Driving a Car in Manhattan Could Cost $11 Under Congestion Plan
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
There is a narrowmindedness on the part of opponents of both congestion pricing and surge pricing, because they are ignoring the obvious point that if they weren't paying the fees they'd be paying in terms of time.
Not to mention that congestion has other negatives, like pollution. Infrastructure needs to get paid for somehow. It is fair when it is paid for by the people benefiting from it.
Let's just say New York does not have a great history of spending on infrastructure.
A recent New York Times piece, mentioned that the price of labor on infrastructure projects is 5 times more expensive then anywhere else in the world.
It just blows my mind that people in the NYC area are willing to put up with that type of congestion.
Doesn't Sidewalk Labs( alphabet company) have an office in Manhattan? Where are they in terms of solving traffic problems?
For instance, when infrastructure is built, it causes surrounding land values and rents to rise. It is possible to use that rising value to pay for the infrastructure, via a special assessment.
There is also an issue where the people with the worst infrastructure would be paying the most under congestion pricing, which means that it would be important to prioritize improvements to the most congested areas.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
The costs aren't high because of cost of living, they're high because of cushy agreements with workers unions and construction companies, among a myriad other things.
Further, it's vastly more expensive to build a road inside a city than in the middle of nowhere. NYC's infrastructure is so extensive it's makes adding more incredibly difficult. That is then compounded by bureaucracy, corruption, and entrenched interests but not more so than most other large city's.
$15 to use the GWB and anything going to Long Island or NJ is ridiculous and Verrizano is $17 and that is the the highest cost for a bridge in the nation. GWB is a major interstate and you have to swing up to the Tapanzee or go further north Fishkill Bridge to get lower fees.
Now add the $11 fee and my cost is $26 just to drive to one place in Manhattan.
When the train cost $27 round trip (off peak) or $38.50 (peak) it is a pain. Also if you have business in NYC you are stuck with either losing the whole day or half a day just to get there.
Now Chicago, Atlanta and LA have bad traffic it doesn't cost you a hundred bucks to commute for a week.
So move to the city and enjoy a shorter (and cheaper) commute. Of course, since you're currently living 50 miles outside the city, the increase in rent would be much more than $100, so you're still enjoying the cheaper end of the bargain.
> Now Chicago, Atlanta and LA have bad traffic it doesn't cost you a hundred bucks to commute for a week.
With parking, you could easily pay that much in other U.S. cities. In addition, they all have pretty terrible options for public transit compared to New York, so I'm not really keen on using them as a reference point.
And neither could my boss (a director) or his boss (the MD of a subsidiary of RELEX)
Only counting gas and parking it would be ~$50+/week in my smallish town/city living 10-20 miles away. If you add in all the other car costs it would quickly reach $100/week.
That's what you get when you want to live that far out. I pay $50/week to go from Essex County, NJ. That was about what my commute cost me (driving) in Dallas.
> When the train cost $27 round trip (off peak) or $38.50 (peak) it is a pain. Also if you have business in NYC you are stuck with either losing the whole day or half a day just to get there.
What train costs this much? The closest I can find is the Port Jervis Metro-North line, coming all the way from Port Jervis (which is way the fuck out there). I wouldn't do that commute for any price unless I had to. If I did, I sure as hell wouldn't buy per-day tickets; I'd get the monthly pass for $488.
Now there was a time when I was 19 and the last train left at 11 PM I the schedule said 1 AM kind of sucked and the next train was at 5 AM. It was with friends from LA and their flight was at 9 AM the next day.
You are on the trains schedule so I will have to wait for the train to leave. Usually if I had a quick stop in the city I would make other stops coming back home. Most people HATE driving in NYC and refuse to do it so I am not sure how much this will help.
Put another way, with congestion pricing, you have two options:
* Pay $27-$38.50 (total) for a four hour round-trip on public transit
* Pay $26 (not including gas) for a faster trip in a private car, probably about two hours round-trip[0]
I'm having a hard time sympathizing with this as a problem, especially since you're coming from 50 miles away. I know people who commute every day from Kingston to Brooklyn using public transit, and that's a full 100 miles.
[0] With no traffic, Kingston to Manhattan (100 miles) is about two hours by car each way, so I'll assume that your travel would take two hours for a round trip.
I grew up in Danbury, CT and probably 20% of the city works in NYC and I now live in Allentown, PA and know several that work there full time and it takes 30 minutes to get to a train station to NYC.
I had one full time job in Manhattan when I was 18 and commuted everyday on the train. I also would have contracted work to do some music or video production and need to be there around 3 PM until 11 PM to 4 AM. So there are certain things that the $11 fee just makes it harder for people to do work.
You'd probably see some increasing density in nearby areas that are still full of 2-3 story buildings. You'd see some parking lots reconsidered. And you'd see people moving to other cities. You'd probably see a whole lot of other creative solutions, too, to the fact that NYC is now allowing its problem of too many cars to be felt by those driving the cars.
Now NYC wants to add an additional charge to each and every ride through it's most populated region? Seems unfair, especially to those who make less. Some might argue that those in the lower incomes probably don't have cars in a city like NYC or even live in Manhattan at all due to it's cost. And they may be right. But it's also a matter of principle. Seems immoral to me to charge people to use what they are already taxed for multiple times (direct gas tax and some form if income/property tax is used to pay for road maintenance). It also seems especially unfair to tax them to use what is essentially a public good that is already paid for. The tax is simply to incentivize a specific activity (i.e. not driving in Manhattan).
