Congestion pricing is cutting off the nose to spite the face.
It's dumb, but it does "stop the problem", the same way charging 5x more for petrol would, or closing all the highways into the city.... whilst also hurting a bunch of people.
It's dumb, but it does "stop the problem", the same way charging 5x more for petrol would, or closing all the highways into the city.... whilst also hurting a bunch of people.
Notably, NYC congestion pricing does not affect the highways into the city: if you take a highway into the city and stay on the highway, you won't be charged. The charge is only for entering the city grid, where the (reasonable) argument is that the transportation system is more than sufficient and the traffic, noise, and tailpipe emissions of your car do more harm to local residents than they fairly benefit you.
That's technically true, but it ignores the fact that both the Lincoln Tunnel (495) and Holland Tunnel (78) require you to enter the city grid. With the way the congestion pricing was designed, if you take either of those tunnels, there's no way to avoid the congestion pricing fee -- this was confirmed multiple times in FAQs and Q+A's.
I'm mostly in favor of congestion pricing, but I really think they need to figure out a better solution for that tunnel issue.
So the only relevant congestion for this specific issue is between the tunnels and the highways. Manhattan residents living near the tunnels know what they're signing up for. The tunnels opened in 1927 and 1937. The traffic isn't exactly a new problem.
Also, the parts of NJ in question (where the tunnels are closer than bridges) are largely urban in character. You make it sound like people are coming from some far-away leafy suburb, that's not the case for the majority of this population.
Any congestion pricing plan which ignores that problem is going to be met with mass outrage, to an extent that will swing elections against incumbents. Especially when said incumbents promote this "no charge if you stay on highways" BS without explaining the fine print.
Again, I'm saying this as someone who only ever takes public transit and is generally in favor of congestion pricing as a concept.
Personally I always take public transit into NYC, but I can completely understand why it isn't a reasonable option for many people. Especially when both NJT rail and Amtrak have daily meltdowns whenever the temperature is above average.
Edit to add: I'm completely puzzled by your comment about "traffic from Florida to Boston or Albany". Boston is on the I-95 corridor, which means going over the GWB -- there's already no reason for any sane driver to enter the congestion zone for that route. And routes to Albany don't need to cross the Hudson at all. I don't see how congestion pricing or these two tunnels have any connection to those routes.
Anyway, my overall point here is that the upthread comment of "if you take a highway into the city and stay on the highway, you won't be charged" is true but worthless, because for one million people here there's no way to actually do that without driving massively out of your way to a bridge crossing.
The through traffic comment was a response to my original comment that a person wanted to use the Hudson River tunnels to pass through NYC onto their destination. I picked the Varanzono bridge route as the southern route around the city and 87 for the northern route. I usually go further north than the GWB to crossover.
The massively out of your way I might prefer to NYC city traffic.
Which parent comment are you referring to? I don't see any talking about non-NYC destinations besides yours.
In any case, the only highways that are exempt are the West Side Highway and the FDR. These are the only highways in the zone. And generally you don't take either of those highways for anything other than "local traffic" as you said. So I'm just not understanding your point about routes outside of NYC, that doesn't make any sense in the context of congestion pricing and the exempted highways in the first place.
My comment was that travelers not going to Manhattan should choose a route that avoids the tunnels.
I'm only now beginning to understand the point you are trying to make is that political outrage makes good policies tougher. I thought this sub-thread was regarding driving into Manhattan to get somewhere else is inconvenient and adding extra costs makes sense.
How so? The toll rate is identical between the Lincoln Tunnel, the Holland tunnel, the George Washington Bridge, the Bayonne Bridge, the Goethals Bridge, and the Outerbridge Crossing: https://www.panynj.gov/bridges-tunnels/en/tolls.html
The GWB can be done without a toll, but if you're shopping for a cheaper route to avoid the Verrazzano toll it's likely way out of your way.
Ideally the toll structure should incentivize through traffic to stay on highways and out of the most gridlocked streets in the country, and I'm saying this as a longtime car owner in Brooklyn who has driven through the Holland Tunnel hundreds of times. Manhattan streets are a tragedy of the commons in action.
But even with congestion pricing, assuming a same-day round-trip with a non-NY EZ-Pass, the combined cost of (Holland or Lincoln Tunnel toll + congestion pricing toll) is still a bit less than the cost of (Goethals or Bayonne Bridge toll + Verrazzano Bridge toll)... because the Verrazzano charges in both directions. So even congestion pricing doesn't fix those incentives :/
It has played out in other cities, there is only one way for it to play out.
It's okay if you disagree with the facts, but it's fairly easy to understand how pricing people out is a poor attempt at a solution, but solves the problem by brute force anyway.
>where the (reasonable) argument is that the transportation system is more than sufficient and the traffic, noise, and tailpipe emissions of your car do more harm to local residents than they fairly benefit you.
Yes. I never said that less cars is not beneficial. I understand this, that's why I said what I said.
There's no such thing as "fairly benefiting from other residents"...
You're still not solving the problem by slapping a $ figure to the entrance of cars. It's just a lazy and bad solution.
