[HN Gopher] Congestion pricing in Manhattan is a predictable suc...
___________________________________________________________________
Congestion pricing in Manhattan is a predictable success
Author : edward
Score : 255 points
Date : 2025-06-20 14:26 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| EGreg wrote:
| And keep in mind that The Economist is traditionally neoliberal.
|
| Yet they stay true to economics principles even when they are
| more lefty and collectively enforced :)
|
| Now imagine what else Pigovian Taxes can do to help solve
| collective action problems, if we had a UBI and local city
| currencies: https://community.intercoin.app/t/rolling-out-
| voluntary-basi...
|
| To quote: _Finally, as taxes and fees are introduced in the local
| economy, the community can start to issue a Universal Basic
| Income in its own currency, without causing inflation.
|
| Various taxes can be organically introduced, including sales
| taxes, land taxes 1, and pigovian taxes 3 on things like
| pollution, fossil fuels, meat or cigarettes. By redistributing
| taxed money equally to everyone, this can align public incentives
| with taxing these negative externalities, and avoid them falling
| disproportionately on the working class, as happened with the
| yellow vest protests in France.
|
| As demand for the local currency (and thus local real estate and
| services) grows, so does the town's ability to tax various
| transactions. The town's citizens could be given the ability to
| democratically vote on the level of taxes, and thus the level of
| UBI, they want to receive.
|
| Thus the town can have both sound money and true democratic
| control of its fiscal and monetary policies, all the while
| becoming more self-sufficient and stronger. Any town will be able
| to introduce a local UBI to end food insecurity, improve health
| outcomes, reduce dependence on means-tested welfare programs, and
| so on._
|
| PS: Why all the downvotes? Why always silent with no reason?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| _The Economist_ was founded in 1843 to oppose the Corn Laws
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_Laws
|
| so there is nothing "neo" about their "liberal".
| krustyburger wrote:
| I'm not sure neoliberal and "lefty" are anywhere near
| synonyms either.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| They aren't. But I find something amusing that _The
| Economist_ (which I subscribe to) is frequently considered
| left-leaning
|
| https://www.allsides.com/news-source/economist
|
| whereas I see it what the center-right would be if we had a
| healthy media/political environment.
| kristjansson wrote:
| Impugns the source(s) trying to place them on the left-
| right axis more than anything.
| tekla wrote:
| They are classical liberal, which is impossible to place
| in the current US Left-Right spectrum because politics
| have become even dumber than previously thought possible
| PaulHoule wrote:
| ... politics aren't just dumb in the US. _The Economist_
| is politically homeless these days and has little faith
| in Labor, Tories or Lib Dems.
| billfor wrote:
| Count how many times they use hard-left vs hard-right, or
| how many times they use hard-right vs any other kind of
| right.
| turnsout wrote:
| It's confusing, but "liberal" and "neoliberal" are in fact
| antonyms.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Not really. Ever seen a "liberal" liberate or a
| "conservative" conserve?
|
| The term got its current usage when FDR came in because
| at that time it was a matter of "burn it all down" (real
| socialism) vs "fix the private property system around the
| margins".
|
| See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism
| recursive wrote:
| Based on this comment tree, I'm tempted to believe
| neither of them mean anything. Or at least very few
| people are aware of whatever real definition they have.
| But many people have opinions about it.
| tekla wrote:
| They do mean things, but most who toss the words around
| only use it to mean "thing that I don't like"
| rsynnott wrote:
| > Or at least very few people are aware of whatever real
| definition they have
|
| I mean, like many things, the meaning of 'liberal' has
| shifted over the last few centuries, and always differed
| somewhat between regions anyway. Words in English mean
| what people use them to mean.
| rsynnott wrote:
| They're not _that_ far off being antonyms, really;
| neoliberalism certainly shares distant origins with the
| left, but that's about as far as it goes.
| EGreg wrote:
| Fair enough from a pedantic point of view, but I was using
| the term in this sense, as it is the most recognizable modern
| term to describe serious economic positions of this kind:
|
| _Neoliberalism is a political and economic philosophy that
| emphasizes free markets, reduced government intervention, and
| individual liberty. It 's often associated with policies like
| deregulation, privatization, and free trade. Proponents
| believe these measures foster economic growth, efficiency,
| and individual prosperity. However, critics argue that
| neoliberal policies can lead to increased inequality, social
| instability, and exploitation_
|
| And my point was here they were applauding policies involving
| clear government intervention.
| tekla wrote:
| > they were applauding policies involving clear government
| intervention
|
| Yes the Economist will do that, because they believe in
| classical liberal markets
| kfajdsl wrote:
| (neo)liberal != libertarian.
|
| The government has a clear role for internalizing
| externalities, which makes markets more efficient. Or, in
| this case, using price signals to allocate scarce resources
| when it was just a free-for-all before.
| jf22 wrote:
| Doesn't it matter more about who they are today rather than
| who they were 180 years ago?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Still dedicated to free trade and putting markets to work
| to solve problems.
| criddell wrote:
| Not if you are trying to figure out if the prefix "neo"
| fits.
| jf22 wrote:
| The prefix in neo-liberalism has more to do with the
| ideas not whether it is "new."
| jowea wrote:
| Charging for an scarce resource instead of letting the tragedy
| of the commons play out does sound like something obvious to
| come out of a neoliberal economist yes.
| EGreg wrote:
| What is The Economist's position on carbon taxes?
|
| Update: wow you're right:
| https://impact.economist.com/sustainability/net-zero-and-
| ene...
| melling wrote:
| Even Bjorn Lomborg who is against most climate change
| policies is for a carbon tax.
|
| https://lomborg.com/news/how-avoid-political-pitfalls-
| carbon...
| montjoy wrote:
| That's an op-ed btw.
|
| > The views expressed in the blog are the author's own and
| do not necessarily reflect the views of Economist Impact or
| the sponsor.
|
| So not necessarily reflective of The Economist's position.
| jcranmer wrote:
| _The Economist_ has long been pretty outspoken over their
| preference for a carbon tax over cap-and-trade (see any
| article they write about carbon emissions).
| vkou wrote:
| Carbon taxes have always been a conservative/neo-liberal
| idea.
|
| Modern 'conservatives' abandoning them tells you a lot
| about how far their politics have shifted over the past
| decade.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Just like the ACA/Obamacare was very similar to a
| proposal that came out of the Heritage Foundation, but
| was universally hated by the people on that side.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Flat rates are not the only way to allocate scarce resources.
| Generally they would be called "regressive", even.
| jowea wrote:
| Well it's a flat rate on car drivers in Manhattan. How
| regressive is it really?
| EA-3167 wrote:
| While I support congestion pricing, I will say that The
| Economist is most notable these days a negative oracle:
| whatever it predicts, the opposite will happen.
| EGreg wrote:
| The Jim Cramer of macroeconomics? :)
| tekla wrote:
| Such as?
| ch4s3 wrote:
| They were spot on about post covid stimulus fueling
| inflation.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Examples? Counter-example: the Economist predicted the 2007
| sub-prime crisis and housing price crash.
| ahepp wrote:
| Congestion pricing seems like a pretty liberal policy to me.
| Using supply and demand to set a price.
|
| Sure, you could crank the Friedman dial to 11 by say,
| privatizing the roads and letting the operators set the price
| based on competition.
|
| But the policy is liberal at its core. A "lefty, collectively
| enforced" policy would be something like a quota or permit
| system.
|
| A key difference being that anyone who wants to drive on the
| road can do so as long as they pay. It isn't "everyone with odd
| license plate numbers can drive today, evens can drive
| tomorrow" but rather "you can drive today if it's worth $9 to
| you".
| varispeed wrote:
| It is classist. If it was liberal, then it would be based on
| % of someone's wealth (and using progressive scale).
|
| These policies are aimed at getting unwashed pleb off the
| roads so the rich can show off their cars in peace.
| queenkjuul wrote:
| All the poor people on the buses were never gonna drive and
| now have faster more reliable service
| cute_boi wrote:
| how are they going to have more reliable service?
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| They mean that buses are now faster/more reliable.
| vkou wrote:
| Buses spend less time stuck in traffic.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Buses work better when there's less traffic.
| varispeed wrote:
| Buses should serve both rich and poor. Otherwise this is
| a very definition of classism. The bus is the "back of
| the bus" now.
| TheGRS wrote:
| Additionally all those emergency vehicles are going to
| have an easier time shuttling patients to hospitals and
| firefighters to fires. The whole spectrum benefits from
| that, not just the rich.
| naravara wrote:
| It's classist to not want pedestrians in cities to die and
| get asthma from traffic?
|
| Got it.
| varispeed wrote:
| Amazing how pedestrian safety suddenly matters the moment
| it becomes a tool to justify purging the poor from city
| centres.
| naravara wrote:
| If you own a car and use it to get around in Manhattan
| you're not "poor." The poor are riding the bus.
| miguelxt wrote:
| I think you and the parent comment are confusing the term
| "liberal". He refers to "liberal" in the classical sense:
| free markets, limited government, rule of law, etc. You
| mean "liberal" in the North American sense: lefty, social
| justice, etc.
| varispeed wrote:
| Free markets presume equal opportunity to access
| infrastructure, not the rich buying exclusive use of
| public goods.
| Marsymars wrote:
| Liberal and leftist are two entirely different things.
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| Alternative link: https://archive.ph/6qlmb
| lysace wrote:
| It's great for the very wealthy.
|
| See also: Singapore. When I first visited I was amazed at how
| little traffic there was. Turns out they had imposed so severe
| costs on car ownership that the vast majority can't afford to own
| one.
|
| _Why Driving in Singapore Is Like 'Wearing a Rolex'_
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/24/world/asia/car-certificat...
|
| (https://archive.is/X6dpP)
| lokar wrote:
| Driving into manhattan and paying for parking is something only
| the fairly wealthy could afford anyway.
| decafninja wrote:
| Driving into Manhattan every day? Yes.
|
| Occasionally? Tons of middle class people do it.
|
| The majority of my social circle consists of middle and upper
| middle class Newjerseyans. Many commute daily into Manhattan
| via public transit. But if they're going in for anything
| other than work, it's always the car.
|
| Which congestion price is perfectly fine for if you're only
| going in occasionally.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| > Occasionally? Tons of middle class people do it.
|
| I would not be surprised if occasionally driving into
| Manhattan is cheaper now. Surely the excessive prices on
| parking should be going down.
| lokar wrote:
| It should be cheaper already if you place a non-zero
| value on your time.
| mc32 wrote:
| Do people put a value on time when not doing value added
| stuff? When they go for a walk, do they instead run? Do
| they try to only meet up with friends who can return an
| investment on their time? Do these people not shoot the
| shit? Are they busy beavers at all times maximizing
| wealth?
| kfajdsl wrote:
| These are all things that people find value in. Most
| people don't assign any value to sitting in traffic.
| recursive wrote:
| Shooting the shit could be precisely what they do instead
| of idling in traffic. Most people would prefer it.
| mc32 wrote:
| I dunno, man, It's rumored they have this thing called
| cellular telephony technology allowing just such a thing
| while in traffic --I could be wrong though, thems being
| wealthy and shit.
| recursive wrote:
| The rumors are true, but you seem to have missed my
| point. Some people might prefer to communicate in person.
| You might not be one of them.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Most normal people put a very low value on their time,
| because they don't have any practical way to monitize an
| extra hour. It's just "free" time.
| echelon wrote:
| The supply demand curve might mean prices temporarily
| drop with demand, but that might put pressure on some
| parking to convert to other uses, which will then lower
| supply.
| lokar wrote:
| I agree. Also, the money from the fee is supposed to
| improve transit (we will see how long that lasts...), and
| IMO a share should go to NJ transit into manhattan.
| shipscode wrote:
| Tell me you've never lived in lower Manhattan without telling
| me you've never lived in lower Manhattan.
|
| Edit: Happy to be downvoted by people who actually live in
| Manhattan and take 5 seconds out of their day to talk to
| anybody who works in a local store. Brooklyn transplants can
| move along.
| lokar wrote:
| 17th and 6th av
| lokar wrote:
| I would (I've since moved) worry that less traffic would
| mean faster cars. As a pedestrian I did appreciate just
| how slowly cars normally move in Manhattan.
| selectodude wrote:
| Manhattan is blanketed in unmarked speed cameras.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| Yeah, this is the only disagreement I have with congestion
| pricing too. I have a friend that lives in Tribeca (in the
| place he grew up in in the 80s) and needs a car to drive to
| his art studio in New Jersey. I feel like they should get
| an exemption or at least a heavily reduced rate.
|
| But my in laws that drive in from the suburbs a few times a
| year? They can afford the $9.
| lokar wrote:
| In such a dense and complex place it's impossible to
| avoid at least some negative impacts, at least early on.
| Hopefully transit will improve.
| righthand wrote:
| Your buddy should move to NJ if he needs low cost access
| to his studio. The roads will be tolled and the price
| will only go up. The entire point is to reduce the amount
| of people using the roads for a cheap benefit (ex living
| in Tribeca one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the
| city and complaining that you have no low cost access to
| NJ).
| shipscode wrote:
| Yep. The people who agree with congestion pricing either
| hate or ignore these people, along with the thousands of
| lower Manhattan small-business employees, subsidized
| housing residence that have cars or street park daily.
|
| I postulate it's because they don't actually live there,
| or just moved there, if they do actually live there,
| they'd have to be severely socially inept to never speak
| to a store or restaurant owner and ask what their commute
| is like.
|
| To act as though it affects nobody of moderate or lower
| income is downright dishonest, when 22% of Manhattan
| households own one - it's no longer an upper class
| activity, just a basic tool to get to work.
| dml2135 wrote:
| The subway is also a basic tool to get to work, which
| even more people use, and we charge a fare for that. So
| why not for driving?
|
| The point isn't that it won't negatively affect anybody
| of moderate or lower income, it's that _overall_ it will
| positively affect _most_ people of moderate or lower
| income, because _most_ of those people do not drive
| regularly into Manhattan.
