 95% of
| what he did only impacted NJ. This is a spillover, because it
| happens to be related to a megacity doing something for the
| first time in North America.
|
| But, beyond that, when people start running for president,
| people start talking about them. Criticisms or not. No one
| talked about Joe Biden doing anything from the start of the
| 2016 election until he announced in 2020, in spite of having
| been a major political player for decades.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Christie's buffoonery around transit[1] is a somewhat staid
| topic in NYC politics, and this is an article about NYC.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Lee_lane_closure_scandal
| gbear605 wrote:
| A more charitable interpretation is people have suddenly been
| reminded that he exists and of what he did. I don't think
| that anyone is getting paid to do propaganda against
| Republican primary candidates on Hacker News. That goes
| doubly so for candidates that have a functionally zero
| percent chance of winning (Christie knows that - he's just
| there to attack Trump).
| iambateman wrote:
| I think it's availability heuristic. There are lots of people
| I don't criticize because they're irrelevant. As soon as they
| make themselves relevant...they are opened up to both more
| enthusiasm and critique.
| superseeplus wrote:
| Talking about the decline of NJ Transit and the specific
| gubernatorial policies that led to it is relevant in a debate
| about congestion pricing. This would have been the case even
| if he was not a presidential candidate.
| Eumenes wrote:
| Hopefully this comes to NYC:
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12011507/ULEZ-Blade...
| Tinyyy wrote:
| I'm a fan of charging market efficient rates for shared goods.
| The congestion situation in the Holland Tunnel is awful and
| bleeds out into various streets of Manhattan as well. The cost of
| sitting in crawling traffic with aggressive drivers cutting
| around is probably much more than an extra $20.
| DaveExeter wrote:
| I agree! Let's get the poors off the roads.
|
| The peasant class belongs on public transport, not on taxpayer-
| funded roads.
| Tinyyy wrote:
| I grew up in a city with insanely high taxes on cars and
| roads (Singapore). But you could get anywhere easily with the
| bus or MRT. In a rush? Your Grab taxi can get you there
| quickly and efficiently. I'm not sure why it'd be better to
| make everyone's day worse instead. Does that really make the
| world a fairer place?
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| There's nothing wrong with public transport. The subway is
| frequently faster than driving anyway.
| bombcar wrote:
| Discrimination is much easier once you take a racial aspect
| out and just use socioeconomic status instead.
| pierat wrote:
| Absolutely true. In fact this was the 1980s republican
| plan. Lee Atwater has a great hot mic moment about this.
|
| You start out in 1954 by saying, "Ni*er, ni*er, ni*er." By
| 1968 you can't say "ni*er"--that hurts you, backfires. So
| you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states' rights, and
| all that stuff, and you're getting so abstract. Now, you're
| talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're
| talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct
| of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.... "We want
| to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing
| thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Ni*er,
| ni*er."
|
| https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-
| atwa...
|
| ---------------
|
| And you also have New York City and the racist/classist
| bridges. Bridges were built too low for public transit to
| get out to Long Island. It did a VERY effective job at
| keeping black people and poor people away from the middle
| class and higher areas.
|
| " In one of the book's most memorable passages, Caro
| reveals that Moses ordered his engineers to build the
| bridges low over the parkway to keep buses from the city
| away from Jones Beach--buses presumably filled with the
| poor blacks and Puerto Ricans Moses despised. The story was
| told to Caro by Sidney M. Shapiro, a close Moses associate
| and former chief engineer and general manager of the Long
| Island State Park Commission."
|
| Who would have thought that building a bridge could be
| racist and classist?
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-09/robert-
| mo...
| raldi wrote:
| Lower-income Americans already take the bus far more than
| wealthy ones, who are much more likely to be driving.
|
| A congestion charge will fall disproportionately on the
| wealthy, and allow the buses carrying lower-income folks to
| move throughout the city faster.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| This isn't exactly true. Rich people have the resources to
| live closer to where they work, they are more likely to
| WFH, they can ride a bike to work often, or maybe even
| walk. Poor people often live farther away from their jobs,
| they have worse commutes, and the likelihood of
| accomplishing that long commute by mass transit in many
| American isn't that great.
|
| Anecdotally, we are well to do, chose our house location to
| minimize our commute and make it easy by bus (and ensure we
| can go to the grocery store by foot). Then I got the
| opportunity to work from home, my wife has a straight shot
| from bus to her office downtown, the kid's schools (even
| high school) are all within walking distance. There is no
| way we could have set all that up without money.
