New York City will charge drivers going downtown
Comments
steveBK123
agotterer
Quite a few of our transit problems today are actually because of the choices Robert Moses made. However, he certainly is responsible for the rapid growth of the transit system and did a great job consolidating power and getting stuff done.
* He had the chance to buy the land and put transit along many highways in queens and Long Island but said that people would prefer to drive so he passed on the opportunity. Acquiring those rights today would be unaffordable and likely impossible.
* Moses didn’t want black people going to Jones Beach (his pride and joy). To prevent them from visiting he built the overpasses on the highways that go to the beach lower so that buses from the city couldn’t fit.
I highly recommend the book The Power Broker which is a deep dive on the history of Robert Moses. The book is very long and can be a bit dry at times. But I learned a lot about the history of New York and why some things that we enjoy and suffer through today are the way they are.
steveBK123
I'm well aware of his history, and it's always interesting to me how few bad things people can point to that he actually did.. when weighed against all the transit/bridges/tunnels/highways build under his watch.
I mean the first thing is a crime of omission, made in basically every other city of the country - where have we seen land be purchased along highways to build transit done anywhere in this country? Even new bridges built by allegedly progressive administrations continue to neglect putting in train tracks.
The second one is obviously morally wrong, though even that is in dispute. Many "parkways" built at that time had similarly short bridges, look to the Merritt Parkway in CT for example. Also, you can presently get there by bus - https://new.mta.info/guides/beaches/jones-beach In fact, it seems it was accessible by bus when it opened, including having bus drop offs advertised in the opening story - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-09/robert-mo...
woodruffw
> I'm well aware of his history, and it's always interesting to me how few bad things people can point to that he actually did.. when weighed against all the transit/bridges/tunnels/highways build under his watch.
Nixing the Staten Island tunnel is a pretty bad one[1]: you could argue, not unrealistically, that Staten Island would be a far denser and better integrated borough with mass transit access had that project gone through.
As a native UWSer, I'd also argue that the Henry Hudson Parkway was a pretty bad call on his part: it was an "obvious" highway to build, but it more or less permanently froze the expansion of a major rail line underneath it (the West Side Line) and means that one of the most beautiful parks in the city is semi-separated from the neighborhoods that are closest to it.
Moses' legacy can also be measured in part by the graveyard of projects that were too obscene even for his own time: his desire to build a bridge and highway over Battery Park, for example, or to divide Washington Square Park with an expressway.
Edit: I didn't even mention the CBE; Moses is arguably directly responsible for the generations of economic and environmental blight that accompanied that particular highway.
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/18/nyregion/staten-island-su...
steveBK123
See these are better examples!
But also, it's easier to find fault in the actions of someone who takes action. And especially to judge them based on the values of our time rather than theirs.
It's hard to fault anyone since for bad major road/transit/bridge/tunnel projects because there really haven't been any!
And we look at things like projects NOT built by Moses and ask - if they were so good, so obvious, and Moses so bad not to build them, what has the city been doing the last 70 years and how many people are as bad or worse to not have built them?
woodruffw
> And especially to judge them based on the values of our time rather than theirs.
More than a few of Moses' projects were egregious, even for his time. What made Moses a great (as in powerful) urban planner was his ability to mold policy decisions to his values, not the values of the neighborhoods that he bulldozed, much less the values of the elected officials who represented those neighborhoods.
> how many people are as bad or worse to not have built them?
This requires us to think counterfactually: we just don't know how the city could have turned out, because the political energy, financial capital, and plain old physical space that could have gone into mass transit systems went into highways instead.
jacobr1
> What made Moses a great (as in powerful) urban planner was his ability to mold policy decisions to his values, not the values of the neighborhoods that he bulldozed, much less the values of the elected officials who represented those neighborhoods.
I think this is key. Regardless of the values, we have built up a system where everyone can veto a project, or require more studies and concessions such that the price increases significantly. So we end up in an equilibria that nobody particularly wants, where nothing gets done, and the few projects that squeak-in cost too much.
We need better mechanisms to solve the collective action problems. A more consolidated transit authority, with more unilateral power, that nevertheless still had an elected odd member board with majoritarian decision making power would potentially do it. But a big part of the problem is that we can't fundamentally satisfy everyone. We need to optimize everyone's interests and compensate where we can't, but consensus on this stuff is rarely possible.
res0nat0r
> The second one is obviously morally wrong, though even that is in dispute
I don't really think this one is in dispute honestly:
Now he began taking measures to limit use of his parks. He had restricted the
use of state parks by poor and lower-middle-class families in the first place,
by limiting access to the parks by rapid transit he had vetoed the Long Island
Rail Road's proposed construction of a branch spur to Jones Beach for this
reason. Now he began to limit access by busses; he instructed Shapiro to build
the bridges across his new parkways low - too low for buses to pass. Bus trips
therefore had to be made on local roads, making the trips discouraging long and
arduous.
jahewson
That's the quote that is disputed.
twright0
> how few bad things people can point to that he actually did..
I'd encourage you to read The Power Broker, if you haven't. Some examples that aren't "policy decisions" we can disagree with given our knowledge of how it turned out (eg, building or not building public transit in a given place), but rather things that were clearly morally wrong at the time:
- repeated wholesale destruction of low-income neighborhoods through a variety of bridge, park, and highway construction projects
- evicting farmers and poor rural landowners through opaque legal methods to build highways and parks atop their land
- running a "slum clearance" program that primarily evicted people from slums and demolished them without providing any real place for the humans to go afterwards
- funneling vast sums of money into the pockets of collaborators, friends, and, in the end, himself
The Power Broker paints a nuanced picture, but he did some pretty terrible things in his time.
wan23
The linked Bloomberg article actually says that buses served Jacob Riis Park (not Jones Beach) at its opening, and that it is in fact true that the Southern State Parkway has lower clearances along the route to Jones Beach than other similar roads around the region from that time.
jprete
> Also, you can presently get there by bus - https://new.mta.info/guides/beaches/jones-beach
That route is absolutely awful. For a typical NYC resident - not even "typical working-class" but anyone - going one-way is 75-100 minutes, two transfers, and around $25-30 per person, while carrying everything you need for the beach. Only the last 20 minutes are actually by bus.
steveBK123
Compared to what?
I mean.. what good beaches can you get to from NYC, even by car, in 75-100min?
That's like how long it takes me to drive to Jones Beach, from Brooklyn, on a good day.
spopejoy
Amazing how many NYCers miss out on Rockaway Beach.
Much shorter drive. Accessible by subway. Just a better beach than Jones -- far superior food and entertainment at the concessions, and way way bigger.
steveBK123
Sure, I've been there.
But even living in North Brooklyn, my travel options there are - 59min drive or 75min trains&walking.
People make these grand statements like we've purposely made it impossible for poor people to get to the beach by bus, but everything in NYC is impossible to get to for everyone, all the time.
Anyway, if you are in Manhattan, the real play is LIRR to Long Beach. Frequent trains, extremely clean, lots of space, long boardwalk, rental bikes, lots of food & restaurants, clean restrooms (amazingly rare at US beaches).. $15/person (kids under 13 free, and I think theres a family pass) to enter beach.
timeon
So what do you think about Jane Jacobs?
steveBK123
I think she was a moderating force against Moses, and you need that tension for you to have progress.
Unfortunately the Jacobs camp has won completely, and the idea of an inertia-less city frozen in amber is somehow the defacto good standard now. The city has insufficient development for its rate of population growth, and anemic transit infrastructure building.
So Manhattan becomes a playground for the rich only.
bobthepanda
Chicago and DC notably built a lot of median subways during the 50s and 60s.
bradleyjg
Moses didn’t want black people going to Jones Beach (his pride and joy). To prevent them from visiting he built the overpasses on the highways that go to the beach lower so that buses from the city couldn’t fit.
This is a true and interesting factoid, but I don’t see how it ties back to any transit issues. Unless you think buses having access to the northern and southern state would meaningfully improve regional transit?
jahewson
It's actually not even true. It's become something of a popular myth. The original quote claimed "poor and lower-middle-class families" who in 1929 New York would have been predominantly white. That quote itself is disputed too, though it may well be accurate.
Funnily enough a factoid is something that is false but sounds plausibly fact-like.
steveBK123
Right If anything there are quotes and evidence of him exhibiting racism directly against Puerto Ricans, which no one in this thread mentions..
At the time most of his projects were built, African Americans were only about 5% of NYC population rather than the 20-30% peak thru today. So it’s kind of backwards looking to assume they were top of mind in his decision making either way.
bobthepanda
They are some of the fastest roads around.
There are commuter express buses, but often they are restricted to the Interstate (there is one for the entirety of Long Island’s millions of people) or the arterial roads with traffic lights
bradleyjg
Long Island bus has been privatized and never carried many people to begin with. They were never going to be competitive for east/west transit against the LIRR.
bobthepanda
I mean, there are also commuter buses in NYC, where the parkways make up most highway mileage.
And why shouldn’t private buses be able to use the parkways either? Plenty benefit the public, like the Chinatown buses.
USB5
Moses' career only existed to serve specific class interests. If Moses had pursued imroving public transit, he would have been out of a job.
_boffin_
Just have to say that I love seeing that book mentioned. Such a fantastic book.
closeparen
Congestion pricing is good insofar as it deters driving. We do need to get our heads out of our asses with respect to the logistics of converting dollars to transit infrastructure, but that's basically independent. Congestion pricing revenue could be given to your favorite charity, redistributed as a citizen's dividend, or lit on fire. The important thing is that as the marginal driver the amount you have to part with is painful enough to you to change your behavior.
In any other US metro area, there is perhaps a realist argument that roads work fine for 98% of trips and trains are too much of a boondoggle for their marginal contribution to capacity. But this is Manhattan. Forget for a moment about urbanism, environmentalism, etc. If the MTA melted down tomorrow, no appreciable portion of its riders could fall back on driving, as a matter of geometry.
nayuki
You're right. Congestion pricing affects the psychology of the driver, regardless of where the money goes - even if it's set on fire (thus causing a minuscule amount of deflation).
To assign the congestion money to a specific project, like public transit, is an act of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_accounting .
I would say that putting the money into the city's general fund is the least bad solution. This is because if congestion monies were put to a specific program like public transit / subsidies for the poor / etc., it becomes more complicated to ensure that those programs receive enough funding but also not too much.
philwelch
I’d go a little further than that. If you enact a Pigovian tax (i.e. a tax intended to reduce some unwanted behavior), there’s a conflict of interest in relying on that revenue for anything because then there is an incentive to try and keep the tax rates lower in order to protect the revenue source.
closeparen
Exactly. ”A tax on drivers” as the parent put it is actually a failure scenario here. Everybody gets low-grade immiserated by the tax but congestion is not reduced enough to improve quality of life.
bjourne
Evidence from cities around the world shows that congestion taxes actually do reduce traffic massively. Drivers always say "we have no choice, we have to drive!" Then they get charged a small amount for driving and suddenly many more are able to use public transport.
tekknik
It’s interesting to me in a free country that you also pay vehicle registration (this is supposed to cover your taxes on road use) that taxes like this are a thing.
closeparen
Congestion pricing does not interfere with drivers going places other than the city center. They can also still drive to the city center if they value it enough. Deterring people from owning cars altogether, or restricting the spaces and routes drivers can use (in the way cyclists and pedestrians are currently restricted, in this "free" country) would be far more aggressive moves.
tekknik
That’s the next step isn’t it?
With EVs being near useless outside of city centers and city centers are beginning to charge congestion fees then it’s quite obvious what’s coming next.
closeparen
EVs are near useless in city centers because hardly anybody can install home charging, plus many households have only 1 car so they hamstring themselves for road trips. If you can install a charger on your property and also have ICE vehicles in your household, EVs are great. Not too many suburbanites / exurbanites doing >250 miles in day.
tekknik
you pretty well ignored the question and answered one nobody asked.
closeparen
The “what’s coming next” part depends on the premise “EVs being near useless outside of city centers” being true. It’s not.
bjourne
Don't think it is stranger than publicly funded museums charging entrance fees.
tekknik
That’s a bit different, but still a head scratcher. You can never go to a museum and still be capable of going to work. You need a car for work most of the time.
Cogito
> You need a car for work most of the time.
This is an interesting perspective.
Here in Sydney Australia most households will have a car or two, but most of the people I've ever worked with do not drive to or for work. Another large chunk of people will drive to get to a train station or bus stop, and then get public transport the rest of the way.
There are a lot of people who do drive for work, especially as you get to the edges of the city sprawl, but even then there are often viable public transport options. Those people tend to not work in the city centre or business parks I've worked in.
With working from home even less people are driving due to work.
tekknik
We’re talking about the US, not Australia.
Cogito
The post you responded to originally literally talks about congestion pricing ‘around the world’.
Regardless, it’s not like everyone in the US has to drive for work, for the exact same reasons they don’t here.
It’s still an interesting perspective for me because I know that in some places it must seem like everyone has to drive, but it’s not something that I would normally consider.
closeparen
You absolutely do not need a car to go to work in Manhattan, outside of very particular situations.
tekknik
if you live in manhattan, but this isn’t punishing those people is it?
closeparen
It’s New York. The vast majority of commuters from outside Manhattan take public transit. PATH, LIRR, Metro North, etc.
steveBK123
My general concern with the whole thing is it's basically not thinking BIG enough.
We're gonna raise the cost of driving into the city so that we have less people drive into the city and then.... ?! and then.. !?
Presumably that will put more load on transit infrastructure that is under built and 10x reasonable cost to build. We can fund transit but we can't build it.
The MTA has already borrowed 15 years of projected congestion pricing revenue with the revenue as collateral. Great, so what does $15B get us?
If we want less drivers why don't we go HARD - announce one of the Hudson tunnels will now be 100% bus. Or we are going to retrofit it for a new train line. Or a new Brooklyn/Queens North/South line for less Manhattan oriented transit?
Even our most ambitious 20 year plans are like "maybe we can finally finish more of the 2nd ave line / prevent the Hudson tubes from flooding / add one more Hudson tube" and that's basically it for the entire city. If you don't live in NJ or the east side of Manhattan, too bad, no new transit for you.
The scale of transit investment you see in say London or Tokyo should make every NYer embarrassed and radicalize you on permitting/environmental study shenanigans/cost management/everyone having a veto on building anything.
JumpCrisscross
> MTA has already borrowed 15 years of projected congestion pricing revenue with the revenue as collateral. Great, so what does $15B get us
Signal modernization, station accessibility, new subway cars (last 2x longer), escalator and elevator repairs, new tracks and the 2nd Avenue Subway's Phase II (taking it to 125th street) [1].
steveBK123
I think slide 7 also paints an interesting picture - +50% ridership in last 20 years, -8% capital capital investment years MTA-wide over 20 years in constant dollars.
I can't put an exact date on it, but somewhere around 2010/2012 it started feeling like the transit system was getting consistently worse, year over year. Mostly in terms of delays, headways, etc.
I have some cousins in the industry, and one of the problems they point to aside from work rules is that city/state agencies have basically no expertise in house for infrastructure. This is despite the fact that there has been a steady stream of some amount of work for decades. That means everything from project design, planning, management, accounting... literally everything is outsourced. All the MTA does is essentially ask for designs & bids, picks one, and then bleeds money to contractors.
ryandrake
> We are planning to spend something like $3B/mile to expand a single train line a few stops further north.
> The MTA estimates they can put in platform doors like other developed world cities in only 1/3 of stations, at an average cost of $50M/station.
