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Comment by steveBK123 | Hacker News Reader

My main concern as NYer is the governments inability to build transit, and not for lack of money.

NY will find it relatively easy to institute a new tax on drivers, but will the billions collected actually make transit better in any tangible way?

NYC is also hamstrung by having its streets controlled locally by our DOT, but our transit & bridges controlled by a state agency.

We just caved (again) entirely to the transit unions in the last contract negotiation. We have subway lines & trains wired up for 1 man operation but run them staffed with 2 due to union work rules.

We have for years instead of building elevators, paid 3rd party access-a-ride minibus/van drivers to provide Uber-like service to anyone in need.

We are planning to spend something like $3B/mile to expand a single train line a few stops further north.

The MTA estimates they can put in platform doors like other developed world cities in only 1/3 of stations, at an average cost of $50M/station.

We spent something close to $10B building an entire new terminal for LIRR underneath an existing Metro North terminal when there was enough capacity to serve both out of the existing station. Bureaucratic squabbles between divisions of MTA serving LI & NY/CT were mitigated by spending $10B. Oh and for the average LIRR rider, despite having 2 Manhattan terminals they can get a train to, the net service has actually been reduced in terms of trains per day.

We basically need a modern era Robert Moses to consolidate NYC DOT/MTA/Port Authority and whatever other agencies and bring us into the modern era.

View on HN

Quite a few of our transit problems today are actually because of the choices Robert Moses made. However, he certainly is responsible for the rapid growth of the transit system and did a great job consolidating power and getting stuff done.

* He had the chance to buy the land and put transit along many highways in queens and Long Island but said that people would prefer to drive so he passed on the opportunity. Acquiring those rights today would be unaffordable and likely impossible.

* Moses didn’t want black people going to Jones Beach (his pride and joy). To prevent them from visiting he built the overpasses on the highways that go to the beach lower so that buses from the city couldn’t fit.

I highly recommend the book The Power Broker which is a deep dive on the history of Robert Moses. The book is very long and can be a bit dry at times. But I learned a lot about the history of New York and why some things that we enjoy and suffer through today are the way they are.

I'm well aware of his history, and it's always interesting to me how few bad things people can point to that he actually did.. when weighed against all the transit/bridges/tunnels/highways build under his watch.

I mean the first thing is a crime of omission, made in basically every other city of the country - where have we seen land be purchased along highways to build transit done anywhere in this country? Even new bridges built by allegedly progressive administrations continue to neglect putting in train tracks.

The second one is obviously morally wrong, though even that is in dispute. Many "parkways" built at that time had similarly short bridges, look to the Merritt Parkway in CT for example. Also, you can presently get there by bus - https://new.mta.info/guides/beaches/jones-beach In fact, it seems it was accessible by bus when it opened, including having bus drop offs advertised in the opening story - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-09/robert-mo...

The linked Bloomberg article actually says that buses served Jacob Riis Park (not Jones Beach) at its opening, and that it is in fact true that the Southern State Parkway has lower clearances along the route to Jones Beach than other similar roads around the region from that time.

Chicago and DC notably built a lot of median subways during the 50s and 60s.

> I'm well aware of his history, and it's always interesting to me how few bad things people can point to that he actually did.. when weighed against all the transit/bridges/tunnels/highways build under his watch.

Nixing the Staten Island tunnel is a pretty bad one[1]: you could argue, not unrealistically, that Staten Island would be a far denser and better integrated borough with mass transit access had that project gone through.

As a native UWSer, I'd also argue that the Henry Hudson Parkway was a pretty bad call on his part: it was an "obvious" highway to build, but it more or less permanently froze the expansion of a major rail line underneath it (the West Side Line) and means that one of the most beautiful parks in the city is semi-separated from the neighborhoods that are closest to it.

Moses' legacy can also be measured in part by the graveyard of projects that were too obscene even for his own time: his desire to build a bridge and highway over Battery Park, for example, or to divide Washington Square Park with an expressway.

Edit: I didn't even mention the CBE; Moses is arguably directly responsible for the generations of economic and environmental blight that accompanied that particular highway.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/18/nyregion/staten-island-su...

See these are better examples!

But also, it's easier to find fault in the actions of someone who takes action. And especially to judge them based on the values of our time rather than theirs.

It's hard to fault anyone since for bad major road/transit/bridge/tunnel projects because there really haven't been any!

And we look at things like projects NOT built by Moses and ask - if they were so good, so obvious, and Moses so bad not to build them, what has the city been doing the last 70 years and how many people are as bad or worse to not have built them?

> And especially to judge them based on the values of our time rather than theirs.

