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Comment by williamsmj | Hacker News Reader

Look, 53’ trailers illegally entering Manhattan is a problem. I’ll be the first to admit that. But if you think life on Manhattan is only possible because of a huge illegal trucking operation then I don’t know what to tell you.

The US doesn’t have dense cities except NYC, so you may not realise this but rules against big trucks in dense cities are extremely common globally. I get that this offends you aesthetically and you therefore want to think the people of Paris and London and Munich and Hong Kong are miserable and starving because they don’t let trucks in. But that’s not true.

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I acknowledge you're right, life is definitely possible without it.

New Yorkers have decided to keep buying stuff brought on these trailers. You probably have too. People voted with their wallet and decided they would buy the goods that came in on the trailer. The reason is because it's just way more practical, and cost efficient, to go along with the standard the rest of the country is using.

Until 1997 Hong Kong was a possession that functioned much like its own country. NYC is simply incomparable to this situation; NYC is less than 5% of the country. I'd also note the tariffs and regulations on goods coming into Hong Kong were way more liberal than NYC before the handoff, so Hong Kong as able to withstand some higher ground transportation cost than NY can withstand at same price.

I'm going to say one more time: there are > 0 illegal 53' trailers in Manhattan, but not by much. It's incredibly hard to get a trailer onto the island. The tunnels aren't tall enough and only 2 of the 21 bridges allow 53' trailers (they are the entrance and exit to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Manhattan_Expressway) at the far northern end (~170th St). The bridges are all controlled by Port Authority not NYPD. The trucks that end up on lower Manhattan are lost drivers, not making illegal deliveries to Target and Whole Foods. If the NYPD enforced the law _perfectly_ it would not be "unsafe" like you suggest. It would instead make almost no difference to the availability of goods on Manhattan.

I figured you'd focus on HK specifically. I don't agree it's incomparable, but forget I mentioned it. Big trucks are banned from big cities all over the world. The police forces that enforce those bans are not all sat in their cars playing games on their phones like they do in NYC. And yet life goes on.

I was mostly referring to 53' trailers that go into outer boroughs illegally, and then get shipped in by smaller trucks into Manhattan. Manhattan is still benefitting from these illegal trailers even when they don't go into Manhattan. I'd venture a great deal of goods in Manhattan come in this way.

Basically all your examples of cities involve places where the nation's trucking industry expects their major cities and a large portion of the populace (or in HK case, basically the entire territory) to require these shorter trailers. This isn't comparable to the situation in the US, and the result is that for pragmatic reasons NYPD have turned a blind eye to a poorly workable regulation. And it becomes doubly unpragmatic when we already in a situation where trucker drivers are scarce even before having to split their approach in two (travel NYC compliant, or travel rest of nation compliant).

They could be illegally transferring loads to smaller trucks in the expensive outer boroughs, or legally in Westchester and NJ where land is cheaper. It makes no difference to my point, which is:

There are almost no big trailers delivering goods to Manhattan. It works well, just like it works well all over the world. It allows people to move around more quickly and safely. It works well even though Manhattan is ~1% of the US population and doesn't dominate economically to the extent of some world cities. It's certainly not "unsafe" (?!) for the residents of Manhattan (a direct quote). I don't know what "unpragmatic" means when applied to a system that works.

Banning big trucks from places where there isn't room and they get in the way is great. I hope they ban them in more places. I hope they ban anything bigger than a Transit van. I hope they transfer enforcement to a less corrupt, lazy, anti-city/pro-suburb agency than the NYPD. In short: big trucks in cities suck. I'm done.

> It allows people to move around more quickly and safely. It works well even though Manhattan is ~1% of the US population and doesn't dominate economically to the extent of some world cities.

>There are almost no big trailers delivering goods to Manhattan

You keep focusing on Manhattan. We were talking about a regulation applying to NYC as a whole. If no one wants or finds it economical to take these trucks in, then the regulation isn't needed. Therefore you should be fine with deregulating truck length.

>I don't know what "unpragmatic" means when applied to a system that works.

A system that works so well, that people have to work around it, to the complaint of one New Yorker.

>It's certainly not "unsafe" (?!) for the residents of Manhattan (a direct quote).

An intentional misrepresentation, and modification of my quote; but nice that you cowardly run away "I'm done" after quoting me in this manner.

> I hope they ban them in more places. I hope they ban anything bigger than a Transit van.

You hope for a lot of odd things. I could hope you are banned from NYC, but instead of hoping bad things against people I'd rather just allow people to live and come in with the trailers that keep things simple and pragmatic for the trucking industry so truckers don't become an even rarer commodity at the expense of a few unusually fearful minority of New Yorkers.

"You keep focusing on Manhattan."

Because we were talking about what effect a ban on large trailers would have, and that's the only place in the US where there are no large trailers. We could have talked about ~all the capital cities of Europe if you'd preferred. Or the entire island of Britain.

"An intentional misrepresentation, and modification of my quote"

Well, it doesn't get better when I quote the full sentence, but here it is: "Lol do you know how unsafe it would be for 'non-driving' residents if trailers can't unload food and necessary items to NYC?". Large trailers can't unload in Manhattan. 53' trailers can't even be on freeways in much of Europe. It's not unsafe. No one starves.

Well if Manhattan is the only place in US not getting a net benefit from large trailers, you pretty much proved the point of how dumb it would be to enforce a ban on these trailers on the whole of NYC. Manhattan is just one borough of NYC. The regulation is pointless if the truckers already don't go there -- those who go there by accident would have broken the law anyway (didn't mean to go there) and those who are intentionally going somewhere to unload never end up there because by your own statement they can't even unload. Let the trucks go on to the outer boroughs so those in Manhattan can keep benefitting and buying the goods that come off these trailers.

NYPD are apparently acting 100% rationally and sober here by choosing not to enforce this regulation, and you've done nothing but systematically prove that point.

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