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Comment by DaveExeter | Hacker News Reader

I agree! Let's get the poors off the roads.

The peasant class belongs on public transport, not on taxpayer-funded roads.

Lower-income Americans already take the bus far more than wealthy ones, who are much more likely to be driving.

A congestion charge will fall disproportionately on the wealthy, and allow the buses carrying lower-income folks to move throughout the city faster.

This isn’t exactly true. Rich people have the resources to live closer to where they work, they are more likely to WFH, they can ride a bike to work often, or maybe even walk. Poor people often live farther away from their jobs, they have worse commutes, and the likelihood of accomplishing that long commute by mass transit in many American isn’t that great.

Anecdotally, we are well to do, chose our house location to minimize our commute and make it easy by bus (and ensure we can go to the grocery store by foot). Then I got the opportunity to work from home, my wife has a straight shot from bus to her office downtown, the kid’s schools (even high school) are all within walking distance. There is no way we could have set all that up without money.

I was poor, I took the bus to college and work (there were times I'd have to add 30 minutes where I knew I'd have to leg it). It was an hour and a half with transfers. It's doable --you get used to it, just like tech workers get used to driving in from the East Bay into the Peninsula. It's no biggie. On the way home, sometimes you get off at a different stop to pick up groceries and then you're the one walking home with two plastic bags -at first your arms ache. Again, you get used to it.

There are multiple levels of poor, like there are multiple levels of rich. Plenty of people are rich enough to drive, but not rich enough to live in convenient locations. It’s weird that, when I was going to university, many people would save money by living far off campus and driving to pay $5 for parking. The richer kids were living on or next to campus, and didn’t even need cars. Housing is expensive, and the American system has made driving unnaturally cheap.

> Plenty of people are rich enough to drive, but not rich enough to live in convenient locations.

Now they're not rich enough to drive, they're become poor enough to use public transportation. Maybe their votes will improve the convenience of public transportation.

To somebody who can afford to live in Manhattan, you'd have to charge $200 a trip to bother them. Just tax them, and use that money to build out public transportation.

Very weird to crusade for the right of people who can barely afford their cars to be better than those who can't afford cars.

A resident of NY is already one of most, if not the most taxed citizen in the country. You pay fed, state, city, and/or borough tax. Relative to the rest of the country, you pay the most for rent, mortgages, food, electricity, natgas, internet, tolls, and even toiletries.

And you want to tax these residents more, and dump the money into the black hole of state-run public transportation projects that take 10x the budget and 10x the time of any where else on planet earth? ...and that is with no guarantee that project would a) get finished b) not be a total clusterfuck like all the others.

Hour and a half is no biggie? Is that one way?

That sucks more than having a car does by far. Even the last part about "your arms ache but you get used to it" - how is that for disabled people? How is it for the elderly? An extra hour and a half - what about if you have kids at home?

Honestly that... Blows?

If the options are to destroy the environment or to have to take an extra three hours daily to commute, I choose destroy the environment - smart people will probably fix it with science.

I thought about it - why would I rather destroy the environment than reduce cars? Because it's a lie - there's clearly no shared burden. Like as soon as humanity bans all privat jets, the entire cruise industry, etc, then maybe I'd consider it. But as it is, it's just one more "eh the poors will get used to it" - meanwhile we don't ban major contributions from sources that are rich people's enjoyment or profits.

3 hours commutes or destroying the environment aren't the only two options. By changing the way we build cities, and by retrofitting the ones we've already built, we can make places where the walked/biked commute is less than a half hour and the environmental impact is slashed dramatically.

A lot of problems can be solved via better urban planning, but most of us have little control over that. What we do have control over leaves us with a couple of options, but we have hope that maybe our grandkids will have more choices.

Agreed. And I'm in the same boat. But I've taken the "best time to plant a tree was 40 years ago" approach and have started working in my community to bring about those changes.

To people who can't afford to drive, this just sounds like relatively wealthy people whining about being reduced to living like they have been the entire time.