Should we also tax everyone who walks through the streets of Mid-town? Those streets are insanely crowded and I hate being there. Maybe we should tax anyone walking on sidewalks?
Yes, they would be paying with time instead of fees. But many people have time and not so much money and they would probably much rather give up their time instead because it's what they have in a relatively larger amount.
Your argument can probably be fairly recast as "everyone should have to pay equal costs in time if they want to use the road". And then never mind that a congestion charge is more predictable than sitting in congestion.
You can even take a helicopter some places.
Example: It's really hard to get your child into certain public schools in NYC. Why not start charging $3k a year per child (much less than private schools) at high demand schools in order to lessen the overcrowding of those schools? There are viable alternatives to paying (less in-demand schools), most lower income people are already not able to send their kids to in-demand schools for reasons of geography, and after all, parents choose to have children, they should pay for the services and infrastructure to support them.
That example seems to essentially be the same as what is proposed for congestion pricing, with many parallel arguments. Why is congestion pricing okay when applying the same philosophy to other matters of public good isn't?
(by the way, I'm a reluctant supporter of congestion pricing, and not of what I proposed for schools, but I struggle with why I believe one is okay and the other is not)
So, the city would not be surge charging for a necessity, just a preference for a high demand school. Likewise, most people would prefer to drive if they could, but the physical limitations of the system require that most people take public transport.
Sometimes this is also a preference for safety, as I learned attending k-12 in NYC. And sometimes the safety isnt a result of bad students, but a result of the entire system just allocating more resources to some schools over others.
NYC is different in that the city government covers rich and poor people and can't legally separate the two so a different measure develops, such as entrance exams where kids whose parents are able to hire tutors perform better on. We can't have a hugely unequal society and expect certain bubbles in it to pretend as if those who have advantages aren't using them.
The good schools are going to be filled no matter what, so trying to assign them the fairest way possible makes sense.
This claim seems probably true for university and probably false for kindergarten?
Some of the youngest schoolchildren already know how to read, count, say the alphabet, listen, and so on. Their parents read books to/with them, buy educational toys and so on. Other children have to learn all this at school. The parents of the children in the first group would prefer that the other children were similar.
Parents who care more are also more likely to get problems solved -- whether that's a problem their own child has (e.g. a learning disability) or with the school.
So in general, the quality of the teaching is often less important than the children and their parents.
...not that it doesn't happen already. Don't most public schools charge parents for meals at school, after-school activities, and equipment if they join the varsity sports team?
It's not a logical argument, it's values.
This is the level on which this conversation needs to take place - what's important? Are some things more important than others? It's not strictly about dollars and cents, or how to pay for it.
For what it's worth I think they're about equally important. There's no such thing as "an alternate road system", you either have one, or you don't. And I also think there's a place for people who don't have kids, who make a considered decision not to fund schools but want good roads so they can go places and get to work.
This is meat and potatoes politics: tradeoffs, values, what we think is important and are willing to pay for.
Wouldn't libertarian philosophy, taken to its logical end, imply private schools and private roads, where you pay whoever owns the school/road to use it?
But if we're going to have some public schools and roads, there's more of a moral principle behind the former than the latter. I would be uneasy with congestion pricing public schools because the moral principle they continue to exist on (nb: not that they were founded on, as far as I know) is equality of opportunity. That goes away the instant you start allowing wealthy people to fill up the best schools that otherwise non-wealthy peoples' children could have attended. It might as well be a private school.
That is correct, though the government still has a major role to play in enforcing their citizens rights. If a private company were to build a poor-quality and dangerous road, this would amount to an act of violence towards the drivers, thus the government would need to ensure that standards are met. If education is defined as a right, the government would need to ensure that private schools are meeting the standard held in it's definition.
Of course this is a simplification, but in a way I view these services as already being "privatised", except one organisation is granted a monopoly: the government! They indeed have some of the same conflict-of-interest that would scare some off private corporations replacing them; we all know that local politicians can be very selective in which stretches of roads receive maintenance, especially coming up to election time.
I think it would be a fair statement that libertarians favor a strong family unit (certainly not its alternative, the dystopian sci-fi separation of children from parents at birth.) Households run in ways that are almost entirely communist. So why should this non-profit collaboration stop at the front door? I don't think a libertarian has to be opposed to every unit of government that dares to call itself government.
So let's say you abolish your municipal government, but you don't have money to pay for private schools, security, road building and welfare. Maybe you have a neighborhood watch for security, a group of neighbors who fill potholes, and a church that provides rudimentary welfare and schooling. Is that government? Maybe it seems similar, but libertarians would argue that government is a monopoly on force, and that doesn't sound like what's happening here.
But maybe a few people in town saved money to buy some livestock, and now they're having problems with coyote/mountain lion attacks. The obvious solution is to have the neighborhood watch carry guns, if they weren't already. After all, if they're already out, may as well kill two birds with one stone. So now you have a neighborhood watch who's also the gun-carrying livestock protection. You can't help but notice that now the neighborhood watch is the only guy carrying a gun around, and that probably makes you less likely to mess with him. Is that a monopoly on force yet?
