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Comment by estearum | Hacker News Reader

Congestion pricing is one of the few policy ideas that's so overwhelmingly positive that even the people who try to argue against it end up strengthening the argument. Love it.

"What about all the people who need to drive into the city for work?" Uhh... don't!

"What about the delivery people who need to bring this into the city?" They should be able to get in and out much faster, and their cargo makes it easy to amortize the cost!

"What about people who need to drive due to mobility issues?" Look, now they can park near their destination too!

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> "What about all the people who need to drive into the city for work?"

How are they going to do if there's no public transportation available for their commute?

edit: and how about plumbers (and the like) who need a vehicle to carry what they need to work?

Given the increased road availability, we should invent trains that drive on roads.

Snark isn't actually a productive way to discuss a topic.

A productive way would be to say that congestion pricing should be used to expand bus service.

Well I don't care how the money flows and neither should anyone else. It's a matter of allocating costs as closely to the origin of those costs as possible.

If you do that, it will turn out that buses (etc) are far superior methods of moving people around, but you really don't need to move money directly from one to the other.

> Well I don't care how the money flows and neither should anyone else

Why shouldn't people care how the money flows and why are you the decider of what people should care about? If the money from congestion pricing was for a new stadium for the Yankees, or to build a new heliport for billionaires' row, or it just went into the pocket of the mayor I think that would be concerning for everyone involved.

Even if we took the money and lit it on fire each year, congestion pricing would still be a very, very good policy.

Arguably, tone policing is even worse. I guffawed at grandparent comment!

> Don't be snarky.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I stand by my guffaw and by my clear call that tone policing is worse.

I thought it was an allusion to trams.

I like trams, they're cool. I wonder if, once automated driving is advanced enough, we'll go back to cars and trams sharing the road (here in France all the trams I've seen have their tracks separated from the road and for good reasons).

Is there any city implementing congestion pricing that doesn't have public transportation?

>How are they going to do if there's no public transportation available for their commute?

is there any city anywhere that has implemented congestion pricing without having public transit available?

Cambridge in the UK tried it. They promised to improve the bus service only after introducing the charge.

It didn’t go over well.

And even for a small city like Cambridge it is a huge lift to go from an already inadequate public transport infrastructure and set of services to infrastructure and services suitable for a city where cars have been largely eliminated.

The irony of course is that bus services, specifically the guided busway, will be cut again soon due to ongoing lack of use. But the lack of use has been caused by long-running and poorly managed maintenance on the busway disrupting services to the point of unusability, rather than because of any real lack of demand.

Some people didn’t trust that promises would be delivered on public transport when it came to the congestion charge. Obviously cuts like this add fuel to that fire.

On a more positive note we have, over the past 10 years or so, gained two new railway stations, and that’s good. But we haven’t gained new rail lines and rail routes so they haven’t done anything really to improve the transport and congestion situations around the city. It’s easier and more convenient to get to London though, depending on where you are.

A web search surfacing contemporary newspaper articles suggests this congestion charge was proposed, but never actually implemented.

That's correct. I said they tried it, as in tried to introduce it. It was never actually introduced.

It is quite likely to be tried again in future.

> and how about plumbers (and the like) who need a vehicle to carry what they need to work?

This is literally addressed by the comment you are replying to:

"What about the delivery people who need to bring this into the city?" They should be able to get in and out much faster, and their cargo makes it easy to amortize the cost!

Always the plumber who can afford every other toll but not the very low priced congestion pricing. No other occupation ever gets mentioned so we must think of the non-existent hundreds of thousands of plumbers who can’t afford it.

My point is that the parent to whom I was responding didn't address the cases where one need a motor vehicle for their work. If it had been addressed as 'those cases will have to pay for the charge and adapt their prices', I wouldn't have mentioned it. Of course, as pointed in another (more useful) response to my comment, for those cases it might become cheaper since they might spend less time stuck in traffic.

My counter point is very few people have those requirements beyond plumbers. That’s why everyone always uses the plumbers as an example. And as you stated someone else's point is that since there are very few plumbers they would benefit. So my point is that those people aren’t a large enough group to matter in the decision of implementing congestion pricing because their negatives from it are nonexistent or over-exaggerated.

> very few people have those requirements beyond plumbers.