> We spent something close to $10B building an entire new terminal for LIRR
I'd love to see the itemized bills that add up to these values. We all know this isn't what labor and materials cost. Defenders will say "oh, it pays for environmental studies, and lawyers, and consultants..." OK, itemize those too. Let everyone see the numbers for everything and that it adds up to $10B without $7B mysteriously disappearing, un-accounted for.
pcurve
MTA costs make the Boston Big Dig look like a bargain, even at $22 billion.
I'm convinced, if they contract this out to first-tier construction firms from oversea that specialize in underground infrastructure (e.g. Europe, Japan, Korea), they can get the job done at 1/3rd the cost.
kuschku
Even in Düsseldorf, building an entire new subway tunnel for several lines through downtown was about a billion euros. Hamburg's new Hafencity lime was in a similar price range, and the new U5 will be as well.
New York for some reason is spending 10× that.
steveBK123
NY is spending $7B to on a Phase 2, to expand a long delayed subway line by 1.5 miles, and half the tunnel is pre-existing from abandoned project in 1970s.
The original Phase 1 was only about 1.5 miles and took something around 20 years on top of the existing half built stuff from the 1970s
There is a Phase 3 to expand the line a further 4 miles with all new tunnels, and there is a rarely talked about Phase 4 to go a final 2 miles again in all new tunnel.
I point to this project in terms of an example of those with a negative agenda "knock stuff down" without having a matching, if not pre-requisite "build better stuff" plan in place. The original 2nd Ave line was planned in the 1920s, they knocked down elevated train lines in the 1940s in anticipation, but didn't start the subway project til 1970s, which opened for service in 2017. By the time Phase 4 finishes in 2140 or so, we may have finally matched the transit removed in 1940s.
So any modern era "just knock down __" without first building transit / alternates / etc risks putting us in a net transportation deficit for a lifetime or three.
PM_me_your_math
That's because NY is one of the most corrupt places on earth. 9/10 goes to pockets of politicians, unions, special interest groups, and their progressive pals.
midoridensha
>I'm convinced, if they contract this out to first-tier construction firms from oversea that specialize in underground infrastructure (e.g. Europe, Japan, Korea), they can get the job done at 1/3rd the cost.
No, they can't, unless the US somehow temporarily makes NYC Japanese territory for the duration of the project. Any foreign firm would still be stuck with the same laws, and the same politicians and other corrupt people, that are in position today and prevent efforts at economical construction.
brewdad
As a public agency, are these numbers not available? If not, why?
I wouldn’t expect them to buy a special section in The NY Times to publish them to the world but surely the numbers are available to someone willing to put in a little work to find them.
woodruffw
The MTA is a state (not city) authority, not an agency. It's effectively a quasi-private corporation[1] with board members who are appointed by elected officials, with special carveouts that allow them to be less transparent than an equivalent agency would be.
The use of authorities in NY law is pretty old, but Robert Moses was the one responsible for really widely encouraging their use; it wouldn't be unreasonable to argue that the MTA's culture of secrecy and opacity is largely a product of Moses' own power plays.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_state_public-benefit_...
bradleyjg
We spent something close to $10B building an entire new terminal for LIRR underneath an existing Metro North terminal when there was enough capacity to serve both out of the existing station. Bureaucratic squabbles between divisions of MTA serving LI & NY/CT were mitigated by spending $10B. Oh and for the average LIRR rider, despite having 2 Manhattan terminals they can get a train to, the net service has actually been reduced in terms of trains per day.
Not just trains per day. The synchronization at Jamaica has been totally destroyed. Commute times during peak hours on several lines have increased by 20%. That’s a lot of hours of human life destroyed by incompetence.
bradleyjg
We basically need a modern era Robert Moses to consolidate NYC DOT/MTA/Port Authority and whatever other agencies and bring us into the modern era.
You’d first need a strong governor to jam the necessary enabling legislation through Albany and DC. They only strong governor we’ve had in decades was too insecure to allow an independent personality anywhere around and forced out Andy Byford instead of promoting him.
wldcordeiro
> We just caved (again) entirely to the transit unions in the last contract negotiation. We have subway lines & trains wired up for 1 man operation but run them staffed with 2 due to union work rules.
I don't think this is a good point to make when we've literally had several disastrous derailments thanks to poor regulations and rules around safety and train companies attacking unions. The transit unions are absolutely right to demand 2 workers for fail safes, "efficiency" isn't the be-all-end-all goal especially when you're talking about trains full of people who could die in an accident.
kortilla
The 2 are not redundant. One just does the extremely difficult job of closing the doors which can in no way be done by the driver due to the immense mental burden it would require.
Subways all over the world operate with just one employee and surprisingly don’t just derail and kill millions. Maybe take your FUD elsewhere.
nmfisher
Singapore MRT actually operates with zero drivers!
kuschku
As does Nuremberg U3!
eastbound
One line in Paris, 2 in Toulouse, Lyon, it’s even more funny that it was built in the 1991 without drivers, truely futuristic.
ThePowerOfFuet
Two lines in Paris, soon to be six.
amphitoky
even Budapest has an autonomous line
Symbiote
There are many.
List: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_driver-less_train_syst...
steveBK123
They are not redundant and fail safe. One sits at the front & controls the driving. The other sits in the middle of train, 5 cars back & controls doors.
Nothing about having the two of them creates redundancy.
eggy
The train is not moving or being driven when the doors need to open and close. Why can't one person do it? I am sure there is an interlock, but this makes the tasks sequential, so the doors must be closed before taking off.
steveBK123
Yes, that's my point. One person very much can do it. There are train lines that have their signals & stations setup for this, and the trains prepared for this mode of operations. The MTA keeps caving to the unions so that the trains remain staffed with 2.
zuminator
What's more although the train operator (driver) can open and close doors, the conductor (doorman) is not certified to operate trains and thus provides no emergency redundancy except perhaps in terms of crowd control.
loeg
Most subways around the world operate with a single driver and are at least as safe. The two worker rule to appease the union is one of the major drivers of cost disease in operating subways in NYC.
resolutebat
There are also an increasing number of subways out there that operate with zero drivers.
ztrww
> thanks to poor regulation
Comparing different systems overseen by different agencies with different regulations, rules and conditions without an objective data doesn’t seem that productive.
also comparing subways with intercity freight trains is a bit of an apples to oranges comparison in the first place.
returningfory2
I agree with your points, but I don’t think they undermine congestion pricing. Even if you take all the congestion tolls and, like, toss them in the Hudson River, the program is still worthwhile. Just getting people to pay to drive into Manhattan is good in-and-of-itself.
steveBK123
I'm not convinced the congestion IN the city is caused by people coming in from OUT of the city. The density of for hire vehicles in the ride hailing era is tremendous.
Further, given how expensive tolls already are to get into the city, whats another $20 for many people?
A lot of reactions I've heard from people have been either "great it will keep those bridge & tunnel people out" or "great, now I can pay the toll and have less traffic". Neither of these seem like the congestion pricing is going to work as intended. It probably needs to be 3x the price, and have onerous per-ride charges for ride hail users.
I think we can also expect a lot of arbitrage of people congesting up the area just outside the zone to hop onto transit there, which would be fine if we planned to actually build any or expand service to accommodate! Great if you live in SoHo, bad if you live in Harlem.
winternett
The last time I drove into downtown Manhattan, just inches form the bridge, I was immediately pulled over by NYPD and given an excessive $150 ticket for the window tints on my car. I demonstrated to the officer that Range Rover made them that way from the factory *limo tint" and that it was legal in my home state, but they had shown that they apparently have always had the inclination to pull people over for bogus minor things in cities like it as an entry tax anyway as the "officer" said "He could drag me and my entire family in the car down to the precinct if he wanted to"... This way they probably don't need to pay police salaries and they just automate the unexpected tax probably. States are the new mafia... Phony "protection fees" and miscellaneous taxes are now more real than before, maybe because the old guard has now transitioned into NY GoV/council/desk jobs?
vel0city
I live in a state which has extremely lax gun ownership and open carry laws. I guess I should just be able to ignore all other state firearm laws when I travel based on your logic.
rascul
Not quite what you're getting at, but there is a Federal law known as the Peaceable Journey Law:
Notwithstanding any other provision of any law or any rule or regulation of a State or any political subdivision thereof, any person who is not otherwise prohibited by this chapter from transporting, shipping, or receiving a firearm shall be entitled to transport a firearm for any lawful purpose from any place where he may lawfully possess and carry such firearm to any other place where he may lawfully possess and carry such firearm if, during such transportation the firearm is unloaded, and neither the firearm nor any ammunition being transported is readily accessible or is directly accessible from the passenger compartment of such transporting vehicle: Provided, That in the case of a vehicle without a compartment separate from the driver’s compartment the firearm or ammunition shall be contained in a locked container other than the glove compartment or console.
winternett
Surely you realize that window tint and guns are 2 completely different things, and that tint can't be taken out simply before entering a city when it's embedded in the window glass by the manufacturer right?
grepfru_it
Land Rover does not tint the front window. NYC have no laws on tinting of rear windows. Either op is full of it, or there is more to the story OP is not letting on (NYC cops also don't generally threaten to take you and your family to the precinct for no reason)
DeRock
I for one am glad they are enforcing the law. Highly tinted windows obstruct the important communication of being able to make eye contact with the driver. It’s important for other drivers, cyclists and pedestrians. I’m not sure why your home states laws matter when you were driving in NY?
throwaway2037
I found this about US car window tinting rules:
https://windowtintlaws.us/crossing-state-lines-with-tinted-w...
CAN YOU GET PULLED OVER FOR WINDOW TINT IN ANOTHER STATE? The short answer is yes, you can be pulled over by state vehicles or law enforcement for window tint violations that go against state tint laws.winternett
Uh... ?
"I demonstrated to the officer that Range Rover made them that way from the factory"
Am I supposed to break the windows out before going to NYC?
vel0city
Can you demonstrate that to us here? I'm not familiar with cars in the US coming from the factory with window tint. Most of the time front window tint is something dealers might add, but that's not "from the factory".
And no, you don't need to break the windows out. You could also just not drive your car that doesn't comply with the laws into that area. Much like how I wouldn't be walking around NYC with an AR-15 strapped to my back even though that's technically legal where I'm from.
grepfru_it
Range Rover front windows are not tinted from the factory. If your range has tinted front windows, its aftermarket and its a film, not part of the glass. There's so much to the story that OP left out (was the cop eyeballing or did they use the actual tint level detector, why did the cop threaten to take his entire family to the precinct). Its not worth your time to speculate. Don't drive your car with aftermarket tint into NYC, very simple.
steveBK123
So that's pretty wild because within the city, they are epically indifferent to enforcement.
There's been a recent epidemic of defaced / quasi legal out of state registered / fake or illegally purchased paper temp tags so people could avoid tolls and tickets.. largely unenforced by cops as they are often the perpetrators..
https://www.streetsblogprojects.org/ghost-tags-part-1-the-de...
rafram
You have to follow the laws of the place you’re in. The place you’re from is completely irrelevant. They don’t let British people drive on the left in NYC because that’s their local custom, and they don’t let you have illegally tinted windows, either.
midoridensha
Did you miss the part about the OP's windows having a factory tint? They came that way from the factory; it wasn't an aftermarket add-on. So, these windows must therefore be in compliance with the federal rules for motor vehicles, or else the car couldn't be sold in the US.
It should not be possible for a state to pass and enforce motor vehicle laws that override the federal government.
grepfru_it
Did you miss the fact that Land Rover tints rear windows and never the front windows from the factory? Regardless, if you drive to a state that mandates tint at a certain level it doesn't matter what factory it came out of.. you're still breaking the law.
midoridensha
Did you miss the part where the OP said multiple times that this is a factory tint?
Yes, it DOES matter what factory it came from. Cars sold in the US must conform to federal regulations in order to be sold in the US, so it's impossible for a car to be built in a factory and legally sold in the US which is illegal to drive on US roads. No, states cannot override federal regulations.
steveBK123
I'd be curious on the exact veracity. For example, limo tint to which he refers is usually restricted to the rear seats. My European brand SUV also has tinted windows in the rear but not the front.
So is his car truly pure factory, or any chance it was a dealer or aftermarket mod to tint the front to match the rear.. as this is something people commonly do (I did not).
midoridensha
He's specifically said multiple times now that this is a factory tint. I don't know why you and the other guy keep questioning this.
maccard
> and that it was legal in my home state
The great american exceptionalism on show.
QIYGT
Even if the money is lit on fire, the reduction in cars entering the city will be a huge benefit.
steveBK123
I just don't think the pricing is going to meaningfully impact the cars entering the city, nor is it going to reduce the main congestion of ride hailing vehicles on every inch of Manhattan street.
The charge is $23 peak / $17 off-peak. Existing city tunnel tolls are already $17ish.
The fact that Uber publicly supports congestion pricing tells you everything you need to know about how it's going to impact ride hail congestion of our city streets. https://www.uber.com/blog/new-york/uber-supports-congestion-...
There's already a measly $2.75 per ride fee added on for congestion, which is trivial given choosing an Uber vs subway costs $20-50 more than taking the subway.
pkulak
Pricing always effects demand. If it’s not enough, double it next year. Keep doing it until you can have conversation in the greatest city in NA without being drowned out by car horns.
Hikikomori
>We basically need a modern era Robert Moses to consolidate NYC DOT/MTA/Port Authority and whatever other agencies and bring us into the modern era.
Idk about that, maybe a less racist one.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_Broker
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...
steveBK123
Yeah, he was a terrible guy and all.
But stuff got built.
The current inability to build anything is almost a direct result. They delegated decision making to an alphabet soup of agencies at different levels of jurisdiction so it's impossible to get anything done.
Because there are so many agencies, you can't for example easily put in a busway because you need NYC DOT, MTA, NYS DOT, city council and mayor to all be on board.
Too many people have veto, so nothing gets done.
Living in NYC for long, it quickly becomes apparently the vast majority of our built infrastructure was built from 1930-1960 and has frozen in time since.
steveBK123
Another great example is the fact that the BQE cantilever is probably going to collapse before anyone can agree on how to replace it and do so.
So far we have reduced a lane to minimize wear & tear, reduced max tonnage for trucks going over it, and are installing advanced automated ticketing to ticket big trucks attempting to go over it.
That's well and good, but salt water corrosion and bureaucratic inertia are going to get some people killed at this rate. And let's not pretend it can simply be done away with. Where do we expect all the goods & services flowing in/out of the city via truck to go otherwise.. local roads through city streets.. how is this not a significantly worse outcome?
Right now we have a lot of vetos with different agendas - anti-car degrowrethers, NIMBY rich BK Heights owners praying on their lottery ticket if their park expands & view improves, and bureaucrats happy to not have to spend $BBillions to replace the thing.
Sometimes living in NYC feels like the opposite of an headline I once saw re: Japan & Italy, where their strategy was described as "Beautiful decline"... for NYC its Ugly Decline.
"I don't own a car" is often a mantra of folks who think we can simply do away with infra like the BQE for example. People live frictionless lives in their apps, clicking buttons and goods just magically appear at their doorstep. The gritty truth of how those goods get there is another story.
On another note, we apparently are incapable of putting trash in bins, for many reasons. One of which is that the DSNY unions would need to be negotiated with. So for our great push to reduce the rat infestation in the city, we've done the dumbest, least effective, most costliest stuff instead.
Rather than mandating containerized garbage or moving up trash collection times to be overnight, what did the city do? Mandate buildings put out trash after 8pm instead of 6pm. Mind you it's not picked up until 6am. So the rats have a 10 hour feast instead of a 12 hour feast, how does this make a difference?
