[HN Gopher] MTA board votes to approve new $15 toll to drive int...
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MTA board votes to approve new $15 toll to drive into Manhattan
Author : jaredwiener
Score : 173 points
Date : 2024-03-27 17:03 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| nobody9999 wrote:
| Finally!
|
| It's still not enough (and don't get me started on the incredibly
| cheap double-parking fines!)
|
| Ride the bus, take the train. Don't make my city more smog
| filled, noisy and nasty.
| DaveExeter wrote:
| Hopefully it will keep the poors off the road!
| affinepplan wrote:
| the poors are already off the road!
|
| they use the train or bus, which is cheaper, faster, and more
| environmentally friendly
|
| if you are wealthy enough to afford a car in NYC then you are
| wealthy enough to pay this toll
| busterarm wrote:
| Who do you think does all of the jobs that require driving
| in Manhattan? Do you really believe it's wealthy people
| doing that by choice?
| affinepplan wrote:
| if you're referring to rideshare and taxi drivers
|
| yes, these rates might rise. but it's the wealthy who are
| consuming these services. costs will obviously pass
| through to the rider (not be borne by driver)
| srndsnd wrote:
| If you're referring to the number of folks who work in
| the central business district of Manhattan but have no
| choice but to drive (given the enormous catchment area of
| MTA services), that number is vanishingly small, and
| congestion pricing _does_ have low income discounts.
|
| If you're referring to those who drive taxis or cars-for-
| hire in Manhattan, yes, the idea is the cost should be
| borne by riders who choose those services instead of
| transit.
| lupusreal wrote:
| I'm sure all the plumblers, electricians, etc (the people
| who actually do the hard work of making the city actually
| function) are taking all their tools and materials around
| town on the buses and subways.
| affinepplan wrote:
| maybe they can make up for it with the revenue from being
| able to fit in another client instead of sitting in
| traffic for 2 hours
| lupusreal wrote:
| Dubious.
| busterarm wrote:
| There is no "CBD" in Manhattan. It's a made up term
| created for this program to make the pill less bitter.
| Let's be real, it's half the fucking island and where
| mostly everyone in the city works and shops. That's no
| small number.
|
| It's everyone making deliveries to those businesses. It's
| every one doing manual labor jobs requiring tools. It's
| city workers on low salaries who have to live so far out
| in the boroughs where the MTA isn't even a good option to
| get to work anymore. The whole FDNY is losing their shit
| over this congestion pricing in particular because it
| hits them fairly hard.
| anyonecancode wrote:
| > There is no "CBD" in Manhattan. It's a made up term
| created for this program to make the pill less bitter.
| Let's be real, it's half the fucking island and where
| mostly everyone in the city works and shops. That's no
| small number.
|
| But it's not half of the city. NYC is more than
| Manhattan.
| reaperman wrote:
| If that was strictly true then the toll wouldn't make any
| difference. I don't have a better solution for Manhattan,
| but I can recognize that fixed-fee tolls select for traffic
| with the "most disposable income" rather than the "most
| economically beneficial" traffic.
|
| Arguments can be made in places like Denver that high tolls
| means that those who have control over politics (who tend
| to be rich) won't feel much need to invest in additional
| road infrastructure, because their experience is that "the
| travel times are fine!". But they're using an up-
| to-$15-each-way toll road (E-470).
|
| Similar to how the TSA procedures would get reformed if
| everyone flying had to go through the same process (most
| importantly, including anyone taking private planes). But
| almost no one who has power to force changes actually goes
| through the TSA lines because they mostly take private
| chartered planes which don't have any TSA process.
| bombcar wrote:
| You have to align incentives with these things, and that
| can be tricky.
|
| For TSA something like "if you're in line an hour before
| your flight and you miss your flight, the TSA pays for
| your ticket unless they can prove you got through in less
| than 15 minutes" might do the trick. You'd have to work
| out the details.
| mc32 wrote:
| Get Buttigieg on the horn. He'll be all over it!
| andrewla wrote:
| Boy is this being downvoted. Sorry to see that since this is
| very real. The "you can get half-price if you submit
| paperwork showing that you make less that $50k" is a joke.
|
| I think like many things in NYC there's a bimodality to it --
| the only people who can drive are the people who can afford
| to drive, or the people who can't afford to not drive. This
| will price out the latter but not the former.
| busterarm wrote:
| You can't move all of the freight that the city needs by rail.
| Enjoy paying more for everything you buy.
|
| And all this does is move more traffic to the outer boroughs
| (city leadership even acknowledges this will be a side effect).
| affinepplan wrote:
| yeah I don't think any freight is being moved by (checks
| article) passenger cars
| busterarm wrote:
| check again: ```Who Will Pay: Most cars, trucks and taxi
| and Uber riders.```
| affinepplan wrote:
| in any case
|
| > Those tolls will be discounted by 75 percent at night,
|
| which is when most truck deliveries are made
|
| I would bet the value in time saved to a freight delivery
| business to be stuck in less traffic (composed primarily
| of passenger cars!) is well worth more than the toll paid
| busterarm wrote:
| > which is when most truck deliveries are made
|
| That's simply not true.
|
| Also congestion based pricing strategies have never
| reduced traffic anywhere they've been implemented. Go ask
| London.
| affinepplan wrote:
| > Also congestion based pricing strategies have never
| reduced traffic anywhere they've been implemented
|
| this is so fragrantly incorrect I don't even know how to
| respond
|
| they absolutely have, including in London
|
| please engage with some of the published research instead
| of just guessing
| busterarm wrote:
| fragrantly?
|
| really?
| nzgrover wrote:
| Doesn't pass the sniff test ;-)
| affinepplan wrote:
| typo
| p-a_58213 wrote:
| > Also congestion based pricing strategies have never
| reduced traffic anywhere they've been implemented. Go ask
| London.
|
| Wrong.
|
| Source: I am a transport engineer. In London.
| busterarm wrote:
| According to INRIX, London is more congested than ever
| and it's so unpopular that 66% of residents voted against
| expanding the program and that very proposal is what sunk
| the Labour party in last year's by-elections.
|
| Also London's public transit infrastructure is lightyears
| better than NYC's and way better managed. This whole
| pricing scheme is just to shore up the MTA which is
| massively wasteful with money and never gets any of its
| projects done on time (by decades).
| p-a_58213 wrote:
| a) You are confusing a congestion charge zone (CCZ) with
| an emissions charge zone (ULEZ) which specifically
| targets vehicles that do not comply with the latest
| emissions standards. These are two separate schemes, with
| different objectives. It is the later that was linked
| with Labour's by-election failures, in the very outer
| boroughs that have fairly poor public transport.
|
| b) The INRIX scorecard is citywide. Assuming that they
| went with the conventional definition of "London", ie.
| whatever lies inside M25, this is an area of 1579 km2.
| The Congestion charge zone has an area of 21 km2, which
| is about 1.3% of the total.
| parl_match wrote:
| Trucks already pay a significant cost on bridge tolls. Tolls
| will be dropped significantly at night, which is when trucks
| make most deliveries. It is unlikely to increase cost of
| goods.
| busterarm wrote:
| I lived in NYC for 35 years and most trucks do not make
| their deliveries at night.
| donohoe wrote:
| Fair. That said, the goal is to shift a lot of that
| delivery traffic to other hours.
|
| There are about 125K truck crossings into Manhattan per
| day. In a NYC pilot program with receiving companies,
| carriers, and truck drivers; some participants
| implementing the off-hour policy at a number of their
| locations and it went fairly well.
| busterarm wrote:
| USPS, FedEx, UPS, DHL and LaserShip won't do it. Home
| Depot, PC Richards and other appliance and furniture
| delivery companies won't do it either. Moving companies
| won't do it because residential buildings won't let them.
| That's a pretty large amount of your truck traffic right
| there.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Well they ought to.
| Symbiote wrote:
| The freight will move faster with less congestion, which may
| well reduce costs overall.
| freejazz wrote:
| $15 over an entire truck's worth of goods? Even if it was
| $150, this is pearl clutching at best.
| donohoe wrote:
| Agreed. These same trucks often get parking tickets that
| surpass the cost of entry.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| Exactly, which is why I mentioned double parking in my
| previous comment[0].
|
| It's a USD$115.00 ticket for double parking and delivery
| trucks do so even when there's space for them to park
| legally, lest they get blocked in by another truck --
| it's just the cost of doing business.
|
| And it's disgusting. Streets which should have four lanes
| of traffic are reduced to one or two lanes with all the
| double-parked trucks. Those fines should be $1000+ and
| entering into Manhattan from _anywhere_ in a car should
| be at least $100. Sadly, no one asked me. And more 's the
| pity.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39842275
| hbrav wrote:
| Consider a relatively bulky item, say, a package of paper
| towel. Probably takes up about a cubic foot of volume, which
| is 0.027 cubic meters.
|
| Suppose you drive that into NYC in a very small van, say a
| Ford Transit. A quick google tells me that has a cargo
| capacity of 10 cubic meters. The $15 toll amortized over 370
| packages would add an additional cost of 4c per package.
|
| This is the most extreme case I could think of off the top of
| my head. I believe most deliveries use vans with a much
| larger cargo capacity than a Transit.
| TomK32 wrote:
| > The toll will be $24 for small trucks and charter buses,
| and will rise to $36 for large trucks and tour buses
|
| Still very acceptable for cargo.
| TomK32 wrote:
| London had the first full assessment in 1964 that something
| ought to be done about cars on the basis of congestion, but
| sadly those building roads had the upper hand for a few more
| decades.
| cm2187 wrote:
| NY isn't really smog filled. It is pretty windy and the
| straight broad streets ensure the wind flows. It's something
| that actually surprised me when I lived there. Trains, taxis
| and busses are also major contributors to the noise, along
| emergency services.
| asah wrote:
| Compared with other places, NYC air could be a LOT better.
|
| Taxis are getting the conversion tax. Take and busses are by
| definition a tiny fraction of the impact.
| kernal wrote:
| >Ride the bus, take the train.
|
| I hear they deployed the national guard in the NYC subway.
| Should commuters also be forced to take mandatory self defense
| classes?
| arcticbull wrote:
| It's literally the most used subway system in the United
| States, and one of the most used in the world. It has an
| annual ridership of over two billion people. Rail is one of
| the safest ways of moving people. Out of the two billion
| rides in 2023 there were 88 deaths and 146 injuries.
|
| Same year, 238 people died and over 100,000 were injured on
| the road despite a similar share of commuters. So that would
| make driving at least 3X more dangerous by death toll, and
| 684X more dangerous by injury count.
|
| Should everyone be forced to wrap themselves in bubble wrap
| and wear a football helmet when in or anywhere close to a
| car?
| kernal wrote:
| I don't have to be concerned with being robbed, stabbed,
| beaten, abused, assaulted and pushed onto the train tracks
| in a car. In the NYC subway - you do.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Except the data (a) completely doesn't align with what
| you're saying and (b) you don't think your car gets
| broken into, and that those things can't happen to you on
| the street? You can't get pushed in front of a car? I
| suggest the burden of proof is on you to show the
| numbers, and tell us exactly how much riskier it is to
| take the train. It's not, at all, so it'll be hard to do,
| but I'm curious how you approach it.
|
| There were 500 carjackings in 2021. 15,000 car thefts
| last year. _Significantly_ more car break-ins than that.
| kernal wrote:
| Of those 2 billion subway riders how many were killed
| when they departed the station to get to their final
| destination?
| arcticbull wrote:
| Do you have some data to back up your assertion, actual
| numbers? If you'd like to enter that number into
| evidence, you should source it. If you think taking the
| subway is risky, back up your assertion, don't just
| gesture in the general direction. Simply feeling it in
| your heart isn't enough to make something true. Not that
| there isn't value in your perception, but if we're going
| to talk about it we should know which is fact and which
| is feels.
| kernal wrote:
| You've cited the number of people that were killed in
| cars compared to the subway. Don't you think you should
| have also included the number of people that were also
| killed during their journey to and from the subway?