I'd say everyone who's working in the various home improvements/renovations, so carpenters, tillers, HVAC/boilers installers and maintainers, roofers, painters, kitchen designers, those who install plancher or carpets...

and taking into account a minority that will have no choice but to interact with the new regulation (unlike service or white collar worker for whom it would be easier to take public transportation) seems like a good idea, no?

They were taken into account and the result is that the negative effects to them were negligible to the gains. They ultimately don’t matter in the end game. Sorry! But not sorry!

The MTA did a 10 year long study. It wasn’t something that appeared out of the blue.

> edit: and how about plumbers (and the like) who need a vehicle to carry what they need to work?

You charge the customer for the congestion charge and use it to pay the fee, just like anything else. I bid construction work and would include congestion fees into my bid or T&M rates if needed.

How do you think construction vehicles pay for parking? They charge the customer for it and use the money to pay for parking.

Presumably it would lower your bid by subtracting 20 minutes less of travel per trip and adding the congestion charge per day.

Definitely, 20 minutes of an electrician in a truck costs me about $45 ($135/hr cost). Probably closer to $170-180/hr in NYC which would be close to $60 if it saved 20 minutes.

What about them? It’s good there will be less traffic so they can get to their jobs on time.

> how about plumbers (and the like) who need a vehicle to carry what they need to work?

They pay the fee and pass on the cost to their customers. And now they can find parking near where they work so they'll save some time.

Not really. It's just a tolling overlay that changes the deal and perpetuates bad engineering. Just as traffic grows to fill a road, budgets grow to spend revenue.

The positivity of it varies dramatically based on the type of jurisdiction and what entity has what power. Manhattan and London have an existing chokepoint arrangement where you won't be able to really assess it's benefit/detraction for a long time. Proponents of the Manhattan congestion pricing tend to ignore where alot growth is happening - Hoboken and Jersey City are in some ways more vital. Most of the benefit could have been realized by tolling the free river crossings, as alot of the traffic reduction was eliminating toll-avoidance trips.

In other places, you can see part of the downside with speed cameras which are starting to pick up. My city adopted them and traffic dropped noticeably, immediately. We also saw a pretty immediate effect on retail and restaurants. My wife works for a restaurant group -- RFPs for large events basically say "not in <city>", because the city's brand is toxified by tolling.

I don't care about the revenue or what it's spent on. I care that people internalize the costs of their own decisions.

River crossings into NYC were already not free. Not sure what you're referring to.

Speed cameras and stop cameras are also great and should be virtually everywhere.

> I don't care about the revenue or what it's spent on. I care that people internalize the costs of their own decisions.

Cool, you're demonstrating that you have no understanding of the issue.

> River crossings into NYC were already not free. Not sure what you're referring to.

They sure are.

Trips that originate from Brooklyn, Queens or Long Island to New Jersey would go <origin> to Brooklyn/Manhattan/Williamsburg/Queenboro bridges. The outbound Hudson River crossings are all free.

Trips that originate from Brooklyn, Queens or Long Island to Westchester and points north or east would go <origin> to Brooklyn/Manhattan/Williamsburg/Queenboro bridges. You take the FDR drive/East Side highway to one of the free east river crossings to the bronx, then take the Deegan to one of the many parkways. You can take the Taconic all the way to Albany for $0.

BTW, the Westside of Manhattan around the tunnel crossings is now just as much of a shitshow as it was. They are just slurping up more revenue for the MTA to set aflame.

> Speed cameras and stop cameras are also great and should be virtually everywhere.

They are fine if they are everywhere. You'll feel differently when you get a $25 fine + $50 contractor fee when you drive through a 20mph school zone in the middle of August in some random town.

> Cool, you're demonstrating that you have no understanding of the issue.

How so?

You're talking about trips within New York City (Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island are part of New York City) or out of New York City.

These are not river-crossings INTO New York City.

> Westside of Manhattan around the tunnel crossings is now just as much of a shitshow as it was

This is just objectively not true. https://www.congestion-pricing-tracker.com/

> You'll feel differently when you get a $25 fine + $50 contractor fee when you drive through a 20mph school zone in the middle of August in some random town.

... why would I feel differently once getting penalized for breaking the law? I want every person who speeds through my child's school zone to get ticketed. If I'm the one doing the speeding, I should get ticketed.

> You're talking about trips within New York City (Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island are part of New York City) or out of New York City.

People of Long Island, which is not part of NYC, go to great lengths to avoid tolls to the mainland. You only need a few thousand cars to make a huge impact. That's the congestion that was eliminated. You can, and people do, the same from Westchester north. There is no free route from New Jersey.

