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Comment by 1970-01-01 | Hacker News Reader

1970-01-01

The fact that tolls are now directly useful to the entire public must not be underappreciated. This is good news for everyone.

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The run up to their implementation was so deeply frustrating. The sheer number of disingenuous objections. And they’ve all been proven false.

People are seemingly okay with rationing services by time, but adamantly opposed to rationing by price. You see this everywhere throughout society.

But obviously the latter is better. It offers more flexibility for consumers and more transmission of demand signals.

> People are seemingly okay with rationing services by time, but adamantly opposed to rationing by price

Maybe that has to do with the fact that lifetime is somewhat (!) equally distributed, while wealth isn't

But you can make more money, but you can't make more time.

> sheer number of disingenuous objections

This is unfair. Nobody wants to pay more for anything. And many of the objections resulted in policy adjustments that made the programme better.

Which objections lead to better policy?

> Which objections lead to better policy?

The MTA "changed its flawed initial proposal to offer the [disability] exemption only to drivers or vehicles owners with state-issued disability plates" [1].

[1] https://www.nylpi.org/resource/letter-to-mta-regarding-conge...

Which objections were proven wrong?

The objection that pricing will damage local retail, in aggregate retail has thrived from pricing.

https://bettercities.substack.com/p/congestion-pricing-is-a-...

Not surprised. In general, retail works way better when shoppers are on foot.

When you have everyone in cars, it's more convenient to go to one big store and buy everything in one place, than to go to three small ones to buy three different things. Shopping malls tried to bridge this gap for suburban retail, but the ultimate rules exploit was Wal-Mart: just build a giant box with a parking lot and sell absolutely everything in it.

The problem with one-stop shopping is the same problem as centralized app stores[0]: it creates a single buyer that can dictate to the entire market the terms of the sale. There's only room for 1 or 2 big-box department stores per market. General retail is owned by Target and Wal-Mart. Electronics is owned by Best Buy. Office supplies are owned by Staples and OfficeMax. Crafts and sewing supplies are owned by Michael's[1]. Pet supplies are owned by Petco[2] and Petsmart. Construction supplies? Home Depot and Lowe's. Each one of these are businesses that were built for maximum scale - to suck up all the demand in a market, region, or country for a thing and then mete it out to whatever supplier offers the best terms.

[0] The fact that arguments for the iOS App Store monopoly are the same as arguments for car-centric suburbs should not be lost on you.

[1] RIP Jo-Ann's

[2] Fuck Petco, all my homies hate Petco. Adopt, don't shop.

Retail where? Inside the congestion zone? What about outside it?

I don't know, but specifically many people objected that the tax would hurt retail inside and they were wrong.

If you are objecting to a policy because it will make that area better and as a result, hurt businesses elsewhere, you need to rethink your choices.

I didn’t say every objection was disingenuous, just that there was an incredible number of objections that were.

I'm sure you're being honest about your intent, but a glancing read of your previous comment sounded categorical, to my ear at least, "And they've all been proven false."

It’s hard from reading what is written how it is intended. Written communication is hard since it doesn’t encapsulate tone, emphasis, and other cues. I read “all” in this case to mean: “most of the commonly espoused objections”.

All of the disingenuous objections. The intent of the OP is very clear, imo.

They better be. No one’s rooting for the smog, but a congestion tax is pretty regressive (hurts poorer people more)

Poor people are forced by circumstance to live in the busiest areas so they will get the biggest health benefits and many do not own cars and often do not even own a car space, so I would beg to differ.

You can also offset the regressive nature of this taxation (if any) by putting the revenue into subsidizing public infrastructure like rail and bus.

Isn’t it the opposite though? The poor aren’t able to live in the most popular busiest areas, and usually have to live on the fringes of the city. They might train in though. This is mostly going to benefit the rich people who can still afford to live in the city, but with rent control there are still some non-rich people in the city.

It is both. People forget that probably a third of all housing in the congestion zone is rent-controlled or public housing.

Half of households in the congestion zone are living at or below 3x federal poverty level ($70K for a family of three). One in six residents makes $20K or less a year.

well it's not 100% this or that -- it's mixed up

really-rich people don't have to work/commute, so prefer to live in countryside with gardens

really-poor people can't afford cars, and rich(=busy) cities usually have accomodations for them -- so they live inside busy cities

Really poor people can’t afford cars in the city, and yes, they can exist in the city because of public housing snd rent control. And it really isn’t the cars that are expensive, or even operating the cars, but the parking.

There are lots of middle class commuters who can’t afford to live in the city: they aren’t lucky enough to win the lottery with a rent controlled unit, and are too rich to live in public housing, but still too poor to live in housing of a standard they can tolerate in the city even if their job is there.

Not in NYC where less than half the population has access to a car.

This mostly commuters and tradesmen. You aren’t going to get your tools on the train, snd you are driving into the city from white plains or somewhere similar.