| Unless you do I don't really think that's a fair
| comparison.
| arcticbull wrote:
| I'm not the one making the assertion, you are. The burden
| of proof is on you.
|
| I refer you to Brandolini's law, or the bullshit
| asymmetry principal. It takes much longer to debunk
| claims pulled out of thin air than it does to pull them
| out of thin air. So I'm not going to play that game. If
| you would like to cite a statistic, you must provide that
| statistic, otherwise it's as good as made up.
|
| You're saying "I bet a lot of people died leaving subway
| stations" -- cool. Don't bet. Find it, share it. Then we
| can talk. Otherwise, I bet the opposite direction and
| your bet is exactly as valid as mine.
|
| When you're doing that don't forget to compare the number
| of people who are killed or injured getting from the
| parking lot to their final destination. Unless you do I
| don't really think that's a fair comparison.
| jrockway wrote:
| Car crashes are the leading cause of death by injury in
| New York. It's not as safe as you think.
| hanniabu wrote:
| > Ride the bus
|
| Have you not seen the busses? They're old and spewing tons of
| fumes
| jrockway wrote:
| 1 ton of fumes / 50 people is better than 0.1 ton of fumes
| for 1 person.
|
| The buses are being replaced over the next few years in the
| MTA capital plan anyway.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Supposedly they will all be electric by 2040, which is much
| later than I was expecting [1]. So far just 60-75 buses in
| NYC are electric out of 5,800.
|
| That does not compare well with e.g. London, which currently
| has 950 electric buses out of 8,600. London plans to have all
| zero-emission buses by 2034 or 2030, depending on funding.
|
| Here in Copenhagen the aim is to have entirely electric buses
| in 2025, although that seems to be apply only to the inner
| city. Some routes in the suburbs will not change until 2030.
|
| [1] https://new.mta.info/project/zero-emission-bus-fleet
| moonshotideas wrote:
| https://archive.is/irMNh
| thedigitalone wrote:
| https://ghostarchive.org/archive/NEoog
| mlavrent wrote:
| This is the right thing to do - it makes drivers pay for the
| externalities they produce (including pollution, congestion,
| noise). When a city grows as big as Manhattan has, drivers need
| to begin shouldering at least some of the costs they introduce to
| the city, instead of leaving residents dealing with those costs.
| willmadden wrote:
| They do, by buying things in Manhattan and paying an 8.8% sales
| tax. Now many of them won't.
| affinepplan wrote:
| oh the tragedy
|
| I would be willing to wager that the increased sales / foot
| traffic from one fewer car trying to make its loud and
| carcinogenic way through manhattan is well worth the
| decreased foot traffic from that car's passenger(s)
| snakeyjake wrote:
| Congestion charges have been implemented in many global
| cities, including London, Milan, Singapore, and Stockholm.
|
| Many more cities have started severely restricting access to
| vehicles, turning many downtown areas that had previously
| been roads into pedestrian malls. Indeed, NYC has done this
| to many roads (parts of Fulton Street, Delancey Street, and
| both Broadway and Times Square).
|
| Do you have any evidence that those schemes have resulted in
| lower sale tax revenue for those locations?
| rsynnott wrote:
| I'm honestly kind of shocked to discover that Manhattan's
| only getting one now. Like, taken on its own it is one of
| the densest large urban areas on earth. I'd assume driving
| in it is a fairly miserable experience, anyway; where on
| earth do people park?
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Yes, I was living in Manhattan in 2004 working on GPS
| navigation software, and had to perform some updates
| relating to the London congestion charge. I thought to
| myself "This is such a great idea, Manhattan will surely
| implement a similar system within a couple years". Here
| we are, 20 years later...
|
| Parking is only _really_ a problem below 59th st or so.
| You can usually get street parking by driving in circles
| for 20 minutes, or go to a parking garage and pay ~$8 /hr
| to park.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| In specially-architected car elevators for a large amount
| relative to what you pay for parking in other urban
| areas. Daily parking varies from $20 to $125.
|
| (I mean, there are also more traditional parking garages,
| both above- and below-ground, but the premium on real
| estate is high enough to justify more expensive solutions
| to maximize land value also).
| CPLX wrote:
| Driving in Manhattan is pretty straightforward. There are
| parking garages everywhere you'd want to go (though most
| non-NYC people would probably consider them shockingly
| expensive) and at night and on weekends street parking is
| not too hard to find in most areas.
|
| But outside of rush hours and especially a few places
| like the tunnel approaches it's not a big deal. People do
| it constantly, it's totally normal for people from NJ or
| Westchester or LI to drive in for dinner and park, that
| kind of thing.
| bombcar wrote:
| I wonder if the parking should be taxed instead of
| tolling the bridge.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| > I'd assume driving in it is a fairly miserable
| experience
|
| Driving in Manhattan is actually pretty pleasant, all
| things considered. Wouldn't even make a top 10 list for
| me of worst places to drive in the US. I think in part
| because there's a weird selection bias where people think
| it will be bad, so bad drivers don't even attempt, and
| you're left with a cohort that, on average, has above-
| average driving skills.
|
| Seattle on the other hand? Worst driver's in the US by a
| country mile.
| Vaslo wrote:
| We aren't Europe though. Many Americans have no interest in
| paying even more taxes. Glad I avoided working and living
| in NY.
| snakeyjake wrote:
| Do you have any evidence that those schemes have resulted
| in lower sale tax revenue for those locations?
| srndsnd wrote:
| If you are living in a place that forces you into car
| ownership as a means of transportation, then you are
| receiving a subsidy in the form of the infrastructure
| that enables car dependent city planning. You're also
| compelled to own a car, which is _enormously_ expensive,
| getting even more expensive, and is probably the thing
| you do on a regular basis which is most likely to kill
| you. Sprawl is expensive, and so is car ownership.
| smileysteve wrote:
| Upvote; People complain about a congestion tax -- or
| traffic -- or bad roads. But they don't think about
| policy when when a car costs ~30% of a median salary,
| when insurance is "required", expensive (and part is
| because some choose not to afford insurance while driving
| a car). Beyond that car / driving enforcement is a drain
| on police preventing more dangerous crime, a top entry
| point of harassment and escalation by police, a drain on
| District Attorneys and the courts from enforcing other
| crime.
| Spivak wrote:
| What are you talking about? The roads in my city are paid
| for my taxes remitted to the city. I guess you could call
| that a subsidy but that's also just known as being paid
| for by taxes. And if you're in an area where everyone
| needs a car to get around then there's no argument that
| drivers are mooching off the tax revenue of non-drivers.
| I swear people are so salty about roads when they don't
| drive but nobody complains about public schools when they
| went to private.
|
| Owning a car isn't enormously expensive except in online
| discussions where people quote the MSRP of $year+1 models
| and act like folks making minimum wage are actually
| paying that. My primary car is a 2012 Honda Fit that was
| $6000 when I bought it at 30k miles and is now pushing
| 120k. I bought it in cash, but the monthly payment with
| insurance would have been 15% of my rent.
| verall wrote:
| Most Americans do not drive solely on city/town roads, we
| rather frequently take highways and interstates which are
| federally subsidized - not mostly paid for by city taxes.
|
| You or your city may be exceptions, you might drive only
| on city roads, but the parent comment's point about
| subsidies is broadly correct.
| bombcar wrote:
| Federal taxes come from ... citizens.
|
| Even the fuel taxes come from ... citizens.
|
| There's not some magical source of funding that doesn't
| eventually come from taxes.
| kube-system wrote:
| I don't think anyone here is under the impression that
| government subsidies don't come from taxes. The criticism
| above is that subsidies skew the observed relative prices
| of transport at the point of use.
| bombcar wrote:
| If I am reading https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.
| gov/files/2022-03/F... correctly (and I'm almost
| certainly not) the budget in 2023 was $60 billion (which
| to be fair includes more than just highways) and if this
| is correct (which it may be biased)
| https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-
| highway-t... then federal fuel taxes raised $43 billion
| of that.
|
| It's within 2/3rds (and frankly lower than I thought, $60
| billion doesn't get you @#@^ these days).
| verall wrote:
| Yes, but I think the poster's point was that their
| locality maintained the roads using tax dollars collected
| from the locality - i.e. their local roads are
| sustainable system.
|
| All US dollars are created by the US government, the
| ability of the US government to create valuable dollars
| comes from the tax base, so of course everything
| eventually goes back to taxes.
|
| But it's not really relevant to the point.
| programjames wrote:
| I'd recommend watching this video by "Not Just Bikes":
| [Suburbia is Subsidized: Here's the
| Math](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI).
|
| The city also has to pay for utility lines, which are
| much more expensive in suburban sprawl than the urban
| center. Also, zoning laws make it more expensive to build
| apartments, so you really only get single-family houses
| in the suburbs and apartments in the inner city. If you
| use property taxes to pay for infrastructure, the inner-
| city residents (living in apartments, and likely poorer)
| are paying most of the money for infrastructure they
| never use.
| toast0 wrote:
| > If you are living in a place that forces you into car
| ownership as a means of transportation, then you are
| receiving a subsidy in the form of the infrastructure
| that enables car dependent city planning.
|
| It costs more to build a road that supports a bus than it
| does to build a road that only supports cars. OTOH, the
| roads also need to support fire engines, so there's that.
| Certainly stores devote more real estate to parking than
| they would if I didn't live in a car dependent
| infrastructure, but I'm paying for that in some way or
| another.
|
| Otherwise, what infrastructure do you think I'm getting
| subsidized? I don't have muni water or sewer, and the
| power and telco utilities certainly pass along their
| costs to me.
| acdha wrote:
| > It costs more to build a road that supports a bus than
| it does to build a road that only supports cars.
|
| This isn't true and it's also missing a bigger point: you
| need many more lanes for cars than buses. That space is
| not providing economic value and has to be subsidized
| using general fund revenue when it could be used by
| businesses or for housing.
| lxgr wrote:
| Adopting or rejecting a policy based on it being
| "European" or "American" rather than by its actual
| projected effects and merits seems like weird
| decisionmaking to me. American exceptionalism, as well as
| its inverse, are usually pretty poor guidance for
| anything.
|
| > Glad I avoided working and living in NY.
|
| Seems like an unequivocal win-win :)
| kube-system wrote:
| > Now many of them won't.
|
| That's the point of congestion pricing.
| mlavrent wrote:
| The issues with this argument is that pedestrians, transit-
| users, and cyclists also pay the same sales tax. So if the
| goal is to have drivers take ownership over the costs they
| produce, we could also consider only levying the sales tax on
| people who arrived by car - but that's silly since there's no
| good way to implement that (how do you know if someone
| arrived in the city by private vehicle?).
|
| The straightforward answer is to add tolls. Another solution
| I could see working is adding special sales taxes on parking
| garages in the congestion pricing zone, but then this
| wouldn't capture tolls on trucks, and make it harder to
| implement exceptions for low-income drivers or drivers with
| disabilities.
| timr wrote:
| It's not a straightforward answer to the issues you're
| presenting -- they're exempting the West Side Highway and
| JFK, and of course, the line at 60th is basically
| arbitrary. I predict that parking garages on the upper east
| and upper west are about to get a lot more expensive.
|
| This is social engineering in tax form, intended to
| redirect traffic (or really...just to raise money for the
| MTA), without a great deal of thought about how it will
| impact the people actually living here (beyond "cars are
| bad", or, "New Jersey sucks", in any case). It is not
| "having drivers take ownership of the costs the produce" --
| that would be, I dunno...raising the gas tax or tag fees or
| something. And don't forget that drivers _already_ pay a
| toll to use the bridges or tunnels into Manhattan.
|
| I'm generally in favor of making externalities real and
| specific, but this plan sucks. One _nice thing_ about
| congestion is that it is inherently self-limiting, so the
| stated problem was already captured in existing economic
| incentives.
| stetrain wrote:
| > It is not "having drivers take ownership of the costs
| the produce" -- that would be, I dunno...raising the gas
| tax or tag fees or something.
