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.
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-...