Better/cheaper train solutions would seem to be the desired fix though not just raising prices to random high numbers.
I agree that this will likely have a good outcome in the end but something about it just seems wrong to me.
I agree that this will likely have a good outcome in the end but something about it just seems wrong to me.
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.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/25/nyregion/mta-congestion-p...
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.
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...
Reminds me of ye olde window tax.
https://www.intelligenttransport.com/transport-news/143883/l...
https://www.oecd.org/climate-action/ipac/practices/london-s-...
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.
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.
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?
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.