> This is just objectively not true. https://www.congestion-pricing-tracker.com/

Compare your data, to what I said, not to what you are upset about. It's still a shitshow, just a shorter wait.

The routes used to avoid river tolls from Long Island (Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg, Queenboro Bridges) dropped. Crosstown traffic dropped.

FDR Drive, Battery tunnel, Queens Midtown Tunnel remained the same or marginally dropped.

So am I understanding that we need to add more tolls and set them higher?

Fine by me!

> Congestion pricing is one of the few policy ideas that's so overwhelmingly positive that even the people who try to argue against it end up strengthening the argument. Love it.

> "What about all the people who need to drive into the city for work?" Uhh... don't!

... Look man, I'm in favor of the policy too, but this reads like straight satire. Please tell me you're trolling.

No. People should not expect to free-ride on an adjacent city's economy while inflicting severe negative externalities on the local community and its infrastructure.

The entire point of the policy is to reduce the number of people driving into cities. "Well how am I going to drive into the city?!" is the position that's indistinguishable from satire.

I'm not disputing the negative externalities from traffic, nor the laudable goal of reducing the number of vehicles entering cities. I'm not even disputing the effectiveness of congestion pricing at achieving that goal.

But the mechanism here is highly unfair. It's obvious why rich people support congestion charges--they're rich! They don't give a shit about the $20 or whatever, and it clears the roads of those dirty poors making traffic. Bring it on!

Meanwhile the poor--already struggling with affordability and cost of living--are the ones who bear the burden. They can't afford the congestion fee, so they're forced to find some alternative way to get into the city. But that comes at an obvious utility cost; if that alternative was the best way for them to get into the city, they'd already be using it! And poor people are the ones with no time to spare, so choosing between spending $20 they don't have or spending 30 more minutes that they don't have is a Hobson's choice.

Here's my proposal: Every vehicle gets 60 free days per year with no congestion charges at all. Days 61-100 have a $1,000,000 congestion charge. Days 101-365 have a $10,000,000 congestion charge. Congestion charges will be reduced, however, to 0.1% of the driver's AGI (for days 61-100) and 1% of the driver's AGI (for days 101-365) upon application. Now even hedge fund managers in Connecticut will be inconvenienced in just the same way as poor people.

Yet somehow I believe that if that were how congestion pricing was implemented, all these Econ professors would magically discover what a bad policy congestion pricing really is!

Simpler idea that will get 90% of the benefit: amplify congestion pricing based on KBB value of the car. Zero enforcement complexity. Yes rich people could drive a shittier car to save their $5k per year or whatever, but most won't, and the few ultra-cost insensitive people will pay for vast numbers of the most cost sensitive.

Imperfect but much better than existing implementations. Really, though, the goal ought to be not only to reduce congestion, but to fairly distribute the net gain of utility among those affected.

A marginal $20 has very little utility to rich people, but 15 minutes saved in traffic has large utility. Congestion pricing results in large utility gains to the rich.

A marginal $20 has tangible utility to poor people, and 15 minutes spent finding alternative transport also has tangible utility. Congestion pricing results in large utility losses to the poor.

KBB values are an imperfect proxy for individual monetary utility but could definitely be used to more fairly distribute the utility gains from congestion pricing.

Yep, in sync with all of the above

The main problem with that scheme is that its imprecision falls exactly where I think we need the highest precision: The ultra-rich. If they're just a passenger in their driver's black SUV (maybe $100k KBB tops), they're not paying anywhere close to a commensurate share of their income on congestion fees. The upper middle class BMW driver, on the other hand, gets screwed (relatively speaking).

The congestion charge should reach each person using that infrastructure in a way that fairly impacts their available individual utility. The impracticality of achieving this goal is why, in my opinion, congestion charges are bad policy.

Avoiding a policy that makes life better for nearly everyone because it doesn't make life bad enough for the top 0.0001% is so absurd that I honestly can't believe it's the source of your real opposition.

Given the extreme wealth disparity in this country, there will be virtually no policies at all that achieve your platonic policy-making ideal. Should we just have no laws at all?

If you really care to deal with the extreme high-end, there are other mechanisms that are easier to do at small n, such as having a superlinear vehicle registration tax.

Good, because it's not. The inevitably unfair distribution of utility gains and losses is why I think congestion charges are bad policy. The fact that your proposal leaves a giant loophole for those whose utility gains are the largest is, I think, quite a reasonable objection.