More than a few of Moses' projects were egregious, even for his time. What made Moses a great (as in powerful) urban planner was his ability to mold policy decisions to his values, not the values of the neighborhoods that he bulldozed, much less the values of the elected officials who represented those neighborhoods.

> how many people are as bad or worse to not have built them?

This requires us to think counterfactually: we just don't know how the city could have turned out, because the political energy, financial capital, and plain old physical space that could have gone into mass transit systems went into highways instead.

> What made Moses a great (as in powerful) urban planner was his ability to mold policy decisions to his values, not the values of the neighborhoods that he bulldozed, much less the values of the elected officials who represented those neighborhoods.

I think this is key. Regardless of the values, we have built up a system where everyone can veto a project, or require more studies and concessions such that the price increases significantly. So we end up in an equilibria that nobody particularly wants, where nothing gets done, and the few projects that squeak-in cost too much.

We need better mechanisms to solve the collective action problems. A more consolidated transit authority, with more unilateral power, that nevertheless still had an elected odd member board with majoritarian decision making power would potentially do it. But a big part of the problem is that we can't fundamentally satisfy everyone. We need to optimize everyone's interests and compensate where we can't, but consensus on this stuff is rarely possible.

> The second one is obviously morally wrong, though even that is in dispute

I don't really think this one is in dispute honestly:

    Now he began taking measures to limit use of his parks. He had restricted the 
    use of state parks by poor and lower-middle-class families in the first place, 
    by limiting access to the parks by rapid transit he had vetoed the Long Island 
    Rail Road's proposed construction of a branch spur to Jones Beach for this 
    reason. Now he began to limit access by busses; he instructed Shapiro to build 
    the bridges across his new parkways low - too low for buses to pass. Bus trips 
    therefore had to be made on local roads, making the trips discouraging long and 
    arduous.

- The Power Broker, pp 318

That's the quote that is disputed.

> how few bad things people can point to that he actually did..

I'd encourage you to read The Power Broker, if you haven't. Some examples that aren't "policy decisions" we can disagree with given our knowledge of how it turned out (eg, building or not building public transit in a given place), but rather things that were clearly morally wrong at the time:

- repeated wholesale destruction of low-income neighborhoods through a variety of bridge, park, and highway construction projects

- evicting farmers and poor rural landowners through opaque legal methods to build highways and parks atop their land

- running a "slum clearance" program that primarily evicted people from slums and demolished them without providing any real place for the humans to go afterwards

- funneling vast sums of money into the pockets of collaborators, friends, and, in the end, himself

The Power Broker paints a nuanced picture, but he did some pretty terrible things in his time.

So what do you think about Jane Jacobs?

I think she was a moderating force against Moses, and you need that tension for you to have progress.

Unfortunately the Jacobs camp has won completely, and the idea of an inertia-less city frozen in amber is somehow the defacto good standard now. The city has insufficient development for its rate of population growth, and anemic transit infrastructure building.

So Manhattan becomes a playground for the rich only.

> Also, you can presently get there by bus - https://new.mta.info/guides/beaches/jones-beach

That route is absolutely awful. For a typical NYC resident - not even "typical working-class" but anyone - going one-way is 75-100 minutes, two transfers, and around $25-30 per person, while carrying everything you need for the beach. Only the last 20 minutes are actually by bus.

Compared to what?

I mean.. what good beaches can you get to from NYC, even by car, in 75-100min?

That's like how long it takes me to drive to Jones Beach, from Brooklyn, on a good day.

Amazing how many NYCers miss out on Rockaway Beach.

Much shorter drive. Accessible by subway. Just a better beach than Jones -- far superior food and entertainment at the concessions, and way way bigger.

Sure, I've been there.

But even living in North Brooklyn, my travel options there are - 59min drive or 75min trains&walking.

People make these grand statements like we've purposely made it impossible for poor people to get to the beach by bus, but everything in NYC is impossible to get to for everyone, all the time.

Anyway, if you are in Manhattan, the real play is LIRR to Long Beach. Frequent trains, extremely clean, lots of space, long boardwalk, rental bikes, lots of food & restaurants, clean restrooms (amazingly rare at US beaches).. $15/person (kids under 13 free, and I think theres a family pass) to enter beach.

Moses didn’t want black people going to Jones Beach (his pride and joy). To prevent them from visiting he built the overpasses on the highways that go to the beach lower so that buses from the city couldn’t fit.

This is a true and interesting factoid, but I don’t see how it ties back to any transit issues. Unless you think buses having access to the northern and southern state would meaningfully improve regional transit?

They are some of the fastest roads around.

There are commuter express buses, but often they are restricted to the Interstate (there is one for the entirety of Long Island’s millions of people) or the arterial roads with traffic lights

Long Island bus has been privatized and never carried many people to begin with. They were never going to be competitive for east/west transit against the LIRR.