| mc32 wrote:
| I was poor, I took the bus to college and work (there
| were times I'd have to add 30 minutes where I knew I'd
| have to leg it). It was an hour and a half with
| transfers. It's doable --you get used to it, just like
| tech workers get used to driving in from the East Bay
| into the Peninsula. It's no biggie. On the way home,
| sometimes you get off at a different stop to pick up
| groceries and then you're the one walking home with two
| plastic bags -at first your arms ache. Again, you get
| used to it.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| There are multiple levels of poor, like there are
| multiple levels of rich. Plenty of people are rich enough
| to drive, but not rich enough to live in convenient
| locations. It's weird that, when I was going to
| university, many people would save money by living far
| off campus and driving to pay $5 for parking. The richer
| kids were living on or next to campus, and didn't even
| need cars. Housing is expensive, and the American system
| has made driving unnaturally cheap.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Plenty of people are rich enough to drive, but not rich
| enough to live in convenient locations.
|
| Now they're not rich enough to drive, they're become poor
| enough to use public transportation. Maybe their votes
| will improve the convenience of public transportation.
|
| To somebody who can afford to live in Manhattan, you'd
| have to charge $200 a trip to bother them. Just tax them,
| and use that money to build out public transportation.
|
| Very weird to crusade for the right of people who can
| barely afford their cars to be better than those who
| can't afford cars.
| analognoise wrote:
| Hour and a half is no biggie? Is that one way?
|
| That sucks more than having a car does by far. Even the
| last part about "your arms ache but you get used to it" -
| how is that for disabled people? How is it for the
| elderly? An extra hour and a half - what about if you
| have kids at home?
|
| Honestly that... Blows?
|
| If the options are to destroy the environment or to have
| to take an extra three hours daily to commute, I choose
| destroy the environment - smart people will probably fix
| it with science.
|
| I thought about it - why would I rather destroy the
| environment than reduce cars? Because it's a lie -
| there's clearly no shared burden. Like as soon as
| humanity bans all privat jets, the entire cruise
| industry, etc, then maybe I'd consider it. But as it is,
| it's just one more "eh the poors will get used to it" -
| meanwhile we don't ban major contributions from sources
| that are rich people's enjoyment or profits.
| wussboy wrote:
| 3 hours commutes or destroying the environment aren't the
| only two options. By changing the way we build cities,
| and by retrofitting the ones we've already built, we can
| make places where the walked/biked commute is less than a
| half hour and the environmental impact is slashed
| dramatically.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| A lot of problems can be solved via better urban
| planning, but most of us have little control over that.
| What we do have control over leaves us with a couple of
| options, but we have hope that maybe our grandkids will
| have more choices.
| wussboy wrote:
| Agreed. And I'm in the same boat. But I've taken the
| "best time to plant a tree was 40 years ago" approach and
| have started working in my community to bring about those
| changes.
| pessimizer wrote:
| To people who can't afford to drive, this just sounds
| like relatively wealthy people whining about being
| reduced to living like they have been the entire time.
|
| If you want to reduce the relative privileges of wealthy
| people, _tax them_ and redistribute or do a socialist
| revolution. Never crusade for the privileges of people
| with _some_ money while ignoring the situation of the
| people with _less_ money. In the limit, you 'll end up
| crusading for the privileges of billionaires against the
| privileges of multi-billionaires. As activism, imo it's
| silly.
| raldi wrote:
| Do you have a citation for that claim? Here are a few
| refuting it:
|
| https://bikeportland.org/2016/01/25/low-income-
| households-dr...
|
| https://medium.com/100-hours/is-congestion-pricing-fair-
| to-t...
|
| https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/3/7/toll-roads-
| hurt...
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I didn't make a quantitative claim, just a qualitative
| one based on anecdotal evidence. I put about 1000 miles a
| year on my car, but I paid a lot of money to get to the
| point that I could do feasibly that. I'm not unusual in
| this either, a lot of rich techies go for urban car-light
| lifestyles if they can afford it.
|
| The above studies seem to only focus on the poorest of
| the poor, and not the lower middle class. Congestion
| charges are going to hit people who are rich enough to
| drive but not rich enough to live in convenient places
| the most. There isn't a binary distinction between rich
| and poor after all. Those links are pretty embarrassing
| actually, surely there are better arguments that this
| will impact rich the most than using the poorest of the
| poor as an example?
| dgacmu wrote:
| I mean, the answer is that this is New York City, not
| Seattle, where parking is going to cost you $30+ in the
| areas affected by the congestion charge. So we've already
| limited the discussion to the pretty well-off.
|
| Per the article itself: "But out of a region of 28
| million people, just an estimated 16,100 low-income
| people commute to work via car in Lower Manhattan,
| according to the MTA."
|
| Probably easier to find a way to meet the needs of 16k
| exceptions. And having a safe fast public transit system,
| which the connection charge funds, is part of that.
|
| (Hi, Sean! Hope you're well!)