> If you really care to deal with the extreme high-end, there are other mechanisms that are easier to do at small n, such as having a superlinear vehicle registration tax.

The extreme high end don't register super fancy vehicles, and if they do, even superlinear registration taxes would be a much smaller marginal utility hit than would be fair--and once again, would be an unfairly large marginal utility hit to the upper middle class.

Can you name some policies (traffic related would be great, but curious in general) that achieve your ideal?

What ideal, exactly? A fair (re-)distribution of utility?

How about "free" school lunches?

Progressive income taxes come close, though ideally they'd have more brackets with higher rates and the brackets would be graduated by both wealth and income.

The "gas guzzler" tax in California seems pretty fair to me, as does the "polluter pays" principle in general.

Specifically traffic-related: I like how California does HOV/FasTrak lanes. There is a separate lane (or even a separate segregated roadway) with free access for "high occupancy vehicles" (2+ occupants, rarely 3+). However, individual commuters can pay (with FasTrak) for access to the lane. The cost is set dynamically depending on traffic conditions; it's a realtime market for spare capacity unused by actual HOVs. (It could still be improved, though, with an AGI coefficient, but I digress). Anyway, the most important part is there are always cost-free freeway lanes available; there's always an option just to sit and wait without additional payment.

> People should not expect to free-ride on an adjacent city's economy while inflicting severe negative externalities on the local community and its infrastructure.

Are you kidding me? Free riding?

I pay the same taxes on my NY income as if I lived in NY plus congestion pricing atop that. Your transportation in the city free rides on me after NY/NYC do their voodoo transfers.

You shut down soooo many lanes then pretend the problem is the commuters.

Consider: "Broad"-way is effectively 1 lane southbound in the southern part of Manhattan.

Yes you are free-riding.

People who live in NY pay NY taxes and NY rent. The reason you do not live in the city is because you prefer to arbitrage the difference in rents. The reason this arbitrage exists is because the costs incurred by e.g. taxes and congestion tolls are not sufficiently high to fully eliminate the free-riding.

I don't think taxes and tolls should be high enough to fully eliminate the arbitrage, but the existence of the arbitrage is an existence proof of the gap internalized and externalized costs.

I also don't think the problem is commuters per se. The problem is cars. But commuters are the primary source of cars.

Why stop your argument at rent? The cost of living is higher for everything in the city! Food, concerts, clothes all higher! That doesn't make free-riders out of everyone not paying NYC prices for a hot dog.

Even if I could afford my house+land smack dab in the middle of Tribeca I would choose to live where I am now.

Once, years ago, I preferred the city. The reason I do not live in the city today is because I now prefer not to. Rent has nothing to do with that preference changing over time.

And, for the record, nothing wrong with the city.

The cost of everything being higher is principally due to rent (in particular land rents). Food, concerts, clothes, coffee, all of them have a "land upon which this was retailed and sold + land upon which the person behind the counter lives" line item. In high-COL areas, this invisible line item makes up a gigantic portion of any bill you pay anywhere.

I'm not sure what the rest of your comment is about? That's fine if you have that preference. Expressing that preference generates negative externalities on the people who do live in the city, and you should have to internalize those costs to whatever degree possible.

Your rents, by the way, do not just pay for your house and land. Your rent pays principally for location. So the idea that you're not engaging in rent arbitrage because you wouldn't want to pay the same amount to have the same unit in Tribeca is nonsense. The question is: would you pay more to have the same house, land, surroundings, and also have immediate access to city amenities and jobs.

The answer to that is already empirically yes. Because you pay the cost you do for your current house, land, surroundings, then you pay an additional cost (an insufficiently internalized one) to commute into the city. Time, tolls, stress, vehicle ownership, parking, etc. So obviously the exact same set of facts minus the commute, despite being physically impossible, would be a more preferable product.

Or to put it another way: would you pay more than $0 to have a teleportation portal from your home in the suburbs to your work in the city. My suspicion is yes.

> I'm not sure what the rest of your comment is about...

You said I live where I live to arb rent. I said, no I simply prefer where I live.

> Would you pay more to have the same house, land, surroundings, and also have immediate access to city amenities and jobs.

No. I prefer the collective surroundings and amenities of the 'burbs over those of the city. It's why I left during early Covid--- right about the time Rick Moranis was sucker-punched.