I mean, there are also commuter buses in NYC, where the parkways make up most highway mileage.

And why shouldn’t private buses be able to use the parkways either? Plenty benefit the public, like the Chinatown buses.

Moses' career only existed to serve specific class interests. If Moses had pursued imroving public transit, he would have been out of a job.

It's actually not even true. It's become something of a popular myth. The original quote claimed "poor and lower-middle-class families" who in 1929 New York would have been predominantly white. That quote itself is disputed too, though it may well be accurate.

Funnily enough a factoid is something that is false but sounds plausibly fact-like.

Right If anything there are quotes and evidence of him exhibiting racism directly against Puerto Ricans, which no one in this thread mentions..

At the time most of his projects were built, African Americans were only about 5% of NYC population rather than the 20-30% peak thru today. So it’s kind of backwards looking to assume they were top of mind in his decision making either way.

Where's this bus going?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnE08Dvx-Cg

Just have to say that I love seeing that book mentioned. Such a fantastic book.

Congestion pricing is good insofar as it deters driving. We do need to get our heads out of our asses with respect to the logistics of converting dollars to transit infrastructure, but that's basically independent. Congestion pricing revenue could be given to your favorite charity, redistributed as a citizen's dividend, or lit on fire. The important thing is that as the marginal driver the amount you have to part with is painful enough to you to change your behavior.

In any other US metro area, there is perhaps a realist argument that roads work fine for 98% of trips and trains are too much of a boondoggle for their marginal contribution to capacity. But this is Manhattan. Forget for a moment about urbanism, environmentalism, etc. If the MTA melted down tomorrow, no appreciable portion of its riders could fall back on driving, as a matter of geometry.

You're right. Congestion pricing affects the psychology of the driver, regardless of where the money goes - even if it's set on fire (thus causing a minuscule amount of deflation).

To assign the congestion money to a specific project, like public transit, is an act of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_accounting .

I would say that putting the money into the city's general fund is the least bad solution. This is because if congestion monies were put to a specific program like public transit / subsidies for the poor / etc., it becomes more complicated to ensure that those programs receive enough funding but also not too much.

I’d go a little further than that. If you enact a Pigovian tax (i.e. a tax intended to reduce some unwanted behavior), there’s a conflict of interest in relying on that revenue for anything because then there is an incentive to try and keep the tax rates lower in order to protect the revenue source.

Exactly. ”A tax on drivers” as the parent put it is actually a failure scenario here. Everybody gets low-grade immiserated by the tax but congestion is not reduced enough to improve quality of life.

My general concern with the whole thing is it's basically not thinking BIG enough.

We're gonna raise the cost of driving into the city so that we have less people drive into the city and then.... ?! and then.. !?

Presumably that will put more load on transit infrastructure that is under built and 10x reasonable cost to build. We can fund transit but we can't build it.

The MTA has already borrowed 15 years of projected congestion pricing revenue with the revenue as collateral. Great, so what does $15B get us?

If we want less drivers why don't we go HARD - announce one of the Hudson tunnels will now be 100% bus. Or we are going to retrofit it for a new train line. Or a new Brooklyn/Queens North/South line for less Manhattan oriented transit?

Even our most ambitious 20 year plans are like "maybe we can finally finish more of the 2nd ave line / prevent the Hudson tubes from flooding / add one more Hudson tube" and that's basically it for the entire city. If you don't live in NJ or the east side of Manhattan, too bad, no new transit for you.

The scale of transit investment you see in say London or Tokyo should make every NYer embarrassed and radicalize you on permitting/environmental study shenanigans/cost management/everyone having a veto on building anything.

> MTA has already borrowed 15 years of projected congestion pricing revenue with the revenue as collateral. Great, so what does $15B get us

Signal modernization, station accessibility, new subway cars (last 2x longer), escalator and elevator repairs, new tracks and the 2nd Avenue Subway's Phase II (taking it to 125th street) [1].

[1] https://new.mta.info/document/10641

I think slide 7 also paints an interesting picture - +50% ridership in last 20 years, -8% capital capital investment years MTA-wide over 20 years in constant dollars.

I can't put an exact date on it, but somewhere around 2010/2012 it started feeling like the transit system was getting consistently worse, year over year. Mostly in terms of delays, headways, etc.

I have some cousins in the industry, and one of the problems they point to aside from work rules is that city/state agencies have basically no expertise in house for infrastructure. This is despite the fact that there has been a steady stream of some amount of work for decades. That means everything from project design, planning, management, accounting... literally everything is outsourced. All the MTA does is essentially ask for designs & bids, picks one, and then bleeds money to contractors.