|
| Gas taxes or registration fees don't reimburse Manhattan
| for the space and infrastructure costs of cars driving
| into and parking in Manhattan for cars that are
| registered and buy fuel outside of Manhattan.
|
| You can toll drivers for driving on those specific roads,
| or add a significant parking tax.
|
| Or reduce parking in general and let prices naturally
| rise, but then you'll also probably have more people
| driving in and then violating parking rules and need more
| parking enforcement. Parking fees/taxes also wouldn't
| capture the costs of traffic that doesn't necessarily
| park in Manhattan, such as ride share drivers.
| timr wrote:
| > Gas tax or registration fees doesn't reimburse
| Manhattan for the space and infrastructure costs of cars
| driving into and parking in Manhattan for cars that are
| registered and buy fuel outside of Manhattan.
|
| The tolls on every bridge and tunnel into Manhattan do.
| Raise those. But now you're tipping your hand: this isn't
| about "having drivers take ownership of the costs they
| produce", it's about punishing people who drive in
| Manhattan (below 60th, excepting FDR and West Side
| Highway, because those don't have externalities, I
| guess.)
|
| > You can toll drivers for driving on those specific
| roads, or add a significant parking tax.
|
| I don't have a problem with charging for parking. But the
| toll roads thing, again...that has little to do with
| "having drivers take ownership of the costs they
| produce". It's just social engineering via taxes, because
| people will avoid those roads, and drive on other ones
| instead.
| stetrain wrote:
| Not sure what I'm 'tipping my hand' about.
|
| This is just another tier of toll in another congested
| subsection.
|
| If your argument is that all vehicles driving and parking
| in all places should appropriately pay for their
| externalities (infrastructure cost, driving and parking
| space, noise, and emissions) then we agree.
|
| Gas taxes or registrations fees paid in another state as
| you suggested don't really accomplish that though.
| timr wrote:
| > Not sure what I'm 'tipping my hand' about.
|
| You don't want the general recapture of externalities.
| You want _specific things to be punished_.
|
| > This is just another tier of toll in another congested
| subsection.
|
| Yes, exactly. And unless you have some _practical
| alternative for the thing you 're taxing_, this is just
| another tax. Those of us who live here don't have an
| alternative to buying groceries or getting deliveries, so
| this is just one more tax on life. I don't own a car, and
| I take the subway most of the time, but this will make my
| life more expensive. That's wrong.
| stetrain wrote:
| > You don't want the general recapture of externalities.
| You want specific things to be punished.
|
| I'm not the one levying this toll, I don't super care
| either way about it. I replied because your suggestions
| for capturing externalities did not seem to be equivalent
| or direct those costs to the correct place.
|
| But I think this all depends on what you consider
| externalities worth charging for. I'm thinking of it as
| more than the simple dollar cost of building and
| maintaining roads and parking. There are other costs to
| dedicating space for those things that cities may want to
| avoid.
| timr wrote:
| > But I think this all depends on what you consider
| externalities worth charging for.
|
| I've already said that I do. So no, I'm making a more
| specific argument than the one you're trying to have.
|
| Capturing externalities is fine, but this is dumb rule
| _dressed up in the clothing of anti-car rhetoric._ It 's
| a little more than a politically acceptable cash grab by
| MTA.
| stetrain wrote:
| > I've already said that I do. So no, I'm making a more
| specific argument than the one you're trying to have.
|
| My point is _which_ externalities you are considering,
| and which ones a city is trying to account for.
|
| Cost of building and maintaining asphalt is one
| externality.
|
| A city might consider other things like congestion,
| noise, and emissions. Pedestrian injuries and fatalities.
| Green space. Space allocated to parking vs additional
| homes and businesses.
|
| You can call this considering the externalities of car
| traffic, or you can call it social engineering because
| the city wants fewer cars. I'm saying the distinction
| isn't super important, they are both the result of
| recognizing negative effects and trying to reduce them.
| timr wrote:
| > My point is which externalities you are considering,
| and which ones a city is trying to account for. Cost of
| building and maintaining asphalt is one externality. A
| city might consider other things like congestion, noise,
| and emissions. Pedestrian injuries and fatalities. Green
| space. Space allocated to parking vs additional homes and
| businesses.
|
| Yes, yes. I understand that you don't like cars. You keep
| ignoring the part where I say that _I 'm not opposed to
| capturing externalities_. Those things are, in fact,
| externalities.
|
| You have to do it fairly. When your rule ends up
| impacting _everyone who lives in Manhattan, even if they
| don 't own a car_, then your rule is either not about
| capturing externalities, or it's badly designed.
|
| In this particular case, the MTA is not concerned about
| what you're concerned about. The MTA is concerned about
| getting more money for the MTA, and this is a somewhat
| craven way for them to do it without huge political
| backlash. They know that left-wing Manhattanites will
| throw their lower-Manhattan neighbors under the bus in
| the guise of "reducing cars", and otherwise won't think
| very deeply about how this is a general purpose tax on
| everyday life.
| stetrain wrote:
| Ok, let me restate some things.
|
| - I drive a car. I like my car. I like driving my car
| places. You seem to be trying to find some personal
| sinister motivation on my part, or using me as a stand in
| for the MTA, and I don't think either are fair.
|
| - You suggested that gas and registration taxes cover or
| could cover the externalities. I disagree because the
| externalities of specifically driving and parking in a
| city center are not covered fairly by taxes levied on
| vehicles buying gas or being registered outside of that
| city center. This is the point I originally responded to,
| and the one you seem to have moved on from to argue other
| things.
|
| - You agree that cars should pay for their externalities
| if done so fairly. I agree.
|
| - I don't think that cars used for personal
| transportation adequately or fairly pay for all of their
| externalities in any US cities. Especially compared to
| the relative costs per person transported by other means
| of urban transportation.
|
| - I don't live in Manhattan and can't speak to the
| motivations and politics of this specific toll being
| levied by the MTA. The MTA may not be doing it for fair
| reasons of capturing externalities. That's perfectly
| valid and I won't (and haven't meant to) dispute it.
|
| - Levying taxes, fees, or tolls on personal vehicles can
| have regressive costs for people living in the area, even
| if they don't own a personal vehicle. Absolutely, I agree
| with this. There are other ways to solve problems like
| getting groceries or deliveries, but if there aren't good
| alternatives in place then that is going to be an unfair
| cost added to those living there. Consideration and
| mitigation of these costs, and providing good
| alternatives, should be part of good policy.
|
| There, I think that's a fairly accurate summary of my
| positions. Is there anything else you have questions on
| per my personal positions, or the arguments I have made
| in this thread?
| stetrain wrote:
| > But the toll roads thing, again...that has little to do
| with "having drivers take ownership of the costs they
| produce". It's just social engineering via taxes, because
| people will avoid those roads, and drive on other ones
| instead.
|
| Toll roads are direct use tax on using that
| infrastructure. 100% of roads being toll roads that cover
| their own costs is the libertarian ideal, isn't it?
|
| Which roads will people take instead, if all roads into
| Manhattan have tolls?
|
| And I agree it is social engineering. Those aren't
| mutually exclusive concepts. What reasons would a city
| have for wanting to encourage people not to drive or park
| in sections of that city? Perhaps there are negative
| externalities of that car traffic that they want to
| reduce. Why is social engineering via levying costs not a
| valid way to handle that?
| timr wrote:
| > Which roads will people take instead, if all roads into
| Manhattan have tolls?
|
| Yes, exactly.
|
| Also: _they already do_. So consider that for a second.
| gscott wrote:
| If you are buying things you can fit more purchases in a
| car then taking public transit. You are also less likely to
| be robbed of your new purchase.
|
| California wants to put in a per mile road charge. Why
| should I drive to go buy something and pay a mile tax when
| I can buy it cheaper online, get it delivered, and probably
| after factoring in higher pricing due to the road tax it
| will still be cheaper. These sort of things ruin
| businesses.
| baq wrote:
| Unfair. Those who don't come by car also pay the sales tax.
|
| Drivers are using a limited resource, why not pay for it. Be
| happy it's a fixed fee and not a proper market.
| ecshafer wrote:
| Who would drive into Manhattan to buy anything? Seriously, if
| you are already in the Suburbs, why not just go to a store
| there. If you are in any other burrough, you will find easier
| parking there. If you are anywhere else, it'll also probably
| be cheaper. No one drives into Manhattan to buy anything. If
| you don't live in Manhattan, you go into Manhattan for work,
| an event, etc.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Who would drive into Manhattan to buy anything?
|
| Because the selection and quality are unlike almost any
| place in the world.
| lxgr wrote:
| I've got the strong suspicion that this was never a thing:
|
| Why on Earth would people living in New Jersey drive into
| (paying bridge/tunnel toll) and park in Manhattan to do their
| shopping when there are so many malls with free parking
| available in NJ?
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Free parking and no sales tax on clothing.
|
| There's a reason the big NYC area malls are in Paramus and
| Elizabeth.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| So they're _not_ paying sales tax?
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Sorry if that wasn't clear: NJ doesn't have a sales tax
| on clothing. NY does. Paramus and Elizabeth are where the
| 4-ish (the ones in Paramus blend together) giant malls
| outside of NYC are.
| evanelias wrote:
| NY/NYC only charges sales tax on clothing over $110 per
| item.
|
| In addition to the giant malls you mentioned, there's
| American Dream in East Rutherford. Parking isn't free
| there though. And all its clothing stores are closed on
| Sundays. (Ditto for the Paramus malls re: Sunday.)
| lowkey_ wrote:
| > There's a reason the big NYC area malls are in Paramus
| and Elizabeth.
|
| I think the reason is that malls are just out-of-fashion.
|
| If we consider the SoHo area to be the equivalent of a
| mall, or the North Williamsburg/Greenpoint area to be a
| mall, I'd bet they dwarf the Paramus & Elizabeth malls in
| GMV sold and foot traffic.
| lowkey_ wrote:
| As someone who currently lives in NYC, I can think of ten
| brands I love to shop at here and not a single one could be
| found in a mall in New Jersey.
|
| My ex's family lived in NJ and we'd always commute in for a
| fun day in the city. There's way better food, better
| shopping, better energy. I'm not surprised people come to
| the city.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| $15 covers about one minute of parking in Manhattan
| stetrain wrote:
| If car infrastructure was replaced by more transit,
| pedestrian, and cycling infrastructure, then _more_ people
| would be able to go into Manhattan and shop and dine.
|
| One or two people per car each taking up 320 sqft of road
| space and parking space imposes a lower human density limit
| than most other ways of getting around. And the
| infrastructure to support it is more expensive on a per-human
| basis.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Now many of them won 't_
|
| It's $15 creditable against other tolls. If whatever you're
| doing in downtown Manhattan during peak hours isn't worth
| $15, its replacement by other activity happening faster is
| likely a net positive.
| iooi wrote:
| > instead of leaving residents dealing with those costs.
|
| Residents will be mostly the ones paying these costs. Residents
| are not exempted.
| nayuki wrote:
| Residents living in the congestion pricing zone aren't the
| ones commuting into the zone.
| srndsnd wrote:
| If you live in Manhattan south of 60th, your number one
| transit option should almost never be driving a car.
| TomK32 wrote:
| From Wikipedia 3.7 million people were employed in New York
| City; Manhattan is the main employment center with 56% of all
| jobs.[19] Of those working in Manhattan, 30% commute from
| within Manhattan.
|
| And: The primary mode of transportation in New York City is
| rail. Only 6% of shopping trips in Manhattan involve the use
| of a car.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_in_New_York_Cit.
| ..
| ghaff wrote:
| NYC, and specifically Manhattan, is pretty much the only US
| city where you can get by pretty easily without owning a
| car but there's no cultural expectation with respect to
| friends and recreational options that you have one.
| CharlesW wrote:
| Chicago is like this as well.
| ghaff wrote:
| Chicago probably comes closest. Yes, it's not really
| binary.
