Comment by _rend | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _rend | Hacker News Reader

As a former NYC resident, and as someone whose family still lives and works in the city, I'm curious to see how this'll distribute traffic patterns throughout Manhattan. If you live in the outer boroughs like my family does, getting into certain areas in Manhattan via public transit can be difficult, and time consuming — significantly more so than getting in by car.

My dad is an on-call doctor; getting to his hospital by car takes ~15 minutes, but ~60–90 via public transit. His patients don't have the luxury of waiting for him to take the bus. His hospital is outside of this zone, but I imagine that paying $15 every time he got called in would be extraordinarily frustrating.

My mom does work within this zone, also in places not easily reachable by public transit. I suspect that she, like many others, will still commute into Manhattan, park in areas outside of the zone, then take public transit into it — which will increase congestion in those areas. It'll be interesting to watch for the lead-on effects.

I sympathize entirely with the desire to reduce traffic in the city, but man, for people who live far from work and can't easily commute any other way, what a pain.

$15 is a cheap Manhattan lunch. Financially, a doctor won't notice it.

Presuming that it will be implemented like every other road toll, it will be auto-paid without noticing, too.

I'd also assume the hospital would reimburse the $15 toll. That's like what they charge for a Tylenol.

I think hospitals should charge a $600 an hour fee for stepping inside their multimillion dollar buildings staffed with multimillion dollar salaried people, and charge market rate for products. That would make more sense to people. We somehow expect access to their facilities for free 24/7, yet get annoyed when they pass the billing through items we know the price of. They should charge an entrance fee like Disney land or a hotel room per hour and then be more reasonable on the Tylenol.

> Financially, a doctor won't notice it.

Not all doctors make enough money to not notice it, especially ones earlier in their career.

Regardless, assuming you have two working adults each paying the $15 toll once a day, conservatively, working 250 days a year, that's $7,500/year that has to come from somewhere. I can't imagine an income level (even if it doesn't affect your quality of life) where that's not an insanely frustrating amount to pay… to the MTA of all places. That money getting reinvested into useful infrastructure would be a dream come true!

You make it sound like they have no alternative. A literal majority of the city uses the trains regularly. The person you're describing can just live within walking distance of a station. The $20k they arent paying for the car and tolls should be just about enough for the rent on a 1 bedroom.

I do not think we should plan the city around the needs of doctors living in Westchester.

I mean... I get it. But an extra $15 per entry to the city for a doctor based in Manhattan is exactly the type of person this is aimed at.

Can likely afford the expense: check Prefers/needs to get into the city faster than public transport allows for: check

The article says they expect traffic entering the city to fall by 17%. You dad is part of the 83% of people who will say the pain of paying another toll is lower than the pain of taking public transit.

Exactly this. I don’t know many lower income folks affording on call doctors, and those who can afford it can also afford an extra $15 charge on their bill, god knows how much they’re paying already anyway.

even if you did work in this zone you could still drive to above 60th and then take public transit down from there. unlikely to change timing very much.

Traffic will drop as a result of that toll. One of the benefits that will clearly positively impact people like your father is that it will make his travels faster.

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