Evidence from cities around the world shows that congestion taxes actually do reduce traffic massively. Drivers always say "we have no choice, we have to drive!" Then they get charged a small amount for driving and suddenly many more are able to use public transport.

It’s interesting to me in a free country that you also pay vehicle registration (this is supposed to cover your taxes on road use) that taxes like this are a thing.

Don't think it is stranger than publicly funded museums charging entrance fees.

That’s a bit different, but still a head scratcher. You can never go to a museum and still be capable of going to work. You need a car for work most of the time.

You absolutely do not need a car to go to work in Manhattan, outside of very particular situations.

if you live in manhattan, but this isn’t punishing those people is it?

It’s New York. The vast majority of commuters from outside Manhattan take public transit. PATH, LIRR, Metro North, etc.

> You need a car for work most of the time.

This is an interesting perspective.

Here in Sydney Australia most households will have a car or two, but most of the people I've ever worked with do not drive to or for work. Another large chunk of people will drive to get to a train station or bus stop, and then get public transport the rest of the way.

There are a lot of people who do drive for work, especially as you get to the edges of the city sprawl, but even then there are often viable public transport options. Those people tend to not work in the city centre or business parks I've worked in.

With working from home even less people are driving due to work.

We’re talking about the US, not Australia.

The post you responded to originally literally talks about congestion pricing ‘around the world’.

Regardless, it’s not like everyone in the US has to drive for work, for the exact same reasons they don’t here.

It’s still an interesting perspective for me because I know that in some places it must seem like everyone has to drive, but it’s not something that I would normally consider.

Congestion pricing does not interfere with drivers going places other than the city center. They can also still drive to the city center if they value it enough. Deterring people from owning cars altogether, or restricting the spaces and routes drivers can use (in the way cyclists and pedestrians are currently restricted, in this "free" country) would be far more aggressive moves.

That’s the next step isn’t it?

With EVs being near useless outside of city centers and city centers are beginning to charge congestion fees then it’s quite obvious what’s coming next.

EVs are near useless in city centers because hardly anybody can install home charging, plus many households have only 1 car so they hamstring themselves for road trips. If you can install a charger on your property and also have ICE vehicles in your household, EVs are great. Not too many suburbanites / exurbanites doing >250 miles in day.

you pretty well ignored the question and answered one nobody asked.

The “what’s coming next” part depends on the premise “EVs being near useless outside of city centers” being true. It’s not.

> We are planning to spend something like $3B/mile to expand a single train line a few stops further north.

> The MTA estimates they can put in platform doors like other developed world cities in only 1/3 of stations, at an average cost of $50M/station.

> We spent something close to $10B building an entire new terminal for LIRR

I'd love to see the itemized bills that add up to these values. We all know this isn't what labor and materials cost. Defenders will say "oh, it pays for environmental studies, and lawyers, and consultants..." OK, itemize those too. Let everyone see the numbers for everything and that it adds up to $10B without $7B mysteriously disappearing, un-accounted for.

As a public agency, are these numbers not available? If not, why?

I wouldn’t expect them to buy a special section in The NY Times to publish them to the world but surely the numbers are available to someone willing to put in a little work to find them.

The MTA is a state (not city) authority, not an agency. It's effectively a quasi-private corporation[1] with board members who are appointed by elected officials, with special carveouts that allow them to be less transparent than an equivalent agency would be.

The use of authorities in NY law is pretty old, but Robert Moses was the one responsible for really widely encouraging their use; it wouldn't be unreasonable to argue that the MTA's culture of secrecy and opacity is largely a product of Moses' own power plays.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_state_public-benefit_...

MTA costs make the Boston Big Dig look like a bargain, even at $22 billion.

I'm convinced, if they contract this out to first-tier construction firms from oversea that specialize in underground infrastructure (e.g. Europe, Japan, Korea), they can get the job done at 1/3rd the cost.

Even in Düsseldorf, building an entire new subway tunnel for several lines through downtown was about a billion euros. Hamburg's new Hafencity lime was in a similar price range, and the new U5 will be as well.

New York for some reason is spending 10× that.

That's because NY is one of the most corrupt places on earth. 9/10 goes to pockets of politicians, unions, special interest groups, and their progressive pals.

NY is spending $7B to on a Phase 2, to expand a long delayed subway line by 1.5 miles, and half the tunnel is pre-existing from abandoned project in 1970s.

The original Phase 1 was only about 1.5 miles and took something around 20 years on top of the existing half built stuff from the 1970s

There is a Phase 3 to expand the line a further 4 miles with all new tunnels, and there is a rarely talked about Phase 4 to go a final 2 miles again in all new tunnel.