And what is the cost? Every single building in the city now needs staff schedules shifted or expanded such that their super/porter/maintenance guy is around after 8pm to take out trash. For the city, it's "free", they don't have to budget anything. But for residents, its yet another cost of living with really no benefit.
master_crab
The city’s density makes it impossible for everyone to own a car. So no, the default step shouldn’t be “let’s ensure all the Moses era car infrastructure is maintained.” Moses’s big mistake was not taking into account the idea that a majority of residents might own a car.
Want a good example of Moses’s lack of foresight. Look at photos from the 40’s. You know why they look so different? It’s not the people or the buildings. It’s that not every inch of the curb in the 40’s was dedicated to parallel parking (and fully used) like it is today.
Source: a guy who lives in BK and sits on the community board of one of the districts that the BQE runs through.
steveBK123
The city should abolish or extremely tax all on street parking. Then you could have sensible loading zones for deliveries and garbage containerizing.
That said… given how many trucks bring goods into the city, I don’t see how abolishing the BQE is remotely tenable.
master_crab
Asking for truck-only transit routes does not necessitate a 6-lane BQE.
But that’s a good first step. Lot’s of other Moses era boondoggles also need to be re-imagined
steveBK123
The problem is no one is proposing tenable truck infrastructure when proposing "knock it down". We have dangerous enough roads all over the city, especially Brooklyn & Queens. Look at the tragedy recently in south Brooklyn. Keeping trucks/trade vans/people transiting the borough on a highway and off surface streets is beneficial.
There's lot of infrastructure & services I don't directly use that I don't demand be torn down. I am also aware that I indirectly use lots of infrastructure when I order goods online, buy groceries at the store, have a plumber service my sink, buy furniture, etc.
No one alive in the city today can say the BQE was suddenly foisted upon them.
I live right next to a bridge in the city, I'd have a better view, quieter life, and higher property value if they tore down the bridge. I work remotely so I don't even use it. I don't believe I have the right to tear it down though.
master_crab
No one is asking for bridges to be torn down. But asking to maintain a 60 year old (at its youngest) 6 lane elevated highway through a city is costly (both in dollars and quality of life). So you need to examine what the end goal is.
Elevating (both literally and figuratively) car culture ain’t it.
Also, you aren’t getting rid of truck traffic on surface streets. They still need that last mile. Better traffic control designs on streets will go a longer way then shuttling all trucks to another superhighway in Brooklyn.
(Admittedly though, the situation is different in North NYC. The cross Bronx expressway needs to be re-examined, and a new, possibly larger route, for interstate trucking to CT, RI, and points North is needed.)
steveBK123
I fail to see the distinction between tearing down urban highways and tearing down urban bridges used by cars.
Obviously, the last mile is always going to be on the local road.. but do we want all those trucks going local surface road from the Verrazano to say Greenpoint or Bushwick?
Further, it seems a little too convenient to want highways you live near to be torn down but concede that the other highways far from your neighborhood are necessary, good and in fact.. need expansion?
master_crab
Actually I’m advocating the removal of the cross-Bronx and something in a less dense area or a truck-only traffic pattern.
So not quite the same thing as what you are alluding too.
MrMan
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mwbajor
The hate for Robert Moses by alot of NYC transplants is similar to the hate alot of "IFLS" type people have for Thomas Edison; its misplaced and overplayed.
You're right, I can't really think of anything important built in NYC after ~1955 yet we have a multitude of agencies that are supposed to fix things. The new congestion fees will not be used to build anything useful, perhaps another almost meaningless pedestrian walkway that will somehow cost $10billion to make.
bradleyjg
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nemo44x
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websap
Yup the state of the subway infrastructure is worrisome.
hahahasotrue
I can hear China laughing at us right about now!
Reason077
To be fair, London has looked at the platform screen doors thing a few times too and dismissed it as unaffordable.
New lines get PSDs but there doesn’t seem to be a realistic prospect of retrofitting existing ones any time soon.
steveBK123
And yet NYC having built only a handful of stations in the last 40 years, couldn't be bothered to include them even there.
f33d5173
I imagine the difficulty would be in ensuring that the train lines up exactly with the doors. In that cade, retrofitting would need to apply to the train and control system, not just the platform itself.
devb
That's not the issue. Union Square on the Park Avenue line and the old South Ferry on the 7th Avenue line both had platform "gap fillers" installed decades ago that require the train to stop at an exact location each and every time:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/14th-street-union-square...
Every station has lining boards that the conductor must check before opening the doors to ensure that the entire train is stopped along the platform:
Reason077
London's Jubilee line extension had platform doors since it was opened in December 1999, but the upgrade to automatic train operation wasn't completed until 2011.
So for a long time, drivers had to manually stop the train at alignment points. This did cause occasional delays and problems, but it wasn't unworkable. As a passenger you did sometimes notice that the train doors weren't aligned perfectly with the platform doors. Now days, of course, it stops perfectly every time.
steveBK123
There in lies the rub. Doing things is always harder than not doing things. Agreed.
They built a new line on second Ave with cavernous station mezzanines and couldn’t be bothered with doors there either. Track, signals, trains were all new.
markdown
> We have subway lines & trains wired up for 1 man operation but run them staffed with 2 due to union work rules.
It's a city of 8M people. What's the difference between 1 and 2 here, really?
steveBK123
The inability to find efficiencies is what leads to ever spiraling costs.
And further we have worst of both worlds. We paid for tech infrastructure costs to support lower staffing but are still paying for all the full staffing.
markdown
But it's an absurd claim to make that this multi-billion dollar operation that carries millions of people isn't doing well because trains have one extra person on each train.
SkyPuncher
It’s a weird point, I don’t get it.
The argument is basically “NYC is flooded with transit money, but they can’t use it. Oh by the way, why are there 2 sub drivers?”
The issue OP is making is much larger than 1x or 2x on each train.
throwaway743
Please, let's not have another Robert Moses. Dude was power hungry scumbag
USB5
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cj
See also:
London congestion charge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_congestion_charge
Singapore Electronic Road Pricing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Road_Pricing
Stockholm congestion tax: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_congestion_tax
jmclnx
When I saw London doing that, I expected cities in the US to start that. I am surprised it took so long.
I expected this because of the push of toll roads to make people use EZPASS. Depending upon the City, I think this makes sense.
But, in the US, I wonder if this will cause another mass migration of people out to the suburbs ? In the US, people are more addicted to their SUVs than heron addicts are to their drug.
mattlondon
I worked on the technical implementation of one of the London Congestion Charge contracts many years ago.
It was a huuuuuuge loss for IBM to implement, but I think their position was "we make a loss here, but then just need to do a search-and-replace for "London" to New York/Paris/Tokyo/Los Angeles and profit!" (I.e. no significant extra development). Suffice to say that didn't happen - it was built with zero customisation in mind. I personally blame it on the insistence that SAP was to be used for processing payments etc.
ricktdotorg
interesting! where did the SAP requirement originate? uk.gov not IBM?
mattlondon
I think it was from the client.
bobthepanda
London has it relatively easy; the only layer of government above it is the national one.
Cities in the US are creatures of their respective states, and the swing votes in states are usually the suburban voters who would be most impacted by a charge like this.
—-
It also helps that TfL has a track record of delivering many miles of projects and a future expansion plan. MTA is planning on using this to keep the lights on for another five years, at which point a new source of money has to be found to pay for capital investment. (The plan is currently to bond out the future congestion revenue to pay for today’s capital investments.)
drdec
> London has it relatively easy; the only layer of government above it is the national one.
Is that actually true? I mean, are there no vestiges of England, Scotland and Wales in the UK?
eynsham
Scotland and Wales have devolved governments. England does not. There is no English parliament; there are no English courts—there are English and Welsh courts; there are many English ministers but no ministers in right of England.
The once-English institutions of parliament, the crown, and its ministers became those of Great Britain first and the United Kingdom subsequently. But the remit of the UK government in devolved matters is limited in some cases to some subset of {England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland}, e.g., the first two and the fourth. Those powers are exercised qua the British government, not qua some English, English and Welsh, or English, Welsh, and Northern Irish (i.a.) government, none of which exist.
There is a body of law peculiar to England. It is administered by the English and Welsh courts, from which an appeal may lie to the UK Supreme Court or the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as the case may be.
A large exception to these remarks is the Church of England; the Churches of Ireland and Wales were disestablished in 1869 and 1914 respectively.
desas
Yes for Scotland and Wales but not for England. The discrepancy is known as The West Lothian Question
amiga386
Not really. The West Lothian Question is "why can Scots vote on English laws but not vice-versa?", which wasn't true at the time it was asked (1977), and especially isn't true now.
Firstly, note that all constituent countries elect MPs to the UK's Westminster parliament, because there are many laws that affect the entire country, and are controlled centrally.
Between 1707 and 1997 (20 years _after_ asking the question!), _all_ laws for Scotland were made in Westminster, and voted on by _all_ MPs. Laws for Scotland get their own bills because Scotland retains its own legal system. Likewise Northern Ireland, but _not_ Wales. Wales shares the same legal system as England, which is why the phrase "England and Wales" appears often.
Since Scottish devolution, certain powers were _reserved_ for Westminster, and the rest of the laws for Scotland are now made in a separately elected Scottish parliament. But there are still plenty of laws which affect Scotland, sometimes _exclusively_ affect Scotland due to the reserved powers having the ability to override choices that Scotland has made for itself. Those laws are still made in Westminster, English MPs can still vote on them and easily win, and so Scots still need representation in the Westminster parliament.
The main part of the West Lothian question, which is where there are sometimes laws that _exclusively_ affect England and Wales, why do Scottish MPs get to vote on them?, was handled by the Scottish MPs voluntarily not voting on them. They managed to do this for centuries without any formal process. Then after the 2015 election, the UK government brought in the EVEL process (English Votes for English Laws), which gave English MPs a "veto" on laws that only affected England. Since the pandemic, Westminster chose to drop EVEL, presumably because the voluntary system of Scottish MPs abstaining from voting on England-only bills worked just fine!
What's relevant for this discussion is that _London_ has an elected mayor, which makes it a special case. It has its own autonomy, within England, which supposedly doesn't have any special carve outs unlike Scotland/Wales/NI... in reality, it has quite a few: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directly_elected_mayors_in_Eng...
pakyr
>The main part of the West Lothian question, which is where there are sometimes laws that _exclusively_ affect England and Wales, why do Scottish MPs get to vote on them?, was handled by the Scottish MPs voluntarily not voting on them. They managed to do this for centuries without any formal process.
Did they? Wikipedia says this:
> In establishing foundation hospitals and increasing student tuition fees in England, Scottish votes were decisive in getting the measures through.[10] The vote on foundation hospitals in November 2003 only applied to England – had the vote been restricted to English MPs then the government would have been defeated.[11] Had there been a vote by English MPs only on tuition fees in January 2004, the government would have lost because of a rebellion on their own benches.[12]
amiga386
While Wikipedia does note that, I'd say those are two pretty rare examples of shenanigans out of several centuries of daily politicking.
In another case of shenanigans, it's an established procedure that if you can't physically turn up to the HoC to give your vote, you find an opponent and pair off with them, they abstain in order to give the equivalent outcome of you turning up to vote. What if they go back on their promise and vote anyway? It happened: https://theconversation.com/pairing-and-why-it-matters-in-th... - has anything been done about it? Not really.
The politics of Westminster are not in the habit of looking at every infraction and locking down process tightly. If Scottish MPs habitually voted on English-only legislation, and if it affected the outcome (which is very rare indeed as there are only 59 Scottish MPs versus 533 English MPs), there would be more concern, but as they generally don't and it generally doesn't, the formal process giving English MPs a veto on English-only legislation only lasted 5 years out of the past 316.
griffinkelly
Does the revenue go to the state of NY, NYC or the federal government? I imagine a split between all if it needed federal approval?
bobthepanda
It needs federal approval because it covers interstate crossings.
epc
Current plan is for revenue to accrue to the MTA, a public benefit corporation owned by NY State.
cronix
There's also the county government layer that cities must adhere to in addition to state/national.
SllX
Hmm, depends a lot on the State.
You can generally make two generalizations about local governments in the United States: they are local governments and you can’t make any other generalizations about them because everything depends on the State and sometimes a locality’s specific circumstances.
In California, municipalities do not adhere to the counties they are in, the county is a legal subdivision of the State which might also have a charter and cities are municipal corporations with a monopoly on the land use within their cities. School districts are also a form of local government here, as are special purpose districts like BART.
In some parts of New England, and I’m not going to go into specifics because when I looked into this more than 10 years ago this had changed or some States were changing it, the State is divided into counties and the counties were divided into townships which are the basis of the New England township system. Somewhere in there, there are also cities, and Maine has a couple of severely underpopulated places designated as Plantations.
So, congestion pricing in the US: NYC, LA, San Francisco and probably Seattle absolutely have the power to this if they wanted to, although I’ll say for San Francisco that would have made a lot more sense to try before the pandemic than now, cuz now, well now downtown is dead so what would it really do? Fairly certain Boston could as well. Everywhere else, I’m less certain, like in Texas I’m fairly certain cities there could, but I’m also fairly certain the Texan legislature under their own laws has the power to step in and go “No. None of that. Shame on you.”
throw3823423
In practice, there are no explicit constitutional protections for municipalities. So really, it's all states that can stomp on municipal legislation with impunity if they really felt like it. There might be a state constitution or two on the way, but those are easy to change, and many a state government is capable of either outright ignore constitutional changes brought in by voters, or do some aggressive deception in the drafting of summaries for constitutional propositions as to make them seem to do the opposite of what they really do. See a recent, pro-gerrymandering change to the Missouri constitution, which talked about independent commissions and cutting political donations, but really overrode earlier anti-gerrymandering language, and gave the governor total control over the process.
So broadly, the rights of local governments only go as far as the whims of the state government and the courts anyway, across the board.
SllX
There you go making generalizations about 50 separate sovereign entities with 50 different legislatures, constitutions and court systems independent of each other.
But yes, legislatures can change laws on a whim, which is quite a bit more of a process than when I do something on a whim. Given the half-a-hundred entities that are the subject of your comment, some variability in the laws and political processes creating different outcomes depending on their jurisdiction is an expected result.
Spooky23
NYC can only do it if granted the home rule authority by the state legislature - which it has.
In general, counties are pretty weak in New York.
SllX
You see, this kind of thing is why I led with this:
"You can generally make two generalizations about local governments in the United States: they are local governments and you can’t make any other generalizations about them because everything depends on the State and sometimes a locality’s specific circumstances."
That is good intel though. I thought NY was a home rule state, but is that only for municipalities which have had home rule enabled by legislation? This table doesn't really go into that many specifics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_rule_in_the_United_States
bobthepanda
Effectively home rule exists at the mercy of state legislation in NY due to the current legal precedents around the state constitution.
One weird NYC thing is that it is the only city I am aware of in the US that sits above the county level. The five boroughs are the five counties and mostly used for administrative management, since four of the boroughs are million plus cities in and of themselves; but the boroughs have no lawmaking powers.
bpye
London and unitary authorities don't have a county above them.
ghaff
I assumed that was in the context of the US. Country governments in the US vary a lot in how powerful they are from being mostly a judicial unit or organization to being pretty powerful (e.g. parishes in Louisiana).
bobthepanda
New York City, which is implementing this, is a bit of a weird case in that it actually sits above the counties, not below them. New York's five boroughs are technically five counties.
stefan_
Migration to cities is whats causing this. When it was just black people homes you had to bulldoze to build your freeway straight to downtown there was obviously no concern. Now that people living downtown are rich and powerful they are starting to wonder why a huge chunk of prime space is reserved for storage of suburbian commuter metal boxes.
