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Comment by tiffanyh | Hacker News Reader

> ’The city will charge $15 to passenger cars that enter the central strip of Manhattan, $24 to vans and $36 to buses and large trucks.’

Shouldn’t they charge progressive less the higher the occupancy is of the vehicle.

This pricing seems backwards to me.

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That depends on what they’re trying to address.

If the issue is primarily the presence of the vehicles themselves, it makes sense that larger vehicles take more space and cause more congestion.

If “congestion” also factors in pedestrians, then those larger vehicles are increasing congestion at a higher rate than smaller vehicles, both in terms of space taken by the vehicle, and number of humans entering the area.

I get what you’re saying, but I think there are a number of ways to make it make sense depending on what behavior they’re trying to alter.

The problem they are addressing is the MTA not having enough money. The solution is finding a politically acceptable way to address that. They’ve already raised subway fares.

If you want to maximize passengers per 'vehicle space' this is the pricing you use. While the van costs more, the per-passenger price is less at capacity. The only other option is to charge based on actual passenger count (with the price being lower per-passenger as you have more passengers).

If they were to charge less for larger vehicles, people would buy larger vehicles just for carting themselves around regardless of number of passengers, which would increase overall congestion.

They should charge like $100 / number of passengers, with cheaper exceptions for very small cars and motorbikes. Then if you fill a four passenger car, it’s only $25 for the car, but a dude in a sports car by himself pays the full charge. Busses and bigger vans are pretty much free. Delivery vehicles can afford to pay the full cost of doing business. Even better if you charge by car class, so larger vehicles are more expensive.

The infrastructure to count passengers would be either a security nightmare because of the surveillance requirements or a inefficient mess where you have to stop for some person to manually see how many people are in the car.

The system they are describing is better.

Fwiw, California's new toll expressways do this - counts people in the car at speed, and charges different rates based on that - so the technology already exists.

Oh for sure, I don't think the tech is hard or impossible to implement. But you are describing a pretty invasive surveillance system.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, they require toll transponders, some having a switch saying whether you have one, two, or three or more occupants. I don’t know how they would catch cheaters, if at all.

Edit: Apparently the highway patrol is notified of carpools they should watch in passing.

California's system only cares about 1, 2, or 3+ passengers. The counting is primarily done with a transponder that is set by the driver (and a display is shown so the highway patrol can catch violators). At toll booths, they also snap photographs from the sides to catch violators. It is not only far from perfect, but wouldn't be useful if you actually need to know the exact number of passengers in (say) a van or bus.

That is progressively less per person even though it's not less per vehicle.

More people can fit in a truck than in a car?

Trucks are more expensive because they take up more space. The comment I responded to was asking why higher passenger vehicles cost more.

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