I point to this project in terms of an example of those with a negative agenda "knock stuff down" without having a matching, if not pre-requisite "build better stuff" plan in place. The original 2nd Ave line was planned in the 1920s, they knocked down elevated train lines in the 1940s in anticipation, but didn't start the subway project til 1970s, which opened for service in 2017. By the time Phase 4 finishes in 2140 or so, we may have finally matched the transit removed in 1940s.

So any modern era "just knock down __" without first building transit / alternates / etc risks putting us in a net transportation deficit for a lifetime or three.

>I'm convinced, if they contract this out to first-tier construction firms from oversea that specialize in underground infrastructure (e.g. Europe, Japan, Korea), they can get the job done at 1/3rd the cost.

No, they can't, unless the US somehow temporarily makes NYC Japanese territory for the duration of the project. Any foreign firm would still be stuck with the same laws, and the same politicians and other corrupt people, that are in position today and prevent efforts at economical construction.

Not just trains per day. The synchronization at Jamaica has been totally destroyed. Commute times during peak hours on several lines have increased by 20%. That’s a lot of hours of human life destroyed by incompetence.

We basically need a modern era Robert Moses to consolidate NYC DOT/MTA/Port Authority and whatever other agencies and bring us into the modern era.

You’d first need a strong governor to jam the necessary enabling legislation through Albany and DC. They only strong governor we’ve had in decades was too insecure to allow an independent personality anywhere around and forced out Andy Byford instead of promoting him.

> We just caved (again) entirely to the transit unions in the last contract negotiation. We have subway lines & trains wired up for 1 man operation but run them staffed with 2 due to union work rules.

I don't think this is a good point to make when we've literally had several disastrous derailments thanks to poor regulations and rules around safety and train companies attacking unions. The transit unions are absolutely right to demand 2 workers for fail safes, "efficiency" isn't the be-all-end-all goal especially when you're talking about trains full of people who could die in an accident.

They are not redundant and fail safe. One sits at the front & controls the driving. The other sits in the middle of train, 5 cars back & controls doors.

Nothing about having the two of them creates redundancy.

The train is not moving or being driven when the doors need to open and close. Why can't one person do it? I am sure there is an interlock, but this makes the tasks sequential, so the doors must be closed before taking off.

Yes, that's my point. One person very much can do it. There are train lines that have their signals & stations setup for this, and the trains prepared for this mode of operations. The MTA keeps caving to the unions so that the trains remain staffed with 2.

What's more although the train operator (driver) can open and close doors, the conductor (doorman) is not certified to operate trains and thus provides no emergency redundancy except perhaps in terms of crowd control.

Most subways around the world operate with a single driver and are at least as safe. The two worker rule to appease the union is one of the major drivers of cost disease in operating subways in NYC.

There are also an increasing number of subways out there that operate with zero drivers.

The 2 are not redundant. One just does the extremely difficult job of closing the doors which can in no way be done by the driver due to the immense mental burden it would require.

Subways all over the world operate with just one employee and surprisingly don’t just derail and kill millions. Maybe take your FUD elsewhere.

Singapore MRT actually operates with zero drivers!

As does Nuremberg U3!

One line in Paris, 2 in Toulouse, Lyon, it’s even more funny that it was built in the 1991 without drivers, truely futuristic.

even Budapest has an autonomous line

There are many.

List: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_driver-less_train_syst...

Two lines in Paris, soon to be six.

> thanks to poor regulation

Comparing different systems overseen by different agencies with different regulations, rules and conditions without an objective data doesn’t seem that productive.

also comparing subways with intercity freight trains is a bit of an apples to oranges comparison in the first place.

I agree with your points, but I don’t think they undermine congestion pricing. Even if you take all the congestion tolls and, like, toss them in the Hudson River, the program is still worthwhile. Just getting people to pay to drive into Manhattan is good in-and-of-itself.

I'm not convinced the congestion IN the city is caused by people coming in from OUT of the city. The density of for hire vehicles in the ride hailing era is tremendous.

Further, given how expensive tolls already are to get into the city, whats another $20 for many people?

A lot of reactions I've heard from people have been either "great it will keep those bridge & tunnel people out" or "great, now I can pay the toll and have less traffic". Neither of these seem like the congestion pricing is going to work as intended. It probably needs to be 3x the price, and have onerous per-ride charges for ride hail users.

I think we can also expect a lot of arbitrage of people congesting up the area just outside the zone to hop onto transit there, which would be fine if we planned to actually build any or expand service to accommodate! Great if you live in SoHo, bad if you live in Harlem.