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I did an internship at IBM Hawthorn so I'm familiar with
| parking in the city. It's actually doable (or was
| doable?) in midtown near Columbia, and it actually made
| sense for my girlfriend at the time. The public transit
| system isn't that great when you are commuting between
| West Chester county. And traffic in NYC is weird. Like,
| going into the city isn't a problem, especially if you
| are going in at night. But take one step out to Long
| Island...and you are snarled in traffic for hours.
|
| My comment about poorer people being more affected I
| believe is still valid even if it's the right thing to
| do. The people who are forced to commute by car generally
| don't have better options.
|
| It would be much worse if they tried this in Seattle, but
| we also need it as well, it just won't be something only
| the rich are suffering (like in NYC).
| dgacmu wrote:
| Yeah, but - the proposed congestion charge is only below
| 60th, and Columbia is up around 116th and higher. Much
| much easier to park near Columbia. Maybe a little more
| risk of having your car stolen, too. :)
|
| Also (adding this a few minutes later), the evidence is
| clear that public transit is seriously beneficial for
| people with lower incomes - and the elderly and folks
| with disabilities that prevent them from driving.
|
| So we may be taking about something that harms 16k people
| and benefits about three million other low-income New
| Yorkers.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Again, I'm not against congestion charging, I'm against
| the thinking that most of the immediate downsides are
| born by the rich. It is politically naive to think like
| this given that plenty of people who are taking advantage
| of driving (for better or worse) are not people who would
| be considered rich. Actually it's worse than that since
| rich people aren't going to think much about a $5 or $10,
| $20 fee while poorer drivers definitely are.
|
| As for it not encompassing midtown, that sounds a bit
| weird to me, but ok. I'm not sure it will have much
| impact on overall region traffic since most trips
| probably don't involve that area in the first place.
| aqme28 wrote:
| [flagged]
| anotherhue wrote:
| > out of a region of 28 million people, just an estimated
| 16,100 low-income people commute to work via car in Lower
| Manhattan, according to the MTA
| pessimizer wrote:
| Exactly. If those 16K really concern somebody, they should
| just issue them a pass based on income. And if capitalism
| means anything, the employers of those 16K will have to
| raise pay to attract people.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| The "poors," as you so delightfully put it have nowhere to
| park in those parts of Manhattan. So they won't be going
| there (leaving aside deliveries and taxis, but then the fee
| is a cost of doing business.)
|
| The group this will hit the hardest are those with de facto
| immunity from parking tickets. Cops, teachers, members of
| certain trade unions, and so on.
|
| However, lest you worry too much about these folk in light of
| automated speed and red light cameras they've taken to
| obscuring their license plates or buying fraudulent paper
| plates on the internet. Of course nothing is done about these
| effectively untraceable vehicles.
| [deleted]
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Having more money lets you buy more of everything. Yet you
| are only concerned about roads (which aren't even used by the
| poorest segment since they can't afford a car)? Why not focus
| on making something more fundamental to existence free, like
| food or shelter?
|
| Oh right it's because it creates poor incentives and overuse
| (tragedy of the commons) exactly like we see with roads (and
| parking). If car drivers had to pay the full cost of the
| resources they use it would reduce wasteful driving
| substantially. And we could use money collected in that way
| to pay for transit (or just give it as a tax rebate to low
| income people if you prefer).
| Tinyyy wrote:
| Yea you're exactly right, there's a tragedy of the commons
| situation right now. You could either decrease the demand
| or increase the supply to fix this problem, and it seems
| pretty impossible to increase the supply (build a bridge
| across the Hudson? That's crazy). So here we are.
| aqme28 wrote:
| Encouraging transit ridership does actually increase the
| supply. You get far far far more people moved via buses
| and trains.
|
| Buses account for about 73% of people moved in the
| Lincoln tunnel, but only 10% of vehicles.
|
| http://www.nymtc.org/data_services/HBT.html
| zip1234 wrote:
| The average speed driving in Manhattan is something like
| 7mph. There is not enough space for cars. Congestion
| charge is such a no-brainer easy solution here.