The alternative is the tradesmen can now apply their trade for 30 minutes more each way rather than sit in traffic (probably better overall) That, and apparently they and their kids can breathe easier.

Tradesmen pass the charge onto their customers. Commuters already have to pay huge parking fees, by comparison the congestion charge is small change.

> Tradesmen pass the charge onto their customers

You mean to say people without cars are paying the congestion tax? :P

Likely not. Reduced congestion decreases transit time which can easily pay for the conjestion charge.

The people who are hiring tradesmen are disproportionately the rich.

I mean it's funny to say but I think it should be pretty obvious to anybody that tradesmen are not the only people driving into NYC.

But yeah, customers pay the congestion tax for the tradesmen to drive just like they pay the tariff taxes on the supplies the tradesmen use.

Ya, definitely, I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.

The congestion tax has far more impact on people who live and work above 60th or in the outer boroughs or NJ than it does Manhattanites. Retail, wholesale, trades, small businesses and yes commuters in these areas, which are poorer than Manhattan, suffer disproportionately

Any evidence for that impact? While the prospect of displaced traffic was very much hyped, the data I've seen is that there's very little of it.

If air pollution dropped 22% then surely traffic dropped by a similar amount

Actual poor people suffer the most from air population. They are the ones who live next to busy roads...

2.90 is pretty accessible

The 2.90 is even capped at $34 per week. Then there's the 50% discount for low-income NYC residents who qualify and apply for the Fair Fares NYC program, or for anyone regadless of residence who qualifies for reduced fares through age or a qualifying disability.

Both of these numbers are changing in early January to $3 and $35 respectively, but same idea.

Still, some European countries like Germany offer far cheaper than this, while others like the UK are probably pricer. NYC public transit gives very good value for the US at least.

Many things hurt the poor more, because there are many things that the poor do that have negative externalities that cannot be compensated for by the productivity of the poor. Strict enforcement against violent crime is pretty regressive in that more poor people are incarcerated when this is done. Others are that strict enforcement of traffic laws is pretty regressive; paid parking is regressive; as are fares for buses and trains. Requiring a minimum number of signatures for a ballot proposition is regressive. Allowing more expensive cars to incorporate more advanced safety features is regressive. Requiring grant applications to be carefully written is regressive. As are minimum flying requirements for pilots. DoD medical standards for soldiers are regressive. Officer ASVAB score requirements are regressive. Surgical requirements. Drug approval requirements.

In fact, anything that requires a standard of performance will be regressive. We don't have to subordinate all goals to regression avoidance. In fact, no functioning society does that.

> Officer ASVAB score requirements are regressive

Used to be that you had to purchase an officer's commission...

The glory days when we could charge cannon fire on horseback. This is what they took from us.

I actually doubt it's very regressive in NYC. Also, you're still only counting the price and not the cost. The benefits are likely tilted towards the poorest residents who absorb the most costs of congestion in terms of both pollution and road safety. That's just an educated guess but it's very plausible.

A charge on the marginal driver looks regressive if you only examine who pays the toll, but not who’s been paying the externalities all along. Once you include the benefits - faster buses, cleaner air, better reliability, and the ability to reinvest revenue into transit - the incidence flips pretty quickly.

We’re basically shifting costs from people who can’t opt out of congestion to people who can. That’s about as progressive as a transport policy gets.

Well, Mamdani wants to make transit free. Car taxes can probably help a lot to pay for that.

Partial correction: he wants to make buses free, but not subways.

It hurts homeless more, that's a fact (although most,big cold city homeless couchsurf rather than sleep in their car in my experience, but it might be different in the US). But if you take 'poor people' as in the bottom 20% of earners, they probably don't drive, because car are expensive.

Do I understand correctly -- you are saying this NYC congestion price hurts the homeless more? As in, people who are homeless in NYC are regularly driving cars into and back out of lower Manhattan?

Poorer people disproportionately take public transit.

No it’s not. NYC transit is already one of the most expensive in the world and quality is suspect. Pushing money into a dysfunctional structure doesn’t make it functional and might make it worse. A money grab from the public that goes through a maze of expenses.

The solution was to re-structure the MTA. But that’s hard work. Politicians would rather blame the other side and just raise taxes. The people like it because they are grabbing money from what they consider it to be their oppressors.

The quality is not suspect. It is one of the world’s few 24/7 systems, and there are many capital improvements happening constantly. For example, making more stations accessible and improving switching equipment to improve reliability and volume.

This comment is typical HN “government bad can do no right” fodder. The MTA is truly a marvel in the service it provides. The only advantage it has is age, which is why it is so expansive.

The MTA is billions in the red because it overpays the union workers and fails to commercialize the stations

You may not realize this, but the roads are also in the red. All transportation is subsidized out of taxes.

You may not realize this, but there are numerous rail systems around the world that are not subsidized and are in fact profitable. See Japan, for instance

Almost all rail in Japan is subsidized, directly and indirectly. Yes the single line that is the Tokaido Shinkansen is immensely profitable; even then, JR Central does not pay market-rate interest on even the portion of the construction debt that was not absorbed by the government.