What about if there are enough herders in town to start paying that guy full-time, and he's used for neighborhood watch too (since he's already out, after all?)
Hopefully you can see where I'm going; people will naturally band together to solve community problems, and that needn't always be via a for-profit venture. I think it's a misunderstanding of libertarian ideology to suppose that you have to be opposed to all levels of government, and it's a misunderstanding by those inside and outside of that movement.
When you realize that most of the popular functions of government are performed by the local (or maybe state) governments, you have to think libertarians could gain a lot of support by re-framing themselves in that way, and it doesn't seem like they would be compromising.
>Libertarians clearly want less power concentrated at a central level
The phrase "less power" is a little vague; to be precise, libertarians want the government to enforce the rights of the citizens, and to otherwise leave them alone. The population does this by collectively granting authority to the government to deal out force legally; the only exception, for the most part, is an individual using force in self-defence. This is the fundamental principle, I believe, on which libertarians base their thinking.
>I think it would be a fair statement that libertarians favor a strong family unit
Absolutely. Though, at the same time, I would wager than purists would not support government legislation that specifically favours the traditional family unit, tax-breaks etc.
>Households run in ways that are almost entirely communist. So why should this non-profit collaboration stop at the front door?
In order for a society to even attempt to be unified, we must first agreed on a set of axioms, shared-truths. We may take for granted that the bond an individual has with their own kin is stronger than that with others. While we can imagine an entirely communistic network where one's personal wealth is equally shared amongst all, it practically cannot work because humans are simply not built that way. There is enough historical data to suggest that it cannot be done. It is morally untenable because it relies on forcefully compelling people to share their resources, where it is given voluntarily in a healthy family setting.
Furthermore, it is debatable wether or not libertarians recuse themselves from their responsibility to be a force for good in the world, and to be charitable; they merely ask to not be forcefully compelled to do so, as this violates the non-aggression principle. The success of the libertarian approach to charity hinges on lessened taxation and regulation creating an environment of unparalleled prosperity and abundance, in which communities will humanely seek to better the world around them.
I think my above points about the governments role in dealing out force legally, which addresses much of the rest of your post. Empowering local and state government is certainly and immediate goal of the libertarian movement.
I think the real root of the problem is that congestion pricing is never okay in matters of public good, we've just conditioned ourselves to believe that infrastructure is this special case of impossible problem to solve, so our terrible workaround to this artificial problem sometimes seems begrudgingly reasonable in context.
Which is why, if you took the exact same logic and applied it to almost anything else, the public would be outraged.
Supply and demand solves itself. The solution is staring right back at you any time you drive around a city at 5PM local. The funding could be solved by taking more money out of general revenue from income and other taxes. It's not too far a stretch from where we are now.
The argument for congestion pricing could be framed as frustration with either of those two components. First, some people want to pay for their use in dollars instead of hours. Second, some people would rather target the users of the public good to recoup the enormous costs of it. Personally, I try to opt out to the maximum extent because I find the time cost unacceptable, and I would avoid the monetary cost for the same reason. And given the risk of runaway time cost or runaway money cost for a rare trip, I'd rather keep the time. If nothing else, my loss aversion would make me avoid driving like the plague after paying a high toll.
We prefer bakeries to bread lines, and food is arguably more important to life than driving. So why should we want the bread line equivalent when it comes to driving? As far as I can tell, it's because that's the system we're used to, and change is hard.
That is never an acceptable reason to neglect infrastructure.
By your logic, we should never build hospitals because building hospitals 'creates' sick people. We should never build public water systems, since that would 'create' sewage. We should never roll out faster broadband internet, because people will simply 'waste' the bandwidth.
Yes, induced demand is a concept that exists. But it's a gross misunderstanding of that concept to use it as an excuse to undersupply infrastructure capacity.
> The solution is (more) mass transit
I agree, that is one way to help the problem. Notice though, that it's not congestion fees on public right of way, and that it is additional infrastructure (the kind you just claimed would not work because it would create more demand).
But all countries have road congestion issues, to my knowledge. It’s an intrinsic feature of road networks. There‘s also a lot more variance than with schools: roads are sometimes empty sometimes full. School attendance is static through the year. (Which suggests an optimal road price would actually be more like a surge, and vary through the day.)
This is not the case for schools.
If you just moved to Boerum Hill and paid cash for a $5,000,000 brownstone and converted it into a single family home, I don't see why not.
Take that money and put it toward improving the various segregated NYC schools that you used your money to avoid.
We have congestion pricing for schools. Try buying a house near one of the good elementary schools in DC or Chicago.
Note that this still isn't a libertarian approach, as I, hypothetically residing in such a district but sending my hypothetical children to a private school, would still be paying for this service that I am not using; I would be paying for the right to use this but not the actual use of it. It's basic taxation but on a hyperlocal scale.
For example, we already charge drivers for the privilege of driving: annual license fees, mandated insurance, gasoline taxes, etc. Congestion fees/taxes are simply an extension of the costs associated with the driving privilege.