> Or to put it another way: would you pay more than $0 to have a teleportation portal from your home in the suburbs to your work in the city. My suspicion is yes.

Sure, who doesn't love a portal? But I would pay more than $0 for a portal to anywhere on the planet. Can my portals be like the ACME-brand black circles from Looney Tunes, the ones you throw on the wall?

> Expressing that preference generates negative externalities on the people who do live in the city...

...by choice. Most everyone who lives in the city chose to live in the city BEFORE the congestion pricing and therefore ACCEPTED all those externalities. You really didn't expect traffic when you chose to live in Manhattan?

Congestion pricing is a pure cash grab from NJ residents, retroactively justified by making me an other-ed villain. The tri-state is a powerhouse because we all cooperate through the free market, not because of punative transportation barriers.

Congestion will gradually return and the city will be just as much a traffic snarl in 20 years as it was before. In the long run the city will still be traffic-y (because it's a city!), the MTA will still be underfunded because its fares are irrationally low, and we will all be poorer for this frictional government intervention.

Until that certain eventually, enjoy the crosstown busses running faster. When's the last time you personally took one? I haven't since Moranis took that hit to the face.

---

Thank you for the discussion. I am going to cut it off here because, as you can tell, it makes me stupid angry when someone tells me that I free ride on NY given what I pay in taxes+fees to this state in which I do not live.

You kind of have it backwards. Cities that overbuild commercial space and underbuild housing get to reap the sales taxes without having to provide the same level of services.

And then the residents complain that people keep commuting to work in the offices they zoned for instead of housing towers.

Yeah, I know, I agree with all this. I'm still saying that if your entire argument for the absolutely giant section of society that drives into cities for work, which includes the rich, the poor, the disabled, those with large families, etc etc is "lol just don't do that stupid" don't be surprised when you find it hard to win support.

Congestion pricing was a very popular idea when it was passed and it's only gotten more popular since then.

> "What about all the people who need to drive into the city for work?" Uhh... don't!

What? Don't work? What else is there, the bus?

And if reputation follows, more people will claim some disability or other of come off their disability much later than normal. If New Yorkers are known for one thing, it’s how to corrupt a system so I would propose having more scrutiny around disability qualifications with more frequent renewals.

A significant portion of modern professional jobs can be done remotely and this has been true for decades.

This is a subjective observation, not an argument for congestion pricing.

while true, this is reliant on company leadership (and their boards/shareholders) to allow for it. there's too much invested in commercial real estate at the moment that every publicly traded company with significant stake from some large investor(s) will be forcing RTO/hybrid. the calculus of 'slightly unhappy workers' vs 'complete collapse for X% of my portfolio' is not a difficult solve

which isn't to say that this is right or just. it's simply the state of things given the way we've decided to arrange our society

I exclusively work remote jobs myself, but I wouldn't say just don't ever have or use a personal vehicle. It costs me $20–40 to get up to family in another state and a train ticket (one-way) in my area would cost twice as much.

I'm not sure if this is a serious question, but: buses, subways, (e-)bikes, working from home, carpooling. I know these aren't an option for everyone in every situation, but congestion pricing areas tend to be set up in places where public transit is good and normal.

Telling people not to drive to work without viable alternatives does not seem like a solution.

If they do not want to cover their externalities, then it is in fact a very good solution.

Good news! In all the areas where congestion pricing has been implement there are abundant alternatives to driving! Or, you can still drive and simply pay the toll!

Yes, or the train. All of these cities have a mix of public transit modes.

> Cities around the world, including London, Stockholm, Milan, and most recently, New York City (NYC), have adopted congestion pricing, charging drivers a fee to enter high-traffic zones.

Sure! Get a job in your own community or if you want access to the city's jobs, then pay to reduce the negative externalities of your access, or pick a transit method with fewer negative externalities.

I mean, sure, if you set up poor arguments like that, they're easy to knock down.

"What about people who need to drive due to mobility issues?"

"What about people on a fixed income who need to drive due to mobility issues?"

Regressive taxes are still regressive, even if you like what they do.

I'm also not quite sure how this is a winning argument either:

> "What about all the people who need to drive into the city for work?" Uhh... don't!

Huh?

The fixed income case is absolutely trivial to solve by just giving them a stipend or discount card, which is obviously what they do in NYC.

The people who drive into a city to work should either pay for access to the city's economy and infrastructure that supports their job (and the entire surrounding region's suburbia), or they can get a job in their own community, or they can take a form of transit with fewer negative externalities on the city. Not that hard to understand.

