This is an unfortunate reality of life: wealth equates to more available time.
The core of NYC has walkable infrastructure and an amazing public transportation infrastructure (at least compared to much of the rest of the country). For those commuting in from suburbs, park-and-rides are already a far more cost-efficient option.
Chances are, even at well over $1000/month, the parking infrastructure is still effectively below the cost of the space it takes up.
As long as you are okay with spending all your time in the city.
The medium to long distance public transport for going out of the city is horrible.
They work as long as very few people take them.
Airports are far, but we have tons of buses and trains that take you out of the city (including a train that takes you to the airport).
That distance would be a 15 minute drive almost everywhere else.
Not every solution can or has to solve the wealth/income gap. Solve congestion with one solution, solve wealth redistribution with another.
It is a waste of time to bring it up every single time. We know being poor sucks, but that is its own issue with its own solution separate from solving too many vehicles in certain parts of Manhattan at certain times.
Increases distances between destinations, which means more energy and time to travel between them, which means higher cost.
> Or increasing capacity or lowering the price of public transit?
This would qualify as redistributing wealth.
Only non-poor people can say something as reactionary as that. Or people who are not friends or relatives with poor people. A populist backlash that will bring some of the middle-class egoism down is long over-due, and not only in the States.
There you go, point disproven.
Of course I don't expect such approaches to be a very popular approach in America, but there are ways to do it. All you need to do is let go of the idea that anything can be gained through purely monetary means.
Straight forward, simple, easy to implement and audit solutions are best for society.
Sure, let’s take wealth from richer people and give it to poorer people, but handle that via taxes, not via the road congestion pricing in certain parts of Manhattan.
And in all honesty, if you are driving in Manhattan, you should probably stop doing that.
If you're poor, you probably aren't getting your cancer cured anyway. And in all honesty, if you are getting chemotherapy, you probably should stop doing that.
See how none of this makes sense?
Congestion pricing is a compromise.
Someone from the Bronx or Harlem could drive there for work but both places have public transportation options that makes driving not make much sense and neither places require going through downtown in order to access south brooklyn.
I think we all know people find it, for one reason or another, more appropriate to take a car despite the already large cost of doing so in Manhattan. People aren’t just behaving completely illogically. If someone is driving, it’s not because they just didn’t even consider taking public transit.
And in the process, they are polluting the air, making busses run more slowly, and (on average across the population) killing pedestrians. On an individual level, this person may indeed have concluded that driving is better for them than taking public transit. For society at large, however, public transit is almost always the better choice.
By making driving in Manhattan more painful for individuals, we bring it in line with the real cost for society.
But even if we ignore this, by induced demand, open streets will simply invite more traffic. The difference is the wealth distribution of the present traffic.
Sorry, when I said "if you're poor, you probably aren't driving in Manhattan in the first place," I didn't mean to imply that zero low-income people drive private vehicles there. However, I do believe that the population of drivers in Manhattan is overwhelmingly higher income.
Separately, I believe that the vast majority of private vehicles should be banned in Manhattan anyway (which is what I meant by "if you are driving in Manhattan, you should probably stop doing that). If I was God Emperor of New York, I would close 4/5 streets in Manhattan to vehicles, and restrict the remaining streets to commercial trucks, busses, taxis, ambulances, and individuals who can park in handicapped parking spots. This would ensure that those who actually do need to drive can do so efficiently.
If congestion pricing gets us partway there, that's a huge win in my eyes.
> But even if we ignore this, by induced demand, open streets will simply invite more traffic.
Great, then NYC can raise the price. They should keep raising the price until the roads are clear. Then they should give that money to the MTA to improve public transit, and further tip the scales against driving.
Ironically I think everyone knows the answer which is that this isn’t about congestion. This is about lining pockets as much as possible.
I'm (sincerely) curious though, who are the poor people affected? Parking downtown is crazy expensive, and there are already expensive tolls around Manhattan.