With respect to schools, we already have a de facto congestion charge, in the form of housing prices near desirable schools. In many states, property taxes near desirable schools are also higher to reflect the greater desirability of the neighborhood.
I find this conversation very interesting - first, the thought provoking notion from your parent that supporters of congestion pricing invoke a "libertarian but only for this" exception that they wouldn't apply to other goods like schools.
Then your (obvious) reply that driving is not a right, but a privilege.
I would counter that while driving is certainly a privilege, the roads themselves are a right, or a public good, comparable to schools. So regardless of what hoops you have to jump through to purchase and license your car, once jumped, the roads are analogous to the schools.
FWIW, I am personally enthusiastic about congestion pricing and have heard nothing but good things about its deployment in London. I would like very much to have it considered here in San Francisco.
Transportation is the public good. Roads are one means of providing it, but there are others, like public transit. It's up to the government to determine how best to provide that public good given existing constraints in funds, time, land area for roads and other transportation infrastructure, environmental considerations, etc. They've apparently determined that the distribution of modes is suboptimal, and are creating economic incentives to shift it and better pay for it, but ultimately people will still be able to get places one way or another.
FWIW, roads were for people first, not cars.
That isn't true. They are for people. First people in wagons, then people in cars. But always for people.
That's not obvious, since it depends on the state and even the district.
In districts that determine enrollment geographically, a child does have the right to go their local high school if they are within the zone assigned to that school. This has been a contentious issue in districts in CA and NY when they redraw school feeder zones (usually when opening up new schools or closing non-performant schools).
[Note that like all rights, it can be limited, if for example the student gets suspended or expelled for disciplinary issues. This is similar in context to the prohibition on firearm ownership by felons.]
So, separate but equal then?
The same can't be said of charging for in-demand school places - from a collectivist perspective, such a policy would be read as punishing poorer families for aspiration and disincentivizing social mobility. It's plausible that essentially the same policy could be reframed by redistributing funding from higher-performing to lower-performing schools and allowing or requiring affluent parents to make up the deficit.
Congestion pricing is hopefully geared to be lower or zero at non peak-hours. That is, people who must drive at 8am can do that for a fee, and those that can leave it until 10am get it cheaper. In the school comparison it’s not a privilege but a right, and also you don’t just “do it later” you only get one education which can be really important for your future life. That said, to really ensure social mobility you also can’t have “school districts” where land/house prices depend on school quality.
We don't even let people from outside the city send their kids to school there.
Good question. Will we see sayings like "Save Road Neutrality"? Net neutrality is something that prevents ISPs from practicing a form of congestion pricing (zero rating, charge more for certain packets, etc...), yet the death of net neutrality has been likened to the death of the internet.
One of things I struggle with is aligning my belief system consistently across the board. It definitely leads to some challenging internal conversations.
I also think that there are reasons to avoid it with schooling even if the educational outcomes are the same -- I think separating schools into "can/will pay" and "can't/won't pay" would be bad for social integration/cohesion.
Further, a congestion charge applied to road usage is probably, partially, intended to discourage use altogether. That clearly isn't the case for schools.
Public education causes positive externalities: educated populace, a third party to help ensure kids are well taken care of, encouraging people to have children who will grow up to continue society, etc.
Even people who aren't making direct use of public education receive the benefit from it, so it makes sense to encourage it as broadly as possible, not to try to restrict people from it.
It's okay to believe public schools should be free and still support congestion pricing. Congestion pricing has demonstrated that it works at solving road traffic externalities. In London it has saved many lives from reduced accidents, both in and around the charging zone. In Stockholm it has reduced asthma attacks substantially. The New York subway needs lots of upgrades and congestion pricing will pay for some of them (although it would be nice if they could get their costs under control).
Public schools are doing fine being free and paid for by taxes. By way of fairness, I guess one could argue that since every kid by law has to go to school they should be free. But I think we actually have the free system simply because it has worked for a long time. There are problems with education quality in the US, but they aren't due to how schools are paid for. We know that because there are better schools in other countries that are still free. By contrast, downtown streets are as crowded and polluting and dangerous as they are mainly because they are free.
As someone who moved from the Los Angeles area and enjoys driving (sans gridlock), it personally seems bananas to me to be driving in the city unless it's a cab/bus/freight/handicap vehicle.
more cars on the road == worse for me
more educated people == better for me
That said, I wouldn't necessarily oppose a congestion fee for schools, especially if that money was used to replicate the success of desirable schools in non-desirable schools.
Although in reality I don't think feeding more money into our archaic school system is the answer, it needs to be reengineered from the ground up, but thats a totally different conversation.
Whereas we associate having children and schooling with positive externalities -- the creation of an educated workforce that will keep our country strong and prosperous in the next decades. So we intuit that if people responded to the tax by having fewer kids or unschooling the kids, that would be bad for society. (I personally don't actually think that public school produces positive externalities but I'm extremely unusual in that belief).
The other complication is that "good schools" are really the schools with the best students and best parents. With road congestion toll you are paying for an inherently limited resource -- wide, paved right-of-ways enabling leading connecting population hubs. Whereas with the limited number of "good" schools in NYC, the inherently limited resource is the good students themselves. So a "good school" tax is essentially charging good students to be around people like themselves, which is kind of a weird thing todo.
so, I think you are confusing people that believe that markets are useful tools with people who believe that markets are things that decide what is most ethical (which is, I think, what you mean by 'libertarian' in this context.)