| dml2135 wrote:
| I'm unclear on how $9 is not a fair price to drive a car
| from lower manhattan to new jersey. Public transit would
| cost at least that much.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Because on public transit, you're paying to use someone
| else's vehicle, and needing to cover the maintenance,
| depreciation, etc., of it, plus the driver's time. But
| with your own vehicle, those are all already your
| expenses, so it's double-dipping to charge you like that
| at all.
| const_cast wrote:
| But it's not double dipping, because the cost of
| infrastructure for motor vehicles is absurdly high -
| higher than even a lot of public transportation. Because
| individual vehicles are horribly inefficient, and require
| significantly more space per capita. Roads are not free,
| congestion is not free, pollution is not free. You're
| used to being subsidized, so when you're not it may seem
| unfair. But it's not.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > You're used to being subsidized, so when you're not it
| may seem unfair.
|
| It wouldn't be unfair if nobody were subsidized. It's
| unfair that _just_ cars aren 't anymore, but buses, etc.
| still are.
| const_cast wrote:
| Cars are still subsidized, just a little less. And public
| transit is absolutely subsidized, but in a similar
| position to cars - some of it is subsidized, and some of
| it you pay. It's not free to ride the bus. To me, it
| seems fair.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| I'm not saying it's not a fair price -- I think largely
| it's a positive to discourage people from deciding to
| commute into Manhattan by car. I'm in my 40s and only
| recently got my license, so I'm certainly on team public
| transit.
|
| But I am saying that not everyone that lives in the
| congestion zone are well off office workers, particularly
| those born and raised in lower Manhattan that have
| housing arrangements that go back a few decades. An extra
| $2-300 month in tolls is not nothing for many people. You
| can't easily bring hundreds of pounds of art and building
| supplies to your art warehouse in Newark every day on the
| path train.
| dml2135 wrote:
| That's fair, I guess I just don't have much sympathy for
| that person as from my perspective, they were getting a
| massive subsidy for a long time, and we're all better off
| if we cut off their gravy train. And I say this as a
| former artist myself -- if they need the space, they can
| move to Brooklyn like the rest of us.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| If that were true congestion pricing would not affect car
| counts
| lokar wrote:
| Like any moderate financial incentive it impacts a minority
| of people at the margin. For phenomenon like traffic that
| can make a big impact.
| tetromino_ wrote:
| I have a school teacher friend who commutes by car every day
| between the Bronx and upper Manhattan (outside the congestion
| zone - but you said "Manhattan" without any qualifier).
| Obviously she doesn't pay for parking. Public transportation
| in her case would be quite inconvenient due to how the subway
| lines are laid out.
| CPLX wrote:
| That was the original criticism, or rather the cynical attempt
| to block it.
|
| It hasn't panned out that way at all however, it's just great
| for everyone.
|
| OK, actually not _everyone_. There 's one very specific group
| that this sucks for, which not-coincidentally was the group
| that was loudly opposing it using the excuse you tried.
|
| That group is people who work for the city and/or are connected
| so they get free daily parking. That's a lot of cops and
| firefighters and various city functionaries at various levels
| and agencies that have been able to get their hands on parking
| placards. It's a core NYC subculture and they were the annoying
| loud voices that tried to stop this.
|
| Almost anyone who was driving into central Manhattan and paying
| for parking already is thrilled by this, it's only a little
| more expensive and in exchange they shave hours of traffic out
| of their commutes.
|
| It's the people that were gaming the system to get free parking
| that are suddenly screwed. Fuck them.
| wang_li wrote:
| It's a bit absurd though. The roads are paid by tax payers
| from the general fund of the city, but they discriminate on
| how much it costs to use those roads based on where you live.
| If everyone entering the zone paid the same then it would be
| one thing. But they have exemptions and deductions based on
| residency and income. If they are going to charge people who
| don't live in the area and not charge the people who do live
| in the area, then the people in the area should have to buy
| all the roads and pay for the upkeep.
| CPLX wrote:
| > It's a bit absurd though. The roads are paid by tax
| payers from the general fund of the city, but they
| discriminate on how much it costs to use those roads based
| on where you live. If everyone entering the zone paid the
| same then it would be one thing. But they have exemptions
| and deductions based on residency and income. If they are
| going to charge people who don't live in the area and not
| charge the people who do live in the area, then the people
| in the area should have to buy all the roads and pay for
| the upkeep.
|
| These aren't deep moral questions. You're trying to draw
| some sort of universal fairness doctrine around this that
| doesn't apply. It's just public policy. The people who live
| in the area are buying all the roads, through various taxes
| and fees.
|
| Roads don't work the way you describe. Are you aware that
| there's literally no way to drive to Long Island without
| going through New York City? Or that driving from Princeton
| New Jersey to Providence Rhode Island requires going
| through New York City or driving about 40-50 miles out of
| the way? Why is all this solely the problem of people who
| live in Manhattan below Central Park again?
| rozab wrote:
| To someone who can't afford to drive it might seem absurd
| to be paying for roads with their taxes in the first place.
| Driving has been generally subsidized for so long that it's
| easy to forget it's subsidized at all. The backlash to
| proposals for free public transport demonstrates this.
| timr wrote:
| > It hasn't panned out that way at all however, it's just
| great for everyone.
|
| Oh, come now. Try a _little bit_ harder to see the other
| side.
|
| Live here, don't have a car -- haven't had one for 20 years.
| Ride the subway every day.
|
| I freely acknowledge that the roads feel less crowded, but it
| makes no practical difference to me. As far as I am
| concerned, the entire thing is a small net loss, in that it's
| another tax, and on the rare occasions I do actually need a
| car or a service that requires a car (plumber, mover, etc.)
| it costs me more.
|
| I look at congestion pricing purely as a question of _" do I
| consent to another tax for the MTA?"_, and when framed in
| that way, the answer is emphatically "No."
| CPLX wrote:
| > on the rare occasions I do actually need a car or a
| service that requires a car (plumber, mover, etc.) it costs
| me more.
|
| That's the part you have to prove. I bet your statement is
| factually incorrect.
| timr wrote:
| It's literally added on a as service fee. You want
| receipts or something? This is standard stuff -- go ride
| in a taxi and you'll see the same thing.
|
| I encourage you to adopt this level of skepticism to
| claims on _both_ sides of this debate, and not just
| things that violate your pre-conceptions of the world.
|
| Edit: not that I use FreshDirect, but it took me about 30
| seconds of searching to find this obvious example.
|
| https://nypost.com/2025/01/09/business/freshdirect-
| quietly-s...
| CPLX wrote:
| Well yes if you are in a car on the congestion pricing
| area it costs money. Of course it does, that the point.
|
| Your argument is that there are indirect costs. That's
| the part that has to be proven.
|
| Some company using it as an excuse to add a junk fee is
| anecdotal but hardly conclusive. It's about as much
| evidence as a hotel saying they didn't bring me new
| towels because they care about the environment.
| timr wrote:
| > Some company using it as an excuse to add a junk fee is
| anecdotal but hardly conclusive. It's about as much
| evidence as a hotel saying they didn't bring me new
| towels because they care about the environment.
|
| Got it. I show you an example of exactly what you ask
| for, from one of the most common delivery services in
| NYC, and you dismiss it as a "junk fee".
|
| Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug.
| CPLX wrote:
| I mean my bias is that we started with crippling traffic
| congestion and not enough money for transit and now we
| have instantly obvious improvements in congestion and
| more money for transit. And no visible downsides
| whatsoever.
|
| You having to pay fifty cents more for FreshDirect is not
| a persuasive counter argument. Especially since that's
| not actually an indirect cost at all.
|
| Your order is quite literally causing more traffic
| congestion, directly, as the car pulls up in front of
| your apartment and double parks while some guy hand
| delivers your yogurt or whatever.
| jcranmer wrote:
| The biggest improvement are for the very poor, who rely more
| heavily than other socioeconomic classes on bus transportation,
| which has seen the greatest efficiency improvements from
| congestion pricing. The merely poor or middle class, in NYC,
| are already reliant on mass transit (although more likely the
| subway rather than the bus system), which sees somewhat more
| indirect benefits from increased funding as a result of the
| congestion charge.
|
| The people whom congestion pricing hurts the most are those who
| feel that public transit is beneath them but still rely on
| driving in Manhattan to a degree that the congestion charge is
| a significant tax. Which unfortunately seems to include most of
| the media class in NYC, hence the incessant whining about it.
| dh2022 wrote:
| With this new moneys coming in they will not even fix one of
| these 50-year old subway switches. Nevermind buying some new
| subway cars, or improving ventilation / air conditioning
| during summer. This new moneys will go to waste. Meanwhile,
| yeah, rich investment bankers get to spend less time in
| traffic.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > With this new moneys coming in they will not even fix one
| of these 50-year old subway switches. Nevermind buying some
| new subway cars...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/29/nyregion/mta-budget.html
|
| "The M.T.A. expects to spend $10.9 billion to buy roughly
| 2,000 new rail cars, an order that will include 1,500
| subway cars and more than 500 for the Metro-North and Long
| Island Rail Road. Some of the train fleet has not been
| updated since at least 1980, the year of the M.T.A.'s first
| capital plan. Another $3.3 billion will buy and support
| 2,261 new buses."
|
| "The plan includes $5.4 billion to modernize the subway
| signal system, which dates back to the Great Depression.
| Over the past 15 months, the antiquated system has led to
| an average of nearly 4,000 train delays a month, according
| to the M.T.A."
| maest wrote:
| > vast majority can't afford to own one.
|
| Why is that an issue?
|
| Public transportation and taxis are readily available.
| throw7 wrote:
| "Only after Donald Trump won re-election did it start."
|
| That makes it seem like Trump was pro-congestion pricing... he
| was not. I remember reading there was a threat and attempt by him
| to reverse it. Lest it seem like I am a Trump hater, I am very
| much not impressed by Hochul's delaying which was certainly
| because of her special interests.
| paulgb wrote:
| It was not just an idle threat either, they tried to do it
| until they were blocked by a judge
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/nyregion/nyc-congestion-p...
| jimt1234 wrote:
| https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/1892295984928993698
| gosub100 wrote:
| They conveniently timed it until _after the election_.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| There was no "They". The state legislature passed it,
| NY/NYC/MTA designed it, and the Biden admin approved it to go
| into effect before the election. Kathy Hochul delayed it
| until after the election on extremely spurious grounds,
| despite the law being on the books and NYCers supporting it.
| timr wrote:
| Elasticity of demand is not magic, so yeah, making something more
| expensive will likely reduce demand. While I have no doubt it is
| a success if you consider _only_ reduced traffic, there are other
| considerations that override that for me:
|
| 1) It's a regressive tax on everyone living here -- even if you
| never use a car. Literally everything we buy and use in the city
| gets more expensive because of this law.
|
| 2) That same regressive tax is used to provide a lifeline for an
| _exceptionally wasteful_ public organization (the MTA) that needs
| budget discipline, not additional funding. The MTA rivals Tammany
| Hall in terms of waste and fraud, and the talks of budget cuts
| were political crocodile tears.
|
| 3) (more minor) By definition, the point of this tax is to make
| it so that only rich people can drive. As the article notes, _of
| course_ this is great if you 're rich enough to afford it...but
| the article doesn't quote the people who can't now.
|
| ---
|
| Edit: I'm just going to respond to the single point that everyone
| is making in one place, instead of repeating it: you don't just
| get to _assert_ that the hypothesized "reduction in transit
| time" offsets the costs. You have to _prove that argument._
|
| You're the one arguing in favor of a new tax. It's not my job to
| prove the negative.
|
| Ultimately, congestion was itself a cost, but it was a _dynamic_
| cost, increasing and decreasing with the amount of congestion to
| maximize utility of the roads. What the state has done here,
| effectively, is set the price of driving higher than the market
| at all times in order to guarantee a marginal reduction in
| demand.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Literally everything we buy and use in the city gets more
| expensive because of this law.
|
| Significantly? Aren't those delivery trucks spending a lot less
| time paying drivers to idle in traffic now?
| timr wrote:
| I don't know, but you don't have any evidence for that
| argument.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I'm asking for evidence of _your_ argument.
|
| We _do_ have concrete evidence the buses, at least, are
| moving around faster.
| arolihas wrote:
| We know there's less congestion, which means less time
| delivery trucks are idling...
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| The MTA has massive waste in absolute terms, but divide its
| budget by 5 million passengers per day and those numbers become
| much more reasonable.
|
| Money spent on the MTA benefits everybody, especially the poor.
| timr wrote:
| _" Sure, Tammany Hall was corrupt, but the corruption was
| only a tiny amount per capita...and what a nice courthouse!"_
| rafram wrote:
| Pointless strawman response. If you think the MTA's waste
| is in any way comparable to Tammany Hall, back that up with
| numbers.
| timr wrote:
| Just for starters:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-
| subway-...
|
| > An accountant discovered the discrepancy while
| reviewing the budget for new train platforms under Grand
| Central Terminal in Manhattan. The budget showed that 900
| workers were being paid to dig caverns for the platforms
| as part of a 3.5-mile tunnel connecting the historic
| station to the Long Island Rail Road. But the accountant
| could only identify about 700 jobs that needed to be
| done, according to three project supervisors. Officials
| could not find any reason for the other 200 people to be
| there.
|
| > For years, The Times found, public officials have stood
| by as a small group of politically connected labor
| unions, construction companies and consulting firms have
| amassed large profits.
|
| > Trade unions, which have closely aligned themselves
| with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and other politicians, have
| secured deals requiring underground construction work to
| be staffed by as many as four times more laborers than
| elsewhere in the world, documents show.
|
| > Construction companies, which have given millions of
| dollars in campaign donations in recent years, have
| increased their projected costs by up to 50 percent when
| bidding for work from the M.T.A., contractors say.
|
| > Consulting firms, which have hired away scores of
| M.T.A. employees, have persuaded the authority to spend
| an unusual amount on design and management, statistics
| indicate.
|
| _This is literally what Tammany Hall did._
| 8note wrote:
| an alternative interpretation is that the union workers
| know more about how to safely do underground work than
| accountants and supervisors do.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I think that particular theory is addressed by the "four
| times more laborers than elsewhere in the world" bit, if
| it includes the developed world. (Which I strongly
| suspect it does.)
