Bill proposed in NYC would charge residents $3 for all packages ordered online | Hacker News Reader

Bill proposed in NYC would charge residents $3 for all packages ordered online

businessinsider.com

19 pointspseudolus13 comments

Over the years the problem hasn't been a shortage of revenue, its been runaway costs. Adding further revenue is just wasting more money. Cut the costs of an inefficient bureaucracy (the MTA) and bloated labor structure (the transit workers union) if you want to solve the problem.

The logic completely eludes me. Tax shipping and give the money to public transport. That's the bill. What's the connection between those two?

New York City has significant problems with traffic and parking; a growing proportion of that traffic is delivery vehicles. These deliveries can be hugely disruptive to both vehicle and pedestrian traffic.

Here's an NYT article from last year: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/27/nyregion/nyc-amazon-deliv...

It's not uncommon to see delivery drivers disgorge their trucks' contents on the street to sort for last hundred feet delivery. It's not even uncommon to see them swapping package between companies so that each deliverer don't have to go into each building.

Of course the answer is "make that illegal" and of course it already is. But the police aren't everywhere, the fines aren't steep enough, and the police tend to look the other way because any particular infraction is a minor nuisance at worst, and the blockages won't be gone any faster if you tell them to clean it up. Fining people for a behavior doesn't work if the police refuse to levy the fines.

Taxing this is a way to put the burden of the costs onto the people that are causing (at least indirectly) the problem, the same way that (at least in theory) gas taxes funding roads puts the burden on the people who drive the most.

And it doesn't matter if you tax the consumer or the delivery company. Either way you're taxing the consumer, the former just makes that cost visible to the consumer, and may change their habits enough to reduce the congestion.

> a growing proportion of that traffic is delivery vehicles.

If instead of ordering online the people went out to get the stuff themselves it would be way way worse, since each delivery vehicle carries many parcels.

Discouraging online commerce by taxing it more than physical commerce seems completely counter productive if the goal is reducing traffic.

That's unlikely, especially in Manhattan. Maybe the bill should be more targeted, but there are certainly areas of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx that would benefit from it, so targeting just Manhattan isn't a silver bullet.

Don't forget about the density in NYC. Not just population but also services. It's dense enough that most families don't even own a car [1]. So if people went out to get the stuff themselves they'd most likely do so using public transportation, which is far better equipped to handle the traffic than roads.

The other part is what kind of traffic you're reducing. The minority that would use their cars create rolling traffic. The delivery vehicles double parked create roadblocks and bottlenecks. The latter increases traffic problems by a significant factor compared to the former. Reducing the number of delivery vehicles and replacing it with an equivalent (or even higher) number of personal vehicles would likely be an improvement from a traffic perspective.

Like I said, maybe it could be more targeted. But I don't see any similar calls for people living in Rosedale or Staten Island to be exempt from the city tax.

Remember that nobody drives in NYC; there are too many cars.

[1] Only 45% of households in the five boroughs own a car, and in Manhattan the number is under 20%.

https://edc.nyc/article/new-yorkers-and-their-cars

I know you don't control the police do this isn't directed at you, but... It seems like the police just need to actually do their job if it's causing major issues.

Ehhhhhhhh. I certainly appreciate the officer that wasn't doing their job when I was doing 52 in a 50 zone yesterday. It's a tough job and there could be any number of factors that prevent them from issuing more citations.

But in the end aren't parking citations just another form of that tax? Shipping companies will just pass the cost on to the consumer, and there may be deeper ramifications (like loss of job) for the delivery person who isn't given any real choice.

One has the money, the other wants the money. That's all the connection politicians ever need.

Why do you think there needs to be a connection between all taxation and expenditure?

What do you think we should tax to pay for libraries for example? Reading? Makes no sense.

Public transport is heavily underfunded in NYC and they're trying to find any excuse to fund the MTA and bus system.

When will they realize that taxation like this disproportionately affects the poor?

Since when did politicians care about the poor? Maybe a bit jaded and cynical of me but schemes targeting the rich for tax increases have actual consequences such as not getting enough donations and re-election support, meanwhile targeting the poor is easy enough since the masses only care about non-issues where the "divide" between R and D is clear to see anyway.

Seems like they want to make sure people don’t return after the pandemic.

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