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Comment by liveoneggs | Hacker News Reader

a friend was once visiting me in manhattan and decided to drive. He came over on the george washington bridge ($15 toll), missed his turn to my block and ended up getting turned around and going over to brooklyn (tunnel, of course: $8.50 toll), realized he was in the wrong place and turned around ($8.50 back through the tunnel).

This, of course, was after driving up from Virginia via I-95, which has its own $20+ worth of tolls along the route.

Where I live now, in Atlanta, we recently closed a $0.50 toll (GA400) because apparently we didn't need the money.

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Oh, we needed the money. :( I live on the OTP on the east side, so GA400 toll didn't hit me. There was a political promise to end the toll when the improvements on 400 were finished. Initially, the DOT wanted to keep the toll booths open to pay for additional improvements (GA400-I285 interchange, expansion of GA400, etc.) but the cries of broken promises ended that plan.

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.

I think I've also heard plans for congestion pricing on express lanes on 285 (not sure of the extent of those - I want to say between 75 and 85 on the north side?)

I have already started seeing congestion pricing signs on I-75

Freezing temperatures, salt, underground infrastructure, and large amounts of traffic increase costs tremendously. Additionally, sometimes the infrastructure cannot handle the demand, therefore demand has to be reduced, and the easiest (and maybe most optimal way for society) is to implement tolls.

Large amounts of traffic means more tolls collected. They could get by fine on a normal toll amount. $15 is indefensible. Why is the answer "screw the poor"?

> They could get by fine on a normal toll amount. $15 is indefensible.

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.

> Large amounts of traffic means more tolls collected. They could get by fine on a normal toll amount. $15 is indefensible. Why is the answer "screw the poor"?

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.

I am not knowledgeable about the costs of roadwork and whatnot in NYC, so I can't speak to how much a toll should be or shouldn't be. However, there is a hard ceiling on how much capacity a network of roads can accommodate (assuming you want it to keep moving at a reasonable pace), so a toll can help in reducing the demand. I'm not sure how much a toll would have to be to reduce demand, but I can see many of the drivers in NYC being unphased by $15 (I'm not sure of the specifics of the toll plan, if it's for a certain number of hours or every time you enter and exit, etc).

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.

$15 isn't indefensible if the project is solely or mostly funded with tolls (and therefore not out of state / city budget).

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.

The “fair” answer is get on a train. There are plenty of affordable communities on the Metro North, LIRR and NJ Transit.

How practical is that for the people who are currently driving in NYC?

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 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.

>New York City massively subsidises drivers.

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.

Tax funded roads being gated off to those without higher incomes doesn't sound fair to me in any case, even if there are alternatives.

> Tax funded roads being gated off to those without higher incomes doesn't sound fair to me in any case, even if there are alternatives.

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-...

Sometimes, the world doesn't present us with a solution that is "fair", especially when demand is greater than supply. Assuming you were tasked with reducing the congestion of the road network in NYC and its surrounding areas, do you any ideas of a solution that is "fair"?

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.

Given the circumstances of Manhattan, where most individuals don't need to drive into the city, a congestion charge would seem to make more sense.

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.)

I think that's not any more fair than a direct charge. Or am I missing something?

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.

I can't speak specifically to the Beijing system but rationing (or lotteries) as a general approach are often seen as a fairer way to distribute a limited good than letting whoever has the most money have it.

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.]

> I can't speak specifically to the Beijing system but rationing (or lotteries) as a general approach are often seen as a fairer way to distribute a limited good than letting whoever has the most money have it.

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.

There are scenarios though where lotteries are really the only reasonable option.

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.

$15 is indefensible. Why is the answer "screw the poor"?

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

Then don't go places you can't afford to pay the externality for. It doesn't screw the poor, its allocating finite resources in a market-based economy. If we want to socialize the cost of infrastructure (which I agree with) then taxes need to be levied. Virginians aren't paying Manhattan property tax so why is it so outrageous to tax people entering over an expensive and congested bridge?

We ended the toll on 400 because it reduced the throughput of the highway, and we're all paying through our taxes anyway.

I'm pretty sure Atlanta could use the money. At the very least we could use it to buy salt and plows so that the city doesn't close down for two days after an inch of snow.

I just recently learned about this. It's unbelievable. How can anyone defend a $15 toll? I'm glad I don't have any business in NYC.

Because cars in Manhattan are a blight on livability and safety. There are only a handful of reasons to legitimately have a car in Manhattan; off the top of my head: moving large items, transporting those with mobility issues, getting from specific subway dead zones to other parts, and leaving manhattan altogether. There is an enormous (albeit overloaded and dilapidated) public transit infrastructure allowing people to both move throughout the city and come into the city from basically anywhere in the tri state area. And even if direct transit options into the city aren’t spectacular, you can drive to any of the thousands of park-and-ride locations on the cheap and take public transit from there.