| nimbleplum40 wrote:
| Another bridge wouldn't do much to fix supply since
| you're still dumping cars into one of the most dense
| urban environments in the world.
|
| The only sustainable way to increase the supply of trips
| into lower manhattan is increased public transit.
| fellowmartian wrote:
| Unironically I'd hate a new bridge across the Hudson
| around the Holland Tunnel, that area is the crown jewel
| of Manhattan and its seafront should be protected.
|
| It's also one of the few safe bike paths in the city
| where casual bikers would feel comfortable biking.
|
| Additionally, we already have one Canal St in the area,
| we don't need another.
|
| Sorry for this small NIMBY rant.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| NIMBYism is not inherently a bad thing; it was originally
| coined by the waste management industry to describe
| opposition to local landfills and toxic waste dumps,
| which any sane person doesn't actually want to live next
| to.
|
| (Yes, I know Europe and Japan build fancy incinerators
| with parks and whatnot that are very pleasant, but the
| odds of that being built in the US by penny-pinching
| private industry is nil.)
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yep, given sufficient externalities, this is true. As an
| example, watch this fictional response to the fact that
| better cars cost more:
|
| Let's get the poors out of safe cars. The peasant class
| belongs in beaters, while the rich ride safe.
|
| Consider the choices necessary to make that statement untrue.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| You mean how the richer you are, the bigger (and safer) the
| vehicle you can afford?
|
| I drive by many parents taking their kids wherever in old
| corollas or kias or other small car, and I see many parents
| at my kids' daycare dropping their kids off in large
| suburbans/F150/Sequoia/etc.
| beerandt wrote:
| If you want safer vehicles across the board, get rid of
| cafe and other efficiency regulations.
|
| At this point in the current regulatory framework, safety
| and efficiency are in direct competition.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Certainly. That's one way, but also poorer people own
| older cars.
|
| An argument that rests on equality should support the
| idea that all people deserve the same car irrespective of
| how much money they have.
| estebank wrote:
| Equality would be to be able to go where you need to go,
| in reasonable time, cost and accomodation, regardless of
| class, race, gender or disability. Focusing on _cars_ is
| over-indexing on one potential solution.
|
| People want to move around. Cars are only one way of
| doing so.
| mc32 wrote:
| Yes, they do! Everyone should be taking public transit, the
| poor as well --and if they prefer private transport, then
| it's time to pay up!
| cyberax wrote:
| > I'm a fan of charging market efficient rates for shared
| goods.
|
| Are you a fan of charging market rates for transit as well?
| creato wrote:
| Sure, as long as you consider externalities like congestion.
| That would suggest charging for passage through congested
| areas (the subject of this thread), and subsidizing mass
| transit in congested areas.
| cyberax wrote:
| > Sure, as long as you consider externalities like
| congestion.
|
| The thing is, transit increases congestion.
|
| No, I'm not joking. Transit promotes denser housing that
| always results in higher congestion.
|
| So, are you proposing making transit even more expensive?
|
| I'm all for it, btw.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| You logic is completely backwards.
|
| Dense housing doesn't result in traffic congestion. If
| more people live closer together there is more population
| density, but as long as they can access commercial areas
| easily then they can do their shopping and work and
| recreational tasks without cars. When you remove cars
| then you suddenly have much more living space because a
| car takes up a large amount of room to store and there
| must be extra space for commuters and visitors.
|
| Are you seriously arguing that adding more space for cars
| makes cities less congested? For every one parking space
| you add you remove a large amount of useful space for
| other things.
| cyberax wrote:
| > Dense housing doesn't result in traffic congestion.
|
| Yes, it does. And the relationship is causal.
|
| > If more people live closer together there is more
| population density, but as long as they can access
| commercial areas easily then they can do their shopping
| and work and recreational tasks without cars.
|
| What a bunch of bullshit.
|
| > Are you seriously arguing that adding more space for
| cars makes cities less congested?
|
| Not quite. Nothing can help hellscapes like Manhattan.
| They just need to be slowly de-densified, it'll take
| generations, but it will be done eventually.
|
| Cities should make sure that they don't rely on transit,
| and the rest will follow.
| paulgb wrote:
| I'm suspicious of that. LA is famous for low use of
| transit (relative to population) and is also famous for
| having bad congestion.
| cyberax wrote:
| You can screw up everything if you try hard enough. LA is
| an example of that.
|
| On the other hand, the Greater Houston Area has a similar
| population to NYC, yet it has 26-minute commutes versus
| 36 minutes for NYC.