| treyd wrote:
| You can get by without a car in Boston as I do as well,
| if you work and live in the city.
| ghaff wrote:
| That applies to a number of cities but that's the caveat.
| Especially if you're a bit older, it's common for friends
| to live outside the city, many jobs aren't in the city,
| there are activities you might like to do outside the
| city etc. Yes, there are rental cars but that's the type
| of thing I was getting at with my comment about cultural
| expectations.
|
| Everyone in my circle who lives in Boston/Cambridge owns
| a car.
| fatnoah wrote:
| > You can get by without a car in Boston as I do as well,
| if you work and live in the city.
|
| FWIW, I lived in the city and worked in a suburb, and
| also was able to live car-free without issue. This was in
| the days before ride-hailing apps, so I imagine it'd be
| even easier now. (Not technically car-free, I know)
| ghaff wrote:
| I've always worked out by 495 not adjacent to commuter
| rail. So living in town without a car would have been
| impossible. Indeed would have been too long a commute for
| me with a car.
| programjames wrote:
| I live in the area. You can get by, as long as you're
| willing to risk your life every few minutes. Some parts
| of Boston are walkable/bikeable, but most of it is not.
| arcticbull wrote:
| You don't need a car in San Francisco. It's a tiny city
| that's easily traversable by bike, metro and bus - or
| just walking. I haven't had a car in the city in over 10
| years and it's really never impacted me - except for
| saving me boatloads of money, I guess, probably well over
| $100K.
| hehhehaha wrote:
| Depends where you are in sf, the transit is an order of
| magnitude worse then manhattan
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| I wouldn't be so sure. A number of my friends tried
| living without a car and they quickly bought one when
| they could afford it. There are so many places that the
| car unlocks.
|
| For instance, taking a bus to Golden Gate park from
| downtown isn't that fast. If you like to go to the park,
| it helps to have a car.
| arcticbull wrote:
| > For instance, taking a bus to Golden Gate park from
| downtown isn't that fast. If you like to go to the park,
| it helps to have a car.
|
| From personal experience, yes, it's strictly "faster" to
| take a car to the park from downtown unless you include
| going to the parking lot, picking up your car, finding a
| parking spot and then walking to where you're actually
| trying to go. From Powell it's 16 minutes by the N train
| every 10 minutes, followed by a 3 minute walk. I guess
| driving is _technically_ 16, but you know, parking on
| either side. Or 23 minutes by bike.
|
| Honestly, the fastest way between any two points in the
| city is a bike (or an e-bike, or scooter) at least 2/3 of
| the day.
|
| Then you have the spiky "oops all traffic" and your drive
| gets exponentially longer while your bike commute (or
| metro, or bus ride with protected lanes) remains exactly
| the same length.
|
| The kind of places a car actually unlocks (going out of
| town on weekends) are like $100 for a car rental vs
| depreciation, financing, tolls, registration, insurance,
| parking, fines, gas/charging, etc. That gives you a huge
| car rental and Uber budget. And rental cars are usually
| available at the same parking lots you'd normally be
| putting your car.
| Nullabillity wrote:
| > From personal experience, yes, it's strictly "faster"
| to take a car to the park from downtown unless you
| include going to the parking lot, picking up your car,
| finding a parking spot and then walking to where you're
| actually trying to go. From Powell it's 16 minutes by the
| N train every 10 minutes, followed by a 3 minute walk. I
| guess driving is technically 16, but you know, parking on
| either side. Or 23 minutes by bike.
|
| Don't forget about the time to actually get to the
| station either.
|
| > Then you have the spiky "oops all traffic" and your
| drive gets exponentially longer while your bike commute
| (or bus ride with protected lanes) remains exactly the
| same length.
|
| A cramped bus or train ride gets pretty miserable too.
| There's nothing fundamentally preventing bike congestion
| either, aside from bikes being miserable enough that they
| have a fraction of the usage.
|
| > The kind of places a car actually unlocks (going out of
| town on weekends) are like $100 for a car rental vs
| depreciation, financing, tolls, registration, insurance,
| parking, fines, gas/charging, etc. That gives you a huge
| car rental and Uber budget. And rental cars are usually
| available at the same parking lots you'd normally be
| putting your car.
|
| This must be somewhere between regional and bullshit.
| Looking it up, it seems like you'd expect to pay around
| $65/day + gas here for a rental. But then you need to
| consider availability (hope you didn't plan on going
| during holiday/vacation season!) and the practicalities
| of the rental process itself (picking up and delivering
| the car becomes its own full trip on its own, not to
| mention all the paperwork involved).
| ghaff wrote:
| I know a couple who live in Dogpatch without a car but my
| observation is they do a lot of Zipcar, regular rentals
| and Uber.
| internetter wrote:
| > they quickly bought one when they could afford it
|
| Anybody can afford a car, and yet we'd be much better off
| if we didn't spend 10 grand a year on something we don't
| really need. With compounding interest, that 1k a month
| becomes 500k in 20 years
| bsimpson wrote:
| SF is an awful place to own a car if you don't have a
| parking garage; however, you lose out on regional
| mobility. Marin, Sonoma, Tahoe - so many monumental
| vistas are an easy drive from SF, but nearly impossible
| without a motor. (Bicycling gets you some of the way
| there, but it's still life at a different scale.)
|
| The ultimate SF cheat code is to get a Vespa - the
| regional mobility of a car, but the ease of travel and
| parking of a bicycle. Traffic doesn't exist on a Vespa.
| riku_iki wrote:
| > Marin, Sonoma, Tahoe - so many monumental vistas are an
| easy drive from SF, but nearly impossible without a
| motor.
|
| you can rent a car over weekend..
| selimthegrim wrote:
| New Orleans used to be until they nuked the bus system
| recently.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Maybe Manhattanites should have to pay $15/day to park
| their cars on the street. That would quickly curb traffic
| issues in the city.
| apstls wrote:
| I would love if (_consistently available_) $15/day street
| parking was a thing in Manhattan, it'd be a good deal
| cheaper than garages and obviously a lot more convenient
| than keeping your car elsewhere. There isn't much benefit
| to having a car in Manhattan for day-to-day life, but it
| would be nice to have for things like day trips. Right
| now I park my car about 45 minutes away in another
| borough (at my family's house) so when I do need to drive
| I have a +90min fixed cost added to my commute time.
| timr wrote:
| The primary mode of transportation is rail, but even
| ignoring taxis and Ubers (which we all use sometimes) we
| depend on things delivered by cars. They don't bring
| groceries or Amazon deliveries on the subway.
|
| This stuff adds up, and is a big reason why it's expensive
| to live here.
| arcticbull wrote:
| I guess so, but a $15 toll vs whatever it is now isn't
| going to impact the price of goods materially unless all
| those trucks are mostly empty, in which case, good?
| timr wrote:
| It's $24 for small trucks, and $36 for large trucks. Plus
| the $1.25/$2.50 for taxis and Ubers, of course.
|
| I grant you that it's relatively small when amortized
| over a truck full of packages, but it's stupid to include
| trucks at all. They haven't thought it through beyond a
| superficial level (or worse: they _have_ , and this was
| intentional).
|
| Regardless, Manhattan is not City of London. City of
| London is one tiny little corner of London. This tax is
| closer to the equivalent of putting congestion pricing on
| all of London inside of M25.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Both zones cover around 8 square miles.
| eduction wrote:
| None of those numbers address the question at issue, which
| is,
|
| "What percentage of vehicles used in Manattan on a given
| day are from outside Manhattan?"
|
| >Of those working in Manhattan, 30% commute from within
| Manhattan.
|
| Most commuters terminating in Manhattan are on mass transit
| so this stat doesn't really speak to the car question. Also
| a lot of vehicular traffic in Manhattan is not to do with
| commuting.
|
| (I suspect the person you are replying to is incorrect,
| incidentally; I take no position in this argument. Your
| comment is a bit of a non sequitur is all.)
| vkou wrote:
| It's fine for residents who inflict externalities on other
| residents to get billed for that privilege.
| paxys wrote:
| Residents aren't the ones driving into the city every day.
| williamsmj wrote:
| 22% of households in Manhattan own a car. There are about
| half a million households below 60th St. So there are about
| 100,000 cars in lower Manhattan that belong to residents. Of
| those, about 25,000 are used to get to work each day. The
| rest sit in garages.
|
| So no, residents will not mostly be the ones paying the
| costs.
|
| But suppose they were. So what? Sounds fair to me. We don't
| make the subway free for residents. Why should it be free to
| drive and store your vehicle just because you're a resident?
| programjames wrote:
| > We don't make subway free for residents...
|
| I think you went the wrong way with that argument. Why _don
| 't_ we make the subway free for residents? All the
| infrastructure for cars is at least as expensive, but it's
| still free. (To be fair, there's a gas tax and tolls, but
| it's still massively subsidized.)
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Only thing is they should charge more for heavier and for less
| eco-friendly cars.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Though it might be a good idea to also encourage carpooling
| with reduced tolls, because presumably one bigger car
| carrying 5-7 people is better than 5-7 smaller but still
| bigger-than-city-cars carrying 1 person each.
| throwaway562if1 wrote:
| Presumably the toll is per vehicle, so carpooling already
| divides the fee among the carpoolers.
| foobarian wrote:
| Wonder about the road damage aspect of this. If the
| relationship is a 4th power of weight, assuming a single
| vehicle with 2x the weight, it would need to replace 16
| individual cars to break even.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Good question. Maybe the amount of toll reduction should
| depend on the number of people carried and the weight of
| the vehicle, encouraging lightweight vehicles that can
| carry a lot of people. Probably should have a hard cutoff
| too so e.g. over a certain weight loses the reduction
| altogether.
| diabeetusman wrote:
| "According to a 2022 study from the Environmental
| Protection Agency, the average weight of a car is 4,094
| pounds."[1]
|
| Going from 1 person of 200lb to 4 people totaling 800lb
| (in a 4,000lb car) increases the damage by less than an
| additional car (4,800 / 4,200) ^ 4 = 1.71
|
| [1]: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/average-car-
| weight-140033718....
| malcolmgreaves wrote:
| No car is, nor ever will be, as eco-friendly as a subway
| train. The point of congestion pricing is to better capture
| the actual costs of folks using cars instead of public
| transit.
| lxgr wrote:
| I don't think it would be productive (or fair) to send a
| message of "your eco-friendly car is welcome", when the real
| concern is traffic/space and any "green car bonus" might
| disappear on pretty short notice.
|
| Incentivizing eco-friendly cars is great in general, but I
| think the two concerns in this case are best addressed
| separately.
| geon wrote:
| How come Kei Cars are not a thing outside Japan?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kei_car
|
| Seems like it would help a lot.
| tempsy wrote:
| Time will tell but I feel like $15 max 1x/day is too low.
| Drivers are already likely paying other tolls, expensive
| monthly parking in Manhattan, gas. Another $15/day is not
| likely to change behavior.
| proaralyst wrote:
| London's congestion charge is PS15 (about $18) and has
| largely been a success. I suspect there's a difference in PPP
| though, so the Manhattan charge is potentially less impactful
| tempsy wrote:
| People in NYC make much more. So if it's less in NYC than
| London then I'm even more convinced that it won't do that
| much for congestion.
| atkailash wrote:
| Median rent is also 2x London's. Median pay is less than
| 3x. That's not even counting the rest of cost of living
| changes
|
| It'll only affect working class people who commute by
| driving for whatever reason. As usual the actual rich
| won't care. The majority of NYers don't even own a car.
| So it's mostly tourists and people from outside the city
| (plus ride share/taxis) who are driving.
| StressedDev wrote:
| Do you have a source for this? London is not known as a
| poor city. In addition, some people in both cities are
| wealthy but a lot more are not. I doubt someone living in
| the South Brox or Far Rockaway can afford a $15/day
| charge.
| Symbiote wrote:
| I don't answer your question, but I had a quick look for
| statistics and found this beautiful map -- zoom in all
| the way!