If you want to reduce the relative privileges of wealthy people, tax them and redistribute or do a socialist revolution. Never crusade for the privileges of people with some money while ignoring the situation of the people with less money. In the limit, you'll end up crusading for the privileges of billionaires against the privileges of multi-billionaires. As activism, imo it's silly.

Do you have a citation for that claim? Here are a few refuting it:

https://bikeportland.org/2016/01/25/low-income-households-dr...

https://medium.com/100-hours/is-congestion-pricing-fair-to-t...

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/3/7/toll-roads-hurt...

I didn’t make a quantitative claim, just a qualitative one based on anecdotal evidence. I put about 1000 miles a year on my car, but I paid a lot of money to get to the point that I could do feasibly that. I’m not unusual in this either, a lot of rich techies go for urban car-light lifestyles if they can afford it.

The above studies seem to only focus on the poorest of the poor, and not the lower middle class. Congestion charges are going to hit people who are rich enough to drive but not rich enough to live in convenient places the most. There isn’t a binary distinction between rich and poor after all. Those links are pretty embarrassing actually, surely there are better arguments that this will impact rich the most than using the poorest of the poor as an example?

I mean, the answer is that this is New York City, not Seattle, where parking is going to cost you $30+ in the areas affected by the congestion charge. So we've already limited the discussion to the pretty well-off.

Per the article itself: "But out of a region of 28 million people, just an estimated 16,100 low-income people commute to work via car in Lower Manhattan, according to the MTA."

Probably easier to find a way to meet the needs of 16k exceptions. And having a safe fast public transit system, which the connection charge funds, is part of that.

(Hi, Sean! Hope you're well!)

I did an internship at IBM Hawthorn so I’m familiar with parking in the city. It’s actually doable (or was doable?) in midtown near Columbia, and it actually made sense for my girlfriend at the time. The public transit system isn’t that great when you are commuting between West Chester county. And traffic in NYC is weird. Like, going into the city isn’t a problem, especially if you are going in at night. But take one step out to Long Island…and you are snarled in traffic for hours.

My comment about poorer people being more affected I believe is still valid even if it’s the right thing to do. The people who are forced to commute by car generally don’t have better options.

It would be much worse if they tried this in Seattle, but we also need it as well, it just won’t be something only the rich are suffering (like in NYC).

Yeah, but - the proposed congestion charge is only below 60th, and Columbia is up around 116th and higher. Much much easier to park near Columbia. Maybe a little more risk of having your car stolen, too. :)

Also (adding this a few minutes later), the evidence is clear that public transit is seriously beneficial for people with lower incomes - and the elderly and folks with disabilities that prevent them from driving.

So we may be taking about something that harms 16k people and benefits about three million other low-income New Yorkers.

Again, I’m not against congestion charging, I’m against the thinking that most of the immediate downsides are born by the rich. It is politically naive to think like this given that plenty of people who are taking advantage of driving (for better or worse) are not people who would be considered rich. Actually it’s worse than that since rich people aren’t going to think much about a $5 or $10, $20 fee while poorer drivers definitely are.

As for it not encompassing midtown, that sounds a bit weird to me, but ok. I’m not sure it will have much impact on overall region traffic since most trips probably don’t involve that area in the first place.

Having more money lets you buy more of everything. Yet you are only concerned about roads (which aren’t even used by the poorest segment since they can’t afford a car)? Why not focus on making something more fundamental to existence free, like food or shelter?

Oh right it’s because it creates poor incentives and overuse (tragedy of the commons) exactly like we see with roads (and parking). If car drivers had to pay the full cost of the resources they use it would reduce wasteful driving substantially. And we could use money collected in that way to pay for transit (or just give it as a tax rebate to low income people if you prefer).

Yea you’re exactly right, there’s a tragedy of the commons situation right now. You could either decrease the demand or increase the supply to fix this problem, and it seems pretty impossible to increase the supply (build a bridge across the Hudson? That’s crazy). So here we are.

Unironically I’d hate a new bridge across the Hudson around the Holland Tunnel, that area is the crown jewel of Manhattan and its seafront should be protected.

It’s also one of the few safe bike paths in the city where casual bikers would feel comfortable biking.

Additionally, we already have one Canal St in the area, we don’t need another.