| zip1234 wrote:
| For sure, let's charge methods of transportation based on
| negative externalities such as how much space they take,
| safety, and noise/particulate pollution.
| cyberax wrote:
| I'm all for it! It would suck for transit, though:
|
| 1. It has a higher CO2 footprint than small/medium EVs.
|
| 2. Transit forces people into smaller and denser housing,
| resulting in suboptimal living conditions.
|
| 3. Buses in particular result in excessive road wear&tear.
|
| It's really amazing that people say things like "car owners
| should not get subsidized" (by whom?), while talking about
| transit that is literally infeasible without massive
| subsidies.
| kelnos wrote:
| Car owners are already hugely subsidized. Toll roads
| cover only a tiny fraction of road maintenance. The rest
| is paid by taxpayers, even those who do not drive.
| cyberax wrote:
| > Car owners are already hugely subsidized
|
| Around 80% of all commutes in the US are by car. You
| can't subsidize 80% of the population.
|
| Drivers simply pay for their road use through various
| taxes, and not directly.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| Could easily make the same argument when some city spends
| 3 billion to build a 4 mile subway extension.
|
| The fare recovery rate is absolutely terrible in the US.
| Expecting 100% isn't exactly necessary, but NYC is at
| 20%.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio
| klipt wrote:
| Transit is completely feasible without subsidies if the
| transit company owns the land near the stations, which
| generate generous rents.
|
| Of course if the land is owned by other people, the
| increase in value provided by transit should be
| recaptured through a Land Value Tax which is then used to
| fund the transit.
| cyberax wrote:
| > Transit is completely feasible without subsidies if the
| transit company owns the land near the stations, which
| generate generous rents.
|
| So basically, you want to subsidize transit by making the
| transport authority be a slumlord. Got it.
|
| There are no unsubsidized urban transit services in the
| US. Even operating costs are not paid from fares. And new
| transit construction is COMPLETELY subsidized.
|
| I live in Seattle and I will have paid around $20k in car
| tab fees alone by the time the choo-choo subway train
| expansion here is done. It won't go anywhere near me and
| it will make my life worse, by inducing even more
| traffic.
| zip1234 wrote:
| > It's really amazing that people say things like "car
| owners should not get subsidized" (by whom?), while
| talking about transit that is literally infeasible
| without massive subsidies.
|
| If road usage fees cover less than half the cost of roads
| then clearly someone is subsidizing roads.
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| Sounds like roads should be paid for only by their users,
| and proportionally to their use. Then it would be
| irrelevant whether it's a sedan or bus since everyone
| pays their fair share. But of course, such solutions are
| not acceptable to those that do not intend to pay their
| fair share.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > 1. It has a higher CO2 footprint than small/medium EVs.
|
| This is too misleading to be unintentional. I don't know
| if you're comparing buses to small/medium EVs 1:1, but
| even if you aren't, the environmental footprint of
| replacing all bus services with EVs would be
| extraordinary.
|
| > 2. Transit forces people into smaller and denser
| housing, resulting in suboptimal living conditions.
|
| Transit doesn't force people into housing. It creates new
| housing options that previously were not tenable. Rivers
| don't create port congestion, rivers create ports. Not
| having enough ports, or enough rivers, creates port
| congestion.
|
| > 3. Buses in particular result in excessive road
| wear&tear.
|
| In proportion to human-miles, or is this a 1:1
| comparison?
| cyberax wrote:
| > This is too misleading to be unintentional.
|
| It's not misleading. On average, buses in the US carry
| around 15 people. A car carries around 1.5, so the raw
| multiplier is just 10.
|
| But wait, there's more!
|
| ALL buses have an incredibly polluting component that is
| fundamental to their functionality: the driver. You need
| around 3 drivers to cover the useful service time (from
| 5am to midnight). And drivers are POLLUTING AS HELL.
|
| > I don't know if you're comparing buses to small/medium
| EVs 1:1
|
| Yes, I do. Here ya go: https://ourworldindata.org/travel-
| carbon-footprint
|
| > Transit doesn't force people into housing.
|
| It does, via market forces.
|
| > It creates new housing options that previously were not
| tenable.
|
| No. It _destroys_ affordable housing to pack people into
| smaller and smaller footprints. Tokyo is a _great_
| example of that.
|
| > In proportion to human-miles, or is this a 1:1
| comparison?
|
| In proportion to passenger-miles. Road wear scales
| approximately as the 4-th power of the axle weight, and
| under-loaded buses still have to haul around their
| massive bulks even if there's just one passenger inside.