|
| It broadly shows there are rich and poor areas of London,
| but I don't know if it's better to be in the bottom 10%
| in London or New York.
|
| https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/perso
| nal...
| tempsy wrote:
| I'm talking about people who already have the means to
| drive into midtown manhattan as is, with all the tolls
| and gas and monthly parking bills they're already going
| to pay. For these people I'm saying I do not see an extra
| $15 1x/day being a difference maker.
| wwarner wrote:
| It can be a successful way to raise money for the subway
| system even if it doesn't help much with congestion.
| timr wrote:
| London's congestion charge is just _City of London_. That
| 's an incredibly tiny portion of London.
|
| In terms of impact, this is closer to putting congestion
| pricing on everything inside of M25.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _London 's congestion charge is just City of London_
|
| This is only lower Manhattan.
| timr wrote:
| No, it's everything south of 60th, and essentially every
| ingress/egress to the city, other than Randalls Island,
| the GW, and the Bronx.
| jfengel wrote:
| Apparently, everything below 61st St.
|
| I'm unclear on how that's supposed to work, though. There
| are a lot of avenues crossing 61st. Are they going to put
| tolls on all of them?
|
| I guess that could work, since it's all EZ-Pass anyway.
| But it does imply that there are going to be some people
| who take the Queensboro Bridge (paying the Central
| Business District Toll), but head to the Upper East Side.
| Then when they leave, they'll have to pay the toll to
| enter the CBD again to take the bridge home.
| domh wrote:
| Not wanting to be too nitpicky, but the congestion charge
| includes the City of London and the West End. The City of
| London is 1 sq mi
| (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London) and the
| congestion charge zone is 8 sq mi total
| (https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/tips-advice/108908/london-
| cong...).
|
| I'm not sure how this compares to Manhattan's zone in
| terms of area.
| timr wrote:
| Very, very small. Roughly similar to taxing driving below
| Wall Street or something.
|
| There's no clean comparison of Manhattan to a portion of
| London, but just in terms of land area it's about 10% of
| NYC, and in terms of population it's around 20% (so maybe
| divide each by half to get the impact of this new rule).
| More importantly, almost every way to enter or exit the
| city by car is covered by this new toll. That's
| definitely not true in the case of the CoL congestion
| tax.
| domh wrote:
| Fair enough. I also think London doesn't really have a
| culture of driving into it. I _could_ drive into London
| but with the sprawl; likely inability to find suitable
| parking; traffic and congestion charge, I never would. It
| 's quicker for me to get the train (living about 50mi
| West of London). Though trains are becoming more
| expensive and less reliable by the day.
| Symbiote wrote:
| > The congestion zone covers about eight square miles of
| central London, close in size to the future congestion
| zone in Manhattan.
|
| https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-
| boroughs/news/2019/05/19/congest...
|
| (Many websites have similar comparisons.)
| zopa wrote:
| It's Manhattan below 60th, not all of Manhattan, so maybe
| half the island, and it doesn't include the FDR. Most of
| the ways to get to Queens, Brooklyn or Staten Island by
| car won't be affected -- same for the Bronx obviously.
| Supermancho wrote:
| You are correct. Most people haven't looked at a London
| map too closely, so there is a limited understanding of
| what the City of London is.
|
| > The City of London, London's ancient core and financial
| centre - an area of just 1.12 square miles (2.9 km2) and
| colloquially known as the Square Mile - retains
| boundaries that closely follow its medieval limits.
|
| Greater London, in total, is larger than Los Angeles.
|
| https://mapfight.xyz/map/los.angeles/#london
|
| https://www.londoninfoguide.com/how-big-is-london-uk.html
|
| The congestion charge is not for Greater London and the
| Manhattan toll is not for all of Manhattan.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| How has it been a success? I'm not familiar.
| notatoad wrote:
| is round-trip bus or train fare into the city higher or lower
| than $15/day? it seems like if they can just make the car a
| higher marginal cost per day than transit, that should do a
| lot.
| tempsy wrote:
| Driving is already likely a lot more expensive, so yeah I'm
| suggesting that if drivers have already made that decision
| as is I don't see another $15/day being a huge difference
| maker.
|
| Monthly garage parking in midtown is like $800/month.
| atkailash wrote:
| It's like $5.80 (2.90 each way iirc) assuming you don't
| have to leave one station to get to another. As long as
| you're behind the turnstiles you don't have to pay again
| (for trains)
| Jcampuzano2 wrote:
| Yes, round-trip bus and train fare work out to lower than
| $15 per day by a pretty large margin. If you were to only
| go into the city and out via subway/train i.e. two rides a
| day it would work out closer to around $6 per day which is
| already lower than the $15 cost which also doesn't include
| cost of gas and parking making it likely much higher of a
| cost for cars. Of course many people take the train many
| more times than that per week but thats where OMNY comes in
| with a per week maximum cost for using transit.
|
| If you use OMNY there is a max you can be charged per week.
| Essentially all rides are free after your 12th ride per 7
| day period. Since the cost of a ride on busses or subway is
| $2.90 that works out to a max of ~$35 per week for
| unlimited rides all over the city via train or bus.
|
| I don't live in NYC anymore, but when I did I could never
| imagine owning a car given the financial burden not being
| justifiable, but obviously those that do have one are
| likely in a much higher tax bracket than I am, or are going
| there for business purposes.
| BillSaysThis wrote:
| This is per car and bus/train/subway are per person.
| notatoad wrote:
| a huge portion of car trips are made with only one person
| in the car, so it's still a fair comparison for all those
| trips.
| StressedDev wrote:
| It depends where you are taking the train from. I know of
| a lot of places in New Jersey where the train fare is a
| lot more than $6/person.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| I think they want the revenues more than they want to change
| behavior. They want it to be low enough to keep the cars and
| the tolls flowing, but high enough to generate revenue.
| 7speter wrote:
| Mta is in nearly $50 billion in debt last I read
| tbihl wrote:
| People normally react with disgust, not rational calculation,
| to tolls. They'll drive in ways that not only discounts any
| value to their time, bu lt also in ways where the additional
| mileage costs more than the toll they're avoiding.
|
| So, give it a chance and then ratchet up. $15 would certainly
| upset me.
| tempsy wrote:
| Well, you probably wouldn't be paying $800/mo just to park
| in midtown as is then.
| dtnewman wrote:
| It will definitely affect a lot of people around the margins.
| Right now, if you commute from North Jersey, you might pay
| $250 a month in bridge tolls, $600 a month for parking and
| another $100 for gas (I'm assuming you commute 20 days a
| month). This will add another 300 bringing your total from
| $750 a month to $1050. Many people will commute by car
| anyway, but that is not an insubstantial increase.
| mgiampapa wrote:
| So one of the big things this will do is encourage mass
| transit from the eastern new york / Manhattan river
| crossings. It has never been (and will continue to not be) a
| level playing field for commuters. Coming in from Brooklyn or
| Queens there are a lot of commuters that drive into lower
| Manhattan which until now was entirely un-tolled. This,
| combined with the rebate for people taking the existing
| tolled entrances will be a first step in equity.
| art0rz wrote:
| Isn't that what road tax is for?
| jacobolus wrote:
| Yes, this is a special kind of road tax for specific
| congested roads.
| akira2501 wrote:
| I guess "improving the roads" has been decided to be
| impossible. Whether it is or isn't, it sure would be a
| great way to increase congestion, if that was your desired
| outcome. You might then expect them to use the money to
| improve roads instead of giving to an unaccountable city
| controlled subway monopoly.
|
| It's a baffling bureaucracy there in NYC.
| acdha wrote:
| They tried nothing else for the better part of a century,
| but the traffic just kept getting worse: the more you
| subsidize driving, the more people choose to do it.
|
| The underlying problem is basic geometry: cars are the
| least spatially efficient form of transportation in
| common use - you need something like 140 square feet to
| transport on average just over one person, plus a similar
| amount of space for storage. That can work somewhere
| unpopular but the math just doesn't work in a city core
| where you don't have that much space unless you bulldozed
| all of the buildings. Even if they did something
| phenomenally expensive and unpleasant like creating
| multilevel streets those would fill up quickly because if
| traffic ever improved, more people would start driving
| all the way in.
| programjames wrote:
| This is so confusing. If you create bigger roads, it
| usually doesn't solve the issue, as:
|
| 1) More people start to use the road, which can actually
| increase total commute time (Braess's paradox).
|
| 2) It removes room for the actual city. The city becomes
| more spread out, and people have to travel farther to get
| to their destinations!
|
| Think about this: do you _want_ to be encouraging other
| people to create more traffic along your commute? No way!
| You want everyone else off your roads, somehow get them
| to start biking or take the subway. And the best way to
| do that is to replace a couple lanes with bus
| /bike/streetcar lanes.
| tekla wrote:
| Explain what "improve the roads" means in Manhattan.
| tverbeure wrote:
| A major part of people who commute to Manhattan live in NJ.
| The taxes paid by the drivers don't end up in the coffers of
| the city.
| BillSaysThis wrote:
| NJ residents who work in Manhattan pay income tax to both
| NY State and NYC.
| kleiba wrote:
| But shouldn't pollution and noise be pretty much solved in the
| foreseeable future, I suppose, with EVs on the rise?
|
| And congestion I find an interesting one. Where I live, the
| city planners are trying to make it as hard as possible for
| people driving into the city, the idea being that people will
| just give up if driving even to a parking lot close to the city
| center sucks too much. However, it has always made me wonder:
| doesn't this strategy add to the congestion? Like, what if you
| made it instead super easy and fast to get to a parking spot -
| then your car would be off the road much faster and you'd
| produce less congestion, less noise, and less pollution.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > But shouldn't pollution and noise be pretty much solved in
| the foreseeable future, I suppose, with EVs on the rise?
|
| The loudest noise is tire noise.
| pgodzin wrote:
| Tire wear also contributes the most to PM2.5 pollution, and
| EVs are heavier and produce more wear
| kleiba wrote:
| Interesting. Do you have a source to back up the part
| about EVs?
| Solvency wrote:
| You need a source to tell you EVs are heavier? This is a
| basic fact.
| programjames wrote:
| > This is a basic fact.
|
| Clearly they don't want a source, it's just malicious
| ignorance. After all, if they really wanted to know it'd
| be far easier to click the "plus" button on their browser
| and ask DuckDuckGo.
| gdelfino01 wrote:
| https://www.emissionsanalytics.com/news/gaining-traction-
| los...
| kcb wrote:
| The real loudest noise at city speeds is mostly jerks with
| modified exhaust or occasionally a large diesel truck.
| kleiba wrote:
| If that is true then I doubt that this new fee will solve
| the noise problem.
| rodgerd wrote:
| Good news! Dodge are catering to that demographic with
| "the "Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust," which combines
| chambers and speakers under the car, plus some actual
| pipes" for all their anti-social needs.
| baron816 wrote:
| This is generally the case in most cities, but less so at
| lower Manhattan speeds.
|
| Large diesel trucks produce a lot of pollution and noise.
| But those will take longer to electrify.
| rbetts wrote:
| In NYC, I'm pretty sure it is the horn (and the siren) ;-)
| leptons wrote:
| Noise will be about the same, it's the people honking their
| horns at traffic that are the real noise problem. But with a
| toll there will be less cars and then less horns honked.
| kleiba wrote:
| Interesting. It's been so long that I visited Manhattan
| that I have no recollection of the soundscape, but the city
| where I live is much, much smaller. There is basically no
| honking here.
| nine_k wrote:
| Honking is moderate. The biggest source of noise is
| ambulance / fire / occasionally police sirens.
|
| Sometimes it's also the occasional car with a kilowatt
| music system blaring at full power.
|
| This is regular streets; expressways are noisier but few.