That's the thing. I (and many people) believe that markets are good tools in many (but not all) situations for organizing production and distributing goods. I don't believe that using a market to distribute goods organize production is any more or less ethical than using any other method for deciding those things, any more than I think that using a drill or a saw when building something is an ethical choice, (I mean, except to the extent that avoidable suffering is caused by using tools that are grossly mismatched to the goal)
I think markets are great for matching up workers to jobs and schedules... and that's what we're doing, largely, with congestion pricing. If it costs a lot to get a worker to place x at time y.... well, that should be factored into the cost of whatever that worker is doing; because of this, I support congestion pricing.
I think markets would be terrible for allocating public school slots, because the whole point of having public schools is to see to it that everyone has some minimum level of education... and to give those who are smart and/or ambitious a chance of climbing the ladder, even if they came from poor families. Markets would produce results that moved in the opposite of those goals, that's why we have public schools rather than relying on a private school system in the first place.
"The median household income of those with wheels is more than double that of those without - $85,000 compared with $40,630." [1]
Do you really think someone who is "poor" can afford "UP TO 12 HOURS $31.25" [2] daily parking, when an unlimited Metrocard is $32 weekly? The commute would be shorter in the car, but with $150/week for parking, add tolls and the cost of insuring/maintaining a car, I do not see congestion pricing being a poor tax.
1: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/19/opinion/editorials/manhat...
2: grabbed from one major garage site. not the end-all pricing, but it's close http://www.rapidparknyc.com/daily-parking-nyc-garage-rates-M...
The majority of New Yorkers — and a supermajority of Manhattanites — do not own a car. Those who do own cars have incomes nearly twice as high as those who don't. Only 5.8% of commuters to Manhattan arrive by single-occupancy vehicle.
https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/04/21/a-reminder-pricing-ca...
So this ends up not impacting the rich, but drastically hurts the poor.
Transit in New York City (and the tristate area as a whole) is very robust -- I seriously doubt most blue collar workers in Manhattan are driving in and parking for work.
Would you be against instant teleportation at low dollar, environmental and energy cost from point-to-point? I might be if used between cities or countries. The world is already pretty homogenized. But for within cities it would be great. The main benefit of cites is to have a huge number of possible people to interact with and the projects (companies, museums, clubs, etc) those groups of people create. Supporting policies of making people waste time waiting, doing nothing useful, to control where and when they move around seems like a very misanthropic and authoritarian view of how the world should work.
It depends how it's implemented. In London, it is a flat fee for the entire day, rather than based on time spent driving within the charging zone, or on distance.
More importantly, taxis, which drive around _all_ _day_ _long_ and thereby cause more congestion than private cars (which might be on the road for 1-2 hours) are exempt from the charge.
Rich people benefit from London taxis, but neither the taxi drivers nor the passengers pay the congestion fee.
A private car wanting to spend 20 mins driving through the charging zone to get from south London to north London is in the charging zone for 20 mins, and pays the full fee.
A taxi wanting to spend 8 HOURS driving within the congestion zone pays nothing.
EDIT: and taxis spend large amounts of time driving around in circles without any passengers, and without any destination. Private cars don't do that. So even if every taxi passenger journey is replacing a private car journey with the same start and end points, taxis still cause twice as much congestion.
Your second point about enabling people to not have cars seems pretty tenuous. Is your argument that exempting taxis from the London congestion charge increases supply or decreases price, to the extent that more people can go without cars?
But I see that wasn't exactly what you were trying to say.
It does seem pretty nice to drive to work rather than cramming into a subway car for a half hour, even if you're stuck in traffic...
Kind of? It can get pretty tight to the point where holding a book up is uncomfortable or not possible due to lack of space.
You only get internet at station stops and not in the tunnels, so it's a little bit tough to read Reddit. I usually get around this by pre-loading a bunch of essays I want to read.
Yeah, you can put on your earbuds and zone out. But it's dark down there, and given how short the days are in the winter, it doesn't feel nice to be trapped underground for so long. I'd honestly rather take a reliable bus (as if these even exist) in the morning.
They don't? Damn, then the internet and telecom and providers in the States are really f*cking their customers up, pardon my French, but that's the gentlest way to put it. Let's say that I can understand that the US is a big country and that you cannot lay fiber over such big of an area as dense as it happens in certain parts of Europe, but to not have metro tunnel coverage for biggest cities in the world is just laughable. The Eastern European capital from where I'm writing this comment has had such a service for at least 5 years, if not more.
I won't deny that the agency responsible for New York transit is incorrigibly corrupt, along with the New York State government that is ostensibly responsible for holding them accountable.
That said, there is cell service in most stations (I think they finished the rollout recently, so it may be in all stations now). You don't get cell service in all tunnels, but that's because the New York subway system is very old. For comparison, that's the case in London as well: you get cell service in most of the below-ground stations on the Underground, but not necessarily in all of the tunnels.
I can see the price to install the equipment being very high — confined space, only a few hours overnight in which to work, and many metal-lined tunnels which probably mean a custom solution is necessary.
https://www.ft.com/content/3cead702-4530-11e7-8d27-59b4dd629...
