I agree that this will likely have a good outcome in the end but something about it just seems wrong to me.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/25/nyregion/mta-congestion-p...
You can answer this question by looking at the existing service.
Are the trains crowded, unreliable, and/or running over capacity? In that case it would be better to spend the extra money on upgrading the service. Or is the service good but not enough people are using it? In that case it may be better to use the money to reduce ticket prices.
Whatever gets more people to ride the trains is going to be the best solution.
> The MTA said money from congestion pricing makes up more than 50% of funding for the agency’s capital program
Presumably, those specific things can now get back underway:
> Projects that rely on the funding include modern signaling on the A train to Far Rockaway, more ADA-accessible stations and phase two of the Second Avenue subway.
[0] https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/transit/2024/02/16/mta-halt...
But that's meaningless; since capital funding from the congestion pricing lockbox will just displace debt issuance, so it's effectively just taking pressure off the operating budget, which is where the current federal funding is going.
I’m for congestion pricing but NJ trains and buses are not going to benefit from this.
I will benefit personally as a NJTransit bus rider by, I hope, having a shorter bus ride (more time to do work and see family) since I sit in 1-2 hours of commuter car induced traffic several days a week
As an NJ resident, I very much look forward to this congestion pricing and wish it were $50 instead of $15...
Like you say though, it's complicated. Especially when you have New York and Jersey City that in a lot of ways are almost one city that happens to be in two states.
However the where you live part is over-emphasized IMHO.
Reminds me of ye olde window tax.
And the transit options are laughable. It's great for the people served by BART or Caltrain, but there are a lot of people far enough from a station to make it less than useful for them. So even with the traffic, they make the entirely logical choice to spend 2 hours commuting rather than 4.
Lazy weapons against problems are just barely better than sort-of-bad solutions. But if you look in the long term, the lazy weapons scorch the earth so that better solutions can't come along.
Citation needed. All studies I have seen suggest that congestion pricing achieves its desired outcomes of reducing car traffic and is the most effective way of doing so.
It's not effective. It's just prohibitive. Prohibiting people stops things, who would have guessed.
Congestion charges or tolls are a good way to put a price on the resource and make market mechanisms work.
Then the resources can be used for whatever produces the greatest benefit (and thus is willing to pay the most for use of the resource), and the tolls obtained can pay to address the externalities.
If 150k people want to go, it's usually better that the 100k people who value the road the most get through quickly, instead of having a random 110k get through after a large traffic jam.
You seem to misunderstand the problem.
Market mechanisms allocate resources better than "whomever is willing to endure the worst conditions" does.
Here, it's a pseudo-static value chosen to try and push the roads to the highest throughput capacity. (There is some variation by time of day, but not by actual demand).
It has a lot to do with market mechanisms. This is stuff that's within the capability of a high school student to perform a reasonable analysis about after a semester-long class.
No, it might take a high schooler to read too much into it and pluck things out of thin air though.
It's okay if you genuinely think prohibiting something is effective at providing people with more effective usage of that thing. You'll be wrong though.
Have you ever seen a city with congestion charge have all traffic vanish? :P
> Car number go up, price go up. Bing bong
As already mentioned by me, to you, above: there are lots of roads with dynamic pricing with this exact characteristic. But there's a tradeoff to be made between having a simple charge and by having fancy dynamic pricing.
> It's okay if you genuinely think prohibiting something is effective at providing people with more effective usage of that thing.
Charging for something != prohibiting.
There's already a lot of costs driving into the city (including the opportunity cost of being stuck in traffic). Adding a charge can make driving cheaper for people who have a high value on driving (because they value their time).
It's just another way to prohibit. That's the whole basis of fines in traffic violations. Not to discourage, but to prohibit most people.
Sorry if you can't understand that even after all this.
Does the opportunity cost of driving fall if traffic decreases?
Is there an optimum amount of traffic on a given roadway for society?
Does society reach that optimum value on its own?
Does the current system (first come, first serve, best-effort) appropriately prioritize traffic with vastly different economic values and priorities appropriately?
Presumably to get less traffic you need to make the choice (to drive a car into the city) less attractive. Making it cost more would seem to do that.
Of course $15 is not enough, because while that will act on the "unattractive" side, there will then be less traffic, which will the increase the "attractive" side. The toll will need to increase to find the balance where it dwarfs the no-traffic convenience.
This is how I played out in London for example. Traffic has been reduced, but the connection charge is quite high.
Which is fine, those who want the convenience, and feel it offers good value for money can use it. And public transport (busses) is faster.
To get less traffic you need to make sure the roads are good enough to hold the amount of cars that come, or are designed in such a way that those cars don't go far or don't stop (hard). Public transport is a great way at reducing cars which may reduce traffic.
Putting a price on travel does not effectively manage traffic. It just chops traffic off. If we put a price on a bunch of stuff and stopped people enjoying the benefits of things that way, we'd also see sharp declines in whatever we wanted.... never because it is effective though.
Claiming a chopped off arm is good healthcare is a great falsehood to run with since it's easy, but it's not right. Instead of pushing that propaganda, let's actually mend the broken arm.
There's already a price on travel-- the opportunity cost of waiting in traffic.
Putting a congestion charge in place may reduce the total price on travel for the people who need it the most.
Not to mention the externalities of vehicle traffic, which strengthen the case for a charge even more.
https://www.intelligenttransport.com/transport-news/143883/l...
https://www.oecd.org/climate-action/ipac/practices/london-s-...
On top of that, make transit faster and more frequent so people look at driving & transit directions side-by-side and see that there's not much difference time-wise. This is already true for many trips inside NYC.
Your suggestion of dropping the cost just means the transit agency would have to make up the cost elsewhere - any suggestions? General revenues backed by a tax hike? Shifting burden of track construction and maintenance fully to tax-funded?
However, in 'failed states', where the government presumably doesn't subsidize anything, you often find independent minibus operators zooming around town, carrying ~20 passengers each, offering in aggregate a very good public transit service, charging a few coins adding up to barely more than the fuel cost for the bus.
How come poor nations and failed states can manage to provide good public transit so so much cheaper than anyone else?
By using badly maintained, very old vehicles, with low to no enforced standards of operations for safety.
By operators exploiting themselves because of only coarsely tracked costs and low level of reserves.
By not having to conform to strict schedules and not providing service in off hours, only when good business is expected. This makes the infrastructure virtually nonexistent, hurting the general economy by limiting the possibilities of those having to take these forms of public transport.
By applying demand based pricing, for example when working off hours charging more to cover the running costs which are split among less users.
By not working for peanuts, it is your false perception because you have far more income (and disposable income) than those who have to live on incomes local to that area. If PPP adjusted it is often quite a sum.
Just to name a few factors. In general well run welfare states, or at least moderately well run authoritarian states (also having some welfare aspects many Americans would probably call communism) tend to have good public transport, for different reasons, and share taxis are generally not considered a good public transit.
Let's also not ignore outright gang/mob style affiliation of minibus transit organisations that will then also actively sabotage government public transport on their post profitable routes.
These private entities in the third world fill a role, but often are also rent-seeking and carve it out for themselves from a government without the willpower to A) build proper public transit infrastructure and B) defend it from bad actors.
My memory was that the car had many warning lights on and turned off while we were driving. Somehow he was able to restart it without it being in park while we were coasting.
It was extremely cheap.
NYC actually has an analogue to this! (Had? I’m not sure how many of these routes survived covid)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_vans_in_the_New_York_...
From memory, a politician claimed a few years ago that 40 km of highway was about as much as 1 JSF (~$110mln). Let's pretend that that is a rough proxy for what maintenance of NYC's streets & public parking would cost.
How often do you have to fillerup before you've spent about $100mln in fuel taxes?