| acdha wrote:
| EVs don't have tailpipe emission but they have tire and brake
| dust (worse, due to the average weight) and make tire and
| wind noise, not to mention having horns. From a climate
| change perspective, less CO2 is better but for things like
| heart disease, asthma, stress as well as water pollution
| they're not much of an improvement.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| > have tire and brake dust (worse, due to the average
| weight)
|
| this isn't really true. EV brakes barely get any use
| because of regenerative breaking, and EV tires tend to be
| stiffer which mostly evens out the tires.
| dumbfounder wrote:
| The cost is fine, but is it creating an incentive for drivers
| to stay longer because if they go in and out they are double
| charged?
| pquki4 wrote:
| I assume this is aimed at commuters who drive into the city
| and almost always enter and exit the city exactly once a day.
| galdosdi wrote:
| We're talking about lower Manhattan, so in practice if they
| stay longer then they have to deal with alternate side
| parking or pay for garage parking.
|
| Or, what the hell, I don't live there anymore, so I'll give
| away my secret awesome free parking spot: under the
| Williamsburg Bridge east of Clinton St.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > congestion, noise
|
| These aren't problems, these are features. Manhatten is not a
| place to go for quiet, empty spaces, except maybe Central Park.
| You're there for energy, movement, lots of action. Who wants a
| peaceful, empty Manhatten??
| acdha wrote:
| You're not there for any of those things from cars. The
| energy and movement people visit Manhattan for are from other
| people - if they wanted car noise, they'd be out at a
| racetrack.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > You're not there for any of those things from cars.
|
| I don't know how you can say that (other than your personal
| preference). The cars have been there, doing those things,
| for generations. They are quieter and pollute less now.
|
| Are they trying to turn NY into Long Island? Keep the
| things that make NY unique and special - people obviously
| love it.
| acdha wrote:
| Cars do pollute less but are still a major hazard and
| quality of life reduction. If you ask people why they
| come to NYC, nobody says it's to listen to people honk at
| each other or almost get run over in the crosswalk by an
| Uber driver. People may say that they accept the
| background car noise as a cost of living in the city but
| nobody sees it as a positive.
| Clamchop wrote:
| I don't know how you can say that (other than your
| personal preference).
| pishpash wrote:
| "...raise $1 billion annually for public transit improvements"
|
| The money isn't going to residents.
| orr94 wrote:
| It's benefiting the residents who use the improved public
| transit.
| rcthompson wrote:
| For me at least, it will also make driving to Manhattan and
| parking actually more expensive than taking the train, which it
| should be. The fact that both options are currently about the
| same price for me has had me thinking that something somewhere
| is deeply wrong.
| Animats wrote:
| So much for "return to office".
| riffic wrote:
| public transit is good.
| busterarm wrote:
| the MTA experience is so bad that ridership is already way
| down and trending downwards.
| lxgr wrote:
| Bad compared to what? I take it four days a week and I
| would never trade it for having to drive a car myself.
| confoundcofound wrote:
| The stations are filthy, have poor accessibility, the
| signage is tattered, the PA systems almost never work,
| the ETAs are often wrong if they're even offered. That's
| aside from the not uncommon sights and smells of piss in
| the cars themselves. The bus system is a different
| crapshoot altogether.
|
| I find it interesting how often when people complain
| about how poor the experience is, there are those like
| you who seem to be quite content with maintaining a
| fairly low standard.
| lxgr wrote:
| Oh, don't get me wrong, I agree on all counts and it
| really is decades behind other (non-US) cities - but
| again, I'd take it over driving a car myself and having
| to worry about traffic and parking any day, congestion
| charge or not.
|
| I don't have a great idea for addressing all of these
| problems, but I strongly suspect that people who can
| afford it opting out of public transit in favor of cars
| would be even worse.
| jedberg wrote:
| > I find it interesting how often when people complain
| about how poor the experience is, there are those like
| you who seem to be quite content with maintaining a
| fairly low standard.
|
| Those of us from outside Manhattan envy what you have
| because it's better than what we have.
|
| I was just in Manhattan last week and commenting to my
| friend how I didn't even need to look it up ahead of time
| -- I knew that I could get where I needed to go using the
| MTA. Can't say the same for pretty much any other city.
| tekla wrote:
| Literally incorrect. Please do any at all research before
| you say things that are completely wrong because you simply
| don't give a damn about reality.
|
| https://new.mta.info/agency/new-york-city-transit/subway-
| bus...
|
| Numbers are trending up incredibly quickly after Covid.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| Compared to during covid sure. But the article itself
| says ridership is at 58% of 2019 level. And that's from
| 2022, subways have gotten worse since then.
| kernal wrote:
| >public transit is good.
|
| Is that with or without a concealed carry weapon?
| throwup238 wrote:
| Destructive devices license. Minimum artillery shell size:
| 150mm.
| bakies wrote:
| so out of touch
| bombcar wrote:
| Apparently you don't even need to bring your own, you can
| just take it from the guy attacking you.
| hanniabu wrote:
| Ah yes, let me sit on a train for 1.5 hours to travel 10
| miles
| shmatt wrote:
| If you're driving into Midtown you're already out $50 a day on
| parking, with no legal limits on the amount they're allowed to
| raise the prices
|
| 99% of the street parking is commercial only in the toll zone
| during office hours
|
| If anything this will force parking lot owners to lower prices
| as less people drive in
| ydnaclementine wrote:
| I appreciate the progress, but I want to know when this actually
| kicks in. Seems like there's yet another vote
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| This was the last MTA vote. The target implementation date is
| in June. The remaining prerequisites before that can happen are
| a Federal Highway Administration decision, which is expected to
| be a timely approval, and several lawsuits, any of which could
| delay or block this.
| tootie wrote:
| As far as I can tell, it's a done deal and the enforcement
| technology is already installed.
| TomK32 wrote:
| 21 years of London's congestion charge and its effect will give
| New Yorkers a good idea on the effects to expected:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_congestion_charge#Effec...
|
| A bit embarrassing that Germany, the USA, Japan and Russia
| embassies are among those refusing to pay the toll... I'm very
| very curious how NYC will treat the British ambassador.
| voisin wrote:
| London's congestion charge is particularly annoying as (at
| least when I lived there in 2012-2013) it was very easy to take
| the wrong turn and be in the zone, not realize you were ever in
| it (even for a single block) and consequently not pay the fee
| in advance. If you don't pay the fee the same day, they send
| you a bill for like 10x the amount. I found TfL to be a totally
| corrupt organization that was trying to obfuscate its rules to
| extract larger fees.
| TomK32 wrote:
| I'm a huge fan of bollards that retract for motorist with
| access, but that's be impractical in such a case. Bollards
| are simply more visible for the average motorist who doesn't
| bother to read signs. The Netherlands are far more advanced
| when it comes to designing roads so the road user visually
| understands "you enter a village and 80 km/h is not
| acceptable any more".
|
| I live in Linz in Austria, three years ago they turned a
| small passage into pedestrian only street and I still stop
| motorist and explain then that things have changed. Most just
| didn't see or understand the sign (which comes with an extra
| sign with a lot of exception obviously, for a 100m passage
| with no parking spaces or private garages). The city won't
| draw the "pedestrian zone" sign on the ground, I'm sure that
| would help a lot.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Choosing a street at random, there are red "Congestion
| Charging (c) Central ZONE" signs on both sides of the road,
| as well as a huge painted (c) on the road lane for turning
| into the road.
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5168161,-0.1655445,3a,49.9y,.
| ..
| voisin wrote:
| I am not sure what the case is today and in all areas but
| for what it's worth, in 2013ish when I got hit with two
| tickets back to back when I drove to a conference that was
| on the edge of the congestion zone two days in a row, I
| went back to the location on foot and walked all around and
| there was zero signage indicating that the street I turned
| onto was the congestion zone, and the opposite end of the
| street I turned immediately out of it.
| Symbiote wrote:
| If there really are no signs you can appeal the fine --
| but lots of old forum posts of people trying this seem to
| end with them accepting that there was a sign.
|
| You can look at old captures in Google Street View.
| m_a_g wrote:
| Good. We Londoners absolutely support that.
| voisin wrote:
| Which part? Congestion charges or Byzantine rules designed
| to obfuscate? If the former, so do I. If the latter, why
| not simply charge the fees you want to charge rather than
| be shifty about it?
| khuey wrote:
| NYC already has plenty of unpaid parking tickets from the UN
| diplomats. It won't be anything new.
| jmyeet wrote:
| I fully support reducing car traffic in Manhattan. Free street
| parking in particular needs to go. Why we're subsidizing car
| ownership when you live in Manhattan is absolutely beyond me.
| Walk down any street in Greenwich Village and look at how
| expensive the cars are parked on the street. That's what we're
| subsidizing.
|
| But there's a problem: the 3 airports (JFK, LaGuardia and Neward)
| have fairly terrible transit options. So to get from Midtown to
| JFK, you need to get on the E line, get off at Jamaica and then
| catch the AirTrain. If you're at Termiannl 8, the AirTrain part
| takes like 20-25 minutes by itself. And it's expensive. If you
| don't happen to be on that line you first need to get to it.
| Alternatively you can get to Penn STation and catch the LIRR to
| Jamaica and still take the AirTrain. So you migh tneed to take 3
| trains.
|
| Why are the transit options awful? Because airports make too much
| money from parking and no government is going to mandate or pay
| for good transit options. There should really be an express train
| from JFK into Grand Central and Penn Station (and ideally across
| the Hudson into New Jersey).
|
| Ubers and taxis will be paying this $15 charge so that will bring
| the cost to pretty close to $100 each way from Midtown to JFK.
| NYC already tacks on a lot of taxes and fees onto Ubers making
| them so incredibly expensive. I can remember trips 10 years ago
| that were $16 that are now closer to $40.
|
| If you buy a parking space for your car in Manhattan it's
| realistically going to cost $300/month, minimum. Possibly
| $500+/month. Street parking should cost $20/day, minimum.
|
| And in an ideal world, the Subway would also be free.
|
| So while I support this, it's glossing over huge systemic
| problems and inequity and doing nothing to the massive gifts we
| continue to give the already wealthy. If you're coming or going
| with a lot of luggage this is incredibly unwieldy
| srndsnd wrote:
| Hugely agree on transit access to the airport, but it _has_
| gotten somewhat better. The GCT Madison connection has enabled
| another connection to Jamaica for the JFK AirTrain alongside
| LIRR and the E-train. And no longer do you need a separate
| MetroCard, as the Port Authority has finally modernized with
| contactless payments.
|
| And the Q60 bus serving LGA also couldn't be easier. It picks
| up from a clearly designated spot on the lower level and drops
| you off right at Jackson Heights for E and 7 access. Could
| there be a direct rail connection a la O'Hare? Yes, and there
| should be.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The same people who want this $15 charge also don't want you
| going to the airport.
| lxgr wrote:
| You can go to JFK for $11.15 including taxes and fees from
| pretty much anywhere in NYC. LGA is even cheaper!