|
| Honestly, it's amazing how bad public transit turns out
| to be when you actually start looking at its negative
| sides.
| superseeplus wrote:
| To be fair, that is how commuter trains in the NYC
| metropolitan area work. The fares are higher during rush hour
| to discourage people who can shift their schedule from
| traveling during rush hour.
| [deleted]
| cj wrote:
| See also:
|
| London congestion charge:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_congestion_charge
|
| Singapore Electronic Road Pricing:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Road_Pricing
|
| Stockholm congestion tax:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_congestion_tax
| jmclnx wrote:
| When I saw London doing that, I expected cities in the US to
| start that. I am surprised it took so long.
|
| I expected this because of the push of toll roads to make
| people use EZPASS. Depending upon the City, I think this makes
| sense.
|
| But, in the US, I wonder if this will cause another mass
| migration of people out to the suburbs ? In the US, people are
| more addicted to their SUVs than heron addicts are to their
| drug.
| dataviz1000 wrote:
| Mass migration to Statin Island, Brooklyn, and Flushing.
|
| I've been interested in cities with rail trails and the like.
| For example, San Antonio with the many mile extension of the
| Riverwalk along the San Antonio river and Atlanta with the
| Belt Line have created non motorized vehicle corridors
| through the respective cities which have spurred incredible
| amounts of mixed use development for miles on each side of
| the walking, peddle biking pathways. The most expensive real
| estate butting the pathway with bars, restaurants, yoga
| studies in the lower levels of the new buildings and with
| less and less expensive real estate pushing away from the
| sides of the path ways out words. Rather than having
| concentration of wealth at a circular center, the
| concentration is linear which has a side effect of having
| lower income house available in closer proximity to the
| wealthy areas.
| milsorgen wrote:
| You sir, know nothing of heroin and it's work.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Or maybe you underestimate the addiction to cars? Because
| I've seen plenty of both and I find the comparison apt
| mortenjorck wrote:
| A huge part of of why London could pull it off is the
| exceptional state of the Underground. It's not hard to wean
| off cars when the alternative is a clean, fast, modern train
| a short walk away. NYC is going to have an uphill battle
| getting the MTA to anywhere near that level, and the MTA
| itself is already leagues ahead of any other transit system
| in the US.
|
| I would love to see London-tier transit in the United States,
| but until our bureaucracies can solve about a dozen or so
| hard problems, plans like this will remain all stick, no
| carrot.
| whack wrote:
| I've taken both the Underground and the MTA and you're
| overstating the difference. Aesthetically, the Underground
| is far better, no question. But most commuters are focused
| on functionality. And functionally the MTA is just as good,
| if not better.
|
| The trains run extremely frequently - every few minutes
| during the day on weekdays. The parallel local-express
| tracks give the MTA a big speed advantage. And the inside
| of the MTA trains are extremely spacious compared to the
| Underground.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _"MTA trains are extremely spacious compared to the
| Underground"_
|
| Depends what line you're talking about. Deep tube lines
| are indeed pretty small due to the narrow tubes they run
| in. But the sub-surface lines (District, Circle,
| Metropolitan, etc) are comparable to NYC subway
| dimensions.
|
| And have you tried our new 200m long Elizabeth line
| trains?
| muh_gradle wrote:
| I live in NYC, have taken the tube when I lived in
| London. I've also lived in other cities like Seoul, Tokyo
| with superior public transportation. The "aesthetics"
| aspect that you describe is an incredible understatement.
| The nearest MTA station is covered in feces and used
| syringes and I'm not exaggerating. Trains are constantly
| late. Apparently building a barrier and a gate on the
| platform is a 10 year, trillion dollar project. I have to
| put my back to a wall because I'm worried some crazy
| person will push me onto the track. Yeah, I wouldn't
| concur with the statement on MTA being so functional.
| nimbleplum40 wrote:
| Huh, what station? I also live in NYC but haven't seen
| any subway stations nearly that bad. Grimy, definitely.
| But never what you're describing.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| London has it relatively easy; the only layer of government
| above it is the national one.
|
| Cities in the US are creatures of their respective states,
| and the swing votes in states are usually the suburban voters
| who would be most impacted by a charge like this.
|
| ---
|
| It also helps that TfL has a track record of delivering many
| miles of projects and a future expansion plan. MTA is
| planning on using this to keep the lights on for another five
| years, at which point a new source of money has to be found
| to pay for capital investment. (The plan is currently to bond
| out the future congestion revenue to pay for today's capital
| investments.)