The last time I drove into downtown Manhattan, just inches form the bridge, I was immediately pulled over by NYPD and given an excessive $150 ticket for the window tints on my car. I demonstrated to the officer that Range Rover made them that way from the factory *limo tint" and that it was legal in my home state, but they had shown that they apparently have always had the inclination to pull people over for bogus minor things in cities like it as an entry tax anyway as the "officer" said "He could drag me and my entire family in the car down to the precinct if he wanted to"... This way they probably don't need to pay police salaries and they just automate the unexpected tax probably. States are the new mafia... Phony "protection fees" and miscellaneous taxes are now more real than before, maybe because the old guard has now transitioned into NY GoV/council/desk jobs?

So that's pretty wild because within the city, they are epically indifferent to enforcement.

There's been a recent epidemic of defaced / quasi legal out of state registered / fake or illegally purchased paper temp tags so people could avoid tolls and tickets.. largely unenforced by cops as they are often the perpetrators..

https://www.streetsblogprojects.org/ghost-tags-part-1-the-de...

I for one am glad they are enforcing the law. Highly tinted windows obstruct the important communication of being able to make eye contact with the driver. It’s important for other drivers, cyclists and pedestrians. I’m not sure why your home states laws matter when you were driving in NY?

I found this about US car window tinting rules:

https://windowtintlaws.us/crossing-state-lines-with-tinted-w...

    CAN YOU GET PULLED OVER FOR WINDOW TINT IN ANOTHER STATE?  The short answer is yes, you can be pulled over by state vehicles or law enforcement for window tint violations that go against state tint laws.

Uh... ?

"I demonstrated to the officer that Range Rover made them that way from the factory"

Am I supposed to break the windows out before going to NYC?

Range Rover front windows are not tinted from the factory. If your range has tinted front windows, its aftermarket and its a film, not part of the glass. There's so much to the story that OP left out (was the cop eyeballing or did they use the actual tint level detector, why did the cop threaten to take his entire family to the precinct). Its not worth your time to speculate. Don't drive your car with aftermarket tint into NYC, very simple.

Can you demonstrate that to us here? I'm not familiar with cars in the US coming from the factory with window tint. Most of the time front window tint is something dealers might add, but that's not "from the factory".

And no, you don't need to break the windows out. You could also just not drive your car that doesn't comply with the laws into that area. Much like how I wouldn't be walking around NYC with an AR-15 strapped to my back even though that's technically legal where I'm from.

> and that it was legal in my home state

The great american exceptionalism on show.

You have to follow the laws of the place you’re in. The place you’re from is completely irrelevant. They don’t let British people drive on the left in NYC because that’s their local custom, and they don’t let you have illegally tinted windows, either.

Did you miss the part about the OP's windows having a factory tint? They came that way from the factory; it wasn't an aftermarket add-on. So, these windows must therefore be in compliance with the federal rules for motor vehicles, or else the car couldn't be sold in the US.

It should not be possible for a state to pass and enforce motor vehicle laws that override the federal government.

I'd be curious on the exact veracity. For example, limo tint to which he refers is usually restricted to the rear seats. My European brand SUV also has tinted windows in the rear but not the front.

So is his car truly pure factory, or any chance it was a dealer or aftermarket mod to tint the front to match the rear.. as this is something people commonly do (I did not).

He's specifically said multiple times now that this is a factory tint. I don't know why you and the other guy keep questioning this.

Did you miss the fact that Land Rover tints rear windows and never the front windows from the factory? Regardless, if you drive to a state that mandates tint at a certain level it doesn't matter what factory it came out of.. you're still breaking the law.

Did you miss the part where the OP said multiple times that this is a factory tint?

Yes, it DOES matter what factory it came from. Cars sold in the US must conform to federal regulations in order to be sold in the US, so it's impossible for a car to be built in a factory and legally sold in the US which is illegal to drive on US roads. No, states cannot override federal regulations.

I live in a state which has extremely lax gun ownership and open carry laws. I guess I should just be able to ignore all other state firearm laws when I travel based on your logic.

Not quite what you're getting at, but there is a Federal law known as the Peaceable Journey Law:

Notwithstanding any other provision of any law or any rule or regulation of a State or any political subdivision thereof, any person who is not otherwise prohibited by this chapter from transporting, shipping, or receiving a firearm shall be entitled to transport a firearm for any lawful purpose from any place where he may lawfully possess and carry such firearm to any other place where he may lawfully possess and carry such firearm if, during such transportation the firearm is unloaded, and neither the firearm nor any ammunition being transported is readily accessible or is directly accessible from the passenger compartment of such transporting vehicle: Provided, That in the case of a vehicle without a compartment separate from the driver’s compartment the firearm or ammunition shall be contained in a locked container other than the glove compartment or console.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/926A

Surely you realize that window tint and guns are 2 completely different things, and that tint can't be taken out simply before entering a city when it's embedded in the window glass by the manufacturer right?