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| At a cost of about 2 hours of travel time, sure.
| lxgr wrote:
| Not in my experience.
|
| Quite often taking a car took longer for me, including
| finding my Uber or Lyft in a sea of others (great system,
| really, requiring everybody to find "theirs" when they're
| all pretty much doing the same thing!), navigating
| cancellations etc.
|
| Of course, if you live far from public transit it's a
| different matter, but many people in NY do live close to
| a subway station.
| rangestransform wrote:
| FWIW google maps really overestimates AirTrain travel
| time, it was close to 1 hour door-to-door from my old
| apartment in LIC
| lxgr wrote:
| > Ubers and taxis will be paying this $15 charge so that will
| bring the cost to pretty close to $100 each way from Midtown to
| JFK.
|
| Isn't it $15/day? Amortized over a couple of airport round
| trips, I doubt it would make a big difference.
|
| > NYC already tacks on a lot of taxes and fees onto Ubers
| making them so incredibly expensive. I can remember trips 10
| years ago that were $16 that are now closer to $40.
|
| Which is generally the right way to go, in my view - taxis and
| Ubers shouldn't ever be a cost-efficient alternative to public
| transit in a city as large and dense as New York.
|
| What's ridiculous about the AirTrain is that it's paid when
| connecting to the subway, while it's completely free (as far as
| I know) for private cars to pick up or drop off passengers at
| the terminal. That's just the wrong incentive.
| CPLX wrote:
| For-hire cars aren't going to add $15 to your fare. Details on
| that are in the article.
| vundercind wrote:
| > I can remember trips 10 years ago that were $16 that are now
| closer to $40.
|
| This is everywhere. I think Uber stopped subsidizing rides so
| much. For a while it wasn't _that_ much more than the gas +
| wear & tear to drive yourself. Totally wild. I'd use them all
| the time because they were stupid-cheap. Now they cost almost
| as much as a taxi, and there's a reason I'd hardly used taxis
| in my life _at all_ before Uber.
| asah wrote:
| Taxis are charged $1.25 per fare, which is a trivial addition
| to the already step price from the airport.
| srndsnd wrote:
| Great, now expand it to all of Manhattan, instead of just 60th
| and below.
|
| And while they're at it, build the QueensLink so people actually
| take transit instead of just turning it into a park so that it
| can never be built.
|
| It boggles my mind how unable NYC seems to be able to invest it
| its largest comparative advantage to every other city in the
| country: its density and transit access.
| xnx wrote:
| Do we know why they went with a system based strictly on a zone
| instead of based on the congestion level in that zone? It seems a
| fee based on congestion levels would maximize use of the roads by
| encouraging more use at off hours.
| lxgr wrote:
| > a fee based on congestion levels would maximize use of the
| roads by encouraging more use at off hours.
|
| Assuming that's the goal, which I don't think it is (at least
| not by itself).
|
| Changing people's habits in favor of public transit and other
| options would be the real long-term win, not them doing their
| car-based trips in the middle of the night.
| goodSteveramos wrote:
| >Changing people's habits in favor of public transit
|
| If that is what this is about then why dont they spend money
| making the public transit options better? There are dozens of
| unbuilt subway lines, areas with poor or no public transit
| and large amounts of crime all of which making a car a far
| superior choice. Taxing the car until people put up with an
| inferior transit service is not an improvement.
| arcticbull wrote:
| More ridership demand and more taxes on car owners means
| more money to build transit. Also a more vocal group of
| people demanding it.
| shmatt wrote:
| you mean finding out the price 45 minutes after you left the
| house?
| nix0n wrote:
| > encouraging more use at off hours
|
| NYC is "the city that never sleeps". Deliveries have been
| happening overnight for decades already, due to the traffic
| congestion.
| asoneth wrote:
| I think it's meant to approximate that sort of dynamic pricing
| while making it simpler for drivers (and voters) to understand.
|
| Sort of like how dynamic electricity pricing for retail
| consumers takes the form of binary peak/off-peak pricing
| whereas industrial users can buy from wholesale markets with
| wild price swings.
| iooi wrote:
| For how progressive HN seems to be I'm surprised at all the
| support this is getting here. At the end of the day this about as
| regressive a tax as you can make.
|
| And the whole point of this tax is to fund the most mismanaged
| organization in NYC -- the MTA.
| voisin wrote:
| I concur. The amount, like certain Scandinavian speeding
| tickets, should go up with income. A billionaire living in CT
| shouldn't pay the same as a plumber living in an outer borough.
| Also, why not have a different cost between EV and ICE vehicle,
| as the externalities in terms of air quality differ markedly.
| nayuki wrote:
| When it comes to air quality, EVs still generate tire dust.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Probably not very much at ~15 mph, which is about as fast
| as traffic can get in lower manhattan.
| voisin wrote:
| What portion of air quality impact from vehicles is due to
| tire dust versus exhaust fumes?
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| If you provide a low cost for poorer people to drive in, then
| more poorer people might start driving in since traffic will
| be better, which negates the purpose of the congestion zone.
| nayuki wrote:
| That's an interesting angle. And then poorer people will
| host taxi services for richer people. Oops, cars are
| fungible, which means charging based on the user's income
| will not work.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Right, the best you could do would be to base it off of
| the car model associated with the license plate. But then
| you might just get people driving their old beaters into
| the city, which would have worse emissions than their
| newer cars and be worse for everyone who is near them on
| the street.
| lxgr wrote:
| This would be incredibly hard to enforce, though. How would
| you properly tax a billionaire being driven by a minimum-wage
| earning driver, for example? How would the MTA get salary
| data for people commuting in from out of state, etc.
| ametrau wrote:
| Something that people don't understand is that even if a
| law doesn't work 100%, it can still be effective.
|
| In this case, make it self reported with random audits.
| Problem solved.
| lxgr wrote:
| Like asking people for their W-2 in the Holland tunnel?
| And who do you ask - the driver, the car's owner, the
| entity paying for the lease, the passenger, or all of
| them?
|
| I agree, but I think this one would create incredible
| administrative overhead and still not even get close to
| 100%.
| voisin wrote:
| How about to use the congestion zone you need a
| transponder which you register for, and annually you
| update your information in the registration portal?
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| I find it hard to care about it being a regressive tax when
| there are numerous options for making your way into Manhattan -
| 24 hour subway, ferries, amtrak, PATH, etc.
|
| Almost no one with a low paying job is driving into Manhattan
| for work.
| lfmunoz4 wrote:
| wonder what probability of getting mugged or having to
| confront a crackhead is if taking public transportation.
| nayuki wrote:
| Not a regressive tax. Poorer people are less likely to own and
| drive a car in the first place.
|
| Moreover, everything about the cost of driving is regressive:
| https://cityobservatory.org/ten-things-more-inequitable-that...
| nerdjon wrote:
| I feel like generally speaking, particularly in Urban areas,
| being progressive also comes with advocating for public transit
| over cars for most situations.
|
| Which like you said, this exactly does.
|
| So I think it makes sense.
| GenerWork wrote:
| I'm not sure why you're surprised. This site is populated by
| people who view people and society as nothing more than a
| complicated Excel spreadsheet and jump at the chance to call
| things "negative externalities" if it aligns with their belief
| system despite it having a potentially large negative effect on
| those that they claim to care about.
| nerdjon wrote:
| Maybe we can finally inch closer to having a city in the US that
| doesn't bow down to car owners and actually cares about the
| health of the people that live there?
|
| Maybe even carless unless absolutely necessary (disability
| related) and emergency services.
|
| Even in Urban areas there seems to be a vocal minority that don't
| want to give up their cars and any inconvenience to them is
| attacked. In Boston we are shutting down some streets in the
| summer and car drivers love to complain about how much worse
| driving is. Which it being worse to drive is a positive to me, as
| someone who actually lives here and does not own a car.
| sp332 wrote:
| NYC shuts down streets too.
| https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/pedestrians/openstreets.sh...
| npace12 wrote:
| So does that mean now that the Lincoln and Holland Tunnel will be
| +$15? That'd cost like $35 to enter Manhattan from Jersey City.
| andrewla wrote:
| Apparently if you use any tolled access route you get a $5
| discount on the congestion fee.
| etrautmann wrote:
| there's a partial abatement of $5 for crossing in from a
| tunnel? not exactly clear yet but that's what TFA suggests.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| Not quite -- roughly $25, depending on when you cross and
| whether or not you have EZ Pass.
|
| + ~$15 toll
|
| + $15 congestion charge
|
| - $5 congestion charge toll abatement
|
| https://www.panynj.gov/bridges-tunnels/en/tolls.html
| _rend wrote:
| As a former NYC resident, and as someone whose family still lives
| and works in the city, I'm curious to see how this'll distribute
| traffic patterns throughout Manhattan. If you live in the outer
| boroughs like my family does, getting into certain areas in
| Manhattan via public transit can be difficult, and time consuming
| -- significantly more so than getting in by car.
|
| My dad is an on-call doctor; getting to his hospital by car takes
| ~15 minutes, but ~60-90 via public transit. His patients don't
| have the luxury of waiting for him to take the bus. His hospital
| is outside of this zone, but I imagine that paying $15 every time
| he got called in would be extraordinarily frustrating.
|
| My mom does work within this zone, also in places not easily
| reachable by public transit. I suspect that she, like many
| others, will still commute into Manhattan, park in areas outside
| of the zone, then take public transit into it -- which will
| increase congestion in those areas. It'll be interesting to watch
| for the lead-on effects.
|
| I sympathize entirely with the desire to reduce traffic in the
| city, but man, for people who live far from work and can't easily
| commute any other way, what a pain.
| wnolens wrote:
| $15 is a cheap Manhattan lunch. Financially, a doctor won't
| notice it.
|
| Presuming that it will be implemented like every other road
| toll, it will be auto-paid without noticing, too.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| I'd also assume the hospital would reimburse the $15 toll.
| That's like what they charge for a Tylenol.
| _rend wrote:
| > Financially, a doctor won't notice it.
|
| Not all doctors make enough money to not notice it,
| especially ones earlier in their career.
|
| Regardless, assuming you have two working adults each paying
| the $15 toll once a day, conservatively, working 250 days a
| year, that's $7,500/year that has to come from somewhere. I
| can't imagine an income level (even if it doesn't affect your
| quality of life) where that's not an insanely frustrating
| amount to pay... to the MTA of all places. That money getting
| reinvested into useful infrastructure would be a dream come
| true!
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| I mean... I get it. But an extra $15 per entry to the city for
| a doctor based in Manhattan is exactly the type of person this
| is aimed at.
|
| Can likely afford the expense: check Prefers/needs to get into
| the city faster than public transport allows for: check
|
| The article says they expect traffic entering the city to fall
| by 17%. You dad is part of the 83% of people who will say the
| pain of paying another toll is lower than the pain of taking
| public transit.
| rappatic wrote:
| As someone who lives in the NYC metropolitan area, the problem
| here isn't with the idea of congestion pricing, it's with the
| public transit system. Public transit options to travel between
| Midtown and Brooklyn, or Staten Island and downtown, etc. are
| sorely lacking, as are options to get into the city from places
| not well served by the MTA trains. The subways and buses are
| unreliable at best. Once those are fixed, I'd embrace congestion
| pricing. Until then, the toll only hurts people who can't easily
| afford to pay: it's no coincidence that those people live in the
| places where it's less convenient to get into Manhattan. They're
| stuck either paying the extra few grand each year or spending an
| extra hour every day on the mediocre transit system.
|
| Once NYC (*including* the other four boroughs, not just Manhattan
| itself) gets its public transit on par with London, Copenhagen,
| etc., I'll embrace the congestion pricing.
| ng12 wrote:
| > between Midtown and Brooklyn
|
| I don't follow. There are relatively few neighborhoods in
| Brooklyn without train access to Midtown (though those do tend
| to be the most car centric).
| tombert wrote:
| I take the trains all the time in Brooklyn, and live here,
| but the person you're responding to isn't completely wrong;
| there's a fairly large patch of north Brooklyn/lower Queens
| that has pretty bad train coverage.
