The new toll to drive into Manhattan won't change much by itself
vice.com
vice.com
Also, I think there’s some fallacious reasoning going on here as if congestion pricing by itself will not help unless timed to exactly coincide with other projects completing. It can as long there’s slack in the system (there is) and it doesn’t need those other projects to be done before it starts helping.
The MTA certainly overpays for projects but that is a much easier problem to point out than to fix. It ties into a huge and longstanding corruption/graft scheme, that has in practice a lot of public support, that you can’t just fix overnight.
He's not spelling out how he'd prefer they repurpose the new funding stream, but he's right that the new projects are expensive window dressing on a burning house.
I just don't buy this. The city could easily afford to just foot the bill with the economic traffic it drives. It's just a non-problem they trot out to work people up.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/05/nyregion/mta-fare-evasion...
If I apply your logic to all taxes, maybe if none of us paid them, we could expect to see a compensatory rise in economic activity? Doesn't hold water. This is a relatively new problem, and it's costing the city big money.
Whereas you see all government revenue as going into a single fungible bucket, and some people with your view may believe that recovering $700M of additional fare revenue is both practicable and necessary.
It's really more of a question of "who pays", in my opinion. I personally think any revenue system with low overhead is a good one.
Ahh, I was imagining a Final Destination scenario
I felt like the core of the article was that NYC had ignored an established pattern (outlined in a report[1]) that suggests that, for this to work like they want, they would need to increase non-car ways of getting into and around the city. I also thought the article did a good job of talking about how the legally relevant metrics are focused on financial targets rather than transit targets.
I do think this kind of article is hard to write clearly, but I do not think what you said is in conversation with the content of the article. I can see why they are worried that congestion pricing must fund new capital projects (i.e. expansion) instead of the existing system. You didn't mention that in your critique and I'm curious because it feels like a central point of the article.
I also do not think this article was exactly criticizing the MTA for overpaying? More than it was noting that it HAD overpaid to situate the reader as to the MTA's current financial situation.
[1] https://rpa.org/work/reports/congestion-pricing-in-nyc#key-f...
NYC already has the most non-car ways of anywhere in the country by a long shot. Subways, trains, buses. Taxis, Ubers, CitiBike.
What on earth more improvements do they want?
Even with all that crowding there are still parts of cars that everyone avoids because Adams’ NYPD won’t do its job.
And trains can be ramped up and down mostly in response to demand, no? It's not a question of underlying track capacity, is it?
I mean I've never heard of someone driving from NJ to NY instead of taking the train because the train was too full. It's usually the opposite -- they take the train instead of the car because the traffic is too slow.
Still, congestion pricing seems like the best solution even for right now. Reducing car traffic underneath the Hudson means buses can run faster and we can add more of them, since that's literally the only short-term solution.
By a long shot? Those, or an equivalent, are pretty standard in all major cities.
(Lime/Spin rental scooters are in the same category as rental bicycles, imo)
I agree with you in principle that you can rent a scooter or get an Uber in LA, but it's much more expensive in general to get around. You can blame it entirely on the lower density, but it doesn't change the fact that NYC is the only major city in the US with less than half of residents owning a private vehicle.
I'm not claiming that other cities are NYC. There's only one NYC. But there are cities, even in the US, where there's an urban core that has useful "Subways, trains, buses. Taxis, Ubers, CitiBike" or equivalent.
Try:
* Seattle
* Boston
* Chicago
* Washington, D.C.
* San Francisco
* Philadelphia
* Baltimore
* Denver
* Portland
* Atlanta
* Minneapolis-St. Paul
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
How do you spend that much money and make things worse? The MTA isn’t just incompetent, it’s world-historically incompetent. Tens of millions of people’s lives would be significantly better if it was only as corrupt and incompetent as a typical metro system in Southern Europe
https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7gxa4/pba-card-police-court...
> “That was probably the tightest spot I could've been in,” Mike said. “Because [the offense] could've been ‘driving without a plate,’ ‘driving with no registration…’" By driving on the shoulder, too, Mike was driving illegally in at least three different ways.
> Despite that, he felt confident as the cop approached his car and told him to roll down his window. Instead of pulling out his driver’s license, Mike simply introduced himself and produced something better. “I just basically happened to have one of their PBA cards on me,” he said, referring to the small, plastic "courtesy" cards issued by the Police Benevolent Association, which usually have an officer’s name, phone number, and signature on the back.
and openly flaunt parking laws: https://twitter.com/NYPD_Parking
Other evasions are actual crimes. Like all those fake paper plates—-criminal possession of a forged instrument.
It’s probably because as another commenter said not worth their time.
Seems like NYC has been battling this for years.
https://m.youtube.com/results?search_query=Fake+plates+new+y...
I vaguely remember some YouTube vlogger that would walk around and spot the fake/modified/obstructed plate. One obstruction was a leaf. That doesn’t even begin to include the probably illegal tinted covers.