I'm not here to give alternative solutions, I'm here to tell you the current solution is slightly worse than nothing.
You would have to make the solution fairly complex for it to be beneficial. But I'd start with quantifying why people are in the city, rather than treating them all the same.
If it were my job, I'd have a better solution than congestion charges, that's for damn sure.
>"convert an urban highway into a beautiful linear park and waterway"
They converted an inner urban highway and other highways in the sky (in the immediate city centre) to walking paths while adding extra highways to the pool further out from the city centre. Removing the inner highways added to congestion, adding the outer highways reduced congestion.
They did not add congestion charges and the city handles it fine. They are not stupid like a lot of people here are.
You may or may not be stupid. I don't know.
Do you have anything to reply? I think you're running afoul of guidelines too.
Externalities are one of the thornier issues and making those prices clear to people is how we get people to decide whether they actually want to pay the full price of a good or service.
Artificial, organic, lab grown or otherwise - does the price of a good or service capture the cost of its production.
It's really nice to be able to pay for better facilities _when you need them_. The person who is late for a flight or a job interview, or who just found out their kid got hurt at school and is heading to the hospital, benefits massively from congestion pricing. They have the ability to access faster transportation when they need it, and to choose the slower alternative when they don't.
Where it fails is an Uber/taxi drivers add a lot more congestion than an average person and the fees don’t get adjusted for this issue.
You can create bus and emergency lanes you know, with less detriment.
No, it's a good solution to negative externalities. In the status quo, drivers do not bear the full cost of driving (noise, pollution, opportunity cost of time lost in traffic). Congestion pricing address that by imposting a fee equal to the societal cost of those externalities.
It's not a good solution in any sense of the word. There are reasons we don't charge for some things. Do you charge people extra who use their entire bin on bin day?
It's weird how many people here are not smart enough to realise how backwards this solution is.
The plan was structured in a way that it would affect every resident of the city via higher prices on goods and services, surcharges on delivery, taxis, construction, etc. Setting aside the issue of local residents with cars (which I could care less about), the planners refused to make sensible carve-outs for things like cargo trucks, construction vehicles, and so on. They could have done it, they just didn't. It was about maximizing revenue for the MTA, not about making sensible policy.
Maybe the fees would be small when amortized over a truck full of groceries or a tanker full of oil, but that didn't change the fact that it was a regressive tax on everyone who lives here, and taxes here are already amongst the highest in the country. This stuff adds up.
I find the math on that claim highly dubious. The toll for a truck is set to be $36 at peak times. $9 non peak. And they get up to $20 credit towards that when travelling through one of the tunnels, as many do. When I think about the amount of goods that can be carried in a truck and divide the $36 minus $20 or $9 across all those items… how much are we really talking about here?
I ask the question earnestly because I don’t know, but at a cursory glance it just doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. Some drivers might even be quite happy to pay if it means they don’t spend hours stuck in traffic!
You're just repeating the last part of what I wrote -- that the taxes would be low when amortized over a large number of items -- but ignoring the rest. The point is, New York does this all the time: yesterday a surcharge on food delivery, today a "congestion tax", tomorrow a "global warming fee" on electricity consumption, a "save the whales" fee on straws, or whatever else. The number of sneaky fees and surcharges and social-engineering taxes in NYC is enough to make even the most ardent liberal begin to resist. Eventually, you're paying $25 for a hamburger and wondering why you can't find staff for your store.
Look, I have no problem with taxes. Just be honest. Don't sneak them in and lie about them and pretend that they're punishment for New Jersey car commuters when most of the revenue will come from the people who live here, directly or indirectly. If the people want to vote in another billion-dollar sales tax for the MTA, great. Go for it.
I don’t personally see the congestion charge as dishonest. You can see it as a quasi-tax, certainly, but provisions like off peaking pricing and credit for using the tunnels means that it has positive side effects a straightforward tax wouldn’t.
In my book, negative externalities are worse than taxes. If we agree that a car driving in Lower Manhattan inflicts a non-trivial cost on everyone else, then not taxing it leads to socially inefficient outcomes.
Effectively, locals are paying a price either way - either by having their bus moving slower, inhaling fumes, etc, or by buying goods and services that reflect congestion pricing. The difference is that congestion pricing aligns incentives - for instance, delivery drivers may choose to travel to Manhattan during the off-peak hours whereas in the status quo they do not care at all about inconveniencing others.
Thought experiment: If we could somehow ban private residential use of all cars and only allow "work" vehicles, there would be no congestion and no tax.
It would also increase the incentive for people to play games like claiming their personal car as a "work vehicle", throwing a little advertising decal on the side, things like that.
By any data available that’s entirely backwards. Cars in the CBD are disproportionately driven by the affluent, transit is disproportionately taken by the poor.
Let's see that data then. Plenty of working class individuals are trying to commute through the CBD for their livelihoods. They aren't taking the bus or rail to fix someone's water heater.