There are easy solutions though: charge by the weight/size of the car (the weight should already be on the car registration).
Exactly. Just like more parking would improve it for everyone.
Midtown Manhattan isn’t Manhattan?
It could have been by girlfriend’s apartment was actually in midtown and I’m misremembering it’s proximity from the university? But even the more northern point is considered Manhattan, so I was mistaken on that count (even if it was on the border with Harlem).
stop freaking out about rich people being able to get something nice. they can already afford nice things. look at the overall costs/benefit analysis of the policy.
Also, the argument was never that rich people cant afford nice things. So while concluding they can is easy and correct, its not accomplishing anything.
It’s not a particularly deep or useful insight.
What do you think should happen here instead since you’re so disappointed with the current plan? No charge for drivers going downtown? A dynamic charge based on social status/wealth?
That's one I like actually, maybe something like the blue book value of the car?
I recently moved out of NYC but I remember looking forward to the congestion charge because I loved taking my greyhound to the union square dog run, which was driving distance for me. 20$ wasn't enough to affect my plans to do that, and less traffic would actually make my life way easier when I took him there.
There were plenty of people like that: totally unaffected by whatever a reasonable toll is, and actually more likely to drive if they enact it.
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At the end of the day I don't buy that in a city like NYC we'll see the type of effect congestion pricing has had in other less connected cities. Here owning a car is already expensive, parking already cost more than people pay in rent in some places, etc. It's like stacking a regressive tax on a regressive tax, it doesn't really have the same effect.
Suppose two people make the same amount of money. One chooses to buy a cheaper car and pays higher rent for a nicer apt. The other, the opposite. Under your pricing scheme, you're unjustifiably charging two persons of equal means different rates.
You can adjust this many ways. One person gets a cheaper car but spends more on luxury vacations or invests more aggressively or spends large sums eating at nice restaurants often or buys expensive clothes or or or etc.
Edit: Lastly, why should we be charging expensive cars more? A BMW M4 is, by all measures, much less irritating to have to share the road with than a large SUV or Ford F-250 (god forbid it's also lifted). Tolls should scale with vehicle size and weight and when vehicles have poor fuel efficiency, not the sticker price.
Instead consider how you get the toll to actually do something: in the case of a congestion charge it's by making driving in Manhattan expensive enough to reduce how much it happens for as many people as possible.
Regardless of the corner cases you can imagine, there are more people who drive an M4 that would be unaffected by a $20 charge rate than there are people who drive an 430i. So increase the cost for the people with M4 and you've made your toll strictly more effective... even if there are people who can afford M4s and chose to drive a 430i.
The 'cost' of the action is the same. A vehicle in the city is a vehicle is a vehicle and therefore the toll should be flat, unless that type of vehicle in particular causes more damage to roads or empirically worsens outcomes like traffic or pollution relative to other types of vehicle. Charging people more because they are wealthier is unfairly discriminatory.
It seems you might not familiar the actual toll to start, it carves out a lot of special cases for that reason: people with certain incomes are exempt if they already live in the area, ride-shares have special rules, they excluded corridors around the edges of the city, etc.
You're also confused on cost here. It's not cost to the city they're trying to change with a toll (that'd be nonsensical) it's cost to the driver. If cost is hard for you to follow, think of it as "attractiveness".
They want driving to be unattractive, not impossible, not untenable... just unattractive.
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
> most forms of transportation finance—fuel taxes, sales taxes, and tolls—are regressive forms of taxation in that they burden the poor more than they do the rich.
Everything with a price is unkind to poor people.
So you can't do anything that affects poor people? What rule/principle are you suggesting then, to get anything done?
Traffic is horrible, subway is more than usable. Just walk.
The first part is true, the second part not necessarily so, if combined with improved subway. Theoretically, it should be even possible to setup the system, where these taxes on cars to downtown directly fund subway expansion and modernization.
Only if don't value your time.