LeanderK
not only this, it just decreases quality of life in the downtown. You want less space for cars, less traffic, less noise, less pollution, less parking and more bike lanes, public spaces, space for outside dining on former parking places etc.
mortenjorck
A huge part of of why London could pull it off is the exceptional state of the Underground. It’s not hard to wean off cars when the alternative is a clean, fast, modern train a short walk away. NYC is going to have an uphill battle getting the MTA to anywhere near that level, and the MTA itself is already leagues ahead of any other transit system in the US.
I would love to see London-tier transit in the United States, but until our bureaucracies can solve about a dozen or so hard problems, plans like this will remain all stick, no carrot.
whack
I've taken both the Underground and the MTA and you're overstating the difference. Aesthetically, the Underground is far better, no question. But most commuters are focused on functionality. And functionally the MTA is just as good, if not better.
The trains run extremely frequently - every few minutes during the day on weekdays. The parallel local-express tracks give the MTA a big speed advantage. And the inside of the MTA trains are extremely spacious compared to the Underground.
muh_gradle
I live in NYC, have taken the tube when I lived in London. I've also lived in other cities like Seoul, Tokyo with superior public transportation. The "aesthetics" aspect that you describe is an incredible understatement. The nearest MTA station is covered in feces and used syringes and I'm not exaggerating. Trains are constantly late. Apparently building a barrier and a gate on the platform is a 10 year, trillion dollar project. I have to put my back to a wall because I'm worried some crazy person will push me onto the track. Yeah, I wouldn't concur with the statement on MTA being so functional.
rafram
I have literally never seen a subway station “covered in feces and used syringes” - or even one single syringe in a station - in my life. How many times have you actually ridden the subway?
muh_gradle
Have you ever visited the 155th station? Maybe you should actually try living in the city before talking. Or maybe Penn station which is next to the biggest methadone clinic in the city. If you think that I'm saying the station is literally covered from floor to ceiling with feces and syringes, then no that's not what I'm saying. But maybe you're just so comfortable with the griminess that it doesn't bother you.
rafram
I live in New York City, but no, I haven’t spent time in a random local station near Sugar Hill. Not sure why that would invalidate the rest of my experience. Penn Station is fine. Methadone is taken orally (as a drink) to treat addiction and no syringes are involved, so the methadone clinic wouldn’t have anything to do with syringes in the station.
spamtarget
No matter where you live, the subway elevators always pull double duty as restrooms, and I've never stepped into one without feeling that pungent scent of urine. But hey, you're absolutely right, the subway is just peachy.
muh_gradle
> Penn Station is fine.
Yeah you either don't live in NYC, or you just have a lower standard for basic hygiene. But let's agree to disagree.
steveBK123
Exactly. I worked across the street for 2 years and the things I saw there on a weekly basis were interesting to say the last. My wife worked a block away for 4 years, same story.
Was also the first place I saw an extremely locked down Duane Reade where I had to ask for help to get almost any product off the shelf. Understandable, given the above.
nimbleplum40
Huh, what station? I also live in NYC but haven’t seen any subway stations nearly that bad. Grimy, definitely. But never what you’re describing.
Reason077
> ”MTA trains are extremely spacious compared to the Underground”
Depends what line you’re talking about. Deep tube lines are indeed pretty small due to the narrow tubes they run in. But the sub-surface lines (District, Circle, Metropolitan, etc) are comparable to NYC subway dimensions.
And have you tried our new 200m long Elizabeth line trains?
steveBK123
Yup, for example, I live in Brooklyn .. an area with multi-million dollar apartments. And yet, my nearest subway station has had 2 murders in the last 2 years. And I am talking about weekday, 6~8pm timeslot on train or platform. One was a shooting the other was a stabbing.
Were they drug/crime related & therefore targeted, so "well don't worry if you aren't a drug dealer". Sure, maybe! But also, shootings frequently have bystanders hit, as for example the outdoor cafe 2 blocks from said subway did during our covid crime spike.
Does it speak to a general level of violent crime happening in/near subways - obviously yes.
Do I think the city is a mad max chaotic wasteland of death? No. Do I want my subway station that I / my wife transit through a dozen times a week to have less murder? Yes.
NYC urbanists have an incredible level of Stockholm Syndrome with this city and cannot let their guard down to admit there are problems in need of solving that are not entirely "from the left".
dataviz1000
Mass migration to Statin Island, Brooklyn, and Flushing.
I've been interested in cities with rail trails and the like. For example, San Antonio with the many mile extension of the Riverwalk along the San Antonio river and Atlanta with the Belt Line have created non motorized vehicle corridors through the respective cities which have spurred incredible amounts of mixed use development for miles on each side of the walking, peddle biking pathways. The most expensive real estate butting the pathway with bars, restaurants, yoga studies in the lower levels of the new buildings and with less and less expensive real estate pushing away from the sides of the path ways out words. Rather than having concentration of wealth at a circular center, the concentration is linear which has a side effect of having lower income house available in closer proximity to the wealthy areas.
jen20
“Statin Island” is funnier than perhaps you realize!
Spooky23
It’s going to kill the city. It’s just going to push businesses out at a bad time.
This doesn’t have anything to do with traffic - it’s a way to try to extract more money for the MTA. Money won’t fix the MTA’s money woes; the unions will just slurp any available cash.
acdha
Every time cities encourage people to drive less, it has immediate benefits for quality of life and health. I’d be shocked if this is more than a rounding error on the impact of telework, especially since prioritizing residents over commuters frees up a ton of real estate for desperately needed housing.
nimbleplum40
I think you’re vastly overestimating how many people commute into lower manhattan via car.
Spooky23
If nobody is driving, why is it congested? New York City is the hub of a region that represents like a quarter of the US population. Like many other regions, you start cutting off the hub and the central business district dies.
Commuting is one aspect. Tourism. Business meetings. Medical care. I live in Queens. Getting a family member to MSK for treatment or getting a meeting in the city via public transit is a 4 hour odyssey.
End of the day, folks are gonna say “fuck it” and move to Jersey.
nimbleplum40
I’m not saying “no one is driving.” Clearly they are or there wouldn’t be such horrible gridlock in lower Manhattan. I’m just very skeptical of the claim that congestion pricing in one of the densest urban environments in the world will “kill the city.”
I work in lower manhattan (in a high-income field). I don’t know of a single coworker that drives into work. Most of my friends also work in lower Manhattan. None of them drive to work.
Many other cities have implemented congestion pricing without killing their economies.
If businesses really do require employees to drive into lower Manhattan instead of taking transit, for most profitable businesses it will not be an issue to cover the additional cost.
I feel for you in Queens. I think we should absolutely expand public transit access. But that takes money. Congestion pricing provides (at least some of) that money.
Spooky23
So you never use cabs or Uber?
My point is, which is definitely not being expressed well by me is that that are millions of exceptions and cost/convenience escalations that are going to impact lots of people and increase the friction and hassle of the place.
nimbleplum40
> So you never use cabs or Uber?
Rarely. Less than once a month.
I get what you’re saying, but there’s lots of friction/hassle associated with all of the cars too. Walk or bike around lower Manhattan on a weekend morning before all of the cars roll in. It’s so pleasant! No honking, no risk of getting run over at every intersection, etc. Biking especially is way better. And for those that do have to drive it’s way better and quicker for them too!
Every time someone drives into lower Manhattan they make life slightly worse for the hundreds of thousands of people that live or visit the area. I don’t want to ban cars, but I think it’s totally fine to discourage driving there.
rafram
> I live in Queens. Getting a family member to MSK for treatment or getting a meeting in the city via public transit is a 4 hour odyssey.
I feel like I’m going insane reading this! There is nowhere in Queens that’s more than two hours from midtown Manhattan by public transit, and pretty much everywhere besides Far Rockaway is under an hour. Do you commute by car into Manhattan every single time? Have you ever actually tried public transit? If you think it’s a “4 hour odyssey,” you’re in for a very pleasant surprise.
Spooky23
2 + 2 = 4.
Try taking a bus to a train then walking 6-10 blocks with a patient requiring the services of MSK. It’s difficult.
Off-peak, it takes about 20-40 minutes via car.
Commuting to the city for the daily grind is totally different. That’s what everyone thinks about - if you don’t have a conventional schedule or have a need that isn’t daily commute, your needs may be different. There are millions of trips every week like that.
post-it
Tourists certainly don't drive in Manhattan. They don't want to get stuck.
LeanderK
Isn't it easier for tourists to just take public transit instead of renting a car? You probably won't find parking next to the empire state building...
post-it
Much easier. I've only visited NYC twice, and both times I took transit into Manhattan. The first time, on my way out of NYC, I accidentally drove over a bridge into Manhattan and it was very stressful.
himinlomax
> It’s going to kill the city. It’s just going to push businesses out at a bad time.
It's going to do the exact opposite. Every city in Europe that has implemented measure to discourage or even BAN cars in some areas has experienced positive economic outcomes. Of course, every single time people like you had predicted that it would be bad for business.
LeanderK
I think it's the other way around. The death of the city is when you see it as dependent on the suburbs, it places transportation and ease of access over quality of life. To see big cities thrive means increasing quality of live so that working remotely and other changes will not mean abandonment, but just an easier life inside the city because it results less traffic and more spaces for people, restaurants, cultural institutions and parks.
A conglomeration of office-towers surrounded by suburbs with major arteries leading traffic in and out is not a real city.
Spooky23
Makes sense for Cleveland. NYC is a different animal. It’s really a conglomeration of cities surrounded by suburbs that are bigger than most US cities.
Jolter
I suppose you have a better idea for financing the investments, instead of congestion tax?
miley_cyrus
He's saying it's not going to finance any "investments" - the extra money is just going to the unions.
Jolter
I’d love to hear more about that. US unions seem broken in such interesting ways. Are they generally seen as a cost driver, apart from working to raise salaries and pensions?
xen2xen1
Hasn't the state also been directly taking money meant for mass transit in general for years?
Spooky23
Lol no. The State through various schemes has been propping up the MTA for years. The bridges and tunnels (rightly) subsidize the mass transit. The state also imposed an additional sales tax for people 100 miles away to raise more revenue.
The MTA’s woes are death from a thousand cuts.
Spooky23
Few ideas:
Structure the fares to charge a premium for low volume riders. Work two days a week? Pay for 5.
Collect fares.
Raise bridge tolls.
Drop construction cost drivers. Change liability laws, reduce MWBE requirements, mandated staffing levels, etc.
There’s lots of potential areas. Just politically expensive to do.
Jolter
What problem would you solve by a “drive twice, pay for five” scheme?
I think that would incentivize people to drive more, not less.
Spooky23
The same problem that congestion pricing aims to solve - more revenue for the MTA.
Reason077
> “But, in the US, I wonder if this will cause another mass migration of people out to the suburbs ?”
If anything, I’d say the opposite is true in London. Reduced traffic levels and cleaner air are making the centre a more desirable place to be than ever. If only it were more affordable!
milsorgen
You sir, know nothing of heroin and it's work.
beebeepka
Or maybe you underestimate the addiction to cars? Because I've seen plenty of both and I find the comparison apt
samstave
Re: Singapore - Have you ever been to Singapore -- _ALL_ their public transport/flow control systems are #1 in the world IMO ;
* The roads are pristine
* The take city planning to the next level (anecdote at end)
* Vehicles cost a boatload - but thats because all other transport is amazing
--
Singapore is a hot a humid climate - a small city-state with lateral constraints.
But they new that they were going to double their population in the next few decades, so they built up and down.
There are massive walkways under the city that are basically large mall-tunnels, that have shops along the way.
The city was really smart in setting large setbacks between road and building such that greenery, plants and general aesthetics are wonderful.
Their freeway / road over-passes generall have planter boxes along the sides - so instead of prison-fencing style over-passes, such as the US', even the freeway and most roads are beautiful to drive on.
The trains, ferries etc - put the entirety of the US public transit system in the toilet.
csomar
The roads in Singapore are okay but nothing in their infrastructure is spectacular. Where Singapore wins is coverage. They have a pretty good coverage of the whole city but this is not unique to Singapore. Paris has good coverage too. So does Tokyo.
Imo, Singapore was hyped too much and also it doesn’t scale (it’s a small island city)
nemo44x
Singapore is the model system but it’s a hard sell here. The delusion that the modern Western way is the best is very deeply engrained here. People have completely internalized the rottenness of it and have deluded themselves into believing it’s a virtue.
fy20
It's worth mentioning that London has three types of road user fees:
- Congestion charge, which applies to everyone, except residents, driving in the centre of London during weekdays
- Low Emissions Zone charge, which applies to everyone driving a vehicles older than emissions class Euro 5 (2009) inside nearly all of London
- Ultra Low Emissions Zone charge, which applies to everyone driving a vehicle older than emissions class Euro 6 (2015) inside the centre of London
And to make things even more fun: If you do not have automatic billing setup you are required to pay online on the day you trigger the fee. If you are even a day late, you will face penalties of hundreds or thousands of pounds, depending on your vehicle class.
throwaway2037
Your last paragraph is overstated... by a lot.
About late fees, I found this: https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/congestion-charge/paying-th...
The daily charge is £15 if you pay in advance or on the same day, or £17.50 by midnight of the third day after travel. If you don't pay by midnight on the third day after travel in the zone, you will receive a Penalty Charge Notice (PCN).
If your vehicle is involved in a contravention on the red route, you'll be sent a Penalty Charge Notice (PCN) for £160. You need to pay this within 28 days. If you pay this within 14 or 21 days (it will say on the PCN), the amount will be reduced to £80.QasimK
That’s not right because it implies that only new cars since 2015 can drive inside the ULEZ.
The ULEZ standard requires diesel cars to conform to Euro 6, available since 2015 - the diesel emissions scandal notwithstanding. (The in-practice standards for diesel cars are much much more lenient than for petrol cars.)
The ULEZ standard requires petrol cars to conform to only Euro 4, required since 2005 but some cars manufactured as early as 2001 meet the standard including my 2002 MINI.
This means relatively few people are actually affected by ULEZ, compared to the implication that you need a car manufactured from 2015 onwards.
superseeplus
A big proportion of the opposition is coming from New Jersey where former Governor Chris Christie systematically diverted public transit funding to constructing more roads leaving NJ Transit with a maintenance backlog, inadequate infrastructure and unhappy workers who were poached by the MTA. This resulted in a mismatch where the infrastructure is designed to favor driving on one side of the river and a fee designed to discourage driving and encourage public transit on the other side.
bilalq
There's more reason for NJ residents to take issue with this. In central jersey, it costs at least $20/person for a round trip ticket. If you go with your family or a group of friends filling a 5 seat car, the train costs $100 just to get into the city and then get hit with whatever additional costs you have for the next few subway rides. Gas, parking, and carpool bridge/tunnel toll prices don't add up to anywhere near that amount.
The reality is that this ends up being a regressive plan where high income earners benefit and everyone else just has to deal with increased burdens.
comte7092
Regressive if you ignore all of the other costs associated with driving.
Drivers always love to make this argument, but it presupposes that everyone already owns and insures a car.
At the end of the day it’s car dependence that is regressive.
ericmay
Yea it also ignores that if everybody stopped riding the $100 train then you’d never actually be able to drive into the city, let alone park anywhere for under $100.
Also, this is a deliberate choice. They can improve train services and lower costs. Idk why people who ostensibly are market oriented are so fixated on current prices and assuming they can’t change or be improved upon. Germany is an example $49 for a ticket for all (I think) transit.
Another thing while I’m at it - how much does your car, insurance, gas, maintenance, tires, and other things cost? How much money per month are you paying to pay for the roads and highways? Etc. It’s hard to do a fair apples to apples comparison here either way.
cogman10
Yeah, everyone also ignores that public transport can be supported through taxes and operated at a loss.