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_...
Source: Just got towed. I was fined 15 minutes after I was in violation and towed 5 minutes afterwards.
There are, of course, other benefits of the subway, including lower costs and the possibility of doing something else like reading.
The biggest problem with Manhattan is that it's hard to get to the rest of NY without going through Manhattan.
If they fixed that, a TON of the traffic would be alleviated.
The fact that even a quarter of Manhattanites own a car demonstrates that people are willing to absorb enormous costs to continue driving. (A much higher percentage than that would, I'm sure, still like to own a car in Manhattan, but simply can't afford it.)
- Taking public transport only: 30 minutes of walking to the nearest bus stop (bus only on the hour btw). 20 minutes on the bus. 2 hrs 30 minutes on a train to Grand Central. All assuming bus and train time line up (they won't since the bus is hourly).
- Driving and taking a train: Drive for 30 minutes and take a 2 and a half hour train ride to Grand Central.
- Drive: 2 h 20 min at 5 o'clock on a Friday. Google maps shows 1.5 - 2hrs is average.
The optimal path is to drive to a train station close to NYC that has frequent service, park and take the train for the last bit. I used to use the Greenwich train station and it worked well. The same is true from New Jersey, you can park at Metropark or get dropped off in Seacaucus.
Source: I lived in CT for 3 years, lived in Manhattan for the last 5 years, bought a car and keep it in Manhattan for the last 6 months.
They aren't near enough to any train stations to make the trip faster by switching stations. Your "brilliant" drive to a closer train station idea is still a 2 and a half hour total trip time for reaching the same place.
And if your commute daily you're not going to be guessing where you park, you'll probably have a monthly garage.
This all goes back to the parent comment which was just being obtuse. In theory no one "needs" to do anything, we can just sit around all day until we waste away.
People who "need" to commute in their cars really want to commute in their cars. No one is saying it's cheap, but it's a right that people have, and it's not hard to imagine that for some people commuting from NYC to CT daily, doing it by car is preferable to public transit.
Not only that, the majority of New Yorkers do not own cars. I don't even know how to drive. I do, however, take buses and ride my bike. (In NYC you'll get ticketed if you ride your bike on the sidewalk )
In NYC, real estate is extremely limited. Why should such real estate, which is paid for with city taxes benefit so few?
East-West across the park can be a bit of a pain on the train. If you're trying to get from the Upper West Side to the Upper East Side, a bus is going to be a faster choice than taking a train to midtown, transferring, and taking a train back up.
I think they're planning on pushing something similar all the way out to the north circular, and maybe the M25 for heavily polluting traffic.
But the additional charge for the worst diesel cars is new: https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/emissions-surcharge
That being said, it almost never makes sense to drive a car inside central London anyway as the public transport is very reliable and has almost full coverage, and it's dealing with a very different problem in the first place (old horse and cart windy roads adjusting for the modern age).
This, of course, was after driving up from Virginia via I-95, which has its own $20+ worth of tolls along the route.
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Where I live now, in Atlanta, we recently closed a $0.50 toll (GA400) because apparently we didn't need the money.
But as to toll (flat) vs tax (progressive), you're right: it's definitely screwing over the poor.
I'm all in favor of usage based charging, but "unaffordable to live near work on a moderate salary" + "we're going to tax your daily commute, the same as your boss" doesn't feel fair.
In Chicago, the vast majority of people who live in the suburbs and work in the loop take Metra. But Chicago's transit system is so heavily hub-and-spoke that the public transit just isn't practical if you don't work near the hub, and plenty of people don't. For them, it's frequently a choice between an hour or so in traffic, and more like 2 hours split among some combination of traffic (to get to the commuter train station), train, and maybe bus. I can't really blame anyone for deciding that 4 hours total commuting is not an option.
I know people who drive from their faraway place to a train station outside the city and then take the Metro-North into Grand Central Station. From street parking to bridges and tunnels, New York City massively subsidises drivers.
I'd strongly prefer we raise tolls and congestion charges and use the proceeds to modernize our subway system.
Actually, the bridge and tunnel tolls are major revenue generators for the MTA. The subway is near revenue neutral. The buses lose tons of money.
Edit: Elsewhere in this thread, someone posted a link to Beijing's solution to congestion, which seem interesting:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_space_rationing_in_Beij...
Unfortunately, I don't know if I would trust the politics of NY to allow for that.
From what I've heard well off families in Beijing will then just have multiple cars, one with an odd license plate and one with an even one.
That said, especially given the circumstances of Manhattan, congestion charging probably makes the most sense and also has the virtue of bringing in additional money that can theoretically be used to improve public transit.
[ADDED: I think the key here is that driving in Manhattan for individuals is something of a luxury good. We'd view things differently if this was about distributing relief food after a natural disaster.]
Lotteries are an absolutely terrible system. They fail the basic test of Pareto efficiency. Or in other words: lotteries result in outcomes in which one person could be made better off without making anybody else worse off. The only way to avoid this with a lottery is provide a secondary market, and that defeats the whole purpose of a lottery - at that point, you might as well skip the lottery and use a direct market.