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > an alternative interpretation is that the union workers
| know more about how to safely do underground work than
| accountants and supervisors do.
|
| As someone in New York who supports congestion pricing
| and public transit, I will say this: yes, there is a
| _ton_ of waste and mismanagement at the MTA, and the TWU
| is unfortunately frequently one of the impediments to
| progress here. They have a history of _opposing_ things
| like industry-standard safety improvements, sometimes
| even things which _create_ jobs for their members, for
| arcane political reasons that require a deep
| understanding of their internal politics to comprehend.
| It would be nice if the TWU were a more consistent force
| for efficiency and progress, but they are not. You can
| compare to unions elsewhere in the world, or even to
| other unions in the US, and the TWU still winds up as an
| outlier in many of these areas.
|
| That said, OP is pointing the finger at the wrong party.
| The MTA is overseen by the state. The responsibility for
| these inefficiencies and cost overruns lie with the state
| legislature and the governor. Andrew Cuomo, who was the
| governor at the time that article was written, famously
| washed his hands off the MTA. He was so brazen as to even
| publicly claim that he had no authority over them, at the
| same time as he was making unilateral management
| decisions on their behalf, including ordering the MTA to
| write a check to an upstate ski resort, to bail the
| resort out after a low-business season.
|
| Fortunately, the money from congestion pricing is legally
| earmarked by state law _and_ under a settlement from a
| federal lawsuit (the lawsuit was unrelated to congestion
| pricing, but the funding was offered up as a settlement
| term), so there 's a lot less wiggle room for things to
| go wrong.
|
| Congestion pricing is a solid policy win. That doesn't
| mean the governor (Hochul) and the state legislature
| don't need to step up and do their jobs - which means
| real, material oversight - but criticizing congestion
| pricing on those grounds, when it's one of the few budget
| items which actually _has_ been legally overseen and
| structured - is completely off-base.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Accounts know nothing about running construction
| projects. If you want to control costs, use fixed price
| or GMP contracts instead of cost plus or T&M. You also
| need to make sure your engineers are accurately
| representing the work scope in the RFP so you don't get
| change ordered to death.
|
| That being said, there is definitely corruption in the
| NYC construction market that doesn't exist in the market
| I operate in, and I've read articles specifically about
| sandhogs inflating contracts and so on. Their union
| contract could possibly specify certain positions being
| required that are extraneous to the work being performed
| that would inflate the cost of the project and line the
| union's coffers.
|
| Net margins on a 9 to 10 figure construction contract
| should be around 3-5% in a competitive market.
|
| FWIW I am a construction management professional.
| dh2022 wrote:
| These new moneys coming in will not buy one new subway car,
| will not fix one mile of subway track, will not fix one mile
| of potholes-filled-streets. Will not even paint one mile of
| street sign. It will all go paying some bureaucrats to create
| some Tableau dashboards showing how much better something
| (anything) is.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Citation needed. It drives me nuts when people treat their
| own Boomer Facebook-esque rants about "The System, Man" as
| adequate evidence in what should be empirical discussions
| about policy tradeoffs.
| rafram wrote:
| It already has done the former two. (Fixing streets is NYC
| DOT, a separate agency run by the city, not the state.)
| const_cast wrote:
| > These new moneys coming in will not buy one new subway
| car
|
| I think it is literally being used to buy hundreds of new
| subway cars as we speak.
|
| Y'all can't just make things up and say whatever you want.
| I get it, I get it, public sector evil. Unfortunately
| that's not an argument. Yes, you're going to actually have
| to _try_ instead of being intellectually dishonest.
| dml2135 wrote:
| > Literally everything we buy and use in the city gets more
| expensive because of this law.
|
| Aruguable. It's very possible that the time saved by not
| sitting in traffic will outweigh the congestion charge for
| delivery trucks (which is what I assume you're referring to).
| CPLX wrote:
| > 1) It's a regressive tax on everyone living here -- even if
| you never use a car. Literally everything we buy and use in the
| city gets more expensive because of this.
|
| That's an empirical question, you're going to have to prove it.
| The time saved by delivery drivers or contractors, for example,
| has value. If they can make more deliveries, or fix more
| elevators in the same day those services get cheaper. If the
| only downside is that the assistant patrol supervisor deputy
| liaison that would have driven to 1 Police Plaza takes the
| train instead it's clearly a net savings and economic
| improvement and makes everything we buy and use in the city
| cheaper.
|
| > 2) That same regressive tax is used to provide a lifeline for
| an exceptionally wasteful public organization (the MTA) that
| needs budget discipline, not additional funding.
|
| The MTA is chronically starved for cash and unable to do large
| scale long term projects because of unstable funding. If this
| policy, which as we saw above might well have literally zero
| aggregate economic downside, also builds more efficient
| transit, it's a virtuous circle of winning.
|
| > 3) (more minor) By definition, the point of this tax is to
| make it so that only rich people can drive. As the article
| notes, of course this is great if you're rich enough to afford
| it...but the article doesn't quote the people who can't now.
|
| Rich people can already drive. Now those rich people give money
| to transit for everyone else. Working people or people who need
| to drive (like those with a van full of stuff that needs to be
| somewhere) are able to do so much more efficiently and most
| likely face net lower costs.
|
| The "downside" is midly affluent people who do have cars and
| regularly drive in the central area take fewer trips or take
| the train a few more times instead. And the other downside is
| that the tens of thousands of assholes who've been abusing the
| city parking placard process for decades have to find another
| way to get to work like the rest of us.
| paulgb wrote:
| > Literally everything we buy and use in the city gets more
| expensive because of this law.
|
| Congestion was already priced into all goods and services in
| NYC, it just came in the form of a deadweight loss (paying
| delivery workers / tradespeople / professionals to sit in
| traffic) instead of a tax that at least ostensibly will fund
| better transit.
| timr wrote:
| > Congestion was already priced into all goods and services
| in NYC
|
| I agree!
|
| > instead of a tax that at least ostensibly will fund better
| transit.
|
| Telling me that the money will be set on fire by a public
| organization with good intent doesn't convince me.
|
| What has happened here -- and mathematically, this has to be
| true, or it wouldn't work -- is that the city has taken what
| used to be the market cost of congestion, and set an
| artificial floor _higher than that market_. They then
| captured the difference as revenue.
|
| That's the fundamental argument against the assertion that
| traffic speed increases will offset the costs. It _cannot_ be
| true, or people would choose to drive.
| paulgb wrote:
| > That's the fundamental argument against the assertion
| that traffic speed increases will offset the costs. It
| cannot be true, or people would choose to drive.
|
| I think the mistake you're making here is assuming that the
| value of driving and the cost of congestion are the same to
| every driver.
|
| For some people, driving is an elastic decision. They mode
| shift, or time shift to off-peak, or carpool, or combine
| errands in the city into one trip instead of multiple.
|
| For other people, driving is necessary. They'll benefit
| from fewer of the first type of person being on the roads
| during peak hours.
| timr wrote:
| No, I don't need to make assumptions about any of that.
| It's a complex interplay of factors (like any economic
| system), and everyone has their own reward function.
|
| I'm just saying that if the marginal driver were still
| _choosing to drive_ , then the system wouldn't work at
| all. That seems tautological?
|
| The MTA has to set the price high enough above market
| that the reduction in demand is X%. Whether someone is
| driving because of speed, or comfort, or some other
| factor, the cost has to exceed their personally
| calculated benefit.
| paulgb wrote:
| > Whether someone is driving because of speed, or
| comfort, or some other factor, the cost has to exceed
| their personally calculated benefit.
|
| It's a dynamic system though; as some drivers opt not to
| drive, the utility of driving for those other drivers
| increases. Yes, the market will find an equilibrium
| somewhere where some people will still drive, but that's
| kind of the point.
| timr wrote:
| I think the better argument for your side is that a large
| number of people have a utility function that isn't
| rational -- or at least, not based on commute time saved.
|
| Yes, the market will find a new equilibrium, but if I'm
| right that the marginal driver is choosing to drive or
| not based mostly on a function of _time saved_ , then
| eventually we'll see the market reaching an equilibrium
| where people are willing to pay up to the amount of money
| they save by getting somewhere faster via car (ignoring
| other costs for the sake of argument).
|
| If that is true -- if the market is efficient for time --
| then this plan can only ever work by making driving more
| expensive than the time lost to congestion.
|
| (As an aside, thanks for having a serious, nuanced
| discussion about this. It's depressing how many people
| just want to fling insults and downvote/flag/censor stuff
| that they disagree with. I knew I was going to get
| ravaged for having a non-canonical opinion, but it's so
| hard to get people to just engage with the argument in
| good faith.)
| josephcsible wrote:
| > time shift to off-peak
|
| One of the worst things about this congestion charge is
| that it applies even at off-peak times.
| paulgb wrote:
| It's 75% lower off-peak though, so there's still an
| incentive.
| 8note wrote:
| > higher than that market
|
| i dont think thats true. the cost can also be much cheaper,
| but people price differentiate better when they can
| actually see the number than when they cant.
|
| you can look at 19.99 as an example, vs 20 as example of
| making people feel a certain way to get them to shop
| differently, or credit cards - which get people to pay much
| more for an item than they otherwise would with the
| interest payments, or with the klarna styled buy now pay
| later.
|
| its not a tautology that a higher price drives down cost.
|
| i think the government price is likely much less than the
| cost of congestion, especially once you price in the
| externalities of pollution, but drivers werent aware of how
| much cost they were incurring from the congestion, and now
| that there's a number, they can make decisions based off of
| it
| AmigoCharlie wrote:
| Look, Timr, haven't you realized by now that you are
| fighting with cyclo-Talibans who will gladly approve
| whatever undemocratic and classist measure just in order to
| see their wet dream (the no-car city) become a (kind of
| Maoist, to be honest) reality?
| rafram wrote:
| It's a max of $21 for a truckload of goods, and that's if they
| deliver during the day. It probably costs the shipper more than
| that when the driver stops at a gas station to use the
| bathroom. Obviously the numbers will vary significantly
| depending on what the vehicle is carrying, but a truckload of
| groceries might go for around $100,000 retail [1]. The
| congestion charge is 0.02% of that.
|
| > By definition, the point of this tax is to make it so that
| only rich people can drive.
|
| That's not true. There's a tax credit for low-income residents
| and a full waiver for disabled people. The average person who
| drives in Manhattan makes $130,000, 40% more than the average
| income in the city as a whole [2], so letting them do it for
| free (while creating negative externalities that we all bear)
| is just a handout to people who don't need it.
|
| [1]: https://selectliquidation.com/collections/grocery-
| liquidatio...
|
| [2]: https://fiscalpolicy.org/impact-of-payroll-mobility-tax-
| on-n...
| timr wrote:
| > That's not true. There's a tax credit for low-income
| residents and a full waiver for disabled people.
|
| That's a fig-leaf argument. Yes, there's some theoretical tax
| credit that may or may not offset the costs for particular
| groups of people -- and it would be insane if they didn't
| exempt the disabled. _But if the tax weren 't causing the
| marginal driver to stop driving_, it wouldn't work, by
| definition.
| rafram wrote:
| It's not a "theoretical" tax credit. Here's the application
| form: https://lidp.mta.info/
|
| Congesting pricing has dual goals of reducing congestion
| and funding the MTA. Low-income drivers get a break on the
| charge, so they fund the MTA a little less than other
| drivers, but they're still _less_ likely to drive than they
| were before, because it costs more now.
| timr wrote:
| It's theoretical in the sense that it _requires that you
| apply for it_ , and hopefully you'll get your money back
| someday.
|
| (...poor people being notorious for having lots of time
| for precise accounting and follow through on government
| bureaucracy.)