Anyway, what isn’t they are so busy doing? It’s definitely not arresting shoplifters, fare evaders, public deficaters, or those that engage in aggressive solicitation.
The DA won’t prosecute any of those crimes unless it is large enough to be I the news and then it’ll be thought about.
Why spend time on crimes that are not going to prosecuted? Even with violent crime we see the offender walk right back out to the streets.
The bigger question is why isn’t the DA prosecuting these crimes?
https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-immigration-illinois-d...
Having been to Asia where you could get anywhere with public transport, it's wild to see the dichotomy in many western countries.
It’s ironic that many of the people most in favor of aggressively promoting transit (I.e. via aggressive measures like banning cars) are also the same that impede the safety and clean parts from happening. Instead they just handwave peoples’ concerns saying “oh that crazy psycho raving about murdering everyone in the subway car is really harmless. You should be worried about the thousands of people cars murder every day instead!”
Also, despite their amazing transit systems, many people in Asia still aspire to own a private car.
Nor the third!
Allow only delivery vans to operate between say 4am - 10am.
With rest of the time for cafes, bars, restaurants etc to open on the streets.
https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/congestion-charge
Restricting all vehicles except some/all during some part of the morning is often how pedestrian streets operate in Europe, but this is usually a much smaller area.
It wouldn't be surprising in a few years that they'll charge by the streets you entered, or the calculated emissions produced by your vehicle.
(Note I have never visited NYC, on the bucket list)
The point is we don't want nor need private cars in central Manhattan. A simpler solution would be eliminating street-side parking, but that's a political hot potato.
We all have dreams. If only.
Living in the big city is not a frog boiling operation. These rules are pretty simple: cars are silly in dense environments. It's in the first paragraph.
"... charge private vehicles..."
Note: I am not a car freak. I'm a solarpunk guy, I'd rather have Futurama style tubes, or VTOL vehicles anytime!
But paying for horrendous traffic jams clearly shows to me that public transport isn't up to snuff.
There is a question there about should the people already there have to accomodate people who want to live elsewhere and still enjoy the ammenity of the big city.
I personally err on the side of the people who live in the suburbs shouldn't dictate the built form to the people who live in the city.
It is admittedly an awkward to do a proper 'transition' from cars in less dense areas to transit stations. in ways that parking lots and garages alone leave some problems.
Nobody from NYC visits rural Idaho expecting a 24/7 subway system to be provided for them.
People take transit method A if it's better than transit method B no matter how shitty A is in absolute terms. And the US has invested 50 years into car infrastructure so it's pretty good actually. For example, Tokyo has a famously good public transit system and 70 minute one way commute time on average. NYC is half that.
Edge cases and laziness. For two thirds of my trips, I can and do take public transportation. For the remaining third, I'm some combination of lazy, needing to maintain a phone call or going between points inadequately served by public transit.
I was in NYC yesterday. I had a somewhat heavy carryon and had to deal with a few too many staircases. I could not determine where the elevators and escalators were easily. I am sure that information exists, but countless subway stations are inaccessible. Buses are far more accessible.
If they need to drive in that badly to the only city in the US with a world class public transport system then they can pay for it.
The transit access/walkability of NYC gives it a LOT of leeway to squeeze some money out, especially with how expensive everything has gotten.
What’s getting worse and worse is rent …
Also note that this only effects poor people in any significant way.
How? There are discounts for the poor [1]. Those in the trades can add it to their bills. And there are precious few poor Manhattanites living within the congestion-charge zone who also have a car. (Parking a car in Manhattan is like renting another bedroom.)
[1] https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2023/05/09/mta-will-offer-conges...
Simply not true. The poor don’t drive into the city. They can’t afford cars, and even if they could, they can’t afford to park them.
This will most heavily affect taxi riders and city employees who park illegally and so don’t have to worry about paying, if they don’t just evade the rules by illegally obscuring or removing their license plates. Which they will—-secure in the fact that the NYPD will never do anything and even if they do OATH will have their backs.
I can buy that excuse in SF which has a lot of poor exurban car commuters by necessity, but NYC has a much bigger public transit network and parking is even more scarce and expensive in Manhattan than in SF (so unless you’re just taking a shortcut through Manhattan, which this is intentionally penalizing, you’re going to be paying a lot for parking anyway and are probably already wealthy).
I've lived in NYC as well as upstate NY and I can tell you for a fact that my friends with cars in university statistically speaking were from Long Island. Total anecdata, but you can look at the actual demographics of who owns private vehicles in NYC and what economic class they belong to. It sounds like the results may surprise you!
However, the more pressing issue is whether the existing democracy is inherently designed to marginalize those below a certain economic threshold. I think it is.
BIG claim. Especially because, obviously, all poor people and only poor people drive in NYC. Citation needed.
Any time an article compares government financing to your household finances, you can stop reading. The author is either misinformed, being disingenuous, or both.