Not all Pareto-efficient scenarios are good, but all scenarios that are not Pareto-efficient are bad, by definition. If Alice could be made better off without making Bob or Eve (or anyone else) any worse off, we know there's a problem.
Say there's a national park campground that fills up within a few minutes of opening up reservations.
However the lottery is implemented exactly (wardialing, picking applications at random), it's pretty much how you have to do things. Raising prices until supply meets demand is (properly) politically a non-starter even if it's the "correct" economic solution.
You can have a waiting list (as I believe many Grand Canyon permits use) but creating multi-year waiting lists have their own set of problems because it makes it hard for people to plan.
But, yes, in general the alternatives for excess demand of a fixed quantity item tend to be:
1.) Increase price
2.) Have a lottery (which doesn't really make any sense here)
3.) Have some sort of rationing scheme (waitlist, can only buy X of item, etc.)
Okay, so as a solution to that, let's stop paying for roads with taxpayer money, and instead let roads in Manhattan be funded entirely from private funds, collected from those who use the roads instead (either individuals who don't mind paying, or businesses who pay fees on the deliveries, the same way ships pay fees at port).
That way, taxpayer funds can go entirely to public transit instead, so (assuming we solve the problem of rampant corruption and fraud within the MTA and NYS government[0]) it's a win-win for all!
I'm being half-facetious here, but those are the implications of the argument you're making, and I'm not going to say they're necessarily a bad idea.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
Edit: "screw the poor" always happens when you have a limited quantity of the desired product/service. In this case, the allocation is based on how much money you have.
Why screw the middle class? Is paying 15$ every time you drive somewhere sustainable for you? If it is, then your not middle class - your rich
Who's to say $15 isn't a normal toll amount? As far as I know the bridge is quite busy which means it seems very defensible. They discount it for electronically billed tolls (which makes it faster for everybody) and discount it again for carpoolers (less cars, again faster for everybody). The $15 is the amount you pay if you're having the most impact.
The answer isn't "screw the poor", because the poor aren't generally driving into Manhattan. They're taking public transit.
Driving into Manhattan is already incredibly expensive. $15 is a drop in the bucket compared to what people already have to pay.
It's probably a pretty good deal for the average new yorker.
There are legitimate life circumstances that necessitate driving around manhattan, and I would be more than happy to exempt those from congestion pricing. And I have no problem with Taxis and buses and delivery vans operating, as they have high utilization. But private cars cause so many problems in manhattan, including danger to pedestrians (which make up the bulk of people in the city at any given time), noise pollution, air pollution, and inefficiency for legitimate ground transport/logistics, that I have no problem disincentivizing the use of them in Manhattan with large tolls. There’s a certain hubris required to be the only occupant in a vehicle in manhattan when the public transit infrastructure is so expansive and affordable.
And don’t even get me started on all the wasted space dedicated to parking that could be used for public space, business, bicycle lanes, etc...
Regarding why everyone talks about Manhattan, it's because it's where a huge fraction of people in NYC live and work. While there are only 1.6 million permanent residents of Manhattan, the population during the day swells to around 4 million due to commuters and visitors. The outer boroughs, while busy in their own right, operate on a completely different scale (population actually decreases during the day), because they're so spread out.
In NYC, it's often faster to take the subway instead of drive.
There are many cities based around cars exactly as you describe. They're okay, and there are great places in them that you can drive. But it sort of necessitates driving. In these cities, it's harder to just walk out of your apartment and get groceries, or eat at a restaurant, or watch a movie, or go to a pub, because things are much farther away, because of the scale of roads and parking needed for fast car transportation. And that, in turn, decreases population density, increases isolation, and destroys any sense of a neighborhood. It make far, far, far more sense to make places easy to walk to first, and worry about cars second.
I don't think you realize what NYC would be giving up if it were designed the way you suggest. Less intersections and faster traffic + all the parking needed would mean less people, less shops, and most of all less culture. Those roads have to go somewhere. It doesn't matter how many pedestrian bridges you build, designing things around cars means that you need to design everything at the scale of cars. Imagining Manhattan designed around cars and every attraction having individual parking so people can drive there is a nightmare scenario. Times Square: Gone. Street food on every corner: Gone. Small niche shops and restaurants: gone. Because people couldn't walk there easily anymore.
Look at these two satellite images [0]. One is downtown Florence, Italy. The other is an interstate interchange in Atlanta. These two images are at the same scale. Which makes more sense? Which would you rather live in? How much does it matter that driving is hard in the first picture?
[0]: https://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2014/06/sprawl.jp...
Something else that I've imagined would be cool is a system of skybridges mirroring the sidewalks. Maybe even in that case pedestrian traffic could be removed from the street level, so pedestrians and vehicles would be fully separated, working out best for everyone.
Another interesting idea is a second network of roads on bridges that maybe go through buildings, which has happened a bit in a few cities. Unfortunately both of these ideas are probably too expensive in practice.
Lots of downvotes but this is actually a decent question. Why is the toll so high, and why don't east river bridges have tolls at all?
The answer has to do with the bridge construction process and ownership. The George Washington bridge was built by a "public authority": The Port Authority of NY & NJ.
As explained in Robert Caro's The Power Broker, the concept of a public authority was to allow a public entity to issue bonds for and manage the construction of a particular project, such as a bridge, with intent to turn the project over to the city once paid off. Other bridges were constructed via authorities that are now owned by the city, and the city chooses not to toll them.