I agree, but at least this makes them relatively correct, if not absolutely.
It’s a worse fix. Studies prove that you have to make driving harder. Sticks work better than carrots.
It's surprising whenever these conversations come up that many seem to miss the extensive body of lessons that can be taken from the research and practice already done around the world. Is it a kind of "Not invented here" sort of thing?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randstad
Density is pretty similar as well.
We call both "city" but we might as well use 2 totally unrelated words given the differences.
As the other commenter said, NYC metropolitan area would be more comparable - 8936 km2, 19.5M people.
Many people in the Netherlands also need to drive and the system supports this while also offering alternatives. Many people means diverse needs indeed, so the reliance on and the defaulting of car travel runs counter to many of those needs.
People in the Netherlands made it hard to drive through their cities, which led to more people not driving. In NYC it's going to lead less people driving too, but still a massive clusterfuck on the roads that will be only worse if the solution of the Netherlands is implemented there.
It did not work in the Netherlands either; in fact, after WW2, they imported “traffic planners”, i.e. people who want — and create! — traffic from the US, and set out to destroying their old city centers to create highways etc, until people said: enough!
To a greater or lesser degree, similar solutions work in Copenhagen, and in some German cities, and are starting to work in Paris, once one of the most car-crazed cities in Europe, and in other places.
I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m just saying that it can be done. It sure takes a lot of work, but it can be done.
To be clear, I'm not saying preserve the status quo. I just don't think the changes the cities you listed made have any chance to work in NYC. Most notably, all of these cities existed way before NYC and we're built with limitations of medieval technology. All the changes you mention are just rollbacks to last working state.
NYC is a new city built with comparatively godlike tech applied without restraint. The NYC-style solution "I guess I'll just commute by helicopter, no problem putting another skyscraper right here" was incomprehensible to the rich people who built the European cities - they had to go a little further away if they wanted their quiet comfortable life.
America is exceptional - in the literal sense, it's an exception compared to organically grown cities that existed for hundreds of years. It doesn't mean it's better, it's just very different and so naturally the solutions are going to be very different too.
I have no idea, can you share specifically why you think autoluw only works for certain levels of population per square kilometer? To the point that the lessons couldn't be adapted and would have to be "very different?"
There's also the problem of mass transit - you can't simply have enough bus/tram lines to cover people's needs if you have so many people who need to go everywhere around the city at one place. You'd have to build an incredibly number of subway lines like Chinese cities have, which is a huge investment.
Mine would be a tenth or less. When I lived in NYC the only people I knew who commuted by personal car in Manhattan were people who made mid-six-figures and lived in some NJ/Westchester suburb. Everyone else took the train/subway.
Beats me, I haven't been there since the late 90s. If 90% of the people who drive personal cars are rich people who can afford it, it's just a tax that doesn't accomplish anything (except revenue generation and keeping the poor/middle 10% off the road) because they will most likely be annoyed but not deterred.
It will hurt the Uber drivers and delivery drivers and whatnot too. Probably tourists as well. I wonder if the city will keep metrics up to see how well it's working. Maybe I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem well thought out.
Why just Manhattan you think? I guess it's where are the businesses are.
> I wonder if the city will keep metrics up to see how well it's working.
Certainly they've talked about tracking travel times before and after, but I think the real test will be the long-term changes in land value. My guess is that eventually land value in car-dependent communities in the NYC metro area will decrease relative to those with transit access.
> It will hurt the Uber drivers and delivery drivers
That is a reasonable hypothesis, but I'm sure we'll find out. I would wager that the reduced travel time will allow drivers to make more deliveries which will make up for the daily $15 fee. In the end, the market will decide.
> Why just Manhattan you think?
That's where the supply/demand imbalance seems most acute. Well, there and many of the brides which we should be charging for as well. Any place that becomes gridlocked on a regular basis should probably have a price applied to ensure efficient utilization.
Finally, if we're worried that this fee is regressive, I think a better solution would be to use some of the funds to make the state income tax even more progressive. Subsiding driving for a small number of poor and middle class drivers seems less fair and efficient than letting people keep more of their money at tax time.
For example:
- many people are afraid to ride bicycles because they are (justifiably) afraid of being run over by cars
- separated bike lanes cannot be created because the space is already used for parking spaces for cars
- street level trolleys or buses can move people very efficiently, but when cars block their path, they are slowed to the same pace as the traffic jam
I could go on and on and on. Unless you take back the space used for cars, it is very difficult to make space for anything else.
This is a daily occurrence in some parts of the city. Notice how unfazed everyone is by it, but also how untenable it would be to someone with a wheelchair, walker, stroller, or frankly anyone who isn’t young and thin and nimble.
Look at the height of the hood of that car, the driver would not even see a teenager trying to cross
Every single time I thought to myself I'm about 10lbs of foot pressure away from having my legs broken by a car.
They absolutely have a choice where their car goes. They've got a gas pedal, a brake pedal, and a steering wheel don't they?
If they can't clear the intersection they have no business entering it.
> If they decide not to move until there is a car length of free space on the other side, cars behind them will honk up a storm.
That's a problem with the car behind them. You shouldn't break the law because someone is honking at you.
> Ticketing them would effectively just be a stochastic congestion tax anyway.
Good.
(Personally I avoid driving and biking in midtown these days because I am uncomfortable breaking the law, but when I do have to choose between following the law and operating safely I choose the latter.)
In heavy urban traffic, it is impossible to know if you can clear the intersection before entering it. You can often predict it with some degree of accuracy, but only if you are already familiar with this particular intersection; forget about out of towners being able to make that judgment.
It is clearly not fiscally better, and its probably not better in terms of speed of induced behavior change. The best mix is probably some of both; make transit better and make driving more expensive so that people who have preconceptions about transit nevertheless feel that the absolute cost of driving (not the cost delta of driving vs. transit) is sufficient that it is not worth the trip without taking transit despite their prejudgement against it.
If you could multiply by 10 the number of people using public transport without changing the number of cars on the road, would the car make less noise, or pollute less, or take up less space? I don't see how.
So the two policies we are discussing really are:
- reduce the number of people using cars by making using cars directly more expensive
- reduce the number of people using cars by making using cars indirectly more expensive, by lowering the cost of the alternatives and funding this extra cost _somehow_ (taxing everyone whether they use cars or not?)
It seems to me that solution 2 is potentially less effective, definitely way more complex and basically make everyone pay rather than just car users.
Of course if the goal is either to be ineffective (just subsidy transit but don't make me abandon my car) or shield car users from most of the cost (create an expensive solution to reduce car usage by making everyone pay, not just car users); then sure, it's better.
If ppl drive more than use transit, they won't support improvements to transit. This is the first step to improving transit. Make driving less attractive, more ppl use transit, complain about its shortcomings, and then fixes get implemented.
I also don't see why we shouldn't make driving less attractive. As the grandparent comment said, drivers should be the ones paying for the problems caused by drivers, not residents.
Id rather have the train ride cost be lowered. Its too high now. Have you factored the price of riding late to work? Or maybe new clothes due to a car with a homeless stink that wont go ? What about the cost of a hospital bill after getting sucker punched in the face?
Sorry. Train is too expensive. Driving is irrelevant.
I'd be very surprised if the risk of an expensive injury wasn't significantly when higher driving vs. taking the train. Surely driving must be riskier? It's one of the riskiest things modern humans do. Maybe the NYC traffic is bad enough that you're never going a dangerous speed?
Inside Manhattan this is almost certainly true. In a modern car you're going to walk away from almost all crashes under about 40 mph.
Maybe that is a 1/1000000 shot, but it is MUCH more horrifying than thinking about getting in a car crash at 40 mph.