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| If nobody is inconveniences, then there would be no
| change.
|
| It is reasonable to say that it achieved its stated
| goals. Its not accurate to say nobody is experience
| higher costs or prevented from doing what they want.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| -- and speaking of truckloads, the truckers & delivery guys
| _love_ congestion pricing.
|
| After being the most vocal critics for years, they've learned
| that low traffic == more, faster deliveries == more business
| and more coverage, or same business with fewer drivers.
|
| This is the real reason why I think it'll never get repealed.
| If anyone tries, the industry lobbies will be arguing to keep
| it instead.
| arolihas wrote:
| Buddy if you are going to make an argument where you make
| statements, people are going to ask for evidence. You are
| making statements in the affirmative. So you also have to give
| proof as well. You are arguing the tax should be removed. Do
| you have proof that literally everything will become cheaper
| without this tax?
| maybelsyrup wrote:
| > I'm just going to respond to the single point that everyone
| is making in one place, instead of repeating it: you don't just
| get to assert that the hypothesized "reduction in transit time"
| offsets the costs. You have to prove that argument. > You're
| the one arguing in favor of a new tax. It's not my job to prove
| the negative.
|
| You ok man? Like, respect for your passion on this issue but
| you're also seething pretty hard about New York City having
| cleaner air and less traffic.
| timr wrote:
| I'm not seething, and I can assure you from the disgusting
| piles of city dust that accumulate in my apartment that the
| air is not cleaner in any way that matters to me.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The difference might matter to your asthmatic neighbor.
| It's early to assess, but:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/05/11/upshot/conge
| s...
|
| > The New York City health department's readings of PM2.5,
| one air quality measure, improved citywide the first three
| months of this year compared with the same period in 2024.
| The improvement was more pronounced within the congestion
| zone, but it's too early to attribute that to the program,
| or to know if that's a lasting pattern, experts said.
|
| "My apartment still gets dusty" seems like a pretty
| desperate anti-congestion charge argument.
| timr wrote:
| I was not being serious, but as you've repeatedly said,
| there's no evidence for the argument you're making.
|
| A three-month change at the beginning of the year in
| PM2.5 is noise.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I provided clear, reliably sourced evidence for it, while
| noting it's too early for that evidence to be
| _conclusive_ yet.
|
| You've yet to provide any for your assertions. Just
| feels.
| timr wrote:
| Again, in case it's not clear: I was being whimsical. I'm
| obviously not resting my opposition to this on a one-off
| argument about dust in my apartment.
|
| I personally don't think the PM2.5 thing would justify
| the implementation of the system _even if it were true_ ,
| but that's not a debate I want to get into.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Again, in case it's not clear: I was being whimsical.
|
| https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=schroding
| er%...
|
| The benefits of reducing PM2.5 pollution are... not in
| dispute. https://www.epa.gov/pm-pollution/health-and-
| environmental-ef...
| timr wrote:
| > https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=schrodi
| nger%...
|
| I've been nothing but polite to you.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| In the Southern belle "bless your heart" sense, perhaps.
| In the "good faith arguing" sense, no.
| timr wrote:
| In the "I literally didn't insult you and call you names"
| sense.
| maybelsyrup wrote:
| https://x.com/dril/status/549425182767861760
| 8note wrote:
| as far as i can read, your argument is that traffic jams are
| impossible, because congestion acts as a dynamic cost function
| to keep the road at its highest utility, when the throughput is
| highest.
|
| unless you disagree with the that definition of the utility of
| the road?
|
| how do you explain phenomena like shockwave traffic jams, where
| otherwise high utility roads get sections of nearly stopped
| traffic. eg. https://youtu.be/Suugn-p5C1M?feature=shared in a
| closed system (30s of video)
|
| can you spend some time showing your work, and both propose and
| prove what the cost function of congestion is? then, it should
| be clear whether the government set cost is higher or lower,
| and under what conditions. id especially want to see the
| limiting behaviour - standstill traffic. my gur sense is that
| the cost of congestion should be going towards infinity, but im
| interested in how the constant value from the government is
| still higher.
| righthand wrote:
| Congestion pricing is great. I routinely end up in Manhattan on
| Friday and Canal Street at 5pm is running smoothly (not packed
| end to end with idling cars as before), the city looks like a
| regular city instead of the packed cars honking and spewing tire
| dust and exhaust. Long gone are the people that would drive into
| LES on Friday night with their expensive cars and blare loud
| music and rev their engines. It's a different environment and
| everyone is loving it that I've talked to.
| ericmay wrote:
| > Long gone are the people that would drive into LES on Friday
| night with their expensive cars and blare loud music and rev
| their engines. I
|
| I don't live in New York, but have been following along loosely
| on the congestion pricing policy as someone who has some
| official business but also just generally curious to see how it
| would work out, and this is a benefit that I had not
| considered. Thank you for mentioning this.
| righthand wrote:
| Yes I imagine a handful of crime was caused by the sheer
| number of people on the street. Fewer people idling about
| looking to cause a ruckus has made a huge difference. Passive
| benefits are what will keep cp in place.
| fitsumbelay wrote:
| Same
|
| I would've had a hard time wrapping my head around being OK
| with ~$10/trip before this post
|
| Goes to show _time_ is the most valuable commodity anyone 'll
| ever own
| xvedejas wrote:
| Surely the reduction in vehicle count is more than enough to
| cancel this out, but a moving vehicle does emit more exhaust
| and tire dust per unit of time than does a vehicle idling. For
| the environmental improvements it's more about the reduction in
| the number of cars than about the better traffic flow.
| mumbisChungo wrote:
| The better traffic flow reduces the amount of time they're
| operating for as well (assuming start/end of planned route is
| independent of travel speed)
| astine wrote:
| Right. Presumably a car idling for ten minutes produces
| less pollution than a car being driven for ten minutes, but
| a car that is driven for ten minutes and idled for an
| additional ten produces more pollution than either of them.
| Any pollution produced by cars idling in bad traffic is
| superadded to the pollution produced in transit so
| improving the flow of traffic should reduce pollution even
| if the total number of cars remains steady.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It's worse than that.
|
| If the trip costed 10 minutes moving, yes the comparison
| would be between a car moving for 10 minutes and one that
| idles for some time and then moves for 10 minutes. But
| congestion makes the cars move slower, and at congestion
| speeds the amount of pollution increases very quickly
| with reduced speeds.
| mystified5016 wrote:
| The stop and start conditions of highly congested traffic
| produce more brake and tire dust
| SoftTalker wrote:
| And more emissions. Idling is pretty efficent, as is
| driving at a constant speed. Repeatedly stopping or
| slowing, then accelerating is not. This is also an
| unintended consequence of "traffic calming" devices e.g.
| speed bumps or chicanes. People slow down, then hit the gas
| again which is awful for emissions.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Pollution per time doesn't make any sense as a metric. A trip
| that includes a lot of idling will pollute more than a trip
| that doesn't.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I think that depends on the motivations of the driver. You
| (and I) are probably thinking of a trip that is motivated
| solely by getting from A to B (or A to B to C to A). In
| that case, any pollution from idling is strictly additive.
|
| But a taxicab working an 8 or 12 hour shift is about the
| only case where I think GP's math/logic applies. (And to be
| fair, there are a damn lot of yellow cabs in Manhattan.)
| toomuchtuna wrote:
| Won't those idling vehicles also end up moving?
| eddd-ddde wrote:
| A moving car from point a to point b will always emit such
| "moving vehicle" pollution. The idle pollution is just extra.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| It remains amazing to me, time and time again, how relatively
| small fees can encourage large changes in behavior. At the
| aggregate level, people overvalue their time and undervalue
| their money.
| somsak2 wrote:
| i think it's the opposite right? people that didn't mind
| spending an hour in traffic are now unwilling to pay $9.
| righthand wrote:
| I think you're agreeing with each other. GP was talking
| about at the aggregate level where your observation is
| about the individual specifically. At the aggregate level
| with traffic reduction you'd think individuals would weigh
| their money as a shortcut to regain time but they don't. My
| personal guess is because Manhattan is not the actual
| destination, work and home are the destinations, Manhattan
| is just the environment. Before it was the cost of car
| maintenance to drive into Manhattan (in the individuals
| eyes "free"), now it's car maintenance + $9/day.
| yupitsme123 wrote:
| If you make it so only rich people can do a certain thing,
| you'll have way fewer people doing that thing. I'm curious
| what kind of inconveniences this has caused for people who
| can't afford to pay the fee though.
| rcpt wrote:
| Are you actually curious or were you just trying to make a
| gotcha against congestion pricing?
|
| I ask because the "only rich people" criticism of NYCs
| project has been beaten into the dirt and discussed at
| nearly every level of politics for more than a year now. If
| there's anything you want to know the information is
| readily available.
| yupitsme123 wrote:
| I'm not curious because I already know the answer. The
| inconvenience is that driving through the city is $9 more
| expensive without any improvement in other transportation
| alternatives. For some people that's no big deal but
| obviously for a lot of people it is, hence why there's
| fewer people on the road. The "missing" people are the
| ones who simply can't afford to be there.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>The "missing" people are the ones who simply can't
| afford to be there.
|
| I don't believe that for a second. They could afford to
| drive a car, insure it, maintain it, buy fuel, and pay
| for very expensive parking in NYC, but $9 is too much
| now?
|
| I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong if there's any
| data that suggest that this is actually true.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Why would they _not_ be there then? How is that supposed
| to even work if it doesn 't affect consumers' behavior?!
|
| This kind of argument reminds me of a French politician
| who defended a tax on sweet drinks as a way to fight
| against the obesity crisis looming (France performs
| better than most country in that regard, but the
| situation is still bad). She wanted a tax to deter the
| consumption of sweet drinks, but at the same time they
| wanted the tax to stay at "a level where it would not
| affect the purchasing power of people".
| gambiting wrote:
| >>Why would they not be there then?
|
| Funny because I was going to use that exact example as
| something that absolutely works. I can easily afford the
| sugar tax where I live, it's been around for a few years
| now. But when I go to a store and a box of regular coke
| is more expensive than diet it makes me not pick regular
| even though the difference is meaningless financially to
| me.
|
| I understand the same mechanism works with cigarettes and
| loads of other things - even if you can afford them the
| increasing price puts you off.
|
| But maybe for a more relevant example - I can comfortably
| afford parking right in the city centre where I live. But
| the idea of paying what's being asked for parking puts me
| off so much I just park at the nearest park and ride and
| take the metro in.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I can also afford the parking in the city center, but
| mostly choose to patronize businesses in the suburbs
| where the parking is free (and usually plentiful). That I
| think is what city business owners are worried about.
| yupitsme123 wrote:
| These are all lifestyle choices. You don't need to do any
| of those things. Getting to work or getting around one's
| own city are not lifestyle options. They're necessities.
|
| Using market-style policies to try to nudge people around
| only works if there are alternatives they can choose
| from. In this case for many people there are not.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > But when I go to a store and a box of regular coke is
| more expensive than diet it makes me not pick regular
| even though the difference is meaningless financially to
| me.
|
| So you're telling me that the very same people who refuse
| to buy non-brand Coke copies whose taste is
| indistinguishable from true Coke in blind tests would
| accept to buy Diet Coke despite it tasting like shit in a
| way that everyone can feel? And they would do so for a
| smaller gain than what it would save them to buy the
| cheap copy?
| yupitsme123 wrote:
| People pay what they have to pay do get to work or get
| around. In that sense they could "afford" it, because the
| alternative is to move or get a different job.
|
| You're trying to make it seem like driving in NYC is
| simply a lifestyle decision that people could choose to
| do or not do. For some people it is, for many people it's
| simply the only viable option. Once you make it no longer
| viable, people have no options left.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>Once you make it no longer viable, people have no
| options left.
|
| Which implies that the people who continue driving are
| indeed those who have no other option, and those who do
| have taken it instead of paying the $9. Would you
| disagree?
|
| And no, of course I don't imply it's a lifestyle choice -
| merely that some people(not all!) were driving in NYC
| even though they indeed had other options available,
| _because_ there was no extra cost associated with it -
| now that there is, those people use those other options
| where possible.
|
| Again, it's really fun to speculate why who and where is
| doing what, but if you have more specific data then
| please share.
| amluto wrote:
| The OP, as well as plenty of other articles, pointed out
| a rather immediate improvement in alternatives: the
| busses are faster as a result of traffic being reduced.
| yupitsme123 wrote:
| If you're going to massively inconvenience millions of
| people then you have to do better than a couple buses
| running faster. Better as in, using the new funds to
| completely revamp the whole system. If those faster bus
| lines don't provide an alternative to my previous route
| then they don't provide me an alternative to paying $9,
| losing my job, or picking a different city to live in.
| righthand wrote:
| $2.95 + planning time or you can walk for free
|
| Literally no one has stepped forward and said "I can't
| afford $9 or $2.95 or the deep discount commuter tickets."
| yupitsme123 wrote:
| I assume you're referring to just taking the metro
| instead. Not everyone who drives lives near a metro. Not
| every destination is accessible via the metro. Many
| people commute from more affordable areas far from the
| city where public transportation isn't always a viable
| option. Driving gets $9 more expensive but public transit
| doesn't suddenly get better for the people who can't pay
| $9.
| overflow897 wrote:
| There are very very few places in nyc not accessible via
| some combo of bus, metro and ferry. It's not as reliable
| as say Japan but the public transit network is pretty
| extensive.
| yupitsme123 wrote:
| Not everyone who drives through NYC lives in NYC. Even if
| it were, those transit hops add time. Now you're forcing
| people to choose between paying money they don't have or
| spending time they don't have.
| beowulfey wrote:
| $9 is basically an hour of parking or whatever so really
| it's likely to be saving people a lot of money since
| transit costs a lot less
| yupitsme123 wrote:
| If transit is an option for those peiple and if all other
| things (transit time, safety, etc) are equal, then yes.
| const_cast wrote:
| It is, the subway is a few orders of magnitude safer and
| cheaper. Sometimes it can take more time... _now_.
| Because of congestion pricing. Before, it was often
| faster to just walk next to the cars than be in one of
| the cars.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| The theory is that the price signal helps people make their
| own arbitrage between time and money and it would maximize
| society utility, but the reality is since people have a
| very different amount of money, it just do what you say:
| the rich pay without second thoughts and enjoy the higher
| quality of life when the less rich see a degradation of
| their own: they will either pay with money they don't have
| in excess and have to stop other consumption, or take
| public transports which is less convenient for them (since
| it's cheaper than car commute, they would be doing it if
| they didn't like it better).
| yupitsme123 wrote:
| Yeah, and I'm guessing the opinions of those people don't
| get taken into account by folks who are studying or
| manufacturing consent for these policies.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| We have finite space for roads and an expanding
| population. Doing nothing means people spend as much time
| on congested roads as they would taking public
| transportation. Objectively the worst of both worlds and
| people having invested in a car and being used to it will
| continue living in it as it gets worse and worse.
|
| Providing additional impetus to make a change seems
| virtuous.
| yupitsme123 wrote:
| If there's an overall plan to revamp transit and public
| spaces to accommodate all people then I'm in favor of it.
| That's how functioning cities do it. This is clearly just
| a money grab by a corrupt city.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| If slack capacity exists in public transportation and
| roads are way over what's needed immediately is for
| people to switch over. Making it more expensive to drive
| instead of subsidizing it is a way to achieve this.
| wat10000 wrote:
| If you want the government to help poor people, there are
| much better ways to do it than giving away access to one
| specific kind of public resource to everyone.
| yupitsme123 wrote:
| Would you be in favor if they also wanted stop "giving
| away" access to the sidewalk and fresh air?
| supertrope wrote:
| Sidewalks can fit an order of magnitude more people than
| roads can fit cars. Especially if one car lane was re-
| allocated to make sidewalks wider. Less traffic means
| less air pollution.