Robert Moses, master governmental hacker of New York State, manipulated the concept of the authority by "renewing" bond issues the year before they expire, giving a single authority (in his case, the Triborough Bridge Authority) large amounts of money, which he then used to complete more public works projects, which could issue more bonds, and so on. The result is that this authority never dissolved, the works were never handed over to the city, and the tolls remain high, basically subsidizing the authority's other projects. He effectively created a public body with huge amounts of money that he could spend however he pleased, resulting in travesties like the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
The Port Authority of NY & NJ, who collects the extortionate $15 toll on the GW Bridge, runs every bridge between NY and NJ, every airport, the PATH train, the airport Airtrains, and One World Trade Center, among other investments.
Effectively, the extremely high GW bridge tolls are subsidizing the PA of NY/NJ's massive losing bet on 1 WTC. And that's why it costs $15.
Let us not forget the congestion pricing for the express lanes on I85. The price kept going down and down during the first few months it was around. I seem to recall plans to use congestion pricing for further I75 and GA400 expansions.
The next thing I'd want to tackle is rampant honking. Not sure how to police this but it should probably cost $10 per second that your horn is making noise. that seems to me like a fair pricing of the externalities produced. And if you're honking to save someone's life i.e. if they're walking into traffic while looking at their cell phone -- ok that's a tough one.
[0] http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2017/09/21/ridgewood-ticket-trap...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/29/nyregion/new-york-removes-...
1) is who is actually causing the congestion in NYC - its my understanding that the bulk of the congestion is caused by non-NYC residents
2) a large unaddressed component is parking - the large amount of free parking available, especially to non-residents, creates a distorting subsidy in favor of commuting in many areas.
If you want to read a great book on the broader subject, check out Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt http://tomvanderbilt.com/books/traffic/
"drivers would not have to pay if they entered Manhattan
by all but two of the city-owned East River bridges,
which are now free to cross, as long as they bypassed
the congestion zone."
"In turn, that means drivers can enter Midtown and Lower Manhattan by two bridges without paying as long as they go directly to the F.D.R. Drive along the East River and then continue on it until they are out of the congestion zone."
I believe what they're saying is that you still enter the congestion zone via those two bridges but you can stay on FDR drive and exit the zone without getting on interior streets [ADDED: and not get charged. FDR Drive is the road that runs along the East River.]
Previous proposals had the congestion zone covering a larger portion of downtown, which meant paying the toll even if you were just passing through on an arterial roadway.
New systems allow finer grained control of where the congestion zone begins. So, a small number of arterial roads/bridges can be left outside the zone, and toll-free.
A congestion pricing scheme that increases the efficiency of the total transportation system would be excellent, but I am skeptical. Congestion, whether on the subway or the road (or even the sidewalk), is already a negative feedback loop that encourages seeking alternate routes/times. If people are taking congested roadways, they are doing so _in spite_ of all the other options available to them in a city with extensive public transit. I am curious what kind of data informs this plan and whether it is primarily a solution to transit times or just another source of revenue for the MTA.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-gridlock/wp/2017/12/0...
Is it wrong? I don't know, usually it is not as bad. But when it got that high and people were still jumping into the lane one has to wonder what's going on.
Granted the nearby counties are the wealthiest in the country, so maybe it shouldn't be that shocking.
This plan for Manhattan will obviously only stop people with low financial power from driving, although they might already have paid for these roads via taxes and duties.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_space_rationing_in_Beij...
My understanding is that it doesn't really help that much because even with the rationing the tendency is still to saturate the roads with cars. São Paulo is one of the cities with the worst traffic congestion in the world. Additionally, rich people can bypass the rationing by purchasing additional vehicles.
Singapore is also switching over to a satellite-based per-km charge.
The West side should get the same benefits.
They should also increase the motorcycle toll discount back to 20% like it was years ago.
https://www.centreforpublicimpact.org/case-study/demand-mana...
> There was a 37 percent increase in the number of passengers entering the congestion charging zone by bus during charging hours in the first year.
> “Greenhouse gas emission was reduced by 16 per cent from 2002 to 2003. NOX and PM10 within the congestion charging zone decreased by 18 per cent and 22 per cent, respectively, by 2004."
> The scheme generated £122 million net in 2005/2006.
> By 2006, the congestion charging zone had reduced congestion in central London by 26 per cent from its 2002 levels.
> There have been between 40 and 70 percent fewer accidents that resulted in personal injury within the zone.
Also, London has changed its road network a lot to favor buses, pedestrians and cyclists. Speeds today are about what they were in 2002 before pricing, but there is more capacity for other modes.
Also there is tons of road construction in London all the time. That harms capacity a lot.
Making poor people pay as always.
Otherwise poor people are subsidizing roads reserved for the rich that they can't even use.
correct, but they haven't been taxed for something they can't afford to use anyway, so they are better off.
Specifically, I'd be worried about driving away tourists and commercial traffic. I doubt a lot of well-off locals would start driving in Manhattan if there were a congestion tax and less traffic, they'd keep taking Uber.
Welcome to the state of infrastructure everywhere, but especially in big cities like NYC.