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/23/Of.
| ..
|
| Also, in Brooklyn, there's a lot of places that _do_ have
| train coverage in the most technical sense, but that means
| they have _exactly one_ line near them. This is fine, but it
| can be annoying if that line is your main mode of transport
| and it gets shut down for whatever reason.
|
| When I lived in Manhattan, even in the less-covered
| Washington Heights, it was comparatively easy to find another
| train nearby if the train I was planning to take was down. In
| Brooklyn, unless you're near the more metro-ey hubs, you
| might just be out of luck (or just take the bus).
| tombert wrote:
| > The subways and buses are unreliable at best.
|
| Everyone complains about the subway, but as someone who lives
| in Brooklyn it's been generally good enough to get to work
| without too many headaches.
|
| I live in the Brownsville/Canarsie area, and I generally take
| the 3 into the city, and that generally just works, but I will
| admit that it kind of sucks that the 3 is the _only_ train that
| 's easily near me. It's not usually a problem on weekdays, but
| it's a very annoying problem on weekends when they have to do
| maintenance, meaning my only easy mode of transportation is
| either severely limited or non-existent. [1]
|
| Still, I really don't think it's as bad as people complain
| about. I've lived in NYC for nine years, and deep in Brooklyn
| for about 5.5, without a car, and it's been "generally ok".
|
| [1] It's not completely horrible, if I'm willing to walk a bit
| further (about a mile) I can get to an L train and if I am
| willing to walk a bit further than that I can get to an A.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| I've experienced 3 line shutdowns in the past 24 hours. F Q
| and 6. All while I was trying to ride them.
| pgodzin wrote:
| The buses will be more reliable when they aren't stuck in
| traffic caused by congestion.
| cute_boi wrote:
| Many roads buses have their own lanes...
| galdosdi wrote:
| > Staten Island and downtown
|
| What a ridiculous statement? Forgot about the free ferry? Once
| you get to South Ferry you have a wealth of connections, the
| 123 (7th ave line), 456 (Lex ave line) and NQR (Broadway line).
| rappatic wrote:
| The ferry is definitely a lot less convenient when you don't
| live North Shore or mid-island. That said I don't have any
| personal experience, I'm only speaking secondhand for Staten
| Island.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| So driving to Manhattan is for the rich?
| galdosdi wrote:
| So what else is new?
| bilbo0s wrote:
| Hasn't it always been?
|
| Not a lot of poor people parking in Manhattan. No one's dumb
| enough to pay those 8 dollar an hour garage parking fees below
| 59th. And you will have to park in a garage, the only question
| is whether you do it right away, or drive around for half an
| hour looking for an alternative first.
| grardb wrote:
| It should be.
| invig wrote:
| Amazing to watch some here try and justify another tax that hurts
| poor people and deprives them of access to opportunity, that
| doesn't impact rich people.
| ericyd wrote:
| In most cities I would agree, but NYC has the best transit in
| the country by a huge margin. Genuine question: are there lots
| of people in NYC and surrounding area who _must_ drive into the
| city for work and don 't have convenient alternatives
| available? This would be true in most places in the US but I'm
| not sure about NY.
|
| Of course, your underlying point is still valid that the
| effects of such a tax will not be felt equally across class
| lines, and that is not ideal in my opinion either.
| galdosdi wrote:
| Genuine answer as a former New Yorker: No. You can get in and
| out more easily by transit than by car already. It's a
| luxury. Driving in Manhattan is already expensive many ways
| anyhow
|
| - bridge/tunnel tolls to enter any way other than from the
| Bronx along slow inconvenient local streets
|
| - parking costs a lot of money, or a lot of time and hassle
| (and in fact is prohibitive, like as in you won't find free
| parking even after circling for an hour, in much of manhattan
| for much of the day)
|
| - if you're an average american driver from the suburbs or
| further afield, who is not used to big city driving, you will
| probably find it very stressful until you practice a lot
|
| - opportunity cost: transit is already great, so there's no
| compelling reason usually
| wwarner wrote:
| Agree with everything you said except "transit is already
| great". Subway could be greatly improved, and taxing
| congestion is one way to address that.
| galdosdi wrote:
| Yeah, true, great is too strong a word.
|
| But, it is great _compared_ to driving, in terms of point
| A to point B on time performance, other than very late at
| night, which is the only time you can get around faster
| in a car (but will likely still struggle with parking)
| fngjdflmdflg wrote:
| I think you overestimate how many poor people use cars in NYC
| and underestimate how much HN hates car owners.
| umvi wrote:
| Almost every public health tax hurts poor people. I'm sure you
| would agree that even taxing tobacco hurts poor people because
| poor people are the largest user base of tobacco and since they
| are addicted, taxing tobacco is tantamount to taxing the poor
| directly (and has little effect on the non-smoking rich). That
| doesn't mean the tax is a bad thing.
|
| Subsidize what you want more of, tax what you want less of, and
| all.
| Gabriel54 wrote:
| I'm sympathetic to this argument, but as an example someone
| from NJ could easily drive up to Secaucus Junction and hop on
| the NJ transit into Penn Station in about the same time as it
| would take to make it through tunnel + Manhattan traffic. If
| there are not good connections inside Manhattan or other parts
| of the city then that is a good argument for better public
| transit.
| galdosdi wrote:
| There are always exceptions to any rule, but the vast majority
| of Manhattan drivers aren't poor and the vast majority of poor
| people passing through Manhattan don't drive.
|
| You're thinking of some other kind of place like the middle of
| america, where that would make sense.
| aeturnum wrote:
| I suspect this summary is fundamentally mistaken. I'm sure at
| least one poor person will have to pay this tax, but my
| understanding is that the revenue from it will be used to
| improve systems used by the general public and the wealthy are
| overrepresented in the expected tax base. By definition, that's
| the opposite of a tax on "the poor."
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| Don't forget the disabled. Can't use 75% of subway stations
| because you're in a wheelchair? Pay the fee because it's now
| your problem that MTA doesn't prioritize accessibility.
| jlhawn wrote:
| So you think the congestion fee should be means-tested (or,
| more accurately, affluence-tested)?
|
| How might such a system work? Have the DMVs from the metro area
| (NY, NJ, CT) link registered vehicle owners with their taxable
| income last year and share this info with MTA to adjudicate
| fees? I think that makes it too complex. You could achieve a
| similar equitable outcome by making the fee universal and using
| the revenue to improve alternative transit services (and/or
| lower fares) that are used more by lower income households.
| eigenvalue wrote:
| This is the sort of thing that makes me really want to just move
| out of NYC for good. They want to force you into the subway, but
| then they also refuse to lock up violent psychopaths who get
| arrested dozens of times a year for violent crimes in the subway
| system. It's a tax on people who value personal safety for
| themselves and their families, so they can shovel more money into
| the broken public transportation system that is never on time and
| which can't offer even basic safety to passengers.
| fooker wrote:
| Why is taxing people the only solution?
|
| Why not do it the other way? Pay people to take public
| transport-i.e. make it free and even incentivize it by adding on
| other perks.
|
| The US has a huge inefficiency issue, tax money is not used
| effectively, and a good fraction goes into carefully designed
| money laundering scams. More tax money here is like eating more
| to avoid stress.
| ethanbond wrote:
| How much could they possibly pay people to use public transit
| that would have anywhere near the same effect magnitude?
|
| > The US has a huge inefficiency issue, tax money is not used
| effectively, and a good fraction goes into carefully designed
| money laundering scams. More tax money here is like eating more
| to avoid stress
|
| Citation needed
| fooker wrote:
| >How much could they possibly
|
| How much more could they possibly tax people before fixing
| root causes instead of symptoms?
|
| >Citation needed
|
| https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/wb_government_effe.
| ..
| jdeibele wrote:
| Someone who shows up frequently in my Twitter feed takes pictures
| of cars where they've put mud or leaves on the license plate to
| obscure the characters. Also they scrape paint off, put a Back
| the Blue sticker on one or two characters, use a reflective
| license plate cover, etc. Almost always there's something that
| identifies the driver as a city employee, often a police officer.
|
| It would be interesting to know if they'll crack down on that
| behavior while fighting congestion.
| dtnewman wrote:
| Personally, I would like to see more dedicated bus lanes. I
| traveled to Vancouver a few years ago where dedicated bus lanes
| are ubiquitous, and the decision to take public transit instead
| of a taxi was easy because the buses got me where I needed to go
| much faster. Make dedicated bus lanes in and out of the city and
| you'll start to even wealthy people ditching their cars for
| commutes because the buses will be much faster.
| bashtoni wrote:
| I think it says a lot about how our society is so hugely car
| centric that the idea of charging people to drive on a road is
| hugely controversial, but the idea of making people pay to travel
| on a train is accepted without a thought.
| probablynish wrote:
| This is not really a fair comparison - even without a
| congestion toll, people have to pay to drive on a road. They
| need to buy the car, pay for its maintenance, fill it with gas,
| pay for insurance, pay annual registration fees to help
| maintain the roads. Presumably some of the money from buying a
| train ticket goes into doing the equivalent things: purchasing
| and maintaining the trains, etc.
|
| Not saying the implicit subsidies/taxes on each mode of
| transport is equal, but it doesn't seem to be as simple as 'one
| is paid and the other is free'.
| hibikir wrote:
| It's $15 a day: $300 if you commute 20 days a month. That's not
| a small price change.
|
| I find that tolls are a good idea, but suspect that we'd have
| significant complaints situation if the MTA decided to raise
| the prices of the 30 day pass by, say $300 a month in one
| sitting. People made decisions based on existing prices, and a
| change this big. Going around the price changes by moving or
| parking further out and then paying for a train is a
| significant lifestyle change. People get really mad when rent
| goes up by this much too. So all in all, we don't need any car
| dependence exceptionalism to expect a lot of push back.
| huytersd wrote:
| I lived in NYC for a few years now but wasn't the toll to
| cross the bridge already between $12-15? How is this a
| significant change?
| nfRfqX5n wrote:
| $15 for bridge/tunnel + $15 for congestion. doubling the
| cost sounds significant to me.
| huytersd wrote:
| Oh interesting. This isn't just a bridge toll, this is a
| surcharge on top of that. This is going to kill traffic
| in Manhattan.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| This is much more expensive than the equivalent trip on a
| train.
| rsanek wrote:
| Except, you own your car and have to pay to maintain it
| already. A better comparison would be taxis, which we do pay
| for per-use, like with a train.
| acdha wrote:
| That's far from universally true and for the median household
| it's a significant expense forced on them by past
| generations' planning decisions.
|
| That also doesn't address the reasoning behind this decision:
| cars are a major health risk and entail significant quality
| of life reduction. Taxing negative externalities is a
| textbook way to shrink them, and your sunk cost in car
| ownership doesn't have any effect of the costs to the
| communities you drive through.
| binarymax wrote:
| I wish this came with some stats on how many cars per day this
| will effect and what percent of total traffic in the zone that
| is.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| The congestion tax works by keeping poor people off the roads of
| Manhatten. Who else is deterred by it?
|
| $15 is nothing to wealthier people; their only objection will be
| spending the time processing the payment. But if you are making
| minimum wage, it's a calculation. Fees are regressive taxes.
|
| If you are poor, you are effectively not welcome south of 60th
| street; that's for the rich people. If the city wants to raise
| revenue, how about a tax where the wealthy make an equal
| sacrifice. If they want to reduce congestion, how about having
| global businesses like Uber bid on road capacity.
|
| Don't forget the fundamentals that made the US and NY great: All
| are created equal, the American dream, the land of opportunity,
| democratic equality, equality under the law. Manhatten is (and
| NYC more generally is) in many ways more than this being turned
| into an island for the wealthy.
| senda wrote:
| I mean is the goal to be fair or to reduce congestion?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Fairness is a requirement. 'Liberty and justice for all'.
| acdha wrote:
| That's why there's an excellent transit system. If you're
| poor, nobody is giving you a car, insurance, parking, fuel,
| and maintenance for "fairness".
| anon291 wrote:
| I'm as conservative as they come and this decision makes the most
| sense in my mind. There is no natural right to drive a car.
| Streets are public properties to be used how 'the public' (that
| is 'the government' sees fit). It is absolutely within the right
| of the city to tax cars. The law is not obviously immoral as all
| data (and my own experience) indicate that new york city is most
| easily traversed by subway and bus, and it has a long history of
| a robust public transit system. Governments need to choose where
| to spend tax money and the market results show that, even before
| this tax, residents preferred transit. Thus it makes sense to
| deprioritize private autos for transit. People who want to own
| cars should live somewhere other than manhattan (my goodness...
| are people really so dense these days that this needs to be
| spelled out for them?)
| nfRfqX5n wrote:
| it sucks as an NJ resident that none of this money will be going
| to help the people commuting to NYC via public transit
| endisneigh wrote:
| Why a fixed cost? Should be proportional to income, or car,
| whichever is higher.
|
| Funny to see people defending regressive taxations. And yes I
| think parking tickets and most other fines should also be
| proportional.
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