|
| It's almost never needed to faregate sidewalks. Tourist
| districts can organize a special improvement district tax
| on stores to fund sidewalk upgrades, trash collection,
| shuttles, security, parking, and planting flowers. This
| makes the zone more even more attractive to tourists.
| yupitsme123 wrote:
| This analogy pretty much gets at the heart of what makes
| these policies distasteful. Me walking or driving through
| my own city or neighborhood, where I live, pay taxes, and
| vote, is not the same as me taking a trip to Disney. I
| don't do it just for fun. I do it because living requires
| me to occasionally move from place to place.
|
| Auctioning off to the highest bidder the right to move
| around is cruel because you make it so that some people
| simply can't afford to exist in public spaces, and
| because you're telling people that their own city or
| neighborhood doesn't even belong to them.
|
| The correct analogy here would be access to healthcare,
| water, or electricity.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Does this imply that the government should buy everyone a
| car? Or is driving not actually necessary for existing in
| this space and it's enough to let people walk for free?
|
| Keep in mind that we're not talking about some suburb
| where you have to drive two miles to get to the store,
| but rather about the most walkable place of its size in
| the US.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Air isn't created or owned by the government. Sidewalks
| are not capacity-limited in real-world usage and so there
| would be no point.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Poor people were taking public transit already
| supertrope wrote:
| People are not perfectly rational. When there's no explicit
| price tag people tend to overlook costs. For example when
| Tesla Model S sold at $70,000 a decrease in gasoline prices
| was predicted to hurt sales even though a few hundred dollar
| swing in fuel cost for one year is not going to materially
| change total cost of ownership of a luxury vehicle.
| GoatInGrey wrote:
| I'm not sure why what is functionally a $180/month fee is
| considered "small". I think what we're seeing here is that
| public services (like roads) are more enjoyable, for those
| who can still use it, if the lower half of the income ladder
| is banned from using it.
| hnav wrote:
| That doesn't make much sense, driving a gas car from Jersey
| is gonna eat up a couple of gallons of fuel
| ($10x20=$200/mo), insuring it will be $200/mo, if it's not
| paid off it'll cost at least $500-600, parking will run
| easily $500 but likely more. Why is that $180 the straw
| that broke the camel's back?
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| When I lived in the area, I used to regularly drive in to
| lower Manhattan after 6PM for free parking because it was
| cheaper, faster, and more convenient than taking the
| train from right in front of my NJ apartment. The
| congestion charge would change that equation.
| ta1243 wrote:
| So your land use is no longer subsidised?
| const_cast wrote:
| The parking should've never been free in the first place,
| that's always a mistake. Even a single parking spot costs
| many thousands of dollars a year to maintain and own.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The Jersey thing isn't the issue. Car commuters still
| commute. Most of the traffic volume are whiny Long
| Islanders who'd rather cut through Manhattan than
| navigate the belt parkway and bridges to New Jersey. Also
| poorly served Queens and Brooklyn residents -- I grew up
| in Queens... my dads public transit time to Lower
| Manhattan or my mom's time to Manhattan hospitals was
| about 2 hours -- similar to taking Metro North from
| Dutchess county or LIRR.
|
| The downside of this stuff that we don't have data on is
| how it affects big employers who benefit from car transit
| and benefit the city as a whole? How many patients are
| going to avoid NYU, Cornell or MSK in favor of a
| satellite site not in the city proper, for example?
|
| NYC chased most of the big industries away already in my
| lifetime, I wonder if this will impact commercial
| business in the city in the long run.
| Aloisius wrote:
| You can buy a used car that gets 30 mpg city for $7,000.
| Even with a loan, that's closer to $200/month at today's
| (rather high) rates, not $500-600/month.
|
| Insurance on that will be on the order of $60/month for
| an adult safe driver, not $200/month.
|
| Driving from say, Jersey City to the East Village and
| back every day is going to use about 10 gallons of gas
| per month @ $3.20/gallon that's $32/month, not
| $200/month.
|
| Parking is bad, but that's because that has also been
| priced to only allow the wealthy to drive.
|
| So yeah, $180/month extra would in fact be a lot.
| ta1243 wrote:
| Manhattan is at least as dense as London, and land values
| must be about the same. The market cost of parking in
| London far outweighs the cost of the congestion charge, so
| presumably that's the same in New York.
|
| Seems that renting a square foot of downtown Manhattan land
| is about $60/year. A parking space being about 200 square
| foot, that's $1k a month if paying the actual rate, just
| for parking (let alone the road space)
|
| Seems that $200 a month is small when compared to the
| actual cost.
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| I certainly refuse to pay $0.10 / plastic grocery bag since
| those fees were put in place. I have been exclusively
| shopping with a canvas bag for years now. Likely having saved
| thousands of bags in that time. In fact, I am angry at the
| half-dozen times where circumstances have forced me to pay
| for one.
| kulahan wrote:
| I think I'm up to like 8 canvas bags, significantly thicker
| yet still significantly plastic, which I continue to forget
| at home.
|
| These laws have absolutely increased my carbon emissions,
| and I think o saw it's like 10,000 visits to offset the
| carbon difference? AKA it's more intensive initially to
| build things that last longer, idea being that you offset
| it over time
|
| I'd be surprised if I got 80k grocery store trips left in
| my LIFE!
| Spooky23 wrote:
| HN likes to equate all environmental issues with carbon.
| It's one dimension but not the sole dimension. Bags were
| a huge litter, wildlife and quality of life issue.
|
| My wife was a finance commissioner for a water utility.
| Guess what the most common clogger of storm drains was?
| Shopping bags. They did hundreds of service calls
| annually doing service that ranged from fishing them out
| to using a hydro-jet to clear a pipe.
|
| Within 18 months of the bag fee, those calls dropped 60%.
| That's easily $800k in wasted labor and dollars in this
| small city.
| pfdietz wrote:
| It's just the most important dimension, by far.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _It 's just the most important dimension, by far_
|
| Strongly disagree.
|
| New Delhi's has gotten more polluted over the last
| decades, to the point that it's almost comical. (400+ AQI
| being normalised.) Post pandemic, it's done a decent job
| in some parts at reducing the amount of trash on the
| roads. On the balance, I find it more pleasant now than
| before.
|
| I'd also guess that most people would prefer trading
| emissions for _e.g._ not living next to a carcinogenic or
| toxic-waste dump.
| pfdietz wrote:
| No, it's still more important. Continued global warming
| would eventually render New Delhi uninhabitable.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Continued global warming would eventually render New
| Delhi uninhabitable_
|
| This is hyperbolic. It will make it more expensive. But
| not uninhabitable.
|
| You know what _would_ render sections of it literally
| uninhabitable? A Union Carbide incident [1].
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster
| pfdietz wrote:
| Sufficiently high CO2 levels, such as existed at the end
| of the Permian period, can raise temperatures above that
| which would be survivable. Sure, people could huddle in
| air conditioned survival pods. This doesn't seem to be a
| sufficient rebuttal of the claim.
|
| If you think an analogy with the P/T extinction is
| invalid, note that CO2 levels are rising now much faster
| than they did over that event.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _people could huddle in air conditioned survival pods.
| This doesn 't seem to be a sufficient rebuttal of the
| claim_
|
| I kind of think it does, particularly when we're talking
| about temperatures that humans choose to live in (almost
| precisely as you describe) today.
|
| CO2 is not going to render our inland cities
| uninhabitable. It will make them more deadly, more
| expensive and less comfortable. It will cause a
| continuation of the current extinction event, which is
| already comparable with (if not equivalent to) P/T.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Great example. FWIW I don't think this is just an HN
| issue. It's hard for most people to have a systemic view
| of policy. I'm pretty dialed in on these issues and I
| never even thought of the drainage impacts of the bags.
| mh- wrote:
| Back when this was new, there were studies showing that
| the typical canvas bags sold at grocers are also breeding
| grounds for all sorts of nasty things that you don't want
| to be transporting your food in.
|
| So it's just purely all downsides. Like security theater,
| but for the environment.
| showerst wrote:
| Tell that to the Anacostia river in DC! They great at
| reducing watershed pollution. It's really noticeable how
| much better things have gotten since the bag fee.
|
| As a side effect, DC's water authority has also been able
| to cut maintenance budgets because clumps of bags were
| our main source of sewer clogs.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Likewise with the canvas bags they are so much nicer but if
| I do end up needing an 8 or 10c bag I hardly care. If I
| spend 50 its 1/5 of 1% of the cost.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Eg when plastic bags are free Grandma wants 5 things in 2
| doubled bags but at 8 cents each she'll just stick them in
| the cart with no bag at all and transfer them to the back
| seat even if 8c for single bag to carry them in would add
| negligible costs to her $120 basket.
| dcchuck wrote:
| Really? I must admit I have not noticed it. I've had nightmare
| trips trying to get into the city still during traditional
| heavy traffic times. Frankly I've thought more "the pandemic is
| finally over" than I did "congestion pricing is working" over
| the past few months.
|
| I'll be curious what happens come winter time. Midtown becomes
| gridlock in the evenings. I do not expect that to change.
|
| All that being said - probably my own biases skewing things. I
| will keep my eyes peeled!
| lr1970 wrote:
| Congestion pricing is only a half of the solution. The second
| half should be the MTA reform. MTA has been a dysfunctional
| mess and a bottomless money pit for as long as I remember. MTA
| of today will squander any amount of money you throw on it
| wasting all the potential gains from congestion pricing.
| sethhochberg wrote:
| Regrettably the only source I can find hosting this video is
| a reddit post, but you might find the remarks by the MTA
| chair interesting: https://www.reddit.com/r/nycrail/comments/
| 1iyve4d/mta_buildi...
|
| In short: for decades they've been allergic to doing any
| design or project management in house, which meant brand new
| teams of consultants and contractors spun up for every single
| project. Lucrative for the consultants, not an efficient way
| to use funds for a big organization that is constantly doing
| design and construction.
|
| Seems like the MTA is finally starting to invest in building
| internal expertise again so they can stop farming everything
| out
| const_cast wrote:
| This is the story of the American public sector. Voters
| push them to outsource X Y Z to the private sector because
| clearly public organization X sucks. The private sector is
| greedy and a black box, so they're basically going to bleed
| the tax payers dry because they have no accountability to
| anyone. And the added complexity of hops between
| communication just burns money. And now the military is
| paying 150 dollars for a shovel.
|
| The American public is allergic to just considering public
| actors as job programs. If the MTA would just keep
| everything in-house that can be a real boon to the local
| economy. But no, we have to give those jobs to some fuck
| ass companies made up primarily of salespeople who are
| going to make big claims and then proceed to run every
| project overtime and over budget.
| dhosek wrote:
| The other thing is that privatization is old-school
| patronage on steroids: if you structure it right, you get
| to channel government money to the recipients in a way
| that continues even after you lose power.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The real problem is public corruption. People got tired
| of public officials getting paid off by a public sector
| union to create a bunch of makework jobs at taxpayer
| expense. The theory of privatization is that you put the
| contract up for bids and then every private company has
| the incentive to get the contract until the profit
| margins are low enough, and "low profit margins" are to
| the public's advantage.
|
| But then the contracting process gets corrupted to
| prevent most companies from bidding and direct the
| contracts to specific cronies.
|
| What you actually need is better ways to stop public
| officials from screwing the public for personal
| advantage.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Voters push them to outsource X Y Z to the private
| sector_
|
| Do voters really push for this? I would have suspected it
| is the consultants and the unions.
| krferriter wrote:
| Americans have a weird thing with government agencies (or
| government-owned companies, e.g. Amtrak) simply hiring
| people to do a thing the government is tasked with doing,
| or buying things the government needs in order to do that
| thing. So instead our governments at all levels rely
| heavily on contracting it out to private companies to do
| the exact same thing but with higher cost and turnover and
| no long term expertise built in-house in the government
| agency which is now tasked with managing and overseeing all
| this contracting.
|
| The MBTA in Boston also suffered from this and is now
| undergoing an effort under the new management to hire more
| in-house staff to do routine maintenance and other work
| that had previously been contracted out to a variety of
| private firms.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| I suspect the theory is that private companies with many
| clients besides the government are less susceptible to
| bloat and waste than a government agency is because they
| are not a singleton entity and will be outcompeted if
| they are sufficiently inefficient.
|
| A problem with this theory is that, I imagine, a lot of
| such companies basically only have contracts with the
| government. So it ends up with the same singleton
| problems, just outsourced.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Largely because a hostile state government is given control
| over what's largely a NYC issue.
| passivedonut wrote:
| Congestion pricing is a regressive tax. It doesn't actually
| 'work.'
|
| As the population or inflation increases the fee will have to
| increase to keep enough people off the road. It doesn't
| actually address the public's transportation needs, it's just
| some rich assholes way of using wealth to cut in line at the
| expense of the general public.
|
| Most of these policies that seek to inflict harm on the
| public to effect social change never actually produce a
| positive and productive end result.
|
| Small businesses which is the U.S. economy will be heavily
| impacted resulting in local cities moving revenue generation
| from commerce to residential property, increasing cost of
| living.
|
| If gentrification is your wheelhouse then yah Congestion
| Pricing sounds wonderful.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| it works in places that are already gentrified, like
| Manhattan or the City (of London). No one is suggesting
| congestion pricing in Queens.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _As the population or inflation increases the fee will
| have to increase to keep enough people off the road_
|
| Most people in a car in Manhattan don't need to be in one,
| and most of those that do are exempted from this charge.
|
| (I say this as someone who is commonly in a car in
| Manhattan.)
| ethbr1 wrote:
| It would be a regressive tax... if there weren't public
| transit alternatives.
|
| As is, it's a tax on people who drive.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _"Long gone are the people that would drive into LES on
| Friday night with their expensive cars and blare loud music and
| rev their engines."_
|
| Interestingly, in London's case we do not get this particular
| benefit from the congestion charge zone, because congestion
| charging ends at 6pm! So all the boys eager to show off their
| hot, loud cars still show up on a Friday or Saturday night.