| griffinkelly wrote:
| Does the revenue go to the state of NY, NYC or the federal
| government? I imagine a split between all if it needed
| federal approval?
| epc wrote:
| Current plan is for revenue to accrue to the MTA, a
| public benefit corporation owned by NY State.
| cronix wrote:
| There's also the county government layer that cities must
| adhere to in addition to state/national.
| SllX wrote:
| Hmm, depends _a lot_ on the State.
|
| You can generally make two generalizations about local
| governments in the United States: they are local
| governments and you can't make any other generalizations
| about them because everything depends on the State and
| sometimes a locality's specific circumstances.
|
| In California, municipalities do not _adhere_ to the
| counties they are in, the county is a legal subdivision
| of the State which might also have a charter and cities
| are municipal corporations with a monopoly on the land
| use within their cities. School districts are also a form
| of local government here, as are special purpose
| districts like BART.
|
| In some parts of New England, and I'm not going to go
| into specifics because when I looked into this more than
| 10 years ago this had changed or some States were
| changing it, the State is divided into counties and the
| counties were divided into townships which are the basis
| of the New England township system. Somewhere in there,
| there are also cities, and Maine has a couple of severely
| underpopulated places designated as Plantations.
|
| So, congestion pricing in the US: NYC, LA, San Francisco
| and probably Seattle absolutely have the power to this if
| they wanted to, although I'll say for San Francisco that
| would have made a lot more sense to try before the
| pandemic than now, cuz now, well now downtown is dead so
| what would it really do? Fairly certain Boston could as
| well. Everywhere else, I'm less certain, like in Texas
| I'm fairly certain cities there could, but I'm also
| fairly certain the Texan legislature under their own laws
| has the power to step in and go "No. None of that. Shame
| on you."
| Spooky23 wrote:
| NYC can only do it if granted the home rule authority by
| the state legislature - which it has.
|
| In general, counties are pretty weak in New York.
| bpye wrote:
| London and unitary authorities don't have a county above
| them.
| ghaff wrote:
| I assumed that was in the context of the US. Country
| governments in the US vary a lot in how powerful they are
| from being mostly a judicial unit or organization to
| being pretty powerful (e.g. parishes in Louisiana).
| bobthepanda wrote:
| New York City, which is implementing this, is a bit of a
| weird case in that it actually sits above the counties,
| not below them. New York's five boroughs are technically
| five counties.
| drdec wrote:
| > London has it relatively easy; the only layer of
| government above it is the national one.
|
| Is that actually true? I mean, are there no vestiges of
| England, Scotland and Wales in the UK?
| desas wrote:
| Yes for Scotland and Wales but not for England. The
| discrepancy is known as The West Lothian Question
| amiga386 wrote:
| Not really. The West Lothian Question is "why can Scots
| vote on English laws but not vice-versa?", which wasn't
| true at the time it was asked (1977), and especially
| isn't true now.
|
| Firstly, note that all constituent countries elect MPs to
| the UK's Westminster parliament, because there are many
| laws that affect the entire country, and are controlled
| centrally.
|
| Between 1707 and 1997 (20 years _after_ asking the
| question!), _all_ laws for Scotland were made in
| Westminster, and voted on by _all_ MPs. Laws for Scotland
| get their own bills because Scotland retains its own
| legal system. Likewise Northern Ireland, but _not_ Wales.
| Wales shares the same legal system as England, which is
| why the phrase "England and Wales" appears often.
|
| Since Scottish devolution, certain powers were _reserved_
| for Westminster, and the rest of the laws for Scotland
| are now made in a separately elected Scottish parliament.
| But there are still plenty of laws which affect Scotland,
| sometimes _exclusively_ affect Scotland due to the
| reserved powers having the ability to override choices
| that Scotland has made for itself. Those laws are still
| made in Westminster, English MPs can still vote on them
| and easily win, and so Scots still need representation in
| the Westminster parliament.
|
| The main part of the West Lothian question, which is
| where there are sometimes laws that _exclusively_ affect
| England and Wales, why do Scottish MPs get to vote on
| them?, was handled by the Scottish MPs voluntarily not
| voting on them. They managed to do this for centuries
| without any formal process. Then after the 2015 election,
| the UK government brought in the EVEL process (English
| Votes for English Laws), which gave English MPs a "veto"
| on laws that only affected England. Since the pandemic,
| Westminster chose to drop EVEL, presumably because the
| voluntary system of Scottish MPs abstaining from voting
| on England-only bills worked just fine!
