Hacker News Reader

Comment by hammock | Hacker News Reader

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com