| tim333 wrote:
| Also a lot of the flash car revving is around Harrods which
| is outside the zone.
| graemep wrote:
| London is a pretty good city for walking around and public
| transport.
|
| When I lived in London (pre congestion charge) I used to walk
| for pleasure a lot simply because I enjoyed it.
|
| I think road design and good public transport have improved
| it (although reliability could be better sometimes) since
| then. I do not agree with all the changes over the years, but
| net its great.
|
| Lots of expensive cars but never really noticed the loud
| revving.
| tixocloud wrote:
| Great to hear the positives about congestion pricing. It would
| be great to see how it can ease the congestion in Toronto.
| Unfortunately, I suggested congestion pricing as a possible
| solution as part of an academic project and was laughed off.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Long gone are the people that would drive into LES on Friday
| night with their expensive cars and blare loud music and rev
| their engines.
|
| The people who blare loud music and rev their engines are the
| people with expensive cars? The people who can afford expensive
| cars are the ones being deterred by congestion pricing?
| 7jjjjjjj wrote:
| >The people who blare loud music and rev their engines are
| the people with expensive cars?
|
| Yes, this has been my experience as well.
|
| >The people who can afford expensive cars are the ones being
| deterred by congestion pricing?
|
| Who says they could afford it? Getting an insane car loan for
| a vehicle you can't afford is an American tradition.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Yes, this has been my experience as well.
|
| Are you adequately distinguishing between expensive cars
| and formerly expensive cars?
|
| A brand new Rolls-Royce or Mercedes comes with an engine
| purposely designed to be audibly subdued and doesn't come
| with a sound system suitable for projecting a racket onto
| the opposite side of the city. A 10 year old Acura or BMW
| with a modified exhaust and a trunk full of aftermarket
| subwoofers, on the other hand... but that's available at a
| different price point.
|
| > Who says they could afford it? Getting an insane car loan
| for a vehicle you can't afford is an American tradition.
|
| The implication of the question was to point out that the
| purported advantage of congestion pricing is really in
| pricing out the riffraff, because "we've succeeded at
| keeping the poor people out of the borough" isn't a very
| sympathetic goal and is what "expensive cars" was
| presumably intended to deflect consideration away from.
| What other relevance does it have if the cars are
| expensive?
|
| If you're admitting that the people being priced out are in
| fact poor regardless of the price of their cars, I guess
| that's kind of my point.
| taeric wrote:
| Are there any measures that show any downside to this? I confess
| a bit of bewilderment at how many people will assert there must
| be something bad every time this comes up. I don't think a single
| measured outcome has gone poorly from this.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| It reminds me of what happens nearly every time car parking on
| a busy retail street is removed for bike lanes/bus lanes/better
| walking.
|
| Business owners universally oppose the change and predict
| catastrophe, the change goes through, and business/foot traffic
| goes way up instead.
|
| It seems that business owners' ability to "know their
| customers" is rather limited; that, or they're just biased by
| their own need for car/delivery parking.
| proee wrote:
| Some changes, like having a highway bypass a small city, can
| be catastrophic to local businesses. A restaurant that might
| have hundreds of out-of-town cars go by, now has only local
| residents.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| That's a completely different sort of scenario than what
| I'm talking about. I'm talking about changes to streets
| that accommodate greater population density.
| mcphage wrote:
| > It seems that business owners' ability to "know their
| customers" is rather limited
|
| Movie production companies compared VCR sales to a serial
| killer. These were the leaders of large, successful
| companies, and they didn't know _shit_.
| ASinclair wrote:
| I think it's often that the business owners themselves drive
| to their businesses and street park. They don't want to give
| up their own parking.
| timeinput wrote:
| I think the businesses do kind of know their customers.
|
| This is an exaggeration of what (I think) happens: all of
| their current customers only ever drive there and park in
| front of their shop. They say oh with no parking I won't come
| any more. Then they stop coming. They lost all their
| customers! Everyone who can now safely walk to the shop (who
| couldn't / wouldn't before for multiple reasons) starts
| walking there. There are a lot more people who can now safely
| walk to and patronize the shop, and they do. The shops foot
| traffic went up by 10x. They still lost all their customers.
|
| I think it's probably good that it's easy for people to walk
| / bike / bus to this shop, and the shop owner probably does
| to, but they still may have lost a lot of old customers.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I think this is basically hitting the nail on the head. My
| town has closed a lot of street parking in the downtown,
| and as a result I rarely do shopping or dining there now
| because I don't want to park in a garage 3-4 blocks away
| when I used to be able to park on the same block if not
| right in front of the business. In other words, I had no
| other reason to be downtown, so making it inconvenient is
| going to make me less likely to go there.
|
| But I'm sure there are people who are downtown anyway (work
| there, etc.) and who now don't want to walk back to the
| garage to get their car and drive somewhere for lunch, so
| they just walk to someplace close by.
|
| So businesses probably lose some old customers, and gain
| some new. It might be a net positive for them.
| tzs wrote:
| > But I'm sure there are people who are downtown anyway
| (work there, etc.) and who now don't want to walk back to
| the garage to get their car and drive somewhere for
| lunch, so they just walk to someplace close by.
|
| This raises a question: why didn't those people walk to
| someplace close by before your town closed downtown
| street parking? Even when their cars were conveniently
| nearby a short walk to a nearby lunch place should be
| faster and more convenient than a drive to some distant
| place.
|
| One explanation that seems plausible is that they did not
| know of the nearby places. When they are at home and
| decide to go out for lunch they go to some national or
| regional chain like Subway or Wendy's or Denny's. There's
| one of those a reasonable drive from work and so they go
| there. When the parking change made that a hassle they
| started paying more attention to non-chain options and
| noticed the local places.
|
| It would be interesting to try to reintroduce street
| parking in some form that will again draw in people like
| you but that would still discourage people who work
| downtown from just hopping in their cars and driving to a
| chain restaurant for lunch.
| yesfitz wrote:
| Another possible answer: It sucks to be a pedestrian
| around cars, so people decide to drive.
|
| As a pedestrian, cars take up space and block your vision
| when they're parked, they're dangerous, loud, and (can
| be) smelly when they're moving, and even when the cars
| themselves aren't around, the space between buildings is
| dominated by their required, exclusive infrastructure of
| asphalt.
|
| Usually when parking is removed, it's replaced with
| planters, seating, and things for _people_ instead of
| cars, which makes it more attractive to be a pedestrian.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > Everyone who can now safely walk to the shop (who
| couldn't / wouldn't before for multiple reasons) starts
| walking there. There are a lot more people who can now
| safely walk to and patronize the shop, and they do.
|
| You're hypothesizing that people are purposefully avoiding
| these streets because they have cars driving on them?
| sensanaty wrote:
| Yes? Cars are loud, they smell, take up a tremendous
| amount of space & are gigantic metal boxes that can cause
| serious injuries even at low speeds.
|
| In Amsterdam there's been _countless_ examples of this
| exact thing. Businesses booming after they rip out
| parking and make roads forbidden for cars, and I can
| anecdotally say I also love whenever they rip out parking
| near me in the Netherlands.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > Everyone who can now safely walk to the shop (who
| couldn't / wouldn't before for multiple reasons) starts
| walking there.
|
| I'm struggling to imagine reasons why a significant number
| of people will now start walking to these businesses. What
| are some of these multiple reasons that have now been
| overcome to an extent as to cause shop traffic to increase
| ten-fold?
| kulahan wrote:
| This actually makes a lot of sense to me. My wife is
| disabled, so I'm probably one of those customers he would
| lose along with his parking, but there are probably 1.5x as
| many homes in my neighborhood (of condos) than there are
| vehicles actively parking here. It would likely be a huge
| boon for the places I frequent now. It might even have an
| effect of slightly countering market downturns as people in
| trouble sell/lose cars and move to public transit
| temporarily
|
| One extremely promising change I've been seeing a lot of
| lately: the most undesirable parking spaces in large lots
| are being ripped up and replaced with small businesses.
| I've seen a new coffee shop and gas station with 4 pumps go
| up in my town so far. Love it!
| acdha wrote:
| > It seems that business owners' ability to "know their
| customers" is rather limited; that, or they're just biased by
| their own need for car/delivery parking.
|
| I think the latter is often the case. In many case, I don't
| even think it's conscious: many business owners, especially
| people who started / inherited successful small businesses in
| city neighborhoods, moved out to the suburbs for bigger
| houses/schools/etc. and are thus completely car dependent.
| It's very human to assume other people live similarly to you
| in the absence of evidence otherwise and someone who bikes or
| walks looks just like someone who drove unless they're
| carrying a helmet or something. If you're in most suburbs,
| there isn't a great transit/bike option to get to the shop
| and so they aren't even in the habit of thinking about
| alternatives.
|
| There's an especially funny thing which comes up all of the
| time when local advocates actually monitor spots: small shops
| often only have one or two street spots so the person who
| works there has a completely different view of the
| convenience because they almost always get a space when they
| show up at 7:30am but nobody else thinks of it as easy
| because the spots is taken and so actual customers would
| spend longer finding another spot and walking to the store
| than it takes to walk/bike from within the neighborhood.
| timr wrote:
| > In many case, I don't even think it's conscious: many
| business owners, especially people who started / inherited
| successful small businesses in city neighborhoods, moved
| out to the suburbs for bigger houses/schools/etc. and are
| thus completely car dependent.
|
| I don't know if you live in Manhattan, but there's a far
| more parsimonious explanation than _" business owners are
| suburban car people"_: in order to operate most kinds of
| businesses in the city, you need easy access to deliveries,
| which means easy parking.
|
| Anyone who has ever tried to arrange logistics for any kind
| of delivery in NYC knows what a nightmare it is. You
| routinely see cars and trucks double-parked, _because there
| 's no alternative_. Trucks park illegally, because the risk
| of the occasional ticket is cheaper than circling the block
| for hours.
|
| I can easily see how this would be a subject of top-of-mind
| importance to any business owner in the city.
| cco wrote:
| Then the owner should prioritize things like congestion
| charges and removal of parking.
|
| To your point trucks already double park so both changes
| would be a positive for deliveries.
| norir wrote:
| Yeah, I imagine they are often projecting their own
| frustration over parking onto their customers. Every time a
| customer comes in and grumbles about parking, it triggers
| their confirmation bias. Conversely, new customers who only
| popped in because they were on foot are probably less likely
| to express that fact.
|
| Given how annoying parking is, I'll bet that there are also
| many business owners who would trade some profit for their
| own ease of parking. Especially given that they have the
| power to squeeze their employees rather than bear the full
| cost themselves.
| ctkhn wrote:
| There were some negative effects at a construction shutdown
| of a street recently where it temporarily did hurt some
| business, mostly retail shops but not the restaurants/bars
| which had a big boost in business. These boutique style shops
| were more patronized by people from suburbs or far flung
| parts of the city than actual locals, and their location was
| based on the owners wanting to live in the city vs their
| actual customers.
| focusgroup0 wrote:
| Small business owners in SF were pretty upset after the
| Valencia St bike lane killed their business:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdYyQ8ev5yE
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Yeah, this is what I'm talking about:
| https://sfstandard.com/2024/06/21/valencia-street-bike-
| lane-...
|
| > Valencia Street's controversial center-running bike lane
| did not harm businesses, as merchants claimed, a new report
| finds.
|
| > "While businesses along Valencia Street have clearly
| suffered more than in other parts of the city since the
| pandemic, the challenges facing the corridor pre-date the
| construction of the bike improvements, and there is no
| statistical basis for linking the two," a City Controller's
| Office report published Wednesday found. The report used
| the city's taxable sales database to analyze the effect of
| the bike lane on businesses.
|
| > Merchants along the corridor have waged a war against the
| city's transit agency over the bike lane for almost a year.
| The owner of Amado's bar, David Quinby, even blamed the
| lane for closing his business, despite suffering a
| devastating basement flood some months prior.
|
| > "This finding does not mean that no business was
| adversely affected by the bike improvements," the city
| report added. "It simply means that any negative impacts on
| individual businesses were offset by positive impacts on
| others, and there is no net effect on the corridor as a
| whole."