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...

Everyone keeps talking about Manhattan, but the GWB bridge serves more than Manhattan. I don't have any numbers to back this up, but I would guess the vast amount of traffic over the bridge serves commuters between Jersey and the other boroughs.

I'd actually wager that the vast majority of people commuting in from Jersey work in Manhattan, rather than the other boroughs. I grew up in central Jersey, and everyone I knew who commuted in on NJ Transit (along the Northeast Corridor line) were commuting into Manhattan. If you worked in Queens or Brooklyn, you'd live somewhere on Long Island. If you worked in the Bronx, you'd live in Westchester (or north). Some fraction of people have longer commutes, but my guess is that it would be a tiny one. You are correct, the GWB serves a diverse set of areas (I only take the GWB to get from Jersey to Westchester), but it's not the only means by which cars get into NYC.

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.

Don't forget the other direction. I commute from Queens to Jersey daily so my perspective might be biased. While I don't have to pay the GWB going towards Jersey, I still have to pay the toll going home (along with RFK or Whitestone). Looks like I pay between $400-$600 per month just in tolls.

My apologies on the commute, can't be pleasant to go through all that traffic. I don't think the the GWB tolls are congestion-based though, they're more for maintenance of the infrastructure that hundreds of thousands of people drive over daily. From my understanding of business in NJ, there are relatively few people doing your sort of commute, so perhaps with congestion prices in Manhattan, the amount of wear on the GWB and related infrastructure (along with maintenance costs) might decrease, which could result in reduced GWB tolls.

It's unbelievable. How can anyone justify spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a bridge or a tunnel just for car usage when many New Yorkers don't even own a car? That's tens of thousands of dollars per resident. I'm glad I don't live in NYC.

Those tunnels are also used by buses and taxis, aren't they?

> How can anyone defend a $15 toll?

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.

The millions of people who do live in NYC thank you. The toll is working as expected.

So you'd rather have less people spend money at your establishments and visit tourist destinations (which is surely more than $15 spent per trip per vehicle). Whatever you say. Why not go full enclave and get rid of all bridges and tunnels in and out?

As I understand it, public transport is a viable (toll-free) alternative for (less-affluent) locals. Such that this toll primarily targets the more affluent class and tourists. Given there are limits to capacity for tourists, driving up costs increases revenue per unit of capacity and as it's limited, that's probably a good choice. Not dissimilar to raising prices if you're selling 100% of your production/inventory.

It's probably a pretty good deal for the average new yorker.

If New York was hurting for tourists and customers, they'd lower the toll. The defense for what people are calling "indefensible" is that enough people pay the toll that traffic is still a nightmare. If it was indefensible, no one would pay it.

NYC isn't exactly hurting in terms of the number of people there or foot traffic.

They can defend it by having good enough public transportation to not need a car in Manhattan. Unless you're carrying something large/heavy, there's no reason to go to Manhattan via car. It's something we Americans aren't used to and don't think about, but basing cities around cars instead of people is a bad idea.

In NYC, it's often faster to take the subway instead of drive.

Was Manhattan "based around cars"? I don't know the specifics but I thought NYC mostly just grew from its roots from a time quite a while before cars. I imagine a city truly based around cars could be made to have much less congestion while still accommodating walkers/bicyclists. More lanes between buildings, with sidewalks replaced by pedestrian bridges so traffic flows with less obstruction, for example. Less intersections and more straight stretches.

No, Manhattan was not based around cars, and that's a good thing. It's what allows for such high population density, and so many unique neighborhoods. Allowing so many people to live comfortably and efficiently in its limited space is what give Manhattan many of its most sought-after features: The food, the diversity, the infrastructure, the walkability. We shouldn't design for cars and accommodate for pedestrians, we should design for pedestrians and accommodate for cars.

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...

I was imagining widening the roads and replacing crosswalks with bridges while holding everything else pretty much constant. I spent a month in a city like the second picture, at a hotel for job training, and it was annoying that I couldn't safely walk right across the street to the stores over there, but if there were just some bridges it would've been fine.

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.

I see what you're saying. That seems like an acceptable way to make a city walkable while having faster driving. Another idea is some kind of underground road layer under the city. I think the important thing is keeping as much real estate as possible for spaces where people live, work, and eat. That's what is needed anyway to have the population density to produce the tax revenue sufficient for one of these solutions.

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