Meanwhile I personally know multiple people who died, mangled in a car after an accident. I know multiple people who have survived but were in bad accidents where at least one person was injured. I know multiple people who were pedestrians and cyclists who were properly using the streets and were hit by cars requiring hospital visits, and indirectly know of several people who have died being legally in the right cycling on the streets.
You're way more likely to be seriously harmed or killed even just being around a car than you are riding a train or subway.
Statistics will not capture 10% of the harrasment people put up with daily.
New yorkers have some massive Stockton Syndrome with what they are used to. Some will argue that if you complain about human feces on the train, maybe you should go back to Ohio, I see it daily.
As someone who lives & works in the Bronx, I haven't encountered any harassment in the Bronx lines. Pretty much every negative experience I've had on any subway line has been in Manhattan.
Metal detectors at every station entrance , mental health screening prior to boarding perhaps?
This is actually the perfect example of car-brain mentality, you can totally ignore huge social issues, ugly and dirty streets, etc. because you are insulated from them and are just driving past. If you had to walk through that area, that would not work.
If wealthy and influential people could not isolate themselves from the problem, maybe they would actually fix the problem
Maybe the leadership of the city should daily take the NY subway - without their personal security. And then write a bond of guarantee for the public.
You are describing tragedy of individual action. Similar story to protesting in Russia. Or using a bicycle instead of a car. Or perhaps climate change, and a few others
NYC pays out BILLIONS every year in real and garbage claims.
> The residents "dealing with the costs" also need things delivered
This generally works in favor of people within the congestion zone, because time is money and delivery drivers can do far more deliveries per hour.
> or a ride to the places mass transit doesn't support
Residents of Manhattan below 59th can easily take one of the above-mentioned transit options to get to Jersey City, Queens, Brooklyn, or Harlem, and get in an Uber or Zipcar from there. But if someone needs to do this most days, perhaps they shouldn't be living in Manhattan.
So "not in Queens", then? Jesus Christ.
They're also tripping over themselves to kick every rent stabilized (and statistically-insignificant rent controlled) renter to the invisible corners of the city where their less career-blessed asses belong.
Land is unfortunately limited. Someone else is willing to pay more for the space than I am.
I understand moving sucks and prices in areas change, but this is still an area where a functioning market is better on whole.
I hear you but for most people that translates to "don't be born there". Most of the same people who would tell you if you can't afford it move out are the same people who think NYC should be a sanctuary city for illegal immigrants because they were born in unfortunate circumstances and desire a better life.
I've moved in and out of NYC several times and each of those moves ended up costing between 5k and 10k in expenses. Broke people can't afford that shit.
We need ‘some’ method to allocate residences, and price seems to be the best one we have.
Maybe give people $10k in loans to move out of NYC… they’ll more than save that money by committing from another state.
Some parts of Queens are better than others. But infrastructure changes (which is what this is) always results in people finding new jobs or new homes.
The only issue I have with any of this is when I want to LEAVE the city. I pay tolls on the way out and on the way in currently that get me close to $30. Now it's closer to $45 if I enter the zone.
I have to admit that's an expensive trip to leave and return to the city now. Might be nice if there were a discount for verified residents of Manhattan, but given existing issues with placard abuse throughout the NYPD I bet any exceptions would get abused to hell and back.
All I needed to read
In the same way returning a 429 is handling high usage of your service.
Though analogy is going to obfuscate things here due to externalities that vehicle traffic has.
Most of the cost of delivery is labor. If a congestion tax successfully decreases congestion, overall delivery costs may actually go down. A lot of last-mile deliveries are done by bike (not subject to the charge) anyway because they’re more efficient.
NYC is very mismanaged in terms of cars and parking. Double parking is the norm and the way the city deals with it is to use tickets as a form of rent. Every single delivery truck gets multiple tickets a day and I think they have some deal worked out that they prepay some amount of their tickets. So instead of solving the problem regarding delivery vehicles the city just lets them break the law and fines them.
None of this stuff is meant to be preventative . It's all about money.
Yes, this isn't uncommon. Besides the example you gave of developing new methods, if costs are high due to supply shortages causing production delays, then increasing the price of those supplies can lower overall costs if it results in higher and more predictable supply.
In the case of the supply shortage of NYC roadway space I do not know if $15 is high enough to lower travel times, but if it is then I can absolutely see it lowering delivery costs.
As a thought experiment, if someone built private tunnels throughout lower Manhattan that allowed drivers to bypass most traffic and charged $15 per day for access, what fraction of delivery drivers would choose to pay that versus sit in traffic and make fewer deliveries?
Yes. The key in this case is that you’re making a finite resource (road space) more expensive for everyone, forcing a more efficient use of that limited resource.
But to add on - congestion is not just a negative externality problem - it’s a policy problem to get a throughput of people to a location that the road infrastructure cannot support and therefore must incentivize people to a new transportation method which I’m not sure has a solution outside of economic incentives (New York’s solution) or strict regulation (Beijing with no drive days based on license plate number). No solution is perfectly equitable or efficient. But it’s a fun policy academic discussion with a lot of data! I am biased towards the economic incentives based on studies of the two.
Humans are not rational (As we know), behavior cannot always easily be predictable.
It’ll only affect working class people who commute by driving for whatever reason. As usual the actual rich won’t care. The majority of NYers don’t even own a car. So it’s mostly tourists and people from outside the city (plus ride share/taxis) who are driving.
It broadly shows there are rich and poor areas of London, but I don't know if it's better to be in the bottom 10% in London or New York.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personal...
It is my general observation that the "rich" areas suffer more from traffic congestion and pollution, because more people own cars and more of those cars tend to be giant diesel Range Rovers and such. In the east it seems like while there are still a lot of parked cars everywhere, people don't actually drive them around as much, choosing the bus/train/bike/feet more often for everyday travel.
Also worth remembering that even the "poor" parts of London are still pretty rich by overall UK standards.
In addition to the central congestion charging zone, London also has an additional £12.50 low-emission zone (ULEZ) charge targeted at older, higher-polluting vehicles. The ULEZ has now expanded to cover all of Greater London.
It was the obvious thing to do for Europeans visiting a metropolis.
In terms of impact, this is closer to putting congestion pricing on everything inside of M25.
This is only lower Manhattan.
You’re right. It’s lower and midtown Manhattan. That said, it doesn’t include most of Manhattan let alone New York City.
The core question is what someone who won’t pay $15 and refuses to not drive into the city during its most congested hours is bringing to the table. That is harsh. But it is a trade-off a city must make with its limited resources.
As someone who hasn't owned a car in well over a decade, but lives in NYC and pays for things here -- and yes, even takes the occasional taxi when the MTA sucks -- this is what I resent. Setting aside the corruption and incompetence of the MTA (which we should absolutely not set aside), this is little more than a regressive tax on the people who live here, dressed up like anti-car activism.
I'm unclear on how that's supposed to work, though. There are a lot of avenues crossing 61st. Are they going to put tolls on all of them?
I guess that could work, since it's all EZ-Pass anyway. But it does imply that there are going to be some people who take the Queensboro Bridge (paying the Central Business District Toll), but head to the Upper East Side. Then when they leave, they'll have to pay the toll to enter the CBD again to take the bridge home.
I'm not sure how this compares to Manhattan's zone in terms of area.
There's no clean comparison of Manhattan to a portion of London, but just in terms of land area it's about 10% of NYC, and in terms of population it's around 20% (so maybe divide each by half to get the impact of this new rule). More importantly, almost every way to enter or exit the city by car is covered by this new toll. That's definitely not true in the case of the CoL congestion tax.
https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2019/05/19/congest...
(Many websites have similar comparisons.)
As a percentage of the whole, the City of London is trivial, whereas this "congestion district" is about half of Manhattan (even more if you account for central park).