I don't want our public infrastructure to be profitable; I want it to be ubiquitous and frequent.

This is not true: Japan's rail systems are profitable on a cash-accounting basis (e.g. fares add up to more than day-to-day operating costs), but not if you include the immense cost of building the rail itself. When Japan privatized its rail, part of the privatization agreement included the government assuming most of the debts from construction, so the private entities wouldn't have them on their books. If you were to include these costs, Japan's private rails wouldn't even be close to profitable.

The MTA does not overpay when you compare to other employers in central NYC. It's an extremely expensive city due to housing policy failures.

As for commercialising the stations, does the MTA try to do so and fail, or are they forbidden from doing so effectively (often by the same people who are pushing the narrative that there is something wrong with the organisation)?

I simply do not care if my public services are “in the red”. Let’s make them entirely in the red, please.

The point is that the MTA is deeply in the red even though it still charges significant fares. Meanwhile, systems like the London Tube manage to recover at least their operating costs without charging fares that are much if at all higher.

According to a quick search the nyc subway is $2.90 rising to $3 next year. This is comparable to, but slightly less than a zone 1 off peak ticket in London at £2.70. Most journeys are more expensive (on the train, busses are pretty cheap here)

If you're a car-owning Long Island or upstate suburbanite who occasionally commutes into Manhattan, the MTA is a god damned marvel compared to what would be available to you in other cities.

If you live anywhere in Brooklyn or Queens, the MTA is an inconvenience that constantly reminds you that the spirit of Robert Moses haunts your city to the present day, and that he really, really would like you to ride a private vehicle. Those boroughs are littered with coverage and frequency gaps that can turn a 40 minute car ride into a 2 hour subway ride. And god help you if you ever need to take a bus.

The capital improvements you mention are improvements on the margins. The MTA needs to engage in a radical rethink of NYC metro area transit. There needs to be radial lines - plural - crossing through Brooklyn and Queens at regular intervals to move as much traffic as possible out of Manhattan. The IBX is a good start, but it should also cross through Staten Island and the Bronx. Queenslink should absolutely be built[0], the N/W should extend to LaGuardia Airport, Utica Ave needs a subway line, and the subway in general should extend through Nassau County and Yonkers. Nassau and Suffolk counties need way more north-south rail[1] than they currently have (which is zero) and the same probably could be said for the service areas of MNR.

The bad part of government is not that it can't run a successful transit service. Actually, government is very good at taking a politically popular service and preserving it[2]. But this comes with a cost: extreme conservatism. You see, our government also happens to have a military that is obsessed with roads; and they pay a 900% subsidy to highway projects. So even states that like transit are hard-pressed to actually fund coverage improvements because it's capital inefficient to build anything that isn't a road. And private institutions building their own rail or transit services will just get absolutely crushed by the road subsidy making driving the only good option. So, government bad, actually, but not for the reason you think.

Also, you're replying to someone talking about NYC in particular. Politics in this area are notoriously corrupt; NJ had a mayor who literally closed a bridge to punish people who didn't vote for him. LIRR in particular has a labor scandal every decade or so. And don't forget, Trump was a NY real estate guy before he decided to tear apart America's political fabric.

[0] In fact, it's kind of absurd they didn't do this when they initially switched the Far Rockaway line over from LIRR to subway service!

[1] This would actually be a good opportunity for light rail, unlike the MTA's initial idea of making the IBX a light rail line

[2] See also: Amtrak.

The quality is most definitely suspect for how much revenue it brings it and how poorly its allocated. MTA has been full of cronyism and corruption for years and the cycle of kickbacks. Yes, its a complicated service, however you cannot deny the lack of transparency and ineptitude leaves the service in a much worse place than it currently could be. People can understand price increases when it translates to service.

Even if the govt lights the money on fire we still get the benefit of fewer cars in lower manhattan.

What in particular about the MTA would you change?

> What in particular about the MTA would you change?

Remove the diversity compliance requirement from bids, e.g. [1]. Open up bids to any firm in the nation and select winners based on cost and competence only. Subject the MTA to a forensic audit every ten or twenty years.

[1] https://www.mta.info/document/180556

Usually diversity requirements don't come with lower competence requirements. They usually require people to be competent and then also equal opportunity. Or are you suggesting that all non-white non-male people are incompetent?

> diversity requirements don't come with lower competence requirements

They come with certification requirements. The one that RFQ lists are NYC specific.

> are you suggesting that all non-white non-male people are incompetent?

I’m saying a local-only bidding pool will necessarily be smaller than a national one. And requiring local certification guarantees the former.

I’m objecting to diversity compliance. Not diversity requirements. (Though even there, one needs to be cognizant of how quickly intersecting requirements can rapidly cascade the candidate pool to small numbers.)

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