They already pay substantial taxes out of their income to the city they work, in most places. They already are paying for access.

Empirically demonstrated by their continued decision to live outside of the city and commute into it, they believe they are getting more value than they are paying in via whatever tax scheme the locale has in place.

You'll know they're paying their fair share when the arbitrage actually stops, but taxing non-resident earnings so aggressively to stop it produces way more negative side effects and regressive taxation effects than congestion pricing does. That's why congestion pricing is a good idea and 90% taxes on non-resident incomes is not (not to mention the ease of enforcement).

Living in NYC is really expensive. Those that earn a lot can do so. Those that have families frequently cannot.

It's not "arbitrage" to commute from a place you can afford to a place you can't. Being middle class isn't an arbitrage play.

That is quite literally arbitrage.

People with families aren't often willing to accept the living conditions they'd need to in order to live in NYC while paying market prices. So they arb and get suburban living conditions with urban employment.

The cost of their decision to do that is mostly borne by the respective communities (home community loses economic productivity and then city community bears increased infrastructure consumption).

We would know there's zero arbitrage when zero people did this. Which again, I don't think is the goal to shoot for. But simply asserting you have some god-given right to make this arb indefinitely at zero cost is a losing argument.

So what?

You didn’t say they should pay as much as they are willing to pay. You said they should pay.

They are paying!

Your new goal is that nobody can afford to work in the city except residents, but that is an objectively dumb idea, and certainly has nothing to do with a “fair share.”

I certainly did not declare that as a goal, lol. I said that you'll know you have eliminated the arbitrage when people no longer do the arbitrage. This is a simple description of reality and not a normative claim.

First, in most cities people don't pay income taxes to the cities they work in but do not reside in. At least in the US this is not typical.

Second, the position that people should pay to reduce their negative externalities does not necessarily imply the view that they pay nothing today. It implies they ought to pay more.

If someone pays for entry to Disneyland, steals a t-shirt, is a valid defense that "they paid" when they bought the ticket? No, obviously not. Does demanding that they pay for the t-shirt imply that they did not pay for a ticket? No, obviously not.

No you said, "You'll know they're paying their fair share when the arbitrage actually stops.” It might not have been intentional, but you communicated clearly that people should be charged more until they are unwilling to work inside the city and live outside. Otherwise they are not "paying their fair share.”

Nevertheless, NYC is the only city I’m aware of in the USA that has congestion pricing, and I’m shocked to find that non-residents who work there do not pay income tax to the city. I live in OH and have to pay an income tax to the small city I work in even though I’m not a resident of said city. I thought it was more common.

You're jumping from "it's unfair that people can do X" to "the goal is to prevent all X."

I, as a realist, believe in systems with flex. As our very own patio11 put it: the optimal amount of fraud is nonzero. Here, the optimal amount of unfairness is nonzero. Or stated another way: the cost of eliminating all unfairness would not be worth it.

The assumptive jumps are not necessary here!

Fine, let’s take it for granted that you don’t want to all of it. But the clear implication of saying that people aren’t paying their fair share is that they generally should. So your ideal may not be 0, but it is (even by your own analogy), close to 0. It’s like saying the goal is to end fraud, and you bring up the technicality that actually the cost of ending all fraud is not worth it. Ok, but the ideal is still no fraud, and nobody is confused about the general goal being to get rid of as much of it as we can cost effectively.

So now I’m honestly asking, are you or are you not arguing that the general goal is to end people "not paying their fair share” (which you equate to living outside of the city you work in)?

Also can you please explain why you believe that “fair” is measurable in this way? Can you give another example of something where a common person would use a similar definition of fair? I think that your definition of fair means stores without dynamic pricing are unfair, which seems crazy to me.

Uhh... I've already stated explicitly that's not a goal. I don't know why you're fixated on something I never said or even implied.

It's not "absolutely trivial" and it's not "obviously what they do in NYC".

It is a convoluted system of city and state tax credits, partial discounts, etc that you must do every year. Not only do you have to file additional forms as part of your tax return, you must also recertify your disability annually.

And if you are simply low income, you can apply and then you receive a 50% discount after your first 10 trips into the city each month. If you are going into the city 2-3 times a week, you receive no discount.

https://www.mta.info/fares-tolls/tolls/congestion-relief-zon...

While the number of options for receiving relief can be large/varied/complex, each individual program is definitely not complex.