That's incorrect. All of the bridges and tunnels other than GW and Randall's Island (RFK) enter or exit from this new zone. With this new plan, literally all of the ways to get to Manhattan by vehicle will now have a toll. Some will have two.
I suppose if you're willing to take the tiny bridges from the Bronx into Harlem you can still get around tolls, but good luck with that.
I’m not counting the Brooklyn Bridge, etc, because I was replying to your “ways to enter the city.” The topic as I understood it was “will you pay this toll if your final destination isn’t Manhattan,” and the answer is “Not unless you’re coming from certain parts of New Jersey, and even then you’ve got choices.”
> The City of London, London's ancient core and financial centre − an area of just 1.12 square miles (2.9 km2) and colloquially known as the Square Mile − retains boundaries that closely follow its medieval limits.
Greater London, in total, is larger than Los Angeles.
https://mapfight.xyz/map/los.angeles/#london
https://www.londoninfoguide.com/how-big-is-london-uk.html
The congestion charge is not for Greater London and the Manhattan toll is not for all of Manhattan.
I used the term Greater London to try to make the distinction. I failed you.
Since the toll and comparative congestion pricing are municipal concepts, the arbitrary sizes matter for the purposes of figuring out consequence. The post was not very illustrative, since I compared LA to London, as opposed to NYC to London. The greater LA area just happens to share arbitrary terminology to my choice of description, rather than specific relevancy.
timr is not correct, he is confidently wrong even if he makes the same claim several times in the discussion.
And you keep forgetting to say that London is 600 square miles, and Manhattan is about 20. They're also vastly different in terms of their connectivity to the outside world. The "London congestion area" is a tiny section of the middle of London. This covers almost every major ingress/egress into the island of Manhattan.
Monthly garage parking in midtown is like $800/month.
If you use OMNY there is a max you can be charged per week. Essentially all rides are free after your 12th ride per 7 day period. Since the cost of a ride on busses or subway is $2.90 that works out to a max of ~$35 per week for unlimited rides all over the city via train or bus.
I don't live in NYC anymore, but when I did I could never imagine owning a car given the financial burden not being justifiable, but obviously those that do have one are likely in a much higher tax bracket than I am, or are going there for business purposes.
Taking NJT one way is $6.75 for me. I also need to take a subway into the office (@$2.75/ride) to make it in on time so $19/day. One could buy a monthly pass at $184/mo or move to somewhere with PATH but for most people dropping $184/month is a lot of money for train tickets and most people who live in NJ need a car for life in NJ.
I don't think this is a good state of things. It would be great if we had plans to expand PATH or increase service times of NJT or build more housing next to NJT/PATH that normal people could afford but all of these seem very unlikely.
As someone who lives in NJ, I'd very much like to see this change. There's a ton of things within easy biking distance of my house, but no safe way to get there. Some decent bike infrastructure would go a long way.
I do still think that for most others near public transit it would still net less costly to use that than to drive given cost of parking and gas on top of these new fees.
However, this $15 charge is a floor. If you commute into the city by car, you're paying for parking and gas (if driving ICE) as well.
So, give it a chance and then ratchet up. $15 would certainly upset me.
I've seen conflicting studies - but in general I don't think poor people living around Manhattan have cars or are parking in Manhattan. Less than half of all people in NYC have cars.
I think this example isn't super clean, but it's closer to that than a tax on the poor or even middle class.
https://nypost.com/2022/06/07/off-duty-firefighter-saves-chi...
https://www.reddit.com/r/Firefighting/comments/w008we/do_you...
Firefighter gear is covered in PFAS and is highly carcinogenic. I don't want them bringing that shit on the subway, no way.
I'm sure they keep it in the trunk of their car or in their garage, etc.
Pricing lower-income folks people out of an activity entirely doesn't make it a "tax on the rich".
There are also exemptions for people who make less than $50,000 a year
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/27/nyregion/nyc-congestion-p...
It's not as progressive of a tax as a progressive income tax, but it is definitely a tax which will help coordinate behavior and will disproportionately be levied on the wealthy. If any policy that wasn't perfectly progressive could not be implemented, we couldn't have car registration fees, subway tolls, or sales taxes either.
The low income were already hurt and now its middle income.
Also, I live in a low-income neighborhood 1 mile from Manhattan. Many people have cars and use them for work and family. Transit can really suck the further out you are.
I'm pro-transit and am not a giant fan of cars. I use mine for transporting my work as well as some trips. Using Uber would maybe save me money if it was only me travelling short distances and the driver doesn't mind me loading paintings or sculptures in their car or SUV.
I don't even know if I disagree with the law but it's not going to stop the less wealthy from bearing the brunt of this. To act as if driving into Manhattan is purely an act of entertainment or easy choice is missing a million elements. What if your older disabled relative lives in Manhattan and can't take transit? Uber will cost more than the $15 even one way. What if you're unable to take transit and just want to visit someone in Manhattan? This is not a tax on the rich as the rich are maybe 1 in 10.
Thats not what a progressive tax means. I understand that you mean poor and middle income will drive less therefor pay less tax. But consider this: would it be a progressive tax if we had a 100% income tax rate on 0-$30,000? Same scenario - poor people would stop making anything therefore not pay taxes yet clearly this is a regressive, not progressive tax, right?
That comparison doesn't apply here. The average rich person will pay more taxes due to congestion taxes than the average poor person.
I realize the concerns about poor people if they have a car and continue to drive but poor people with a car in southern Manhattan are the exception. Parking already costs $15+ an hour there so it's really just commercial vehicles, tourists, cabs, and wealthy people. Not to mention the policy already has exceptions (admittedly, maybe annoying to file for) for those making under 50k
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/27/nyregion/nyc-congestion-p...
If rich people pay enough to keep driving on the roads frequently, funds (and maybe even space for buses/rail) can be reclaimed to make transit that much better. The rich people pay for the privilege of driving and transit riders get better service, a win/win.
NYC can't solve income inequality in the US. It's pretty much globally true that everything is better for rich people, everywhere.
I've seen rate quotes in Chelsea/West Village (which is where you'd be parking if you work at say Google or any Disney subsidiary) anywhere from $1200-2200/mo.
Going from 1 person of 200lb to 4 people totaling 800lb (in a 4,000lb car) increases the damage by less than an additional car (4,800 / 4,200) ^ 4 = 1.71
[1]: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/average-car-weight-140033718....
Incentivizing eco-friendly cars is great in general, but I think the two concerns in this case are best addressed separately.
Seems like it would help a lot.
e-bikes are fine though, and should in fact be encouraged somehow. They're a great form of personal transport in a dense city; they're very very common here in Tokyo these days.
And congestion I find an interesting one. Where I live, the city planners are trying to make it as hard as possible for people driving into the city, the idea being that people will just give up if driving even to a parking lot close to the city center sucks too much. However, it has always made me wonder: doesn't this strategy add to the congestion? Like, what if you made it instead super easy and fast to get to a parking spot - then your car would be off the road much faster and you'd produce less congestion, less noise, and less pollution.
The loudest noise is tire noise.
Clearly they don't want a source, it's just malicious ignorance. After all, if they really wanted to know it'd be far easier to click the "plus" button on their browser and ask DuckDuckGo.
So I'd recommend for next time, keep your clairvoyance to yourself (because I "clearly" did want a source) and while your add it, perhaps also your offences ("malicious ignorance").
Large diesel trucks produce a lot of pollution and noise. But those will take longer to electrify.
Sometimes it's also the occasional car with a kilowatt music system blaring at full power.
This is regular streets; expressways are noisier but few.