In the US, we have a weird obsession with all public goods/services paying for themselves. We should ditch that, operate at a loss, and pull the difference out of progressive taxes.
There's no reason your CEO or office shouldn't foot part of the bill to transport you into work.
Heck, were I king I'd fund public transport 100% from taxes and do away with ticketing. Imagine how much less money we'd pay on road maintenance, police doing traffic duty, running ticket stands/etc. Not to mention the air quality improvements and environmental impacts.
mikepurvis
The weirdness of the obsession is even stranger when you compare it to basically any other public service. Like, are schools supposed to pay for themselves? Airports? City infrastructure like streets, parks, and rec centers? The military?
No, of course not. All of these things are essentials for the which the benefits are felt across the economy, but those benefits are far too diffuse to be individually tallied up and toll-boothed— which is of course why they are (generally) financed out of the general tax base rather than by private industry.
jrockway
I've heard an argument that schools are supposed to pay for themselves. The idea is that people who go to school end up in a higher tax bracket, so it's an investment, not merely public good. Similar arguments are made for parks and recreation; more open space, less noise, so less stress-induced heart attacks, which means more years being a taxpayer.
I think this is a toxic way of thinking of things, but I guess it allows even the most greedy politician to live with himself for not opposing schools.
AnthonyMouse
But then you can make the same argument about transit. It facilitates people coming into the city to engage in taxable activities.
mikepurvis
Exactly— that's a "diffuse" benefit, and indeed the same logic that most of the world also applies to healthcare, though introducing that to a US-centric discussion just muddies the waters, for obvious reasons.
Reason077
In much of the world, yes, airports are supposed to pay for themselves through landing charges, retail, etc.
In many countries, airports are privately owned and operated and make a profit. The US is, perhaps, a bit unusual in that airports are owned by governments and often subsidised.
AmpsterMan
Honestly though, you see a strong movement, especially on the right, to privatize and have those perks "pay for themselves" all the time. I've been to many state parks that require an entry fee, many city parks that require a parking fee (and are impossible to get to ootherwise). School vouchers are a first step toward full privatization of schooling.
I agree with your sentiment but let's not forget that people have been trying to fence off the commons for ages now.
yurishimo
> There's no reason your CEO or office shouldn't foot part of the bill to transport you into work.
This is how it works in the Netherlands. Transportation to and from work is required to be paid by the employer, and importantly, the employee gets to decide how they commute.
If I want to take the train from the other side of the country everyday, my employer needs to foot the bill. With a subscription, this is around €350/month for a 2nd class ticket. If I want to drive, the company must pay the kilometer rate set by the government.
To help control costs, some employers may offer company cars to employees, but in my experience it is mostly used as an employment benefit and a tax write-off. Both parties save on the tax burden while the employee also gets access to cheap and reliable transportation.
If the US implemented a requirement to reimburse employees for their travel to and from work, the amount of public infrastructure would explode.
The average commute is about 20 miles; 40 x 40 cents = $16/day (there and back). $80/week or $320 per month for an employee that lives, on average, pretty close to where they work.
A unlimited pass for the Dallas TX public transit system is $192/mo. So an employer could save 50% of the transportation costs by encouraging employees to ride the light-rail and the bus.
Unfortunately, we all know that there's a lot more that goes into incentivizing people to use public transportation. Walkable destinations, sidewalks, mixed zoning, etc etc all play into the decision, but if 3000 people are lining up to outside the same bus stop every day, some business is going to open up nearby to take advantage of the increased foot traffic.
To bring this back around, forcing employers to pay for transportation is a good way to incentivize public transit by making the companies goals in line with that of the municipality. If the city has better public transportation infrastructure, everybody wins!
MandieD
The 49 EUR/month ticket in Germany covers all local transit, and you can generally piece together regional trains to get across the country if you’re patient, but it doesn’t cover the InterCity Express, InterCity, or some long-distance regional trains.
So it’s a good way not to worry about how Berlin transit pricing works if you’ve already have a Deutschlandticket to cover a Nuremberg-area commute, but getting to Berlin from Nuremberg still requires an ICE ticket… or a lot of patience.
blkhawk
I agree - takes almost 3 times as long than with an ICE.
It might be interesting to people that if you buy early enough the prices get stupidly cheap. I bought a ticket in march for May and the ticket for a Nuremberg - Frankfurt ICE would have only cost me 12,90EUR. I splurged for 1st class (instead of just seat reservation) at 22,90EUR.
So if you say visit Germany by plane you are probably booking that early as well - do yourself a favor and just book a couple of train trips early as well. That way you can save on car rental for a couple of days. The website to buy train tickets at is bahn.de
MandieD
Price orientation for those of you who don't regularly use German trains: the impulse buy price for me for this route today, a BahnCard 50 holder, is 35.50 EUR, while it would be 71.00 EUR without the annual discount card, which is expensive enough that it only makes sense for people who live here and use long-distance trains a fair bit.
tshaddox
> Another thing while I’m at it - how much does your car, insurance, gas, maintenance, tires, and other things cost? How much money per month are you paying to pay for the roads and highways?
Not to mention the driver’s costs are artificially reduced because they benefits from externalities that are distributed across everyone, particularly pollution and climate change. Driving would be a tad more expensive if you had to pay for carbon sequestration for every gallon of gas you burn.
lotsoweiners
Even better would be if office workers whose jobs can be done from home could fill out paperwork to pass along that carbon sequestration to their employer when they are required to come into the office. Why let the companies that are responsible for all of the transport and traffic off the hook?
ericmay
Very neat idea. I think if employers were required to realize economic impacts of commutes they’d be a lot more open and judicious about who they require to come in to the office. Being able to effectively price in the cost of the commute and potentially saving money via tax credits or something is cool.
On the other hand this presents a bit of a problem for, say, Boeing or Honda or Caterpillar who require workers to physically be present. I guess you could argue well then they should figure it out, but that probably results in private transit infrastructure and company towns and those probably aren’t a good path either.
One thing that kind of sits in the back of my mind is that you can effectively create a rat race about going to the office since ostensibly the C-suite team will have the company pay for their commute and then so on and so on as more people demand the company privilege of being able to go to the office.
mrkstu
That doesn't address the underlying issue of family groups being priced out of transportation options altogether.
superseeplus
NJ Transit allows kids under 11 to travel free with a fare paying adult on weekends and holidays. MTA charges them $1 but makes the discount always available.
mike22
How do you get the $1 price for kids in 2023? Currently the rule is “Up to three children under 44 inches tall ride for free when they’re with a fare-paying adult.” https://new.mta.info/fares
speakfreely
> Drivers always love to make this argument, but it presupposes that everyone already owns and insures a car.
Have you ever been to New Jersey? The entire state is set up to make it as difficult as possible to live without a car.
comte7092
That’s the point.
Why does New York have to accommodate New Jersey and not the other way around?
nemo44x
Because people from NJ put billions into the NY every year via income tax (no reciprocity with NY, hell they’re even coming after new work from home people) and tons of tourism etc. Its in NY’s best interest to accommodate NJ.
LeanderK
but on the other side people living in NY have to endure it. You can not just make the people living downtown dependent on the woes of the commuters. I can not imagine driving into NY as a large share of commuting mobility to make sense...it's just too big and dense
umanwizard
Yes, but it’s complicated by the fact that a lot of infrastructure funding is done at the federal level, which should in principle care about people in NY and NJ equally.
comte7092
We aren’t talking about infrastructure in general though, we are talking about a relatively small area in Manhattan.
umanwizard
At least one of the entry points to that relatively small area is a border crossing between NJ and NY, so I think even if the feds don’t own the infrastructure involved (IDK if they do or not), they at least had to sign off on it.
comte7092
Just because infrastructure crosses a state boundary, doesn’t mean it requires federal sign off.
SSLy
Excuse my European understanding, but isn't it the state's right to make such policy, and isn't it NY's not to care about it too?
throw3823423
This is a great example of how, even when one buys the idea of giving rights to individual states over the federal government, the US state borders are rather unnatural. Someone living in Jersey City and someone living in Manhattan have an incredible amount of shared economic interests. However, the Manhattan resident shares a state government with people living in Buffalo instead. This happens in plenty if places in the US: We have more than one multi-state megalopolis, and along with it, metro areas over a million residents that are split in such a way that they count little in their respective state governments.
In most of Europe, borders have had a whole lot of time to align economic development and political organization. But the US, unlike its corporations, is against reorgs. The fact that we even get to discuss state rights for something that could be a municipal matter is, in itself, a problem.
comte7092
Yes. NY and NJ are fully independent and equal sovereign entities from one another. In general, most of the public road infrastructure is built and maintained by state and local governments (though there is some federal funding provided). Same with public transportation.
The main complication comes from the interaction between the states and the federal government.
ryukafalz
It's unevenly distributed. I live in a suburb of Philadelphia and I can generally get around by bike, with a relatively frequent train into the city. I use my car something like once a week.
Just north of me is a car sewer though, so your point stands.
knorker
And that's the problem. Not any fees NY may introduce.
mwbajor
NYC transplants always like to make this argument.
I would rather see lots of smaller cars and more ridesharing services. I think that would be even better than trains. Its my unpopular opinion but I would say in an ideal world, get rid of the trains. NYC is a perfect place to roll out a driverless car taxi service. You can make it so that you don't need to own a car but when you're traveling with people there is no argument; a car is better however you get it.
I've lived in the NYC area my whole life and somehow, its always the people that just moved here from ohio or california that come up with the half-baked traffic solutions and push them.
nimbleplum40
That’s not even remotely feasible. There isn’t nearly enough road space to accommodate all of the trips via train right now.
mwbajor
"That’s not even remotely feasible"
Strong words, how do YOU know?
Get rid of buses and trains and replace them with 3 types of vehicles, 2 person, 4 person and 8 person. Keep reserves of vehicles in the train tunnels.
How can the contributors of HN not see a perfect application for variable packet sizes?
nimbleplum40
Would you also ban all private automobiles? I don't know how you're going to accommodate 1.3 million _extra_ car trips per day that currently (well, pre-covid) are handled by just the Lexington Avenue line alone. That's an insane amount of traffic. Streets would be completely gridlocked.
nemo44x
Everyone in NJ already has a car though so it’s not material to the discussion.
comte7092
1. Everyone does not own a car in NJ, just the vast majority.[0]
2. The discussion is about NYC, not NJ, so it is material to the discussion.
[0] 11% of households in New Jersey have no access to a car, see https://www.valuepenguin.com/auto-insurance/car-ownership-st...
nemo44x
The parent you replied to was talking about NJ and people in NJ who own cars being accommodated by NY. Your comment was about how people choosing to drive in don’t consider the cost of buying a car. I’m saying no one buys a car to drive in. They already have one because having a car is awesome if you live in NJ.
90% is just about everyone. There are poor people that can’t afford cars and also NJ has cities like Hoboken and Jersey City that are more like being in NYC.
comte7092
10% is an absolutely huge number when we are talking about making public policy, you can’t just round that up.
nemo44x
What else do 90% of people agree upon? We should put 90% of transit funds to car things but we don’t. That 10% is basically over served when you look at it this way.
But yeah policy should be built around what 90% of people think. In this case it’s that people want cars. And it makes sense because they make life so much better.
comte7092
I have a car but that doesn’t mean I want things built around cars. I have a car because I need it not because I want it. Having to have a car makes my life actively worse.
You’re making a significant leap by assuming that car ownership implies car support.
lr4444lr
A substantial majority of outer borough households own a car compared to much wealthier median income non car owning Manhattanites. It is regressive.
polygamous_bat
It's because the public transit in outer boroughs tends to be much worse.
steveBK123
Yes, and that's sort of the point. We have become unable to build transit infrastructure due to cost disease.
Making it worse for cars in the short term without any concept of how we will make transit better is not great.
Sure we're going to collect money.. estimated at $1B/year, and then what? More $3B/mile boondoggles? Maybe we'll have a new subway line funded by the year 2100.
np-
You really think traffic is filled with 5 people in a car? Try looking around in a traffic jam, it’s like 95% 1-2 people occupancy. At 5 people, just paying the congestion charge starts to make sense. Also you could always split the difference, driving some of the way and parking along the PATH line, ie at Harrison parking is $10-15 per day and PATH fare is $2.75 per person, it’s still possible to get in cheaper and faster by public transit even in contrived situations like this.
Waterluvian
Heyyyyyy!… It should be $100 minus $20 per extra person in the car.
woodruffw
In addition to what others have said: everything you've said is a reason to lower end-user public transit costs, not lower car tolls. A well-structured scheme here would simultaneously disincentivize individual car traffic and use some of the funds from that disincentivization to subsidize public transit.
twelve40
yeah, but - guess what? - nobody is even talking about it, just inventing new ways to punish the car owners offering no improved options.
jasonpbecker
Managing to leave out parking costs, which could easily be $50 in a garage is very convenient.
Also, I'd eat my shoe if more than 5% of cars entering Manhattan had 5 people in them. I'd guess the number is sub 0.5%.
paulgb
Yep. I used to work next to the Holland tunnel and the vast, vast majority of cars leaving the city at rush hour have exactly one occupant.
superseeplus
But if there are 5 people in a car, the congestion pricing ends up costing each person less than it would cost someone driving alone. In a way, this discourages people using the road space inefficiently in favor of people like you and your friends who are using it more efficiently.
lwhi
Congestion charges work.
They discourage journeys taken by car; reducing traffic, easing pollution and improving health.
exhilaration
This is great for New Jersey, let's keep those dining and tourism dollars local, build up more businesses, create jobs so people don't have to commute to NYC. Time to bring in a new NBA team!
jccalhoun
that would be true if it was all of New York City and not just part of Manhattan and only during certain times.
diebeforei485
If there's 5 people in the car, clearly the optimal solution is to pay the congestion fee. You'll also have less traffic to deal with.
freebee56
I live in NJ and in work downtown Manhattan. No one is commuting by car into downtown Manhattan. The rich take a helicopter. PATH is $5 per person roundtrip without discount. The only people (with enough time on their hands) going to that area by car are tourists, party goers, and college students. For businesses (e.g. trucks) the toll cost will be minimal.
oilchange
> In central jersey, it costs at least $20/person for a round trip ticket. If you go with your family or a group of friends filling a 5 seat car, the train costs $100 just to get into the city and then get hit with whatever additional costs you have for the next few subway rides. Gas, parking, and carpool bridge/tunnel toll prices don't add up to anywhere near that amount.
Drive to a PATH station in newark, hoboken, jersey city, etc. Take the PATH train to manhattan and save $75. Profit.
kevin_thibedeau
The opposition from NJ is the double dipping of already high bridge and tunnel tolls along with the new congestion toll. They also have a really meager fixed discount for motorcycles which has diminished in value as the tolls have risen over the years.
Jolter
Why should motorcycles have a discount? How big should it be in your opinion, and why?
chrisweekly
Not OP but: mcycles don't contribute as much to congestion given their smaller size and maneuverability. Also they get about 50mpg.
throw__away7391
Motorcycles should be charged according to the decibel volume of their engine.
eyelidlessness
I’m extraordinarily noise sensitive and I find this appealing for emotional reasons. But I don’t think it’s good policy nonetheless. IME motorcycle drivers are generally among the most respectful about the noise they make, relative to all drivers of all vehicle types. They scoot through and move on.