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| The business owners are clueless.
|
| Vancouver did a study of how people arrived to their shopping
| destination and found that a small minority drove to their
| destination. This was in opposition to the assertions of the
| business owners that claimed drivers were remarkably more
| dominant and parking critical.
|
| https://slowstreets.wordpress.com/2016/10/18/new-
| vancouver-c...
|
| Every time I see a study like this it is similar results
| where the reality doesn't match the guesses of local
| business.
| obelos wrote:
| I think there's also a dominating bias that people who
| walk/bike/bus are poor and thus make bad customers. "If
| they had money, they'd be in a car!"
| xvedejas wrote:
| I wonder whether pedestrian collisions will be slightly more
| deadly, since one effect is that traffic flows faster than
| before. Great for drivers but probably more dangerous for the
| jaywalking new yorker.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/05/11/upshot/conges.
| ..
|
| > With fewer cars on the road in the congestion zone, there
| have been fewer car crashes -- and fewer resulting injuries.
| Crashes in the zone that resulted in injuries are down 14
| percent this year through April 22, compared with the same
| period last year, according to police reports detailing motor
| vehicle collisions. The total number of people injured in
| crashes (with multiple people sometimes injured in a single
| crash) declined 15 percent.
| zahlman wrote:
| What matters in a pedestrian collision is the speed of
| impact. Traffic flow is about the average speed over time.
| Cars that spend less time stopped don't become significantly
| more dangerous when their maximum speed is still limited to,
| say, 30 km/h (20 mph). Certainly not for those who are aware
| of a constant traffic flow.
| Herring wrote:
| It's basically that America has a caste system, and public
| transit is a lower-caste thing that any respectable member of
| society should ideally avoid. It's a pity because public
| transit done well is amazing -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNTg9EX7MLw [NotJustBikes]
| conductr wrote:
| We'd have to have an example of public transit done well to
| break the caste stigma you referenced. I don't think anywhere
| in the US is anywhere close to Amsterdam (discussed in video
| you linked)
| siliconwrath wrote:
| NYC generally doesn't have this stigma as bad as the rest
| of the USA. Wealthy people and celebrities ride the MTA.
|
| https://www.eonline.com/photos/6722/stars-on-the-subway
| cguess wrote:
| NYC really doesn't have this stigma at all. The narrative
| is more or less pushed by groups with anti-liberal
| agendas who want to convince people whom have never even
| visited NYC that it's just as bad as where they're from,
| when in fact the violent crime rate per capita in NYC is
| much lower than most medium sized midwestern and southern
| cities.
|
| Celebrities, politicians, billionaires all ride the
| subway all the time. New Yorkers know to keep to
| themselves out of politeness not safety and honestly are
| more likely to step up and defend someone famous being
| harassed than join in. We're all just trying to get to
| where we're going and the subway is almost always the
| fastest and most convenient way (not to mention cheapest)
| to do that.
| culi wrote:
| Most of these photos are taken for their social medias.
| Which further proves that them taking the subway is
| exceptional enough to be worth posting. Not the norm; not
| a 9-5 commute like regular people
| conductr wrote:
| NYC is an outlier of US cities though. The long narrow
| island of Manhattan makes everything more efficient in
| terms of the subway, etc. Most other large US cities
| sprawl endlessly in all directions.
| gosub100 wrote:
| Refusing direct contact with homeless people's excrement is
| not based on class/self-respect.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| A society that causes and/or permits homeless people
| pooping in the subway is, though.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilets_in_New_York_City
|
| > Compared to other big cities, public bathrooms in New
| York City are rare, as the 1,100 public restrooms result in
| a rate of 16 per 100,000 residents. Most public restrooms
| are located in parks; comparatively few other public
| spaces, including New York City Subway stations, have
| public restrooms.
|
| > As of 2022, the New York City Subway has 472 stations, 69
| of which have public bathrooms. Several homeless people
| sued the New York City government and the Metropolitan
| Transportation Authority (MTA) in 1990, claiming that the
| city and MTA created a "public nuisance" by failing to
| provide public toilets. A report by the Legal Action Center
| for the Homeless, who represented the plaintiffs, noted
| that of 526 public comfort stations surveyed in parks,
| almost three-quarters were "either closed, filthy, foul-
| smelling or without toilet paper and soap." In 2010, there
| were 133 open restrooms in 81 of the system's 468 stations.
|
| There's a great quote on this: "A developed country is not
| a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use
| public transportation."
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| 'Society' doesn't make people shoot up, turn tricks, or
| attempt to set up permanent shop in public toilets inside
| train stations. Also, they're great places to put bombs
| (in theory at least).
|
| I admit I don't have an answer for this. San Francisco's
| experiments with nifty self-cleaning public toilets have
| been expensive failures for the most part. I'm not sure
| where we go from here, given that the problem seems to be
| cultural/user-based.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Society absolutely does do that.
|
| Housing, healthcare, mental health, public transit,
| unemployment, lead abatement, education - all of these
| policy levers impact the prevalence of the behaviors you
| describe.
| rendang wrote:
| The kind of people who destroy public spaces and public
| toilets will also destroy any free housing you give them.
| If by "mental health" you mean involuntary commitment,
| then yes, that will do the job
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_First
|
| "Cities like Helsinki and Vienna in Europe have seen
| dramatic reductions in homelessness due to the adaptation
| of Housing First policies, as have the North American
| cities Columbus, Ohio, Salt Lake City, Utah, and Medicine
| Hat, Alberta."
|
| https://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-
| chroni...
|
| "A decade ago, Utah set itself an ambitious goal: end
| chronic homelessness. As of 2015, the state can just
| about declare victory: The population of chronically
| homeless people has dropped by 91 percent."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_Finland
|
| "Finland has adopted a Housing First policy, whereby
| social services assign homeless individuals homes first,
| and issues like mental health and substance abuse are
| treated second. Since its launch in 2008, the number of
| homeless people in Finland has decreased by roughly
| 30%,[1] though other reports indicate it could be up to
| 50%. The number of long-term homeless people has fallen
| by more than 35%. "Sleeping rough", the practice of
| sleeping outside, has been largely eradicated in
| Helsinki, where only one 50-bed night shelter remains."
|
| Having a stable housing situation turns out to make a
| whole bunch of other related social changes more
| feasible.
|
| > If by 'mental health' you mean involuntary commitment,
| then yes, that will do the job
|
| I mean, I'd start with therapy, addiction services,
| social supports, and the like. But I do think the
| _complete_ removal of long-term inpatient mental health
| in the 50s /60s was an overshoot. Some people need that
| much help.
|
| (I also believe there's a lot more we can do to _prevent_
| people from _becoming_ that "kind of people" in the
| first place.)
| echoangle wrote:
| What makes a toilet a better place to put a bomb than a
| full train car?
| sokoloff wrote:
| IANAB, but I'd imagine the privacy inherent in a toilet
| makes it easier to assemble a dangerous bomb from
| transported-safe components than doing so in a full train
| car would, and to leave it long enough that the bomber
| can get away without getting caught.
| const_cast wrote:
| I think it does, which is why this is a problem in some
| societies but not others.
|
| I think the explanation of "some people are bad people"
| is a lazy explanation. The proportion of bad people to
| everyone else should be about the same everywhere. We
| have to take a closer look at incentives and systems in
| place.
| lurk2 wrote:
| The bathrooms become too expensive to maintain because
| they are being used by people who need to be
| institutionalized. When this is suggested the Civil
| Liberties people get into an uproar. You could build one
| wall and keep people who suffer from psychosis inside of
| it, or you can put them on the street and watch as
| everyone else finds ways to build walls of their own.
| bluGill wrote:
| The institutions of the past were so bad that it is more
| human to let those people fend for themselves than put
| them in one. Yes some people freeze to death now but that
| is better than before.
|
| if you can reform the system fine but I don't have
| conidence. Human nature doesn't deal well with the needed
| power imbalance.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| For better or for worse a lot of US progressives view
| transit as a "solution of last resort" which is why so many
| progressives are okay with transit also acting as a
| homeless shelter and being tolerant of some drug use. One
| way to think of this is that progressives view government's
| role as a champion of the disenfranchised. Another is to
| think that the US is a class based society where transit is
| considered the domain of the disenfranchised, the lowest
| class. Which framing you choose is probably based on your
| experience and frustrations with your local US transit
| system.
|
| (I'm not trying to weigh in one way or the other in my
| comment, but as someone who rides local US transit
| regularly and has for over 10 years, my patience for using
| transit as a "solution of last resort" is wearing thin but
| still remains.)
| epicureanideal wrote:
| Exactly. It's the cleanliness and safety issues in US
| public transit that makes people avoid it. Fix that and
| more people will use it.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Wealthy people use the subway in NYC, it's often the fastest
| way to get somewhere.
| anthomtb wrote:
| In my lived experience, public transit is not actively
| avoided by so-called upper castes (I am not convinced you
| know what a caste is). Rather, it is so straightforward to
| take ones own automobile that you don't even consider public
| transit options.
|
| Obviously there's a significant negative feedback loop here.
| taeric wrote:
| I'm torn on this. It is a very appealing way to blame people
| in discussing why it goes this way.
|
| It doesn't contend with the fact that having a car is
| ridiculously useful. It is intensely amusing when I see
| people in other nations comment on how useful getting a car
| has been in their daily life. And I don't think people
| realize just how many cars Americans have.
|
| That is, there may be a caste system, but as this congestion
| pricing shows, the catch is that we have a ton of cars. And
| people use them because they are convenient as hell.
| trgn wrote:
| They're only convenient in cities built for cars.
| some_random wrote:
| That's just not true, cars are extremely useful in every
| single city and people only choose to forgo them when the
| city makes them too expensive or difficult to keep and
| use. If you have a pros vs cons list, it's not a lack of
| pros that causes people to stop using cars it's an
| overabundance of cons in every single case I know of.
| const_cast wrote:
| I don't think this is true, cars truly only make sense in
| places where every single detail is built to accommodate
| cars. In an absolute sense, public transit is wildly more
| efficient.
|
| The reason we don't really see this is that in the US 99%
| of cities are built exclusively for cars. Of those that
| have transit, those are very obviously an afterthought.
|
| For NYC, it's not that having a car sucks. It's that the
| city isn't built for them. So you're going to be stuck in
| traffic.
|
| Prior to congestion pricing, a lot of people were driving
| because they're, well, stupid. Often it's faster to
| literally walk alongside the cars than be in them,
| because that's how severe the traffic was/is in lower
| Manhattan. But they didn't want to take the train for
| whatever reason, so they drove instead. And wasted time
| and money.
|
| At the end of the day, cars take up way more space, and
| they're wildly expensive. Many of the cost of cars are
| actually subsidized, not the other way around. Consider
| free parking - that parking spot actually costs thousands
| of dollars a year. But drivers aren't paying it.
|
| In regards to congestion, that costs money. It's not free
| to have thousands of cars essentially idling for hours of
| the day. But that's a cost everyone pays - even though
| most people commute by subway. That's a problem. That's
| going to break a lot of incentives.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| > people only choose to forgo them when the city makes
| them too expensive or difficult to keep and use
|
| I have friends who chose to move into cities and sold
| their cars in the process. The pros of the cities
| outweighed the pros of car ownership for them. They also
| don't have to spend money on car maintenance, insurance,
| or gas. They can move around the city fine with public
| transit and ride sharing. They rent cars to make long
| trips.
|
| Absolute statements rarely are absolute, particularly
| when the motivations and preferences of individuals are
| in the mix.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _cars are extremely useful in every single city and
| people only choose to forgo them when the city makes them
| too expensive or difficult to keep and use_
|
| I happily take the train and ferry in New York over a
| car. For some journeys, _e.g._ into Long Island with a
| group, renting a car would actually be cheaper.
|
| If you haven't spent any time not driving, it's hard to
| imagine the luxury going car-free brings. Not the least
| of which is the ridiculous amount of privacy and law-
| enforcement interference we tolerate for drivers.
| rafram wrote:
| It is genuinely such a luxury to spend zero minutes of
| your day looking for parking, remembering where you
| parked, memorizing parking regulations, planning out the
| parking situation around a place you might want to go...
| All of that feels so silly when you have to go back to it
| after living without a car for a while.
| sokoloff wrote:
| And in towns, suburbs, rural areas, and pretty much
| everywhere except the densest city centers.
| trgn wrote:
| So you mean built for cars
| badpun wrote:
| In Europe, most of those places were built before cars
| existed (and certainly before they were popularized).
| Still, people overwhelmingly prefer to drive cars there.
| trgn wrote:
| Yeah, and if you have a car in any of those city centers
| dating from before the car, it's inconvenient and you'll
| walk for little errands, it'd be insane to drive. In
| suburbia, car is convenient, and sure, europe has a lot
| of suburbia too
| jajko wrote:
| They are, and should be, huge time saver outside cities.
| But city centers? Those should be on purpose as annoying,
| time consuming and costly to regular traffic as possible.
| It should be only necessary services, taxis, public buses
| and so on.
|
| Here is the place for a good public transport, even in US
| it should be trivial to make it financially self-sufficient
| and attractive. People always choose whats best for them
| (cost or time wise). European city centers work like that
| and everybody normal accepts that.
| taeric wrote:
| Right, but if you already have a car, you are likely to
| reach for it quite often.
|
| And, I can agree it is the kind of thing that can save
| time for anyone, but will spend time for everyone.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| MTA is a corrupt money pit. It will never be self-
| sufficient.
| enaaem wrote:
| It is not that cars are not useful. It's that people want
| to live in nice cities and too much car infrastructure ruin
| cities. You can't have both. You can't enjoy a nice terras
| next to a busy road. Or kids cannot safely cycle with their
| friends if there are many cars driving around.
|
| People should not forget that Europe has tons of car
| friendly towns and suburbs and many people live there. You
| can choose your lifestyle.
| taeric wrote:
| I fear it often cuts a different way. Everyone wants it
| so that they can have the benefits of the car, along with
| the benefits of nobody using a car. A friend I was
| talking with called it the "main character syndome."
|
| It is a lot like people wanting city life to look a lot
| like college life. Without wanting to live in dormitories
| where people are also raising kids.
| austhrow743 wrote:
| Do people raise kids in college dormitories?
| taeric wrote:
| Not to my knowledge. My point is that that is probably
| closer to what is needed for a lot of the dream cities
| than people acknowledge.
|
| Granted, college dormitory is a hyperbolic. More
| realistic, will be your standard smaller apartment
| blocks.
| supertrope wrote:
| Car commercials always feature completely empty streets,
| no red lights, and no speed limits.
| rafram wrote:
| Not Just Bikes is such a terminal pessimist. I enjoy his
| videos but I think he really has trouble acknowledging the
| counterpoints to his doom-and-gloom rhetoric. What he says in
| that video just barely applies to NYC at all.
| lurk2 wrote:
| Mid-40s amateur urban planner YouTube is the worst social
| media trend to have come out of this decade bar none. They
| all look, sound, and think the same. Their worldview is
| fundamentally conspiratorial in that they believe there is
| a utopian world that only they and their fellow flannel-
| enjoyers understand, that somehow actual urban planners,
| economists, and consumers have missed.
|
| Not Just Bikes is like the Joe Rogan of these people in
| that whenever I see one of his videos recommended on
| YouTube, I know I'll be hearing about it from people trying
| to pass the ideas off as common knowledge within two weeks.
| zahlman wrote:
| Not just that, his approach to the politics of it is
| incredibly obnoxious. He comes across as everyone who
| disagrees with him with the same brush, railing against
| some sort of ideological complex that includes everything
| his "team" hates and insinuates that it's all somehow
| interrelated. Of course he doesn't _say_ those things, but
| it surfaced really prominently for example in his April
| Fools ' video where he played the role of a suburbanite
| obsessed with his new truck. Satire is one thing, but if
| you see enough of it (also content from Twitter and other
| social media) you get the sense that he really does take
| his perception of other people way too seriously.