Land Rover does not tint the front window. NYC have no laws on tinting of rear windows. Either op is full of it, or there is more to the story OP is not letting on (NYC cops also don't generally threaten to take you and your family to the precinct for no reason)

Even if the money is lit on fire, the reduction in cars entering the city will be a huge benefit.

I just don't think the pricing is going to meaningfully impact the cars entering the city, nor is it going to reduce the main congestion of ride hailing vehicles on every inch of Manhattan street.

The charge is $23 peak / $17 off-peak. Existing city tunnel tolls are already $17ish.

The fact that Uber publicly supports congestion pricing tells you everything you need to know about how it's going to impact ride hail congestion of our city streets. https://www.uber.com/blog/new-york/uber-supports-congestion-...

There's already a measly $2.75 per ride fee added on for congestion, which is trivial given choosing an Uber vs subway costs $20-50 more than taking the subway.

Pricing always effects demand. If it’s not enough, double it next year. Keep doing it until you can have conversation in the greatest city in NA without being drowned out by car horns.

>We basically need a modern era Robert Moses to consolidate NYC DOT/MTA/Port Authority and whatever other agencies and bring us into the modern era.

Idk about that, maybe a less racist one.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_Broker

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...

Yeah, he was a terrible guy and all.

But stuff got built.

The current inability to build anything is almost a direct result. They delegated decision making to an alphabet soup of agencies at different levels of jurisdiction so it's impossible to get anything done.

Because there are so many agencies, you can't for example easily put in a busway because you need NYC DOT, MTA, NYS DOT, city council and mayor to all be on board.

Too many people have veto, so nothing gets done.

Living in NYC for long, it quickly becomes apparently the vast majority of our built infrastructure was built from 1930-1960 and has frozen in time since.

Another great example is the fact that the BQE cantilever is probably going to collapse before anyone can agree on how to replace it and do so.

So far we have reduced a lane to minimize wear & tear, reduced max tonnage for trucks going over it, and are installing advanced automated ticketing to ticket big trucks attempting to go over it.

That's well and good, but salt water corrosion and bureaucratic inertia are going to get some people killed at this rate. And let's not pretend it can simply be done away with. Where do we expect all the goods & services flowing in/out of the city via truck to go otherwise.. local roads through city streets.. how is this not a significantly worse outcome?

Right now we have a lot of vetos with different agendas - anti-car degrowrethers, NIMBY rich BK Heights owners praying on their lottery ticket if their park expands & view improves, and bureaucrats happy to not have to spend $BBillions to replace the thing.

Sometimes living in NYC feels like the opposite of an headline I once saw re: Japan & Italy, where their strategy was described as "Beautiful decline"... for NYC its Ugly Decline.

"I don't own a car" is often a mantra of folks who think we can simply do away with infra like the BQE for example. People live frictionless lives in their apps, clicking buttons and goods just magically appear at their doorstep. The gritty truth of how those goods get there is another story.

On another note, we apparently are incapable of putting trash in bins, for many reasons. One of which is that the DSNY unions would need to be negotiated with. So for our great push to reduce the rat infestation in the city, we've done the dumbest, least effective, most costliest stuff instead.

Rather than mandating containerized garbage or moving up trash collection times to be overnight, what did the city do? Mandate buildings put out trash after 8pm instead of 6pm. Mind you it's not picked up until 6am. So the rats have a 10 hour feast instead of a 12 hour feast, how does this make a difference?

And what is the cost? Every single building in the city now needs staff schedules shifted or expanded such that their super/porter/maintenance guy is around after 8pm to take out trash. For the city, it's "free", they don't have to budget anything. But for residents, its yet another cost of living with really no benefit.

The city’s density makes it impossible for everyone to own a car. So no, the default step shouldn’t be “let’s ensure all the Moses era car infrastructure is maintained.” Moses’s big mistake was not taking into account the idea that a majority of residents might own a car.

Want a good example of Moses’s lack of foresight. Look at photos from the 40’s. You know why they look so different? It’s not the people or the buildings. It’s that not every inch of the curb in the 40’s was dedicated to parallel parking (and fully used) like it is today.

Source: a guy who lives in BK and sits on the community board of one of the districts that the BQE runs through.

The city should abolish or extremely tax all on street parking. Then you could have sensible loading zones for deliveries and garbage containerizing.

That said… given how many trucks bring goods into the city, I don’t see how abolishing the BQE is remotely tenable.