I’d definitely like to charge drivers for their relative noise impact, but I’d start with the recreational sports car drivers and work my way up to industrial vehicle operators who don’t seem to give any fucks, before I even bat an eye at anyone on two wheels.
durumu
In NYC specifically, by far the loudest vehicles are dirt bikes — people ride them through streets with absolutely no regard for safety or pedestrians, running reds and honking and revving their engines. I think what you have said is generally true in other US cities I’ve been to though.
eyelidlessness
I can definitely acknowledge this varies by location! I’ve been in Seattle for 20 years, and only in the last year or so have I come to terms with the completely superfluous sports car noise as a normal thing here, but it was everyday life in Virginia when I lived there the 20 years prior.
throw__away7391
> IME motorcycle drivers are generally among the most respectful about the noise they make, relative to all drivers of all vehicle types.
I don't think we live in similar countries. In the US an astonishing percentage of motorcycles are illegally modified to be louder. In NYC there are four loud vehicles, the Lamborghini Aventador, Nissan GTR, the Dodge Challenger Hellcat, and motorcycles. Of these only GTRs behave more obnoxiously than motorcycles (though Hellcat drivers are in close competition). In NYC they like to coast down the street in groups revving their engines, they especially seem to love triggering car alarms.
On the other hand in Asia I've never seen this behavior from motorcycles.
acdha
That’s lower mileage than the car I bought 25 years ago, and it made far less noise pollution.
kevin_thibedeau
For motorcycles, London gives 100% off the congestion charge. The NY thruway is half off but PANYNJ tolls are just $1 off.
joecool1029
Less wear on the roads (due to dramatically lower weight). Less space taken up, more efficient in urban scenarios. Tolls, especially bridge tolls, should scale with the weight of the vehicle.
LeanderK
I think the size of the vehicle is more important because the main issue is the congestion
RhysU
Motorcycles don't cause congestion. Motorcycles can travel through congestion when permitted to lanesplit.
acdha
They’re not as bad as cars but they still take up a fair amount of space and pollute (noise, fumes) heavily. A modest discount seems appropriate but they definitely should still cost more than transit.
wizofaus
I'd be keen to charge vehicles based on noise pollution, but I'm not sure how feasible it is. Does anyone know if it's ever been trialed anywhere?
arrosenberg
Seems like it would be easy enough - you register your car, each model has an average and max decibel rating. Your congestion charge includes a factor for that - Harley's pay a bigger markup and EVs pay next to nothing for that particular thing.
Jolter
It’s too easy to modify the exhaust on a motorcycle, so I don’t think this would be practical. Local laws here are very strict about noise levels, and vehicles are inspected regularly, yet still there are a lot of drivers with modified machines that can wake up the dead when revved.
eggy
They do not pollute heavily fume-wise, and most motorcycles other than Harleys or sport bikes with racing exhausts with the dB component removed are not that loud. I get 60 mpg and the engine is efficient. A car gets half or less that mpg, so is 2 to 3X more polluting than a motorcycle when you have 1-to-1 driver/passenger comparison. 2 people on a moto is even better than a car.
Jolter
Most motorbikes I’ve been near have had significantly more smelly exhaust than a modern car. I don’t think their catalytic converters are as efficient, or maybe they’ve been broken?
Anyway, I don’t think the fees aim to improve pollution, just congestion.
eggy
Motos emit less CO2, but more NO, however, most motos are now adopting the EU emissions standards with Euro 5 for motos, so I think that gap is not as bad as when Myth Busters did their episode on it.
Motos are certainly less congestive especially with most cars being single driver and no passengers going into NYC.
Jolter
If you do the math on the CO2, the emissions per passenger mile is significantly worse for a motorbike than for subway or bus -- regardless of the power source for the train or bus.
But, again, I don't think this proposed fee/tax is aiming at pollution or carbon emissions per se, more at the congestion itself.
RhysU
When moving, they take up the space of about 2 bicycles riding safely. When parked, about 4 bicycles.
It's a congestion tax not a fumes tax.
devb
Do you have a citation for the MTA poaching unhappy NJT workers? I've only seen people leaving the MTA for NJT, and not a single instance of the opposite.
jimbob45
[flagged]
superseeplus
Talking about the decline of NJ Transit and the specific gubernatorial policies that led to it is relevant in a debate about congestion pricing. This would have been the case even if he was not a presidential candidate.
iambateman
I think it’s availability heuristic. There are lots of people I don’t criticize because they’re irrelevant. As soon as they make themselves relevant…they are opened up to both more enthusiasm and critique.
HWR_14
You are being paranoid.
If nobody was talking about Christie, it's because 95% of what he did only impacted NJ. This is a spillover, because it happens to be related to a megacity doing something for the first time in North America.
But, beyond that, when people start running for president, people start talking about them. Criticisms or not. No one talked about Joe Biden doing anything from the start of the 2016 election until he announced in 2020, in spite of having been a major political player for decades.
woodruffw
Christie's buffoonery around transit[1] is a somewhat staid topic in NYC politics, and this is an article about NYC.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Lee_lane_closure_scandal
insanitybit
> Nobody was talking about Christie at all for years
I've been hearing about Christie for absolute ages, no clue at all what you're on about.
deepsquirrelnet
Until primaries are over, primary candidates of national parties mostly attack their opponents… (hint: their opponents are other candidates in their primary)
Brian_K_White
It is entirely explicable why anyone is talking about Christie this week and not last week.
hooverd
That just sounds like recency bias. Plus before announcing they're more likely to have not been in the news.
gbear605
A more charitable interpretation is people have suddenly been reminded that he exists and of what he did. I don’t think that anyone is getting paid to do propaganda against Republican primary candidates on Hacker News. That goes doubly so for candidates that have a functionally zero percent chance of winning (Christie knows that - he’s just there to attack Trump).
Tinyyy
I’m a fan of charging market efficient rates for shared goods. The congestion situation in the Holland Tunnel is awful and bleeds out into various streets of Manhattan as well. The cost of sitting in crawling traffic with aggressive drivers cutting around is probably much more than an extra $20.
cyberax
> I’m a fan of charging market efficient rates for shared goods.
Are you a fan of charging market rates for transit as well?
zip1234
For sure, let's charge methods of transportation based on negative externalities such as how much space they take, safety, and noise/particulate pollution.
cyberax
I'm all for it! It would suck for transit, though:
1. It has a higher CO2 footprint than small/medium EVs.
2. Transit forces people into smaller and denser housing, resulting in suboptimal living conditions.
3. Buses in particular result in excessive road wear&tear.
It's really amazing that people say things like "car owners should not get subsidized" (by whom?), while talking about transit that is literally infeasible without massive subsidies.
pessimizer
> 1. It has a higher CO2 footprint than small/medium EVs.
This is too misleading to be unintentional. I don't know if you're comparing buses to small/medium EVs 1:1, but even if you aren't, the environmental footprint of replacing all bus services with EVs would be extraordinary.
> 2. Transit forces people into smaller and denser housing, resulting in suboptimal living conditions.
Transit doesn't force people into housing. It creates new housing options that previously were not tenable. Rivers don't create port congestion, rivers create ports. Not having enough ports, or enough rivers, creates port congestion.
> 3. Buses in particular result in excessive road wear&tear.
In proportion to human-miles, or is this a 1:1 comparison?
cyberax
> This is too misleading to be unintentional.
It's not misleading. On average, buses in the US carry around 15 people. A car carries around 1.5, so the raw multiplier is just 10.
But wait, there's more!
ALL buses have an incredibly polluting component that is fundamental to their functionality: the driver. You need around 3 drivers to cover the useful service time (from 5am to midnight). And drivers are POLLUTING AS HELL.
> I don't know if you're comparing buses to small/medium EVs 1:1
Yes, I do. Here ya go: https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint
> Transit doesn't force people into housing.
It does, via market forces.
> It creates new housing options that previously were not tenable.
No. It _destroys_ affordable housing to pack people into smaller and smaller footprints. Tokyo is a _great_ example of that.
> In proportion to human-miles, or is this a 1:1 comparison?
In proportion to passenger-miles. Road wear scales approximately as the 4-th power of the axle weight, and under-loaded buses still have to haul around their massive bulks even if there's just one passenger inside.
Honestly, it's amazing how bad public transit turns out to be when you actually start looking at its negative sides.
jrockway
Let's be honest, it's far from factual that dense housing is problematic in any way. It's just your opinion, and you're mad about it because you stand to lose the most in a world where you have to pay cash for your externalities. The sewer and water system to your house is subsidized. Snow removal from your cul-de-sac is subsidized. Most people couldn't afford the suburbs if someone else wasn't paying for those things (usually future generations).
Many people enjoy living in a dense environment, as evidenced by how much they'll pay to do so. It's objectively better for the Earth, and pretty enjoyable for the people that choose that path.
cyberax
> Let's be honest, it's far from factual that dense housing is problematic in any way
Densificatoin causes enshittification spiral. Each successive generation lives in worse conditions. This is an inherent property of densification.
> The sewer and water system to your house is subsidized.
It isn't. I'm paying for it from my taxes (that's why in Seattle my water is more costly than in the middle of a freaking desert).
> Snow removal from your cul-de-sac is subsidized.
It isn't. I'm responsible for keeping it clean, and I was once fined when I failed to do that.
> Many people enjoy living in a dense environment
The vast majority of people want to live in single family houses (90% or so - https://www.redfin.com/news/millennial-homebuyers-prefer-sin... ). They simply can't afford that. And of course, the psychological defense mechanism is: "I never wanted it anyway".
EatingWithForks
> Densificatoin causes enshittification spiral. Each successive generation lives in worse conditions. This is an inherent property of densification.
Could you uh, explain this a bit more? This doesn't seem to correspond with the desirability of dense cities atm. All of the most desirable places to live seem to either be dense or easily commutable to somewhere dense.
cyberax
Dense cities create a self-reinforcing vicious cycle. It's more efficient for employers to create office-style jobs in the Downtown, because they can more easily attract talent.
In turn, people want to live close enough to their jobs. So this drives up the price of housing in and around the Downtown. In turn, this incentivizes developers to build new buildings as high as economical, and to make units as small as feasible.
Thus the new construction in Downtowns tends to be smaller than the existing one ( https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle/seattle-sma... ). This drives up the price of existing larger apartments even more, making them unavailable for younger people. So if you don't work in tech, you'll have to make do with a small apartment.
But no worries, by the next generation your small apartment will look positively spacious!
mastersummoner
For the record, there are lots of people who love living in extremely dense urban situations. There are benefits to being exposed to so many different people living different lives, it's one of the things that cuts down on the bias of icky being exposed to an extremely homogenous group with homogenous opinions.
Obviously urban centers can be improved on, and many people living in them wish they had more personal space. But there are advantages too.
op00to
> Densificatoin causes enshittification spiral.
This is not a real thing. Please refer to factual, verifiable phenomena and not imaginings.
mdorazio
> It's not misleading.
It's very misleading because you're starting from the supposition of EVs rather than the actual mix of personal cars. If you choose EVs for the cars, why not choose ZEV buses that are starting to enter the market as well?
> And drivers are POLLUTING AS HELL.
What? I genuinely don't understand what you're trying to say here.
> No. It _destroys_ affordable housing to pack people into smaller and smaller footprints. Tokyo is a _great_ example of that.
It doesn't destroy affordable housing, though, it shifts it to other areas while increasing density near stations. You need to show why that's a bad thing. Most urban planners and economists would say that increased density is a good thing and that Tokyo is an excellent example of a city done right.
You seem to have a personal bone to pick with high-density cities that's just not shared by most other people.
cyberax
> It's very misleading because you're starting from the supposition of EVs rather than the actual mix of personal cars.
If we're talking about planning, then we should look at least 10 years ahead. By that time, most of new vehicles are going to be EVs.
Mind you, the subway construction around here is planned 20 _years_ in advance. All the current proposed projects are going to be finished some time in 2040-s.
> If you choose EVs for the cars, why not choose ZEV buses that are starting to enter the market as well?
ZEV buses still retain the most polluting part of regular buses: the driver.
> What? I genuinely don't understand what you're trying to say here.
One average US citizen produces around 20 tons of CO2 per year. A bus needs 3 of them working full-time. This completely dwarfs the emissions due to fuel use.
> It doesn't destroy affordable housing, though, it shifts it to other areas while increasing density near stations.
Bullshit. New density does NOT create ANY affordable housing. Never has, never will. And dense housing near stations is certainly not cheap.
Heck, here's an article from urbanists that admits that: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/4/26/upzoning-might...
> Most urban planners and economists would say that increased density is a good thing and that Tokyo is an excellent example of a city done right.
Most oil executives say that oil is great and that the large trucks are good!
Tokyo is a great example of young people forced to live in "microapartments" while just a couple of hours away, beautiful old houses sit empty.
> You seem to have a personal bone to pick with high-density cities that's just not shared by most other people.
Most other people haven't heard ANY opposing opinion in their lives. And neither have they researched it themselves. Thus, I routinely hear utterly risible nonsense like "we need more density to allow affordable housing" going unopposed.
rfrec0n
> One average US citizen produces around 20 tons of CO2 per year. A bus needs 3 of them working full-time. This completely dwarfs the emissions due to fuel use.
Are you trying to say that these people wouldn't already exist without the bus? So everytime we commission a new bus, 3 fully grown licensed drivers appear in a flash of smoke from the storage compartment of the bus?
cyberax
> Are you trying to say that these people wouldn't already exist without the bus?
No. They would be doing other productive things. But right now, they have to spend their productive power on driving buses.
This is simply a huge waste of human potential.
matchbok
Are you a troll account? Or a joke? Can’t tell. Either way the sanctimonious rants devoid of facts are entertaining.
cyberax
Have you seen the bike bros? Now _that's_ sanctimonous.
nayuki
And individual people driving themselves is not a waste of human potential?
cyberax
Nope. Because cars _save_ _time_.
Car commutes are shorter than transit commutes in well-designed cities.
But even otherwise, you don't need a dedicated full-time driver.
rfrec0n
> cars _save_ _time_ Cars only save time if there aren't very many of them. Look at Northern Virginia, at 3 A.M you can drive 10 miles in 10 minutes because the roads are direct and have high speed limits, but that same drive would take close to an hour during the day.
zip1234
What do you consider to be a well designed city?
mastersummoner
Why not plan ~ten years ahead and expect these buses to be self driving then?
cyberax
Do a mental experiment. Suppose that you have technology that can make buses drive themselves.
First, you want to solve the problem of long bus intervals. It's still not economic to just buy more buses because they require a lot of power to run and do tons of road damage.
But you can make buses smaller! And by making them smaller, you can run them faster without incurring a lot of useless overhead.
Heck, you can just idle, dare I say _park_, these unused small buses when there is no demand. And since it's so easy to manage the fleet this way, you can make personalized buses for every passenger.
Hmm... It really reminds me of something...
nimbleplum40
Do you have citations for those numbers? They don’t match what I’ve heard in the past so I’m curious to learn more.
Also, everything about density in relation to quality of life is pretty subjective. Luckily, we have cities for both! You’re free to live in Houston while those of us that prefer dense urban environments can live in New York and take transit.
cyberax
> Do you have citations for those numbers?
Road wear scales as 4-th power of axle weight: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law
The average loads: https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/mobility/perso...
The CO2 impact by transport mode: https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint
Nothing I'm saying is controversial. Heck, even urbanists admit that, they just try to avoid talking about it.
> Also, everything about density in relation to quality of life is pretty subjective. Luckily, we have cities for both!
My problem is with people that try to remake wonderful cities like Seattle into Manhattan-style hellscapes. And this is a result of market forces, that need to be counteracted via political regulation.
I'd love to live in Houston, but I just can't tolerate its weather. I tried.
nimbleplum40
Thanks for the links, I’ll read through them when I get a chance.