Regarding location, check the prices in hotels right on the Times Square; they used to be lower than in similar hotels a few blocks away. Times Squae can get really noisy, and stays bustling 24/7. Tourists value some quiet %)
It's not about city size; I live in Tokyo now, which is much larger than NYC, it's extremely rare to hear a horn honk here, even in the areas with heavier car and truck traffic. Horn honking is a cultural thing.
this isn't really true. EV brakes barely get any use because of regenerative breaking, and EV tires tend to be stiffer which mostly evens out the tires.
> Assuming lightweight EVs (i.e. with battery packs enabling a driving range of about 100 miles), the report finds that EVs emit an estimated 11-13% less non-exhaust PM2.5 and 18-19% less PM10 than ICEVs. Assuming that EV models are heavier (with battery packs enabling a driving range of 300 miles or higher), however, the report finds that they reduce PM10 by only 4-7% and increase PM2.5 by 3-8% relative to conventional vehicles. Additional simulations indicate that the uptake of electric vehicles will lead to very marginal decreases in total PM emissions from road traffic in future years. In scenarios where electric vehicles comprise 4% and 8% of the vehicle stock in 2030, their penetration reduces PM emissions by 0.3%-0.8% relative to current levels.
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/env-2020-311-en/index.ht...
Ignoring actual tailpipe emissions and focusing on large PM10 particles like dust kicked up from the road is not a serious evaluation of the benefits of EVs vs combustion engines
The most poorly understood urban planning concept by the general public is the idea of induced demand. Usually this is applied to freeway expansion, which inevitably ends up being just as congested as pre expansion.
However, induced demand can just as easily be applied to parking lots. Especially in NYC area, very few people who drive and park don't have an alternative. Those people only have so much tolerance for looking for parking, so limiting parking will push people on the margin to transit.
For the individual, driving will almost always be the best choice if you build endless parking and highways. But, it's not necessarily better for the collective to allocate our land and resources like that. Parking lots aren't free. In fact, they require a huge amount of space. You can fit more people in an apartment building with that space!
The reality in many cases is that walkers make up a substantial, if not majority of the business in these places (referring to denser town areas with parallel curbside parking rather than suburban strips with normal parking or actual parking lots)
People do not cover the cost of their commuter lifestyle.
you can make a point that charging drivers will impact the poor a lot more then others.
and another point you can make is that if anyone was actually interested in pollution then wouldn’t it have been better to restrict usage directly?
Reason is there are lots of lower income folks who live top far out to use public transport or need to drive for other reasons (hotdogs or bagel cart) that this would really negatively impact.
I'm a big proponent of no-fare subway's, but I don't think the MTA should just do that without a revenue source to replace rider fares. It would result in a completely broken subway system.
No, the MTA seems to be running with a substantial deficit right now: https://new.mta.info/budget/MTA-operating-budget-basics
Removing fare revenue would only exacerbate that as a large portion of their revenue comes from fares.
labor related costs seem sticky, and 58% is huge. I wonder how that compares to D.C. and other metros with automated systems.
a $3b cliff due to change of ridership is impressive, but doesn't common sense suggest fewer riders mean they don't need as much money?
Not necessarily. Consider: what would they cut? Run fewer trains? Reducing frequency has a huge negative effect on how convenient transfers are, which means you're likely pushing more riders away. (It can be the difference between hopping off one train and catching a new one 5 minutes later rather than 10 or 15 minutes later. Not a fun change in the middle of your trips!)
That can then lead to even less fare revenue... and you really don't want that, it's the infamous transit death spiral.
Or, what the hell, I don't live there anymore, so I'll give away my secret awesome free parking spot: under the Williamsburg Bridge east of Clinton St.
Residents will be mostly the ones paying these costs. Residents are not exempted.
I'm talking about from the Seaport all the way up to Alphabet City. I hope you've got strong legs.
Tangentially, this is one of the reasons that nearly-invisible corners of Manhattan like the eastern end of Cherry St and Water St still have serious crime problems today.
Honestly that whole stretch between Smith Houses and Vladeck Houses is pretty fucked.
And: The primary mode of transportation in New York City is rail. Only 6% of shopping trips in Manhattan involve the use of a car.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_in_New_York_Cit...
Everyone in my circle who lives in Boston/Cambridge owns a car.
FWIW, I lived in the city and worked in a suburb, and also was able to live car-free without issue. This was in the days before ride-hailing apps, so I imagine it'd be even easier now. (Not technically car-free, I know)
The most amazing part of that commute was that most of the commuters actually did a cross-platform transfer at North Station from the Newburyport/Rockport line to the Fitchburg line. Again, one reason it worked is that the conductors on the outbound train would hold a few minutes of the Newburyport train was late.
For instance, taking a bus to Golden Gate park from downtown isn't that fast. If you like to go to the park, it helps to have a car.
From personal experience, yes, it's strictly "faster" to take a car to the park from downtown unless you include going to the parking lot, picking up your car, finding a parking spot and then walking to where you're actually trying to go. From Powell it's 16 minutes by the N train every 10 minutes, followed by a 3 minute walk. I guess driving is technically 16, but you know, parking on either side. Or 23 minutes by bike.
Honestly, the fastest way between any two points in the city is a bike (or an e-bike, or scooter) at least 2/3 of the day.
Then you have the spiky "oops all traffic" and your drive gets exponentially longer while your bike commute (or metro, or bus ride with protected lanes) remains exactly the same length.
The kind of places a car actually unlocks (going out of town on weekends) are like $100 for a car rental vs depreciation, financing, tolls, registration, insurance, parking, fines, gas/charging, etc. That gives you a huge car rental and Uber budget. And rental cars are usually available at the same parking lots you'd normally be putting your car.
Don't forget about the time to actually get to the station either.
> Then you have the spiky "oops all traffic" and your drive gets exponentially longer while your bike commute (or bus ride with protected lanes) remains exactly the same length.
A cramped bus or train ride gets pretty miserable too. There's nothing fundamentally preventing bike congestion either, aside from bikes being miserable enough that they have a fraction of the usage.
> The kind of places a car actually unlocks (going out of town on weekends) are like $100 for a car rental vs depreciation, financing, tolls, registration, insurance, parking, fines, gas/charging, etc. That gives you a huge car rental and Uber budget. And rental cars are usually available at the same parking lots you'd normally be putting your car.
This must be somewhere between regional and bullshit. Looking it up, it seems like you'd expect to pay around $65/day + gas here for a rental. But then you need to consider availability (hope you didn't plan on going during holiday/vacation season!) and the practicalities of the rental process itself (picking up and delivering the car becomes its own full trip on its own, not to mention all the paperwork involved).
It's unpleasant but the bus/train will get there at about the same time it would with fewer riders, which is not the case for car congestion.
> There's nothing fundamentally preventing bike congestion either, aside from bikes being miserable enough that they have a fraction of the usage.
Because bikes are smaller and more nimble, it takes substantially more of them to have congestion in the same amount of space as it does with cars. A single stopped car in an 11-foot-wide lane will back up that lane; given the same amount of space cyclists will just go around.
I've been traveling in the Netherlands/Belgium the last few weeks and it's made the space taken up by cars extremely clear. On the streets where cars are restricted, there's a ton of space for pedestrians and cyclists - until a single car shows up, at which point it dominates the available space.
Check out Getaround or Turo. In major cities there's zero paperwork, the keys are in the car, and the car is parked in a parking lot a short walk from where you already are. They're very cheap and you can rent by the hour. There's a getaround parked in the white zone in front of my apartment building that's $53 per day.
Both seem to be very US-focused, and CA specifically.
> In major cities there's zero paperwork,
For a very narrow definition of major, perhaps.
> They're very cheap and you can rent by the hour. There's a getaround parked in the white zone in front of my apartment building that's $53 per day.