|
| Which is to say: his case studies examining the details of
| specific cities, evaluating transit system design etc. are
| great. But his analysis of why the bad things are bad
| (especially when he starts blaming people and ascribing
| motivations) is utterly insufferable.
| rafram wrote:
| > his April Fools' video where he played the role of a
| suburbanite obsessed with his new truck
|
| Happy to say I missed that one.
|
| But yes, I completely agree with all of that. I'd love
| more of the analyses of why some systems work and less of
| the vitriol against everyone who isn't already totally on
| board.
| some_random wrote:
| First off, comparing classes in the US to a caste system is
| genuinely delusional. The US doesn't have a caste system
| (except where it has been imported by immigration) and if you
| think it does either you don't know what a caste system is or
| you are completely out of touch with American culture.
|
| More importantly, no C-Suite executive, Banker, Socialite, or
| whatever "upper caste" stand in you want to select gives a
| shit about sitting next to a Janitor on the train. Hell, they
| don't give a shit about sitting next to a normal sane person
| who is homeless. The reason so many people who have a choice
| don't chose to use public transit is because of low quality
| service (as always), crime, and a very small number of very
| visible mentally ill people having daily breakdowns in
| public.
|
| This is a good thing! NotJustBikes is a huge doomer loser,
| don't listen to him, there's a really straightforward route
| to making things better.
| p_dubz wrote:
| I created an account because of how terrible this comment is.
|
| A caste system? are you kidding me. CASTE. Like the system
| where a group of people were called untouchables??? These
| kinds of extreme comparisons are so utterly unhelpful to
| literally everyone.
|
| Frankly just on the face of it your claim is completely out
| of touch with the US cities with decent public transit
| options (New York, Washington DC, Boston, Chicago). Everyone
| that lives in NYC that can take the subway takes the subway.
| I know plenty of hedge funders and traders and big tech
| workers in NYC who take the subway every day, and plenty of
| big law partners who take the DC metro to the office.
|
| Obviously there are really big problems with how transit is
| implemented and treated in most cities in the USA, but you
| are completely incorrect. In American cities where there is
| good transit everyone takes it
| bdangubic wrote:
| EVERYTHING you wrote was going GREAT until _In American
| cities where there is good transit everyone takes it_ -
| this cannot be further from the truth. _some_ take it, not
| enough to make a dent in traffic congestion madness in any
| City (especially those you specifically listed, I live in
| one of them...)
| righthand wrote:
| The project was studied for 10 years so the nay-sayers really
| don't have a platform because they're up against a decade of
| research. Most of the anti-cp has a romanticized view of
| driving into the city as some sort of right or NYer benefit.
| standardUser wrote:
| Other than Trump's seemingly knee-jerk opposition because it
| was implemented by, in his own oft-repeated words, radical left
| lunatics, I haven't really heard anything negative at all as a
| Manhattanite.
| hedora wrote:
| The metrics I have seen all look cherry picked.
|
| Archaeology tells us that for ~ 4000 years, people have
| tolerated an average of a 30 minute commute.
|
| The usefulness of a city goes up (superlinearly!) with the
| number of people that can work / shop / live there.
|
| So, the universal metric for any city, and therefore transit
| system is: "How many people can regularly make use of the
| city?"
|
| A simple proxy for that is: "How many people live within a 30
| minute commute of the city center?"
|
| So, at peak times, how many people can simultaneously get to
| their destination in NYC in under 30 minutes?
|
| Second: How many of those people can do so during non peak
| hours?
|
| If congestion pricing is a success on all metrics, then both
| those numbers will have increased. Those metrics have worked
| well for 4000 years of cities so they are as close to a natural
| law as exists for cities.
|
| It wouldn't surprise me if the numbers went up (or down) but
| the lack of reporting on "is NYC's effective population
| increasing or decreasing as a result of congestion pricing?"
| makes me skeptical.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/05/11/upshot/conges.
| ..
|
| Commute times: Faster.
|
| Transit ridership: Up.
|
| Visitors: Up.
| hedora wrote:
| Counterpoints (could be true or false, but do not
| contradict the data from any article I have found):
|
| - average commute time is up because transit is still much
| slower than driving used to be (this first point is
| definitely true), and many drivers were forced on to the
| slower mode of transportation (also true, but that doesn't
| imply average times went up or down).
|
| - Occasional visitors (that only pay once in a while) are
| up, but the number of people that can commute are down,
| hollowing out commercial office districts.
|
| - polls showing it is popular under-represent people that
| can no longer afford to travel to the city.
|
| The fact that the numbers being reported are so vague as to
| be compatible with my doomsday scenario is why I say the
| metrics seem cherry picked.
|
| I'd love to see a study that reports enough of their
| methodology to disprove my three bullet points. I'm
| generally supportive of things like congestion pricing and
| public transit, but sloppy studies and sloppy reporting on
| their actual impact doesn't help their cause.
| prasadjoglekar wrote:
| The biggest downside is that the reason this was done had
| little or nothing to do with congestion. That's a side effect.
| It was to fill budget holes in the MTA, which is a notorious
| money pit that delivers far less value than the billions if
| gobbles up.
|
| There's a real chance that future cash flows from this
| congestion pricing are going to be securitized for today's cash
| payments, similar to Chicago parking.
|
| https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/nyc-transit-governor-s...
| zahlman wrote:
| > the reason this was done had little or nothing to do with
| congestion. That's a side effect
|
| Then why, out of the countless alternatives, did they choose
| to raise the funds this way?
| prasadjoglekar wrote:
| Au contraire, there aren't countless alternatives. Raise
| fares, raise taxes or impose a penalty on drivers, most of
| whom you think will come from Long Island, NJ and CT They
| chose the most politically palatable option.
| erehweb wrote:
| Trivially, the measure of how much it costs in dollars to drive
| into Manhattan along the affected routes has gone up. So there
| are likely some people who are worse off. It's rare to have a
| completely free lunch, but this one looks pretty cheap.
| zahlman wrote:
| >how many people will assert there must be something bad
|
| Some of my friends seem to be convinced that Pigouvian taxes
| don't work, that hoi polloi just suck up the extra cost and
| complain more. Also they'll say that it's regressive (i.e. the
| thing being taxed already represented a higher proportion of
| income for the lower classes).
|
| What I'm getting at is, I agree with you, but I don't think the
| objections are all that nebulous, nor based in "too good to be
| true" intuition.
| tim333 wrote:
| In London from 2020 till about 2023 congestion charging ran
| till 10pm and then that was moved back to 6pm. The reason was
| it was hurting nightlife especially west end theatre.
| anthomtb wrote:
| I find it surprising that theatre would be harmed by a
| congestion charge. It seems like the cost of paying or
| planning around a congestion charge would be small relative
| to the cost and planning required to go to a live show.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Are there any measures that show any downside to this?_
|
| The opposition to Manhattan's congestion pricing has a curious
| tendency to be inversely correlated with how frequently that
| person is in Manhattan.
|
| At this point I think it's just another proxy for rural voters'
| rage at liberal cities.
| agentultra wrote:
| There are so many more initiatives from climate adaptation and
| environmental advocates and urban planning folks that will have
| similar, "well duh," effects. It's surprising how many easy,
| simple ideas there are that society and politicians dismiss.
|
| Maybe we don't need to burn the planet to "achieve AGI," in order
| to "solve climate change," and, "make cities livable." It's not
| like that tech, even is possible, is going to stop hurricanes or
| take cars off the streets.
|
| Hope more cities in North America will follow suit. It's sad how
| many have been doing the exact opposite of good ideas for so
| long.
| newyankee wrote:
| Another predictable success would be converting entirety of NYC
| into a driverless car zone, but we are probably not ready for the
| repercussions as a society
| ericmay wrote:
| Maybe, or maybe just have more street cars and trams and such.
| More walking, and more biking to go from A -> B.
|
| I'm not sure in the case of Manhattan that driverless cars are
| particularly valuable, and it's very much debatable whether
| they would be a predictable success for a few reasons.
|
| Inevitably you arrive at a scenario where you have a limited
| number of them because of course otherwise would be to defeat
| the purpose of the congestion zone, and then you'll only have
| certain operators with the right permits able to extract money
| from moving people. Kind of like the taxi medallion scheme all
| over again.
|
| One of the best things America could do is to be to reduce
| reliance and spend on cars. This applies to New York but even
| moreso to the rest of the country.
| TheGRS wrote:
| Entirety seems a little extreme. Maybe gradually they could get
| there as society and technology changes. But yes changing large
| areas to pedestrian-only seems totally doable to me in NYC.
| humanpotato wrote:
| Already 90-95% get around without a car and the rest are
| paying. Car traffic is necessary to an extent. Compare how
| shipping companies offer Next Day Early AM shipping for 10x the
| cost of 4 day shipping. Hardly anyone uses it, but when you
| need it, you are glad to have that expensive option.
| trgn wrote:
| The future of nyc is one with electric kei cars puttering
| around for the one offs and trams and subways for everything
| else. I can see it in my minds eye and it is better in every
| way
| post_break wrote:
| Ironically NY bans kei vehicles.
| trgn wrote:
| Oh no!
| wakawaka28 wrote:
| Since they define what success is, of course it will be.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Which contrasting metrics that've gone in the negative
| direction would you like to highlight?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| There are obvious winners and losers. Of course it is one
| sided if you dont care about the losers.
|
| Those who want to drive, not pay, and not take mass transit
| are losing out and nobody cares.
|
| Im not saying anyone has to care, but I dont think it is
| honest to call it a free lunch.
| zahlman wrote:
| "The measure is failing because people are less able to do
| the thing that the measure was specifically implemented to
| reduce" doesn't seem to me like a very convincing argument.
| amazingamazing wrote:
| we need to do this with more things
| djaychela wrote:
| Relevant Climate Town Video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEFBn0r53uQ
| ks2048 wrote:
| It's interesting that everyone is saying it is a drastic change,
| when it says "Traffic is down by about 10%" (which doesn't sound
| like a drastic change to me).
|
| I guess it is near a critical point where a relatively small
| change in traffic results in a large change in travel times,
| traffic jams, etc.?
| carabiner wrote:
| Yeah it's like fluid flow where once you reach choked flow or
| hit the sound speed, there's a discontinuous jump in resistance
| that fucks up everything.
| djaychela wrote:
| >I guess it is near a critical point where a relatively small
| change in traffic results in a large change in travel times,
| traffic jams, etc.?
|
| Yes, same as school traffic (certainly where I live in the UK).
| It's not all the traffic on the road, but the difference it
| makes is enormous.
| toast0 wrote:
| Manhattan traffic was pretty much at capacity. Bumper to bumper
| most of the time, certainly during peak times.
|
| Reducing traffic to 90% of capacity makes a huge difference. A
| little bit of room here and there allows for much smoother flow
| and a lot better experience for those who didn't get priced
| out. And almost certainly better flow for busses, which is
| helpful for a lot of people.
| bravesoul2 wrote:
| Like CPU %. Or maybe memory is a better analogy.
| time4tea wrote:
| Cycling is so much more effective than cars.. actually approx 5x
| more in terms of street usage. So when people move to bikes, the
| streets look way less busy. You'd need a 5x more bike traffic
| than car traffic for the two lanes to be equivalent.
|
| Just worth bearing mind when people talk about streets being
| emptier - just emptier _of cars_
| mattlondon wrote:
| Congestion will creep back up, just like it has in London.
|
| Unless they really price it to deter people, they'll just drive.
| In London it's cheaper to pay the PS15 charge than to get two
| adults return tickets on the tube from the outer suburbs. Once
| you factor in comfort, convenience, reliability and practicality
| of your private car Vs London's public transport it's obvious why
| more and more people just pay the fee to drive.
|
| If they really wanted to stop congestion they'd increase the fee
| from PS15 to something like PS150-250 a day. But they won't do
| that because then hardly anyone would pay it and they'd lose the
| revenue.
| bravesoul2 wrote:
| Thinking the same thing. Sydney has a lot of tolls but not for
| congestion. More as an additional tax really. Doesn't stop
| people using cars. What probably does is pedestrian streets and
| less parking making it a PITA to drive vs get a bus.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Congestion will creep back up, just like it has in London.
|
| This is actually a good point, because of the nature of what
| _causes_ congestion.
|
| It's that governments don't do the things that prevent it (e.g.
| allowing higher density housing construction to shorten
| commutes or adding capacity to both mass transit and road
| systems), until the congestion gets really bad.
|
| So when you first introduce congestion pricing, congestion goes
| down, because of course it does -- increase the cost of
| something and you get less of it. But then, why do any of the
| other things that address congestion until it gets really bad
| again? So population grows over time or existing infrastructure
| decays and doesn't get replaced because it isn't "needed" yet.
| Until congestion is as bad as it ever was, but now people are
| living with a new mass surveillance apparatus and paying a
| regressive tax.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _governments don 't do the things that prevent it (e.g.
| allowing higher density housing construction to shorten
| commutes or adding capacity to both mass transit and road
| systems), until the congestion gets really bad_
|
| This is Manhattan. We tax the living shit out of parking, are
| actively converting driving space to bike lanes, and have
| multiple efforts to reduce or potentially even eliminate
| street-side parking in the congestion zone.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If they really wanted to stop congestion they 'd increase
| the fee from PS15 to something like PS150-250 a day. But they
| won't do that because then hardly anyone would pay it and
| they'd lose the revenue_
|
| This is nobody-goes-there-it's-too-crowded logic.
|
| If there is congestion despite a charge, you can make more
| money by raising the price until there is less congestion.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Releasing a deadly virus would also be quite successful at
| reducing congestion. Is it convenient for those who are affected?
| tmaly wrote:
| I am ok with congestion pricing. Most of the time I park above
| 60th street to avoid the tax.
|
| But the tolls on the tunnels are super expensive.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-06-20 23:01 UTC)