And feel free to argue about keeping Seattle the way it is. I have no interest in changing Seattle. Just leave my Manhattan out of it :)
rafram
If the extraordinarily boring, centerless, sprawling city that is Seattle is your idea of wonderful, you can have it! Young people are moving to NYC over Seattle because that’s the sort of city environment they want to live in.
acdha
> On average, buses in the US carry around 15 people. A car carries around 1.5, so the raw multiplier is just 10.
Buses in the US are largely avoided due to the last century spent prioritizing suburban car commuting over everything else. What you should be looking at are the averages on bus routes where the buses run regularly and aren’t blocked by solo drivers. That means that the floor for a bus is 10:1 but it can easily rise to 50-70:1 with cheap policy changes (e.g. put a $500 camera on the bus to ticket drivers and suddenly headways improve by 50%). In contrast, the large EVs people are actually buying will never become more efficient over the lifetime of the vehicle.
cyberax
> What you should be looking at are the averages on bus routes where the buses run regularly and aren’t blocked by solo drivers
Le sigh. If you want more bus passengers in each bus, you either need to run buses with longer intervals (making them completely useless) or you need to pack people together. Packing people together densely enough to make buses work inevitably requires living in small apartments.
The US in the last century decided to focus on comfortable human-oriented housing, and not on building Soviet-style human anthills.
> In contrast, the large EVs people are actually buying will never become more efficient over the lifetime of the vehicle.
Large EVs have lifecycle CO2 footprint of about 70g/km. Buses are ~100g/km, and EV buses (trolleys) are 60 g/km.
Moving to mid-sized EVs, such as Tesla Model 3/Y, cuts that to about 35 g/km (it depends on the US state). This is definitely something that we should encourage. The US addiction to huge barn-sized SUVs is unhealthy.
kalleboo
> Le sigh. If you want more bus passengers in each bus, you either need to run buses with longer intervals (making them completely useless) or you need to pack people together. Packing people together densely enough to make buses work inevitably requires living in small apartments
This is not my experience. Living in a village of around 2000 pop in Sweden with pretty much only single-family houses with gardens. The whole village was within 15 minutes walk or bike within one of 3 bus stops to a bus service that went into the city every 20 minutes during the day, with double-length buses during peak hours. The buses had a very healthy occupancy rate.
You just have to make sure to design towns around the transit instead of around cars. US suburbs are really hard to retrofit transit into, with designs that actively subvert it
zip1234
> It's really amazing that people say things like "car owners should not get subsidized" (by whom?), while talking about transit that is literally infeasible without massive subsidies.
If road usage fees cover less than half the cost of roads then clearly someone is subsidizing roads.
alphanullmeric
Sounds like roads should be paid for only by their users, and proportionally to their use. Then it would be irrelevant whether it’s a sedan or bus since everyone pays their fair share. But of course, such solutions are not acceptable to those that do not intend to pay their fair share.
klipt
Transit is completely feasible without subsidies if the transit company owns the land near the stations, which generate generous rents.
Of course if the land is owned by other people, the increase in value provided by transit should be recaptured through a Land Value Tax which is then used to fund the transit.
cyberax
> Transit is completely feasible without subsidies if the transit company owns the land near the stations, which generate generous rents.
So basically, you want to subsidize transit by making the transport authority be a slumlord. Got it.
There are no unsubsidized urban transit services in the US. Even operating costs are not paid from fares. And new transit construction is COMPLETELY subsidized.
I live in Seattle and I will have paid around $20k in car tab fees alone by the time the choo-choo subway train expansion here is done. It won't go anywhere near me and it will make my life worse, by inducing even more traffic.
nimbleplum40
There are also no unsubsidized fire departments, police departments, public schools, public parks, etc. Analyzing only the first order costs/benefits is really not a good way of analyzing any infrastructure project.
cyberax
> There are also no unsubsidized fire departments, police departments, public schools, public parks, etc.
My fire department, police, and parks are certainly not subsidized. I pay for them from my taxes.
nimbleplum40
That’s what a subsidy is my dude. The money obviously has to come from _somewhere_.
Are you saying that if taxes pay for transit then transit isn’t subsidized?
cyberax
> That’s what a subsidy is my dude.
Dictionary definition: "a sum of money granted by the government or a public body to assist an industry or business so that the price of a commodity or service may remain low or competitive."
What I have is NOT a subsidy. I use the resources, and I pay for them.
I don't have people from New York paying for my fire department in Seattle.
> Are you saying that if taxes pay for transit then transit isn’t subsidized?
I use fire protection, and I pay for it. My neighbors receive equal fire protection. There are no subsidies, we all pay our equal share (based on the house value).
However, I won't benefit from transit that is being built (heck, it will make my life WORSE). Yet I have to pay for it, thus I subsidize it.
Clear?
nimbleplum40
Do your taxes go towards the fire department even if you never have a fire? (Subsidy)
Do your taxes go towards the public parks even if you don’t use them? (Subsidy)
Do your taxes go towards public schools even if you don’t have kids? (Subsidy)
cyberax
> Do your taxes go towards the fire department even if you never have a fire?
Fire departments provide protection from fire. I absolutely do use and depend on it.
> Do your taxes go towards the public parks even if you don’t use them?
This is indeed a subsidy. A pay-per-use system would allow to remove the subsidy. However, it's so small around here that it's inconsequential in the face of massive transit subsidies.
> Do your taxes go towards public schools even if you don’t have kids?
Nope. I will eventually have kids who will need schools. So not a subsidy.
nimbleplum40
You said you’re in Seattle? If so, you have quite the parks department… It’s certainly not inconsequential. https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/FinanceDepartm...
Also, if your public schools receive funding from people who do not currently have kids in school (no kids, kids already graduated, kids in private school, etc.) it’s subsidized. To claim otherwise is to redefine words.
PM_me_your_math
Taxes are not subsidies. Good Lord
nimbleplum40
Sure, to be more specific - tax revenue can be used to subsidize services.
In the context of transit, people talk about transit not being able to “pay for itself” and needing subsidies. That money comes from taxes… so people who don’t ride transit end up subsidizing people who do (via taxes) in the same way people who don’t go to parks subsidize people who do (via taxes) and people without kids subsidize public school education of those who do (via taxes).
rafram
> I don't have people from New York paying for my fire department in Seattle.
Fire departments receive federal funding through federal taxes that everyone pays, so yes, you do: https://www.fireandemsfund.com/fire-department-funding-where...
predictabl3
Wow, just wow.
klipt
> So basically, you want to subsidize transit by making the transport authority be a slumlord
Is everyone who owns land a "slumlord" now?
It's well studied that transit generates huge economic value, but that value mostly manifests as increased land value near the stations.
So why shouldn't that value - created by transit - be credited to the transit that created it?
trinovantes
> So basically, you want to subsidize transit by making the transport authority be a slumlord. Got it.
Yes, it's better to have transit company use that money to fund operations than some numbered corp generating profit for wall street investors
Tokyo transit is highly profitable and don't require tax-payer subsidies because they own the land around stations
kelnos
Car owners are already hugely subsidized. Toll roads cover only a tiny fraction of road maintenance. The rest is paid by taxpayers, even those who do not drive.
ApolloFortyNine
Could easily make the same argument when some city spends 3 billion to build a 4 mile subway extension.
The fare recovery rate is absolutely terrible in the US. Expecting 100% isn't exactly necessary, but NYC is at 20%.
rafram
The “farebox recovery ratio” of a road is usually zero. Roads are funded through taxes (with the exception of some toll highways). Why can’t transit be the same?
ApolloFortyNine
There's not only the gas tax to think about, but also that every road also enables the truck that inevitably delivers goods to your grocery store to get there.
The subway system is only possibly used by those who live near a station and are traveling near another station, and tourists.
cyberax
> Car owners are already hugely subsidized
Around 80% of all commutes in the US are by car. You can't subsidize 80% of the population.
Drivers simply pay for their road use through various taxes, and not directly.
seadan83
Only a fraction of the US population work and thus commute. Of those that commute, that 80% do not have equal road usage. Even within that community, there is a subsidy going on. So, yes, there is a ton of subsidization going on (and this is not always bad)
> Drivers simply pay for their road use through various taxes, and not directly.
I think this is the point, notably because those 'indirect' payments are also payed by non-drivers as well. Hence, the subsidy.
Even within drivers, some are subsidized by others (let alone non-drivers). To illustrate, first: most road wear is from weather [1]. This means any two lengths of similar roads will have about the same upkeep cost regardless of usage (not quite true, but if taking 30 people vs 300, it's about true).
Let's consider 10 miles of road to suburb A with 30 drives, and 10 miles of different but similar road to suburb B with 300 drivers. The city will pay for upkeep of 20 miles, collecting various taxes from 330 people, and those taxes are then spent evenly across those 20 miles. To do this proportionately, without any subsidies, the group of 300 could arguably have those various taxes reduced for them only by 90% and increase the taxes of the 30 people 9 fold. That would be an equitable upkeep system.
The fact the road upkeep payment per person is not equitable, means there is a subsidy (and this situation is not always a bad thing)
[1] https://lacrossetribune.com/what-causes-roads-to-wear-out/ar...
cyberax
> Only a fraction of the US population work and thus commute.
The fraction that doesn't work is either too young to pay taxes anyway, or they had used road commutes before they retired. Everybody else are within the margin of error.
Additionally, if you are not using a car for commute, you're likely to be in the lower tax brackets and thus not paying (much) in taxes anyway. I had a paper looking at exact numbers bookmarked, but I lost it somehow.
So in practice, car owners don't get substantially subsidized by transit users. While the inverse is overwhelmingly true, transit users are massively subsidized by car users.
> This means any two lengths of similar roads will have about the same upkeep cost
This is simply incorrect. Vehicles cause stresses in the concrete, allowing fractures to accumulate, and they also directly wear down the pavement. The weather then amplifies the damage, especially in areas that experience frequent zero crossings.
If you want to learn more, feel free to check: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law and click the links about pavement engineering.
Jcowell
Couple do things since I actually live in New York
> The fraction that doesn't work is either too young to pay taxes anyway, or they had used road commutes before they retired. Everybody else are within the margin of error.
If you buy anything anywhere in NY you’re paying taxes.
> Additionally, if you are not using a car for commute, you're likely to be in the lower tax brackets and thus not paying (much) in taxes anyway. I had a paper looking at exact numbers bookmarked, but I lost it somehow
In NY this wouldn’t suffice for the income level (6 figures bracket) we’re talking about. it’s infeasible for a majority chunk of residents living in Chelsea , Hell’s kitchen, Upper East Side , FIDI, etc, to own a car since the cost to have it , pay the insurance, and store it working make economical sense. Especially so since if you’re affording to live there you’re job is also on the island.
It a bell curve where the beginning are the low income residents living in Harlem and the outer boroughs that necessitate having a car (with the space to accommodate for it and wouldn’t be hit by congestion pricing), the middle curve of 6 figures+ making residents that would be in the best position to not have a car, and then the rich or dual income families that has the ability to pay this congestion tax anyway.
joshuaissac
> Additionally, if you are not using a car for commute, you're likely to be in the lower tax brackets and thus not paying (much) in taxes anyway.
To the contrary, those in the highest income brackets are the ones most likely to walk to work,[1] and also the most likely to be paying more in taxes.
1. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0739456X18796652 page 9, figure 'Work Trip Walking by Income and Density'
PM_me_your_math
70% of the tax burden is carried by people making $120k/year or more. The argument that the poor pay more taxes than the rich is mental gymnastics with back injury. Similar to how some believe the rich get richer taking something the poor didn't have in the first place. It is all just class warfare used to divide and conquer.
seadan83
"Low-income Americans face higher payroll tax rates than rich Americans. Americans with less than five-figure incomes pay an effective payroll tax rate of 14.1 percent, while those making seven-figure incomes or more pay just 1.9 percent.Low-income Americans face higher payroll tax rates than rich Americans. Americans with less than five-figure incomes pay an effective payroll tax rate of 14.1 percent, while those making seven-figure incomes or more pay just 1.9 percent."
> https://www.americanprogress.org/article/5-little-known-fact...
While the absolute numbers for the rich paying a lot more in taxes is true, when looking at effective tax rates, the rich are not actually being taxed enough for there to be equity in taxation.
"Billionaires in the US pay a smaller tax rate than most teachers and retail workers. "
"According to a 2021 White House study, the wealthiest 400 billionaire families in the US paid an average federal individual tax rate of just 8.2 percent. For comparison, the average American taxpayer in the same year paid 13 percent."
> https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/stories/do-the-rich-pay....
Indeed, that 8.2 percent is a whole heck of a lot of money; far more than the 13 percent coming from the average taxpayer.
cyberax
> To the contrary, those in the highest income brackets are the ones most likely to walk to work
Stop misrepresenting the data. High incomes are still most likely to DRIVE to work.
They are _more_ _likely_ to walk to work than lower incomes, but:
1. The difference is slight.
2. The absolute numbers are around 5% of trips.
seadan83
> Additionally, if you are not using a car for commute, you're likely to be in the lower tax brackets and thus not paying (much) in taxes anyway.
Doesn't this directly contradict your point that car commuters are subsidized?
seadan83
One more thing that occurred to me, most US retirees still own cars, and still pay car tabs! That is kinda the issue, payment for driving is spread across US society rather than being the burden of those that use cars.
A strict counter-example, myself, I pay a _lot_ in property taxes and put almost zero wear on the roads. When I did last own a car, I was averaging about 500 miles per year.
This is really the point. Drivers must be subsidized because the cost of driving does not go up linearly with miles driven. For example, if someone just spent 24 hours driving rather than say 4 hours, their payments for driving upkeep does not go up 6 fold (they do not pay 6 times on car tabs, 6 times on car tax, 6 times on property taxes, etc.. they only pay gas tax as extra).
Now, this is kinda a tired argument, because it then goes to, "well, even if you don't use the roads, you still benefit." I sure do. Though, the issue is that the way things are incentivized, by spreading costs across everyone, we are put in a situation where otherwise unsustainably low density areas become incentivized.
Which goes exactly to the point of charging people to drive through downtown. Seemingly it is a very rare example of a disincentives to car culture. The argument that mass transit is subsidized seems a bit obvious (and is it is true that mass transit is very subsidized), though.. given all the incentives to drive, not having to pay the full cost per mile traveled as those costs are spread out - why the hell not drive everywhere? Why at all would anyone take mass transit when the cost to drive 5000 miles compared to 500 miles are so similar.
Let's look at the math: Driving 5000 miles (my last car got about 400 miles to the tank, at about 13 gallons), requires about 130 gallons of gas. At about $0.50 per gallon for tax, that is a payment of just $65 dollars in tax to go 10 times further. Car tabs alone are over $100 in WA state.
This hopefully illustrates really easily that users of the road are not paying proportionate to their usage of the road. This is a mixed bag, as I would very much not want farmers to have to pay the full cost of the roads connecting them to the overall transit grid. Yet, because how costs are shared, driving in a lot of ways is "too cheap" and the overwhelming incentive is to (unsustainably) drive everywhere. Further, because everything in the US is built with driving in mind, it makes it so everyone has to drive, whether they would want to or not. This is compounded in city policy with zoning laws that force there to be parking, force residential to be segregated from commercial that would otherwise for walkable neighborhoods. All that is to say, it's the second order effects of how we pay for driving that creates quite a number of sustainability issues and really diminish the quality of life we could have (quieter, less polluted, less time spent in commute, less time spent in traffic jams).
seadan83
> The fraction that doesn't work is either too young to pay taxes anyway, or they had used road commutes before they retired. Everybody else are within the margin of error.
The argument that either everyone was already a tax-paying driver or will soon be one is hard to believe. Without data, I won't take that at face value.