For a very broad definition of cheap, perhaps.
And is it going to be available when you actually need it? Even the most congested highways are practically empty a pretty large portion of the day, but that doesn't help you for shit during rush hour.
> and the car is parked in a parking lot a short walk from where you already are.
I assume "huge parking lots everywhere with lots of space" is another US-ism.
Further, I said a car rental was $100 for the weekend, and yeah, I guess it was $106. The average American spends $800-1000 per month on their car in excess of the base price according to the AAA, so yeah, $53 per day seems pretty cheap within the context of this conversation.
Anybody can afford a car, and yet we’d be much better off if we didn’t spend 10 grand a year on something we don’t really need. With compounding interest, that 1k a month becomes 500k in 20 years
And $1k a month sounds insane to own a car to me - at least 5 times the cost
Average monthly car payment for a new car in California is $738 ($532 used). A record share of Americans are payment $1000 or more on monthly car payments. [1]
Average monthly parking in SF is $340 according to SpotHero, if you have your own place and spot, that added $80-100,000 to the price of your home, so you can decide how you'd like to value that. Today 7.5% APR mortgage, that would add $7500 per year in interest, $625/month. Less if your mortgage is lower-interest.
Bankrate says the average annual insurance cost in SF is $2692 ($224 per month).
AAA says the average price of routine maintenance is 10c/mile. Average distance traveled is 14000mi/yr, so that's $1400/yr ($116 per month).
Add in gas, tolls, fines, registration, collision damage, etc.
Should be $800-1000 per month on top of your car payment.
Which is incidentally what AAA found. US average is $894 per month on top of the purchase price, or just shy of $11,000 per year. And one has to imagine it's a lot more than that in San Francisco. [2]
The GGP's $1K per month estimate is actually probably about half of what people pay all-in amortized over the ownership period of a car. 6.6% return is below the S&P average. I dunno man, the numbers check out, and may even be quite conservative.
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/auto-loan-average-payments-2023...
[2] https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/car/cost-of-car-ownership...
Have lived here over a decade, with car, motorcycle, bike, and ridden Muni+Bart. I'd never use the buses (way too slow) but ebikes are pure gold in the city.
The ultimate SF cheat code is to get a Vespa - the regional mobility of a car, but the ease of travel and parking of a bicycle. Traffic doesn't exist on a Vespa.
you can rent a car over weekend..
By contrast, with a group of paddling friends, some of which live in Cambridge, everyone has a car and while we'll carpool where appropriate the (correct) assumption is everyone has a car for gatherings and activities.
This move was so short-sighted.
This stuff adds up, and is a big reason why it's expensive to live here.
I grant you that it's relatively small when amortized over a truck full of packages, but it's stupid to include trucks at all. They haven't thought it through beyond a superficial level (or worse: they have, and this was intentional).
Regardless, Manhattan is not City of London. City of London is one tiny little corner of London. This tax is closer to the equivalent of putting congestion pricing on all of London inside of M25.
(hint: one is about 30x bigger than the other.)
"What percentage of vehicles used in Manattan on a given day are from outside Manhattan?"
>Of those working in Manhattan, 30% commute from within Manhattan.
Most commuters terminating in Manhattan are on mass transit so this stat doesn't really speak to the car question. Also a lot of vehicular traffic in Manhattan is not to do with commuting.
(I suspect the person you are replying to is incorrect, incidentally; I take no position in this argument. Your comment is a bit of a non sequitur is all.)
> Census data show that more city residents than suburbanites drive to work in Manhattan every day, according to Mr. Schaller. He estimated that 263,000 people in 19 counties in and around New York City drive regularly to jobs in Manhattan below 60th Street. Of those, 53 percent, or 141,000, live in the five boroughs, Mr. Schaller said. The greatest numbers are from Queens, with 51,300, and Brooklyn, with 33,400. About 23,900 auto commuters live in Manhattan, while 17,400 are from the Bronx and 15,200 from Staten Island. The suburban area with the most auto commuters to Manhattan is Nassau County, with 22,091 people driving to work in the borough, followed by Bergen County, with 19,975.
So 53% from NYC, 10% from Manhattan, 47% from outside the city. Only counting commuting as you note.
So no, residents will not mostly be the ones paying the costs.
But suppose they were. So what? Sounds fair to me. We don't make the subway free for residents. Why should it be free to drive and store your vehicle just because you're a resident?
I think you went the wrong way with that argument. Why don't we make the subway free for residents? All the infrastructure for cars is at least as expensive, but it's still free. (To be fair, there's a gas tax and tolls, but it's still massively subsidized.)
I have no idea whether roads or MTA is more subsidized, but certainly there's a lot of upstate tax dollars going towards NYC transit...
It's a baffling bureaucracy there in NYC.
The underlying problem is basic geometry: cars are the least spatially efficient form of transportation in common use - you need something like 140 square feet to transport on average just over one person, plus a similar amount of space for storage. That can work somewhere unpopular but the math just doesn’t work in a city core where you don’t have that much space unless you bulldozed all of the buildings. Even if they did something phenomenally expensive and unpleasant like creating multilevel streets those would fill up quickly because if traffic ever improved, more people would start driving all the way in.
1) More people start to use the road, which can actually increase total commute time (Braess's paradox).
2) It removes room for the actual city. The city becomes more spread out, and people have to travel farther to get to their destinations!
Think about this: do you want to be encouraging other people to create more traffic along your commute? No way! You want everyone else off your roads, somehow get them to start biking or take the subway. And the best way to do that is to replace a couple lanes with bus/bike/streetcar lanes.
And NYC residents who work in NJ pay income tax to the state of NJ as well as to NY state and NYC.
it's one of the reasons why I left!
They we can talk about new ones. As it is this is only punishing honest people.
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/ny-ghost-cars-dodging-...
In India, we specifically pay a separate "road tax" to the State when purchasing a vehicle ( https://indianauto.com/stories/road-tax-india-different-stat... ), and the idea behind it is that the government needs money to build and maintain the road. Despite this, in the last 2 decades, the government has also introduced tolls on many state and national highways. In another decade or two, I expect even city corporations and municipalities to make road use a "subscription service" for all vehicle owners. /s
It is just another way to grab funds from private section into public ones, which usually operates at extremely low efficiency and high corruption level.
The money isn't going to residents.
If you want to do a Pigovian tax, do a Pigovian tax properly. If you want to do congestion pricing, make it budget neutral to users. If you want transfer payments, do that and call it that.
Does your state government send you a portion of tax receipts? No? They must be putting it in their mattresses instead, eh? Please.
So that makes those taxes too?
And even if they are taxes, so what?
Congestion pricing in NYC is a tax on the selfish. And it's not nearly high enough. It should be at least ten times higher.
I would be willing to wager that the increased sales / foot traffic from one fewer car trying to make its loud and carcinogenic way through manhattan is well worth the decreased foot traffic from that car's passenger(s)
Many more cities have started severely restricting access to vehicles, turning many downtown areas that had previously been roads into pedestrian malls. Indeed, NYC has done this to many roads (parts of Fulton Street, Delancey Street, and both Broadway and Times Square).
Do you have any evidence that those schemes have resulted in lower sale tax revenue for those locations?
Parking is only really a problem below 59th st or so. You can usually get street parking by driving in circles for 20 minutes, or go to a parking garage and pay ~$8/hr to park.
(I mean, there are also more traditional parking garages, both above- and below-ground, but the premium on real estate is high enough to justify more expensive solutions to maximize land value also).
But outside of rush hours and especially a few places like the tunnel approaches it's not a big deal. People do it constantly, it's totally normal for people from NJ or Westchester or LI to drive in for dinner and park, that kind of thing.