Asking for truck-only transit routes does not necessitate a 6-lane BQE.

But that’s a good first step. Lot’s of other Moses era boondoggles also need to be re-imagined

The problem is no one is proposing tenable truck infrastructure when proposing "knock it down". We have dangerous enough roads all over the city, especially Brooklyn & Queens. Look at the tragedy recently in south Brooklyn. Keeping trucks/trade vans/people transiting the borough on a highway and off surface streets is beneficial.

There's lot of infrastructure & services I don't directly use that I don't demand be torn down. I am also aware that I indirectly use lots of infrastructure when I order goods online, buy groceries at the store, have a plumber service my sink, buy furniture, etc.

No one alive in the city today can say the BQE was suddenly foisted upon them.

I live right next to a bridge in the city, I'd have a better view, quieter life, and higher property value if they tore down the bridge. I work remotely so I don't even use it. I don't believe I have the right to tear it down though.

No one is asking for bridges to be torn down. But asking to maintain a 60 year old (at its youngest) 6 lane elevated highway through a city is costly (both in dollars and quality of life). So you need to examine what the end goal is.

Elevating (both literally and figuratively) car culture ain’t it.

Also, you aren’t getting rid of truck traffic on surface streets. They still need that last mile. Better traffic control designs on streets will go a longer way then shuttling all trucks to another superhighway in Brooklyn.

(Admittedly though, the situation is different in North NYC. The cross Bronx expressway needs to be re-examined, and a new, possibly larger route, for interstate trucking to CT, RI, and points North is needed.)

I fail to see the distinction between tearing down urban highways and tearing down urban bridges used by cars.

Obviously, the last mile is always going to be on the local road.. but do we want all those trucks going local surface road from the Verrazano to say Greenpoint or Bushwick?

Further, it seems a little too convenient to want highways you live near to be torn down but concede that the other highways far from your neighborhood are necessary, good and in fact.. need expansion?

Actually I’m advocating the removal of the cross-Bronx and something in a less dense area or a truck-only traffic pattern.

So not quite the same thing as what you are alluding too.

The hate for Robert Moses by alot of NYC transplants is similar to the hate alot of "IFLS" type people have for Thomas Edison; its misplaced and overplayed.

You're right, I can't really think of anything important built in NYC after ~1955 yet we have a multitude of agencies that are supposed to fix things. The new congestion fees will not be used to build anything useful, perhaps another almost meaningless pedestrian walkway that will somehow cost $10billion to make.

Yup the state of the subway infrastructure is worrisome.

I can hear China laughing at us right about now!

To be fair, London has looked at the platform screen doors thing a few times too and dismissed it as unaffordable.

New lines get PSDs but there doesn’t seem to be a realistic prospect of retrofitting existing ones any time soon.

And yet NYC having built only a handful of stations in the last 40 years, couldn't be bothered to include them even there.

I imagine the difficulty would be in ensuring that the train lines up exactly with the doors. In that cade, retrofitting would need to apply to the train and control system, not just the platform itself.

There in lies the rub. Doing things is always harder than not doing things. Agreed.

They built a new line on second Ave with cavernous station mezzanines and couldn’t be bothered with doors there either. Track, signals, trains were all new.

That's not the issue. Union Square on the Park Avenue line and the old South Ferry on the 7th Avenue line both had platform "gap fillers" installed decades ago that require the train to stop at an exact location each and every time:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/14th-street-union-square...

Every station has lining boards that the conductor must check before opening the doors to ensure that the entire train is stopped along the platform:

https://www.topic.com/conduct-yourself

London's Jubilee line extension had platform doors since it was opened in December 1999, but the upgrade to automatic train operation wasn't completed until 2011.

So for a long time, drivers had to manually stop the train at alignment points. This did cause occasional delays and problems, but it wasn't unworkable. As a passenger you did sometimes notice that the train doors weren't aligned perfectly with the platform doors. Now days, of course, it stops perfectly every time.

> We have subway lines & trains wired up for 1 man operation but run them staffed with 2 due to union work rules.

It's a city of 8M people. What's the difference between 1 and 2 here, really?

The inability to find efficiencies is what leads to ever spiraling costs.

And further we have worst of both worlds. We paid for tech infrastructure costs to support lower staffing but are still paying for all the full staffing.

But it's an absurd claim to make that this multi-billion dollar operation that carries millions of people isn't doing well because trains have one extra person on each train.

It’s a weird point, I don’t get it.

The argument is basically “NYC is flooded with transit money, but they can’t use it. Oh by the way, why are there 2 sub drivers?”

The issue OP is making is much larger than 1x or 2x on each train.

Please, let's not have another Robert Moses. Dude was power hungry scumbag

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