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Comment by mtalantikite | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, this is the only disagreement I have with congestion pricing too. I have a friend that lives in Tribeca (in the place he grew up in in the 80s) and needs a car to drive to his art studio in New Jersey. I feel like they should get an exemption or at least a heavily reduced rate.

But my in laws that drive in from the suburbs a few times a year? They can afford the $9.

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Your buddy should move to NJ if he needs low cost access to his studio. The roads will be tolled and the price will only go up. The entire point is to reduce the amount of people using the roads for a cheap benefit (ex living in Tribeca one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the city and complaining that you have no low cost access to NJ).

I’m unclear on how $9 is not a fair price to drive a car from lower manhattan to new jersey. Public transit would cost at least that much.

Because on public transit, you're paying to use someone else's vehicle, and needing to cover the maintenance, depreciation, etc., of it, plus the driver's time. But with your own vehicle, those are all already your expenses, so it's double-dipping to charge you like that at all.

But it's not double dipping, because the cost of infrastructure for motor vehicles is absurdly high - higher than even a lot of public transportation. Because individual vehicles are horribly inefficient, and require significantly more space per capita. Roads are not free, congestion is not free, pollution is not free. You're used to being subsidized, so when you're not it may seem unfair. But it's not.

> You're used to being subsidized, so when you're not it may seem unfair.

It wouldn't be unfair if nobody were subsidized. It's unfair that just cars aren't anymore, but buses, etc. still are.

Cars are still subsidized, just a little less. And public transit is absolutely subsidized, but in a similar position to cars - some of it is subsidized, and some of it you pay. It's not free to ride the bus. To me, it seems fair.

I'm not saying it's not a fair price -- I think largely it's a positive to discourage people from deciding to commute into Manhattan by car. I'm in my 40s and only recently got my license, so I'm certainly on team public transit.

But I am saying that not everyone that lives in the congestion zone are well off office workers, particularly those born and raised in lower Manhattan that have housing arrangements that go back a few decades. An extra $2-300 month in tolls is not nothing for many people. You can't easily bring hundreds of pounds of art and building supplies to your art warehouse in Newark every day on the path train.

That’s fair, I guess I just don’t have much sympathy for that person as from my perspective, they were getting a massive subsidy for a long time, and we’re all better off if we cut off their gravy train. And I say this as a former artist myself — if they need the space, they can move to Brooklyn like the rest of us.

I see where you’re coming from, but it does assume the American approach to basic housing as an investment opportunity vs a basic need the government should ensure is available and affordable.

In such a dense and complex place it’s impossible to avoid at least some negative impacts, at least early on. Hopefully transit will improve.

Why does this friend in particular deserve an exemption or reduced rate? Why don't they do something like take the trains into the nearest NJ suburb and leave their car at the parking lots there, which will probably be free or much cheaper, since they're doing the opposite of most commuters. Then they'd avoid this and all of the other tolls, most of which are much more expensive, and would probably be faster too.

They're a visual artist that is often lugging around hundreds of pounds of supplies/fabricated materials/finished pieces/etc. If they just needed a laptop bag or something that'd be a different story, public transit would work for them. I think they're avoiding the tolls by just working until 2am or so every night.

I only brought this up to agree that there are definitely working class people that live in the congestion zone and happen to need a car, and the extra $200-300/month does have a real impact on their lives. It would be nice to have taken them into account a bit more.

Yep. The people who agree with congestion pricing either hate or ignore these people, along with the thousands of lower Manhattan small-business employees, subsidized housing residence that have cars or street park daily.

I postulate it's because they don't actually live there, or just moved there, if they do actually live there, they'd have to be severely socially inept to never speak to a store or restaurant owner and ask what their commute is like.

To act as though it affects nobody of moderate or lower income is downright dishonest, when 22% of Manhattan households own one - it's no longer an upper class activity, just a basic tool to get to work.

The subway is also a basic tool to get to work, which even more people use, and we charge a fare for that. So why not for driving?

The point isn’t that it won’t negatively affect anybody of moderate or lower income, it’s that overall it will positively affect most people of moderate or lower income, because most of those people do not drive regularly into Manhattan.

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