The random chance of winding up in standstill gridlock is just way too high. I can’t even count all of the times it has taken me over an hour to go like five blocks. Every time I’ve had the bad idea drive to the office to get a head start on an after-work trip, my mind is blown that some people actually do it every day, by choice.
I imagine all the congestion toll will do is swap the cost of congestion from time to something more palatable like money. And a windfall for people that own real estate just outside of the tolled boundary (yay brooklyn)
Driving in Manhattan is actually pretty pleasant, all things considered. Wouldn't even make a top 10 list for me of worst places to drive in the US. I think in part because there's a weird selection bias where people think it will be bad, so bad drivers don't even attempt, and you're left with a cohort that, on average, has above-average driving skills.
Seattle on the other hand? Worst driver's in the US by a country mile.
Owning a car isn't enormously expensive except in online discussions where people quote the MSRP of $year+1 models and act like folks making minimum wage are actually paying that. My primary car is a 2012 Honda Fit that was $6000 when I bought it at 30k miles and is now pushing 120k. I bought it in cash, but the monthly payment with insurance would have been 15% of my rent.
You or your city may be exceptions, you might drive only on city roads, but the parent comment's point about subsidies is broadly correct.
Even the fuel taxes come from ... citizens.
There's not some magical source of funding that doesn't eventually come from taxes.
It's within 2/3rds (and frankly lower than I thought, $60 billion doesn't get you @#@^ these days).
All US dollars are created by the US government, the ability of the US government to create valuable dollars comes from the tax base, so of course everything eventually goes back to taxes.
But it's not really relevant to the point.
The city also has to pay for utility lines, which are much more expensive in suburban sprawl than the urban center. Also, zoning laws make it more expensive to build apartments, so you really only get single-family houses in the suburbs and apartments in the inner city. If you use property taxes to pay for infrastructure, the inner-city residents (living in apartments, and likely poorer) are paying most of the money for infrastructure they never use.
You're really just arguing that suburbia is a drain on city budgets and I can agree with that, it's a drain on a lot of things. I think the reason it persists and gets special treatment is because a significant number of people consider it the goal and see themselves moving out of the city eventually.
But more generally people get so stuck in the idea that tax dollars will be spent on things that aren't for you. Am I the weird one that's unbothered by this? If your vegan you're paying for meat and dairy subsidies you don't use, if you don't have kids you're paying for schools you don't use, if your house is all electric you're paying for gas subsidies you don't use, if you're not outdoorsy you're paying for parks you don't use, if you're acab you're paying for police you don't want, if you believe that caging people is immoral you're paying for whole prison systems you don't want.
It costs more to build a road that supports a bus than it does to build a road that only supports cars. OTOH, the roads also need to support fire engines, so there's that. Certainly stores devote more real estate to parking than they would if I didn't live in a car dependent infrastructure, but I'm paying for that in some way or another.
Otherwise, what infrastructure do you think I'm getting subsidized? I don't have muni water or sewer, and the power and telco utilities certainly pass along their costs to me.
This isn’t true and it’s also missing a bigger point: you need many more lanes for cars than buses. That space is not providing economic value and has to be subsidized using general fund revenue when it could be used by businesses or for housing.
In the city I live in, nearly all roads are one lane in each direction. Even if we had a lot more busses, I don't see how we would have fewer lanes. If we had a lot less traffic, one lane roads could work.
The minimum infrastructure for busses is more than the minimum infrastructure for cars. Although, if you're getting municipal roads, it makes sense to build them to standards so you can use busses.
Re: lanes, yes, rural areas are different but if you look around suburban or urban environments there are a ton of 4-8 lane roads, complex interchange ramps, etc. which exist only because people drive solo and the resulting congestion leads to a massive amount of dedicated space. If you count the number of people on a given block, it’s usually an amount which will fit on a single bus. This is really eye-opening if you’ve ever driven in New Jersey where there are these huge congested roads full of cars and a single train goes by with more people than every car in eyesight.
> If you are living in a place that forces you into car ownership as a means of transportation,
Which I felt moved the topic out of NYC. Lots of people live in NYC without car ownership.
The city you drive into is subsidizing your ability to drive into the city, the space to park in the city (which could be used for more housing), paying the cost of your emissions and noise, so that you can live a cheaper life in an area that's generally more expensive to sustain per-capita.
> I don't have muni water or sewer, and the power and telco utilities certainly pass along their costs to me.
The power and telcos generally do not pass these costs onto you. The costs are spread across the entire user-base, and it's more expensive to support you because it's more infrastructure for less people. Streets/roads/highways are also generally subsidized.
Suburbs and extreme white-flight areas are heavily subsidized by cities, especially if you're commuting into them for work. If the costs of sustaining your living situation were truly passed onto you, you wouldn't be able to afford to live there.
> Glad I avoided working and living in NY.
Seems like an unequivocal win-win :)
That's the point of congestion pricing.
The straightforward answer is to add tolls. Another solution I could see working is adding special sales taxes on parking garages in the congestion pricing zone, but then this wouldn't capture tolls on trucks, and make it harder to implement exceptions for low-income drivers or drivers with disabilities.
This is social engineering in tax form, intended to redirect traffic (or really...just to raise money for the MTA), without a great deal of thought about how it will impact the people actually living here (beyond "cars are bad", or, "New Jersey sucks", in any case). It is not "having drivers take ownership of the costs the produce" -- that would be, I dunno...raising the gas tax or tag fees or something. And don't forget that drivers already pay a toll to use the bridges or tunnels into Manhattan.
I'm generally in favor of making externalities real and specific, but this plan sucks. One nice thing about congestion is that it is inherently self-limiting, so the stated problem was already captured in existing economic incentives.
Gas taxes or registration fees don't reimburse Manhattan for the space and infrastructure costs of cars driving into and parking in Manhattan for cars that are registered and buy fuel outside of Manhattan.
You can toll drivers for driving on those specific roads, or add a significant parking tax.
Or reduce parking in general and let prices naturally rise, but then you'll also probably have more people driving in and then violating parking rules and need more parking enforcement. Parking fees/taxes also wouldn't capture the costs of traffic that doesn't necessarily park in Manhattan, such as ride share drivers.
The tolls on every bridge and tunnel into Manhattan do. Raise those. But now you're tipping your hand: this isn't about "having drivers take ownership of the costs they produce", it's about punishing people who drive in Manhattan (below 60th, excepting FDR and West Side Highway, because those don't have externalities, I guess.)
> You can toll drivers for driving on those specific roads, or add a significant parking tax.
I don't have a problem with charging for parking. But the toll roads thing, again...that has little to do with "having drivers take ownership of the costs they produce". It's just social engineering via taxes, because people will avoid those roads, and drive on other ones instead.
This is just another tier of toll in another congested subsection.
If your argument is that all vehicles driving and parking in all places should appropriately pay for their externalities (infrastructure cost, driving and parking space, noise, and emissions) then we agree.
Gas taxes or registrations fees paid in another state as you suggested don't really accomplish that though.
You don't want the general recapture of externalities. You want specific things to be punished.
> This is just another tier of toll in another congested subsection.
Yes, exactly. And unless you have some practical alternative for the thing you're taxing, this is just another tax. Those of us who live here don't have an alternative to buying groceries or getting deliveries, so this is just one more tax on life. I don't own a car, and I take the subway most of the time, but this will make my life more expensive. That's wrong.
I'm not the one levying this toll, I don't super care either way about it. I replied because your suggestions for capturing externalities did not seem to be equivalent or direct those costs to the correct place.
But I think this all depends on what you consider externalities worth charging for. I'm thinking of it as more than the simple dollar cost of building and maintaining roads and parking. There are other costs to dedicating space for those things that cities may want to avoid.