Sorry for this small NIMBY rant.

NIMBYism is not inherently a bad thing; it was originally coined by the waste management industry to describe opposition to local landfills and toxic waste dumps, which any sane person doesn't actually want to live next to.

(Yes, I know Europe and Japan build fancy incinerators with parks and whatnot that are very pleasant, but the odds of that being built in the US by penny-pinching private industry is nil.)

Another bridge wouldn’t do much to fix supply since you’re still dumping cars into one of the most dense urban environments in the world.

The only sustainable way to increase the supply of trips into lower manhattan is increased public transit.

Encouraging transit ridership does actually increase the supply. You get far far far more people moved via buses and trains.

Buses account for about 73% of people moved in the Lincoln tunnel, but only 10% of vehicles.

http://www.nymtc.org/data_services/HBT.html

The average speed driving in Manhattan is something like 7mph. There is not enough space for cars. Congestion charge is such a no-brainer easy solution here.

The “poors,” as you so delightfully put it have nowhere to park in those parts of Manhattan. So they won’t be going there (leaving aside deliveries and taxis, but then the fee is a cost of doing business.)

The group this will hit the hardest are those with de facto immunity from parking tickets. Cops, teachers, members of certain trade unions, and so on.

However, lest you worry too much about these folk in light of automated speed and red light cameras they’ve taken to obscuring their license plates or buying fraudulent paper plates on the internet. Of course nothing is done about these effectively untraceable vehicles.

I grew up in a city with insanely high taxes on cars and roads (Singapore). But you could get anywhere easily with the bus or MRT. In a rush? Your Grab taxi can get you there quickly and efficiently. I’m not sure why it’d be better to make everyone’s day worse instead. Does that really make the world a fairer place?

> out of a region of 28 million people, just an estimated 16,100 low-income people commute to work via car in Lower Manhattan, according to the MTA

Exactly. If those 16K really concern somebody, they should just issue them a pass based on income. And if capitalism means anything, the employers of those 16K will have to raise pay to attract people.

There's nothing wrong with public transport. The subway is frequently faster than driving anyway.

Discrimination is much easier once you take a racial aspect out and just use socioeconomic status instead.

Absolutely true. In fact this was the 1980s republican plan. Lee Atwater has a great hot mic moment about this.

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Ni*er, ni*er, ni*er.” By 1968 you can’t say “ni*er”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Ni*er, ni*er.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwa...

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And you also have New York City and the racist/classist bridges. Bridges were built too low for public transit to get out to Long Island. It did a VERY effective job at keeping black people and poor people away from the middle class and higher areas.

" In one of the book's most memorable passages, Caro reveals that Moses ordered his engineers to build the bridges low over the parkway to keep buses from the city away from Jones Beach—buses presumably filled with the poor blacks and Puerto Ricans Moses despised. The story was told to Caro by Sidney M. Shapiro, a close Moses associate and former chief engineer and general manager of the Long Island State Park Commission."

Who would have thought that building a bridge could be racist and classist?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-09/robert-mo...

Yes, they do! Everyone should be taking public transit, the poor as well --and if they prefer private transport, then it's time to pay up!

Yep, given sufficient externalities, this is true. As an example, watch this fictional response to the fact that better cars cost more:

Let's get the poors out of safe cars. The peasant class belongs in beaters, while the rich ride safe.

Consider the choices necessary to make that statement untrue.

You mean how the richer you are, the bigger (and safer) the vehicle you can afford?

I drive by many parents taking their kids wherever in old corollas or kias or other small car, and I see many parents at my kids’ daycare dropping their kids off in large suburbans/F150/Sequoia/etc.

If you want safer vehicles across the board, get rid of cafe and other efficiency regulations.

At this point in the current regulatory framework, safety and efficiency are in direct competition.

Certainly. That's one way, but also poorer people own older cars.

An argument that rests on equality should support the idea that all people deserve the same car irrespective of how much money they have.

Equality would be to be able to go where you need to go, in reasonable time, cost and accomodation, regardless of class, race, gender or disability. Focusing on cars is over-indexing on one potential solution.

People want to move around. Cars are only one way of doing so.

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