Low-income: Show your tax return <$50k/yr or show your enrollment in a public assistance program.

Disability: Get your disability assess annually or show enrollment in the already-existing disabled-people transit assistance programs.

Not sure what you think is non-trivial about either of these?

You seem to be avoiding the point that to get a discount you must travel into the city by car more than ten times a month and those first ten times are full price.

And then you must pay 50% of the price after that. Then, in April, you may get some tax relief.

This is a good system and trivial in your mind? Because the average low income or fixed income person can just float that money for a year and then maybe get some of it back?

And you can't even do it if you've moved recently. If all of your documents don't have the exact same address you are out of luck. If you've moved since you filed your taxes and your address on your car registration is your old address you're out of luck until you file your next taxes and update your registration.

And then you have to mail it all in and just wait until you get a response. And if it's denied you get to start the process again. And then next year you get to do it again.

This isn't "trivial". Trivial is submitting your social security number, VIN, drivers license, and address.

You're mixing two distinct relief systems.

The standard low-income relief program does not entail any tax credits or fronting any money. It does not require a disability assessment. It's just a discount attached to your EZPass and you can get it if you're already enrolled in a federal or local public assistance program.

A different relief program gives you a post-facto tax credit.

These are two different systems. One is easier for one group, the other is easier for a different group.

Sure go make it more trivial. No complaints there!

I don't think this should be described as a tax. It's paid access to a scarce resource, no different from a parking garage charging people to park. In this case it just happens to be a government-owned resource, but that doesn't make the price a tax.

If you're worried about poor people, the right move is to price things properly and then give assistance to those who need it, rather than giving away scarce resources to everyone for free.

A government fee or whatever you wish to name it is still a tax.

Didn't the city already charge tolls on the bridges and tunnels in and out?

A road isn't a scarce resource. You can't deplete it.

So when I go buy rum at the local liquor store, the price on the shelf is actually a tax? That's not what the word means.

Land is a scarce resource. Roads require land. Charging money for access to land is extremely common.

What I don't like about congestion pricing is that the people asking for money are the ones who are responsible for the congestion. They are always making cities denser and denser, bigger and bigger, which no resident asks for.

"Asking for money?" Who are you referring to?

People love density. What they don't like are some of the consequences of density, such as traffic. This alleviates a major consequence without getting rid of the stuff people like.

If you don't like density, there are plenty of un-dense places you can be, with no congestion pricing.

You have no clue. Low-density suburbs create much more traffic than dense areas, just because you _have_ to travel >5km just to the next supermarket. In dense areas, most people walk.

San Francisco wasted millions on congestion pricing research that ironically totally solved by Covid.

Now work from home has essentially destroyed the downtown but also left it with very little traffic compared to 2019.

That being said the primary argument against it was that for residents who lived in S.F. it was an insanely bad proposal that had you paying to drop your kids at school, go to the grocery store and do average everyday things that had no public transit option.

This shows a total lack of empathy for people without the wealth to live wherever they want. “You can sit on a bus for an hour and a half, dummy” is a terrible argument.

I’m glad we all have great work situations, for many of us working from home whenever we want even. Most people are just a job loss away from having to commute to a job far away from the house near their kids’ school or their partner’s work. People don’t get jobs with a commute by choice to begin with, and this just punishes people for that.

Edit: I haven’t had a car since 2018, but before that I had one because I needed it, and I hated that commute. The alternative to a 25- to 35-minute drive was 1:45 on 2 trains. You shouldn’t have to literally experience things in the world yourself to recognize that people are in situations that you are not in yourself.

No, quite the contrary. Unlimited free road consumption has created the conditions under which jobs get super-concentrated into commercial centers and away from communities, which centralizes land values and urban vitality into the few neighborhoods the wealthy can live in.

How can you argue here that it is "free road consumption" while in another comment you point out that there were already tolls?

Which one is it? Is it free or were there tolls?

In another comment thread I was talking about New York City in particular.

This comment thread is talking about the general dynamics of commutes.

Unlimited free or near-free road consumption is the norm across the entire US. NYC in particular has always been ahead of the curve in mitigating this. The bridge tolls are obviously not priced anywhere close to the value of crossing the bridge, or else land values would be the same on both sides of the bridge.

I suspect this isn't actually hard to follow and you're just getting irritated for some reason.