I've already said that I do. So no, I'm making a more specific argument than the one you're trying to have.
Capturing externalities is fine, but this is dumb rule dressed up in the clothing of anti-car rhetoric. It's a little more than a politically acceptable cash grab by MTA.
My point is which externalities you are considering, and which ones a city is trying to account for.
Cost of building and maintaining asphalt is one externality.
A city might consider other things like congestion, noise, and emissions. Pedestrian injuries and fatalities. Green space. Space allocated to parking vs additional homes and businesses.
You can call this considering the externalities of car traffic, or you can call it social engineering because the city wants fewer cars. I'm saying the distinction isn't super important, they are both the result of recognizing negative effects and trying to reduce them.
Yes, yes. I understand that you don't like cars. You keep ignoring the part where I say that I'm not opposed to capturing externalities. Those things are, in fact, externalities.
You have to do it fairly. When your rule ends up impacting everyone who lives in Manhattan, even if they don't own a car, then your rule is either not about capturing externalities, or it's badly designed.
In this particular case, the MTA is not concerned about what you're concerned about. The MTA is concerned about getting more money for the MTA, and this is a somewhat craven way for them to do it without huge political backlash. They know that left-wing Manhattanites will throw their lower-Manhattan neighbors under the bus in the guise of "reducing cars", and otherwise won't think very deeply about how this is a general purpose tax on everyday life.
- I drive a car. I like my car. I like driving my car places. You seem to be trying to find some personal sinister motivation on my part, or using me as a stand in for the MTA, and I don't think either are fair.
- You suggested that gas and registration taxes cover or could cover the externalities. I disagree because the externalities of specifically driving and parking in a city center are not covered fairly by taxes levied on vehicles buying gas or being registered outside of that city center. This is the point I originally responded to, and the one you seem to have moved on from to argue other things.
- You agree that cars should pay for their externalities if done so fairly. I agree.
- I don't think that cars used for personal transportation adequately or fairly pay for all of their externalities in any US cities. Especially compared to the relative costs per person transported by other means of urban transportation.
- I don't live in Manhattan and can't speak to the motivations and politics of this specific toll being levied by the MTA. The MTA may not be doing it for fair reasons of capturing externalities. That's perfectly valid and I won't (and haven't meant to) dispute it.
- Levying taxes, fees, or tolls on personal vehicles can have regressive costs for people living in the area, even if they don't own a personal vehicle. Absolutely, I agree with this. There are other ways to solve problems like getting groceries or deliveries, but if there aren't good alternatives in place then that is going to be an unfair cost added to those living there. Consideration and mitigation of these costs, and providing good alternatives, should be part of good policy.
There, I think that's a fairly accurate summary of my positions. Is there anything else you have questions on per my personal positions, or the arguments I have made in this thread?
Toll roads are direct use tax on using that infrastructure. 100% of roads being toll roads that cover their own costs is the libertarian ideal, isn't it?
Which roads will people take instead, if all roads into Manhattan have tolls?
And I agree it is social engineering. Those aren't mutually exclusive concepts. What reasons would a city have for wanting to encourage people not to drive or park in sections of that city? Perhaps there are negative externalities of that car traffic that they want to reduce. Why is social engineering via levying costs not a valid way to handle that?
Yes, exactly.
Also: they already do. So consider that for a second.
The Brooklyn Bridge, Queensboro, Manhattan, GW (heading to NJ only), and Williamsburg bridges are the only bridges that do not currently have tolls. All cross the East River. With this plan, you will have to enter the congestion area to use all of those but the GW -- but that's already tolled heading into Manhattan. They even defined the "zone" to be sure to catch the Queensboro onramps. It's intentional.
As for NJ (which is every New Yorker's favorite scapegoat when imagining car commuters): every crossing of the Hudson south of Albany has a toll.
I guess you can count the tiny bridges over the Harlem river if you really want to be pedantic about it, but this is essentially a new tax on NYC residents, whether you own a car or not. Literally every truck entering Manhattan by a major artery will be tolled in one form or another -- in many cases, twice.
California wants to put in a per mile road charge. Why should I drive to go buy something and pay a mile tax when I can buy it cheaper online, get it delivered, and probably after factoring in higher pricing due to the road tax it will still be cheaper. These sort of things ruin businesses.
Also, "the costs they produce" is way, way too flimsy of a definition. Are you talking about damage to roads? That's heavy trucks, not passenger vehicles.
Drivers are using a limited resource, why not pay for it. Be happy it's a fixed fee and not a proper market.
Because the selection and quality are unlike almost any place in the world.
Why on Earth would people living in New Jersey drive into (paying bridge/tunnel toll) and park in Manhattan to do their shopping when there are so many malls with free parking available in NJ?
There's a reason the big NYC area malls are in Paramus and Elizabeth.
In addition to the giant malls you mentioned, there's American Dream in East Rutherford. Parking isn't free there though. And all its clothing stores are closed on Sundays. (Ditto for the Paramus malls re: Sunday.)
I think the reason is that malls are just out-of-fashion.
If we consider the SoHo area to be the equivalent of a mall, or the North Williamsburg/Greenpoint area to be a mall, I'd bet they dwarf the Paramus & Elizabeth malls in GMV sold and foot traffic.
It's apparently back and better than ever though [2].
And anecdotally, everyone I know shops much more in SoHo than they did a decade ago, even if the center has shifted to Williamsburg/Greenpoint and more thrifting / vintage stores.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/23/nyregion/soho-empty-store... [2] https://equicapmag.com/real-estate/soho-retail-rebounds/#:~:....
My ex's family lived in NJ and we'd always commute in for a fun day in the city. There's way better food, better shopping, better energy. I'm not surprised people come to the city.
Even while living in midtown manhattan. This is still true for me living out in the rural south.
One or two people per car each taking up 320 sqft of road space and parking space imposes a lower human density limit than most other ways of getting around. And the infrastructure to support it is more expensive on a per-human basis.
It’s $15 creditable against other tolls. If whatever you’re doing in downtown Manhattan during peak hours isn’t worth $15, its replacement by other activity happening faster is likely a net positive.
These aren't problems, these are features. Manhatten is not a place to go for quiet, empty spaces, except maybe Central Park. You're there for energy, movement, lots of action. Who wants a peaceful, empty Manhatten??
I don't know how you can say that (other than your personal preference). The cars have been there, doing those things, for generations. They are quieter and pollute less now.
Are they trying to turn NY into Long Island? Keep the things that make NY unique and special - people obviously love it.
My support is based on both the real health costs and direct injuries/fatalities - see e.g. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abf60b – and the fact that if people loved the pollution so much there wouldn’t be an entire political movement to reduce it. Beyond the topic of this thread, they’ve also had a variety of laws to punish noisy vehicles and reduce traffic: https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2021/07/06/opinion-loud-driving-...
Pretty sure if I went to everyone I know who lives in NYC and asked them if they'd prefer less car noise throughout the day and night, they would answer with an emphatic yes.
I agree with you that car noise has been a part of NYC's backdrop for generations, but that doesn't make it a good thing, even for people who are accustomed to it.
Cars still pollute plenty, especially in a dense place like Manhattan, and that pollution is a health hazard.
It sounds like you'd complain if eventually everyone in NYC started driving EVs, because it'd be too quiet for your taste. Weird.
Unless the people you know are much different than the ones I know, the great majority would say they don't care, many would embrace the energy of the city, and no doubt some would agree. (Of course, it depends on how you frame the question - 'do you want less car noise?', and 'do you want NY to be quiet like the suburbs?' would get different responses.)
The answer is no one. No one ever wanted any of these features.
Consider the following: if everything else stayed the same, but all traffic was removed from Manhattan, would there be a net increase or decrease in population from migration?