This seems against basic human rights of free circulation.
Seems pretty common to not necessarily be allowed to go anywhere you please just because you want to. Maybe it is an extreme example, but I know I don't want people freely circulating inside my house.
If you think this wasn't a right have y'all never wondered why states don't simply ban people they don't want?
As for the justification for why it's a basic human right
https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...
> Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
https://www.usconstitution.net/constnot.html#travel
> It is interesting to note that the Articles of Confederation had an explicit right to travel; it is now thought that the right is so fundamental that the Framers may have thought it unnecessary to include it in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.
Let's say you have a right to travel down a road with a bridge on it. Then 1000 people decide to travel across it at once and it collapses. Obviously each individual doing their own thing isn't a problem, but when a lot of people do that thing it becomes a problem.
We all love the idea of freedom, but it always requires responsibility. When individuals do not take this responsibility then issues like the tragedy of the commons manifest.
We generally solve these purely hypothetical problems that never actually occur by ignoring them.
It was overwhelmed... yes it was a design flaw. That's the point.
I think that's called "having a warrant out for your arrest" and it's always mystified me that each state keeps their own list of personas non grata
This is long overdue, I hope they succeed. Tourists has lost all respect for an old, hard to live, beautiful city, and for the (shrinking number of) people that still live there.
On weekends from april to october Venice is almost unbearable for normal people.
I get that there is the view of "but why should I have to?" but that seems like a fairly simple solution to people entering a door they shouldn't.
Plus obviously if it reduces violent threats from your friend then the world is also a slightly better place as a result.
Locks have been a thing for a long time so this is not exactly a new problem.
https://www.google.com/maps/@45.4857329,12.4147932,3a,75y,34...
Does that seems a museum? That's the problem with Venice (stupid) tourists, they think it's a open air museum, it's not, it still is a city with people living there.
I guess what I am getting at is that people's cultural upbringing is different, and so their expectations are different. This is unconscious bias but for houses I guess. That is not to excuse people for entering someone's home without permission, but that does look like an attraction to me. Personally I would not just walk in unless it was obvious, but then everyone is different.
World cultures ignorance is staggering in some Anglo-Saxon countries...
Try to get to Manhattan without paying the city a toll, for a helicopter permit, or a public transit ticket. I'll wait.
> NYC DOT owns, operates, and maintains 789 bridges and tunnels throughout New York, including the Brooklyn, Ed Koch Queensboro, Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges, 24 movable bridges, and four tunnels. There are no tolls on bridges operated by NYC DOT. Some bridges in New York City are operated by other agencies.
Also, you can walk across many of the bridges to Manhattan:
https://foursquare.com/beelzebibi/list/bridges-to-walk-acros...
Also, if you could get to Staten Island (e.g. by walking over the Goethals Bridge), you could take the Staten Island Ferry to Manhattan for free!
1) It might be true that you can get from other boroughs to Manhattan without paying a bridge toll, but getting to those other boroughs without paying a toll along the way is hard.
2) Walking or biking also limits the areas that you can come from
Both of these combined are equivalent to Venice's free tickets for people in the surrounding zone.
But, in focusing on bridges and tunnels, you missed the important new development in NYC. Manhattan is going to charge people a toll directly for using the streets to drive. I think it's six months old at this point.
So, yes, if you live close enough you don't need a car, you can get there. But I challenge a non-NYC resident to do so in a realistic way that doesn't involve mass transit.
On the tolling it actually hasn’t happened yet and it’s only applicable south of 60th. Free to drive anywhere in NYC at no additional cost except for the dense traffic riddled area of lower Manhattan.
You could also fly directly into NYC and move about by the magic of walking. It’s free. Unfortunately, airfare is also not free and so based on your logic NYC has an airfare surcharge.
I recently took a train from Rome to Tuscany. I was outraged that Tuscany charged me a train fee to enter the area.
I wasn't aware of the limitations on the tolls inside Manhattan to below 60th. I can see how you may have focused on the bridge/tunnel tolls (and maybe I should have been more explicit), but that's the word they have been using for those charges.
> Free to drive anywhere in NYC at no additional cost except for the dense traffic riddled area of lower Manhattan.
This is similar to how you are free to go anywhere in the PATREVE metro area except for the dense, canal-filled area of Venice.
> Unfortunately, airfare is also not free and so based on your logic NYC has an airfare surcharge.
Apparently LGA (unlike JFK or EWR) is considered walkable. I didn't think it was, but it is with 3 hours.
AFAIK, unlike tolls and mass transit, no portion of the airfare goes to NYC, nor does NYC have any direct control over the costs. So it's a good counterexample.
> Try to get to Manhattan without paying the city a toll, for a helicopter permit, or a public transit ticket. I'll wait.
Which was trivially answered. But now you want convenience.
I am not sure why you’re fixated on this. Venice charges you per person per day to enter and stay in Venice. This is in addition to highway tolls on the way to Venice and tolls to cross the bridge to enter Venice. Roads aren’t free. Bridges aren’t free.
NYC does not charge a fee per person per day, but you will similarly pay to cross bridges.
So to recap for you:
In Italy you pay to travel to Venice via your preferred method of travel. In Venice you pay a fee per person per day.
In the US you pay to travel to NYC via your preferred method of travel. In NYC you do not pay a fee per person per day.
Hope that simplified things enough for you.
So your plan works if you just want to raise money/raise the cost to discourage people. It doesn't work if you plan on increasing the cost to act as a soft cap on the tourists per day and you want people to know if they got in on a given day.
Meanwhile, baking the entry fee into modes of transportation bundles it all in one ticket, letting people make one decision to go/no go. Each of those entry modes has a given (or at least designatable) capacity, and would have its own increasing price curve administered by the ticket seller. This has the added bonus of reserving capacity on each transportation mode for the locals traveling at the last minute.
[0] Hotel seems to bake in the entry ticket, which actually keeps the book-factor at the standard tourism "2" (transport+hotel), and only increases it to 2 for day trippers.
Now you can stop waiting.
In what other civilized city in the planet is access charged? Disney? Cars in Manhattan? De facto taxes via taxi fare in some cities?
It isn't a huge deal in my opinion, but it is novel.
And places like Venice are rather special exceptions we can accept and live with. It is clear that something should be done for public good, also the now limited number of tourists.
I'm sure you can't freely wander onto a military base in any EU country and claim it's your right of free movement to go anywhere you want.
The question is where restricting access to an entire city lives.
I can't think of another time an entire city was placed behind a paywall, other than in communist countries where you need a passport to travel between cities.
Probably more will follow this terrible example and the world will be a worse place for it.