(I love social medi... sorry HN oops how can I get this wrong, the quality of discussion is so high! :)
[1]: https://wellango.github.io/posts/2021/06/who-owns-cars-in-ny...
It is true, that some rich motorists will pay up congestion pricing, but they wont even notice these charges cause they are rich (so NO EFFECT whatsoever on actual congestion). In fact, that's exactly what MTA wants - they want congestion pricing Revenue, not reduction in congestion loss in revenue.
But the most impacted would be workers who rely on car to make a living: uber, lyft, doordash, blue collar contractors, food delivery trucks, etc. Everyone who has to drive to make a living will be taxed, while rich Manhattan residents will enjoy subsidies from the working class. and they cannot take public transit, so no reduction in actual congestion either.
it's all farce and show to steal money from honest working people and have over it to corrupted union bosses at MTA
Of course there's a long way to go before visible changes happen. the US is extremely car-dependent after all, and public transportation does not organically expand with more demand for it. and without alternatives people will just pay it.
but this doesn't necessarily make it a bad tax. other changes can build on it.
fundamentally though it is NOT about reducing congestion, it is about stealing money from poor blue collar workers from outer boroughs, and handing them out to finance MTA's bogus overtime and 400k salaries for doing nothing useful.
while also enabling rich urban liberals from manhattan to signal their "ecology conciousness"
It isn’t though, is it? What percentage of poor blue collar workers in the outer boroughs drive into the CBD of Manhattan for work on a regular basis? Very few. The cost of parking already makes it prohibitive for most. If they work as e.g. an electrician they’re already passing the parking fee onto their customer. Congestion charge will be the same.
But yeah, sure, there will be a small number of people affected that way. But orders of magnitude more poor blue collar workers would benefit from better public transit. You can’t run a city by vetoing anything that has a negative effect to someone. Nothing will ever get done.
Just pick the good policies instead of the bad dummy!
If the person has their own business then they can easily afford the daily $15. Skilled trades and the owners of those companies make very good wages in NYC.
I see plenty of blue collar workers on the MTA. Its one of the fastest ways to get around Manhattan and much cheaper than paying for parking.
A lot of NYC residents can easily afford extra $15 (their incomes are like 6 figures) why not just spread the tax to everyone to make it more equitable? And more revenue for MTA
It's much easier to solve the problem like a brute and attack people and say they're wrong when they point out the nature of the solve.
It's not even about money, if it were about the usage of power, food, travel, etc. it'd also be terrible. If you were to convince people they can't eat meat because it's wrong and then offer a solution as bad as "just become vegetarian", it'd also be laughable... but of course people would attack anyone pointing it out.
In the end not much will change, people who would have takes transit will end up takin transit, people who have to drive will drive, they just will pay additional tax.
How so? If a taxi used to take 20 minutes and $20 and now it takes 15 minutes and $18 the demand for that form of transport will go up.
If you see demand for cabs increasing + congestion pricing revenue of $1.5bln that means more traffic and more paying drivers
Right now, you have Group A: people who are ok with some members of their city getting to deal with congestion, so that they can have cheaper goods.
Group B: The people who deal with the effects of congestion, who have to find a ways to have their needs met.
as mentioned: >Setting aside the issue of local residents with cars (which I could care less about), >someone who lives here and doesn't own a car
The status quo should suit you.
That said, the inefficiency caused due to congestion, ends up affecting both group A and group B. This will add to costs, in either wait times / Delays, wastage, wear and tear, pollution etc.
Those costs are borne by you, but not associated with congestion.
[1]: https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-new-york-traffic-manhat...
Stop sanitising killing people.
You can save the pearl-clutching hyperbole.
We already pay a congestion tax on all of these things, it just takes the form of paying for the labor of someone sitting in traffic. It's not obvious at all to me that the cost of the tax will be less than the gain on the labor cost.
What I know, without doubt, is that the plan didn't make any reasonable exclusions for residents, so it was de facto an additional tax. Would such a tax reduce marginal wait time cost by more than the price of the tax? Golly, that would be convenient for proponents, wouldn't it?
Regardless, even if you believe this, you still have to deal with the counterfactual of a world where we do the whole congestion fee thing, but exclude obvious categories of essential vehicles, like delivery trucks, construction, etc. That would be better, smarter, and more aligned with the stated goals of the system.
I live in London they brought it in and it's been ok overall. It doesn't stop congestion but reduces it a bit. For commuters it's probably a bit better as they mostly use the train/bus etc and benefit from less traffic. For workmen needing to deliver and fix things it's a bit of a pain. For me living in the center I'd probably take the plus of less traffic over the minus of getting a plumber to visit being expensive.
Re the tax grab - yeah but they have to get tax money from somewhere to pay for services and the like.
The one thing that has been bothering me about NYC congestion toll is I figured there was be a cut in the fares for subways and rail to entice more riders. But I don't see that mentioned; just for capital projects it seems.
That being said, NYCT's fare ($2.90 without zones or times) is markedly cheaper than even the cheaper London Underground off-peak same-zone fare. I don't particularly want to pay more for the subway, but the fare also really hasn't kept up with inflation.