> Unlimited free or near-free road consumption is the norm across the entire US

Roads are funded with taxes. How does that make them free? The main source of road funding in the US are property taxes and gas taxes, followed by things like license plate tabs (mine were ~$2500 last year).

> The bridge tolls are obviously not priced anywhere close to the value of crossing the bridge, or else land values would be the same on both sides of the bridge

Nothing about that is obvious, nor does your explanation make any sense. We should only invest in infrastructure if the costs to utilize it are equivalent to its benefits? That's not what we do with anything. Why build a bridge that provides no positive benefit to the people using it?

> Roads are funded with taxes. How does that make them free?

Road creation and maintenance are funded by taxes. Road consumption is generally free or near-free. These are distinct concepts.

> Nothing about that is obvious, nor does your explanation make any sense.

A simple case of disequilibrium doesn't make sense to you? The two sides are clearly of unequal value. If the act of crossing them costed as much as that difference, then the two sides would equalize.

> We should only invest in infrastructure if the costs to utilize it are equivalent to its benefits? That's not what we do with anything. Why build a bridge that provides no positive benefit to the people using it?

Nope! Not sure how you got from a description of how prices work and clear empirical evidence of price imbalances to a normative argument about what we should do. As I've stated explicitly elsewhere in the thread, the goal is not to completely eliminate the imbalance. I'm saying the existence of price differences and the arbitrage between the two sides of the bridges are clear evidence there is an imbalance.

Transit access is what concentrates jobs and creates urban vitality. Highway access has a similar effect but creates corridors and edge city clusters which also drive up land values and cost but are impossible to effectively serve by transit, requiring every single person to drive.

This is backwards. With public transport you have to be near public transport. With a car you can go from any start point to any end point. Banning cars would mean you either work in a local coffee shop or supermarket or something, or you work in the office buildings and large employers at public transit hubs, which are usually downtown. It increases concentration of jobs into zones, increasing the need to be in a residential area that can access them, increasing demand for those locations, increasing wealth inequality by limiting access to jobs based on where you can afford to live.

Increase public transit density. In Asia like in Seoul or Tokyo I'm not further than a 10 minute walk anywhere to a public transit station.

Job concentration predates the automobile by some amount. The concept of suburbs largely originates from the development of streetcars (very much not free!), although the suburban sprawl associated with US cities nowadays arises from the private automobiles. Note that streetcar suburbs are generally associated with medium-density development: it allowed urban centers to grow larger without having to really pack everyone into high-density tenements (though that still happened in many cases). White flight and the automobile means that post-WW2 suburbs become large low-density suburbs, focused on detached single-family homes.

In essence, the "unlimited free road consumption" created the disaggregation of decentralized, low-density suburban regions from the high-density commercial districts, which predates that concept by several decades.

You're saying the same thing that I'm saying.

Subsidized roads creates an arbitrage that allows people to live away from their jobs. This concentrates commercial activity, i.e. it creates commercial-only zones and residential-only zones that are far away from each other. Prior to that, people lived and worked in the same area. These were very dense areas, but the economic activity of the region wouldn't be described as concentrated because there was no gradient to low-activity surroundings.

Obviously actual zoning policies play a (significant) role here as well.

I don't think you're saying the same thing.

Transportation allows people to live far from where they work, but that's everything from horses to bullet trains.

Free roads allow for dispersed uses but doesn't affect how dense of segregated they are. Beyond the cost and space requirements to park everyone's cars. Zoning is doing almost all the work you're describing - even with the presence of cars and subsidized highways, the built environment would look very different without zoning and with more market forces.

No free roads create the cost-free arbitrage between cheaper land in the outer areas and more expensive urban core.

And no, cost of land and ease of transit is a far more powerful force than zoning. Look at Houston.

As opposed to sitting in their car for an hour and a half?

Seeing as the comparable drive is probably a half hour, if you’ve sat in the car for an hour and a half then you’ve found a great way to spend your time.

Nobody wants to commute either by bus or by car, so the reason that they are doing it to start with is that they must do it. It’s not like people think to themselves “I’d love to find a job an hour away from my house”.

The places that are doing congestion pricing are not the places where your commute is 30 minutes by car but 90 minutes by bus.

Improve public transit then. This is not a good argument to instead allow everyone to have cars.

Now that you can't white knight for the people with medical emergencies, you're white knighting for the poor?

Cars are a money sink, everyone would be richer if you don't need them for personal transport.

I never said anything about medical emergencies, and nobody is forcing you to own one today.

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