|
| What's relevant for this discussion is that _London_ has
| an elected mayor, which makes it a special case. It has
| its own autonomy, within England, which supposedly
| doesn't have any special carve outs unlike
| Scotland/Wales/NI... in reality, it has quite a few: http
| s://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directly_elected_mayors_in_Eng.
| ..
| eynsham wrote:
| Scotland and Wales have devolved governments. England
| does not. There is no English parliament; there are no
| English courts--there are English and Welsh courts; there
| are many English ministers but no ministers in right of
| England.
|
| The once-English institutions of parliament, the crown,
| and its ministers became those of Great Britain first and
| the United Kingdom subsequently. But the remit of the UK
| government in devolved matters is limited in some cases
| to some subset of {England, Wales, Scotland, Northern
| Ireland}, e.g., the first two and the fourth. Those
| powers are exercised _qua_ the British government, not
| _qua_ some English, English and Welsh, or English, Welsh,
| and Northern Irish (i.a.) government, none of which
| exist.
|
| There is a body of law peculiar to England. It is
| administered by the English and Welsh courts, from which
| an appeal may lie to the UK Supreme Court or the Judicial
| Committee of the Privy Council as the case may be.
|
| A large exception to these remarks is the Church of
| England; the Churches of Ireland and Wales were
| disestablished in 1869 and 1914 respectively.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's going to kill the city. It's just going to push
| businesses out at a bad time.
|
| This doesn't have anything to do with traffic - it's a way to
| try to extract more money for the MTA. Money won't fix the
| MTA's money woes; the unions will just slurp any available
| cash.
| Jolter wrote:
| I suppose you have a better idea for financing the
| investments, instead of congestion tax?
| nimbleplum40 wrote:
| I think you're vastly overestimating how many people
| commute into lower manhattan via car.
| acdha wrote:
| Every time cities encourage people to drive less, it has
| immediate benefits for quality of life and health. I'd be
| shocked if this is more than a rounding error on the impact
| of telework, especially since prioritizing residents over
| commuters frees up a ton of real estate for desperately
| needed housing.
| mattlondon wrote:
| I worked on the technical implementation of one of the London
| Congestion Charge contracts many years ago.
|
| It was a huuuuuuge loss for IBM to implement, but I think
| their position was "we make a loss here, but then just need
| to do a search-and-replace for "London" to New
| York/Paris/Tokyo/Los Angeles and profit!" (I.e. no
| significant extra development). Suffice to say that didn't
| happen - it was built with zero customisation in mind. I
| personally blame it on the _insistence_ that SAP was to be
| used for processing payments etc.
| ricktdotorg wrote:
| interesting! where did the SAP requirement originate?
| uk.gov not IBM?
| stefan_ wrote:
| Migration _to cities_ is whats causing this. When it was just
| black people homes you had to bulldoze to build your freeway
| straight to downtown there was obviously no concern. Now that
| people living downtown are rich and powerful they are
| starting to wonder why a huge chunk of prime space is
| reserved for storage of suburbian commuter metal boxes.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _"But, in the US, I wonder if this will cause another mass
| migration of people out to the suburbs ?"_
|
| If anything, I'd say the opposite is true in London. Reduced
| traffic levels and cleaner air are making the centre a more
| desirable place to be than ever. If only it were more
| affordable!
| endisneigh wrote:
| Charging should be a function of either car book value as well
| jupp0r wrote:
| The point is to reduce traffic and raise revenue.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Yes, more reason to adjust to car book value.
| jupp0r wrote:
| Do expensive cars create worse traffic?
| endisneigh wrote:
| No but their drivers can pay more thus increasing revenue
| for public transit, like income all taxes should be
| progressive :)
| codegeek wrote:
| You will be surprised to know that lot of real wealthy
| people drive normal cars. People who buy flashy cars in
| America, majority of them finance/lease it and probably
| couldn't afford it to buy in cash which is what u need to
| be able to do if ur buying a car.
| jupp0r wrote:
| From the article:
|
| "Drivers who make less than $50,000 a year or are
| enrolled in certain government aid programs will get 25%
| discounts after their first 10 trips every month. Trucks
| and other vehicles will get 50% discounts during
| overnight hours."
| endisneigh wrote:
| Good start but nothing about luxury vehicles :)
| lkbm wrote:
| Surely if you're concerned about identifying how rich
| someone is, using _value of their car_ is a much worse
| proxy than using _their actual income_.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Sure, let's do that then. But just so you know excise tax
| is a thing and uses book value
| teakweazel wrote:
| [dead]
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