Even that 'margin of error,' I think needs some examination. Any 'margin of error' means there is a subsidy. Notably, drivers are simply not paying the full cost of their road usage. If so, it would not matter at all whether there were retirees or not, the costs would be payed for entirely by drivers. That is not the case, ergo, drivers are subsidized. Now, let's argue about what that percentage is.
> So in practice, car owners don't get substantially subsidized by transit users.
This is moving the goal posts as far as I can tell. The statement is that car owners get subsidized by everyone else, not just transit users.
> So in practice, car owners don't get substantially subsidized by transit users. While the inverse is overwhelmingly true, transit users are massively subsidized by car users.
>> This is simply incorrect.
Per the reference: https://lacrossetribune.com/what-causes-roads-to-wear-out/ar...
“Cars usually do not have that much loading impact on the road,” said John Mueller, a DOT Highway Mainten-ance Engineer. “The main source is the water that sits in the joint that freezes and thaws.”
"It is once concrete deteriorates that traffic loads pack a punch. Large trucks can accelerate the process."
Thus, you have it the other way round. Weather deteriorates roads, then it is traffic that amplifies that damage.
We can still make the example more extreme, let's say that group of 300 are 1 mile away, and half take light rail. At this point, it's very clear that the 30 people living 10 miles away (perhaps even 50 miles!), are being subsidized considerably.
Regarding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law, I think I understand what you are trying to get at. In my example, I was trying to keep things about equal and was assuming that both groups of people were driving similar cars. I would suspect in most realistic examples that are similar, that group that is 10 or 50 miles away are probably driving larger vehicles (and maybe farm equipment & logging trucks are more frequently on those roads).
Cutting to the chase though, we don't have to argue to what extent drivers are subsidized, there are numbers for that:
> A report published in the April of 2022 issue of Ecological Economics teased out the lifetime cost of driving a small car to be roughly $641,000, with society subsidizing about 41% of that cost. [1][2]
[1] https://stacker.com/society/how-driving-subsidized-america#:.... [2] https://www.thetelegraph.com/news/slideshow/How-driving-is-s...
Then there are more subsidies at play to keep oil cheap and gasoline artifically low in price, as well as the cost of purchasing cars, and the cost of parking is amortized to property owners [3]
[3] https://medium.com/radical-urbanist/cars-gets-billions-in-hi...
acdha
You certainly can subsidize large populations because taxes cover all income but are being used specifically to encourage just one more of transportation. If driving wasn’t so heavily subsidized, people would use other options because the true cost is much higher than what people see directly – it’s not just roads but also things like below market rate storage, zoning rules requiring owners to build more car storage than they necessarily want, and especially not requiring drivers to carry insurance sufficient to cover the full cost of their mistakes and decisions.
cyberax
> You certainly can subsidize large populations because taxes cover all income but are being used specifically to encourage just one more of transportation.
It can be argued that rich people subsidize poor, since they pay more taxes. However, that's pretty much it.
Transit users in the US overwhelmingly do NOT subsidize car users. While the inverse is true, transit users on average don't pay even half of the true cost of transit. The rest is born by everyone.
> If driving wasn’t so heavily subsidized
BY WHOM?
acdha
> > If driving wasn’t so heavily subsidized
> BY WHOM?
You’ve had multiple people tell you so at this point I would highly suggest doing some homework before getting angry. Here’s a summary:
* Roads are paid for around 50% by general tax revenue. Thar keeps the upfront price of driving low compared to alternatives and decades of studies have found this creates a massive number of extra car trips. If we used more efficient transportation modes we would also not need the massive highway projects sold to taxpayers as rush hour alleviation but delivering only more traffic thanks to the principle of induced demand. * Most cities subsidize street parking below the cost of providing it, much less market rates. This encourages driving but takes a significant amount of public space and generates a huge amount of congestion and pollution (emissions and noise) as people circle looking for subsidized spots rather than paying for garage parking. * Most cities require minimum amounts of parking to be provided for solo drivers even if the owner of a property doesn’t want it (we require bars to encourage drunk driving!). Everyone pays more for that even if they don’t drive because they’re paying for more construction and maintenance and many businesses have less revenue generating space because, for example, instead of a restaurant having tables for 40 more patrons they have parking for 8 vehicles. Since housing is required to have at least 1-2 spaces per home, a given piece of land will house fewer people and many large projects require expensive garages, which you’re paying for whether or not you want it and traffic is also a common argument against the density which would lower costs. Making housing more expensive causes more people to need longer commutes and the consequent lower quality of life. * Car owners are not charged for the negative health impacts of driving - a leading cause of asthma and all kinds of cardiovascular conditions – or to compensate city residents for the quality of life reductions their commuting causes. * Drivers are not charged for the expensive city infrastructure created to protect pedestrians and bicyclists from unsafe driving. All of that concrete, flexposts and barriers, various pedestrian light systems, etc. are car infrastructure. * Drivers are not required to have sufficient insurance to cover the full cost to anyone they hit. This intersects really badly with our horrific healthcare system and is a common cause of people falling out of the workforce or into substance abuse over chronic pain following collisions. * Last but not least, driving is the most expensive way to commute in common use when it comes to greenhouse gases. EVs promise a 50% reduction but that’s still far higher than any mainstream alternative. There are many other factors in climate change but driving is something like 30% so it’s going to have to go down a lot to reduce the trillions in economic damage we’re facing.
ryukafalz
> Drivers simply pay for their road use through various taxes, and not directly.
Taxes that are also paid by those who don't drive, yes?
cyberax
> Taxes that are also paid by those who don't drive, yes?
If you want to be strictly true then yes.
In practice, if you are using transit in the US, then you are likely not paying much in taxes. There are exceptions (NYC, SF, DC), of course.
matchbok
If your whole argument against transit requires us to ignore the three biggest transit systems is order for your argument to work…. You don’t have a good argument champ.
rafram
> There are exceptions (NYC, SF, DC), of course.
The metro areas of those three cities contain almost 10 percent of the US population.
(Edit: And the vast majority of transit users!)
seadan83
> 1. It has a higher CO2 footprint than small/medium EVs.
If mass transit _and_ also EVs are incentivized over petrol cars, that is not bad [1]
> 2. Transit forces people into smaller and denser housing, resulting in suboptimal living conditions.
My anecdotal experience is that areas around light rail stations gentrify and luxery style condominiums pop up like mushrooms around them. A 10 minute and consistent train ride into dowtown is compelling when that same journey can take 30 to 120 minutes by car (this is Seattle, it can take 20 minutes to just cross the U bridge and travel a quarter mile).
> 3. Buses in particular result in excessive road wear&tear.
If a bus is actually taking 50 cars off the road, and is traveling on lanes that are built for the excessive wear; then it is still a net benefit.
> "car owners should not get subsidized (by whom?)"
Point 3 discusses the wear and tear of roads. Drivers do not pay fully for the wear and tear of roads (and road construction, etc). Road funds come from many funds and car traffic does not generate enough in fuel and car-tab taxes to fully pay for roads. Hence, it is subsidized by other people that pay those taxes.
-----------
The comparison perhaps should not be also strictly of just buses against EVs.
creato
Sure, as long as you consider externalities like congestion. That would suggest charging for passage through congested areas (the subject of this thread), and subsidizing mass transit in congested areas.
cyberax
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Eisenstein
You logic is completely backwards.
Dense housing doesn't result in traffic congestion. If more people live closer together there is more population density, but as long as they can access commercial areas easily then they can do their shopping and work and recreational tasks without cars. When you remove cars then you suddenly have much more living space because a car takes up a large amount of room to store and there must be extra space for commuters and visitors.
Are you seriously arguing that adding more space for cars makes cities less congested? For every one parking space you add you remove a large amount of useful space for other things.
cyberax
> Dense housing doesn't result in traffic congestion.
Yes, it does. And the relationship is causal.
> If more people live closer together there is more population density, but as long as they can access commercial areas easily then they can do their shopping and work and recreational tasks without cars.
What a bunch of bullshit.
> Are you seriously arguing that adding more space for cars makes cities less congested?
Not quite. Nothing can help hellscapes like Manhattan. They just need to be slowly de-densified, it'll take generations, but it will be done eventually.
Cities should make sure that they don't rely on transit, and the rest will follow.
Eisenstein
> Yes, it does. And the relationship is causal.
If the relationship is causal, why are spread out areas with less dense populations which rely heavily on cars, like the Dallas or Houston or LA areas, so congested?
If you think your opinion is backed by data, I would love to see it.
nimbleplum40
> What a bunch of bullshit.
How so? I live in lower Manhattan. I go to work, the gym, parks, restaurants, bars, movie theaters, etc. all without a car.
> Nothing can help hellscapes like Manhattan.
Lol. Don’t move to Manhattan then. Some of us enjoy it. Some of us prefer it over the suburbs. You don’t have to. No one is forcing you.
josephcsible
> Some of us prefer it over the suburbs. You don’t have to. No one is forcing you.
A lot of people say suburbs are bad and that we need to get rid of them.
acdha
Suburbs are unequivocally bad for the environment but saying they shouldn’t be subsidized isn’t saying they should be banned. A high fraction of our problems could be solved with market mechanisms to capture the cost of externalities like carbon emissions or habitat destruction, so those factor into people’s buying decisions. Tolls are one of the most important mechanisms for cities to do this because much of the 20th century was spent redesigning cities for non-residents at the expense of the local economy, tax base, health, and quality of life for residents.
We’re seeing this happen partially as the insurance industry adjusts to climate change drives flooding and fires but it’s incomplete and needs to be combined with zoning reform in many cities.
nimbleplum40
Sure, there are people with extreme views on any issue.
The existence of those people doesn’t have any bearing on whether or not we should have congestion pricing in one of the densest urban environments in the world.
paulgb
I’m suspicious of that. LA is famous for low use of transit (relative to population) and is also famous for having bad congestion.
cyberax
You can screw up everything if you try hard enough. LA is an example of that.
On the other hand, the Greater Houston Area has a similar population to NYC, yet it has 26-minute commutes versus 36 minutes for NYC.
nimbleplum40
Huh? The Houston metro area has 7.5 million people. The New York City metro area has 20 million.
If you want to look at the city proper (not a great comparison since city boundaries are somewhat arbitrary) then it’s 2 million for Houston versus 8 million for NYC.
It’s not even close.
superseeplus
To be fair, that is how commuter trains in the NYC metropolitan area work. The fares are higher during rush hour to discourage people who can shift their schedule from traveling during rush hour.
op00to
Sure. Let's make sure we account for all the negative follow-on effects from personal car ownership including wasted space from parking, pollution, etc etc. Also account all the positive effects from transit - less wasted space for parking, less pollution, etc etc.
DaveExeter
I agree! Let's get the poors off the roads.
The peasant class belongs on public transport, not on taxpayer-funded roads.
raldi
Lower-income Americans already take the bus far more than wealthy ones, who are much more likely to be driving.
A congestion charge will fall disproportionately on the wealthy, and allow the buses carrying lower-income folks to move throughout the city faster.
seanmcdirmid
This isn’t exactly true. Rich people have the resources to live closer to where they work, they are more likely to WFH, they can ride a bike to work often, or maybe even walk. Poor people often live farther away from their jobs, they have worse commutes, and the likelihood of accomplishing that long commute by mass transit in many American isn’t that great.
Anecdotally, we are well to do, chose our house location to minimize our commute and make it easy by bus (and ensure we can go to the grocery store by foot). Then I got the opportunity to work from home, my wife has a straight shot from bus to her office downtown, the kid’s schools (even high school) are all within walking distance. There is no way we could have set all that up without money.
raldi
Do you have a citation for that claim? Here are a few refuting it:
https://bikeportland.org/2016/01/25/low-income-households-dr...
https://medium.com/100-hours/is-congestion-pricing-fair-to-t...
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/3/7/toll-roads-hurt...
seanmcdirmid
I didn’t make a quantitative claim, just a qualitative one based on anecdotal evidence. I put about 1000 miles a year on my car, but I paid a lot of money to get to the point that I could do feasibly that. I’m not unusual in this either, a lot of rich techies go for urban car-light lifestyles if they can afford it.
The above studies seem to only focus on the poorest of the poor, and not the lower middle class. Congestion charges are going to hit people who are rich enough to drive but not rich enough to live in convenient places the most. There isn’t a binary distinction between rich and poor after all. Those links are pretty embarrassing actually, surely there are better arguments that this will impact rich the most than using the poorest of the poor as an example?
dgacmu
I mean, the answer is that this is New York City, not Seattle, where parking is going to cost you $30+ in the areas affected by the congestion charge. So we've already limited the discussion to the pretty well-off.
Per the article itself: "But out of a region of 28 million people, just an estimated 16,100 low-income people commute to work via car in Lower Manhattan, according to the MTA."
Probably easier to find a way to meet the needs of 16k exceptions. And having a safe fast public transit system, which the connection charge funds, is part of that.
(Hi, Sean! Hope you're well!)
seanmcdirmid
I did an internship at IBM Hawthorn so I’m familiar with parking in the city. It’s actually doable (or was doable?) in midtown near Columbia, and it actually made sense for my girlfriend at the time. The public transit system isn’t that great when you are commuting between West Chester county. And traffic in NYC is weird. Like, going into the city isn’t a problem, especially if you are going in at night. But take one step out to Long Island…and you are snarled in traffic for hours.
My comment about poorer people being more affected I believe is still valid even if it’s the right thing to do. The people who are forced to commute by car generally don’t have better options.
It would be much worse if they tried this in Seattle, but we also need it as well, it just won’t be something only the rich are suffering (like in NYC).
dgacmu
Yeah, but - the proposed congestion charge is only below 60th, and Columbia is up around 116th and higher. Much much easier to park near Columbia. Maybe a little more risk of having your car stolen, too. :)
Also (adding this a few minutes later), the evidence is clear that public transit is seriously beneficial for people with lower incomes - and the elderly and folks with disabilities that prevent them from driving.
So we may be taking about something that harms 16k people and benefits about three million other low-income New Yorkers.
seanmcdirmid
Again, I’m not against congestion charging, I’m against the thinking that most of the immediate downsides are born by the rich. It is politically naive to think like this given that plenty of people who are taking advantage of driving (for better or worse) are not people who would be considered rich. Actually it’s worse than that since rich people aren’t going to think much about a $5 or $10, $20 fee while poorer drivers definitely are.
As for it not encompassing midtown, that sounds a bit weird to me, but ok. I’m not sure it will have much impact on overall region traffic since most trips probably don’t involve that area in the first place.
aqme28
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mc32
I was poor, I took the bus to college and work (there were times I'd have to add 30 minutes where I knew I'd have to leg it). It was an hour and a half with transfers. It's doable --you get used to it, just like tech workers get used to driving in from the East Bay into the Peninsula. It's no biggie. On the way home, sometimes you get off at a different stop to pick up groceries and then you're the one walking home with two plastic bags -at first your arms ache. Again, you get used to it.
seanmcdirmid
There are multiple levels of poor, like there are multiple levels of rich. Plenty of people are rich enough to drive, but not rich enough to live in convenient locations. It’s weird that, when I was going to university, many people would save money by living far off campus and driving to pay $5 for parking. The richer kids were living on or next to campus, and didn’t even need cars. Housing is expensive, and the American system has made driving unnaturally cheap.
pessimizer
> Plenty of people are rich enough to drive, but not rich enough to live in convenient locations.
Now they're not rich enough to drive, they're become poor enough to use public transportation. Maybe their votes will improve the convenience of public transportation.
To somebody who can afford to live in Manhattan, you'd have to charge $200 a trip to bother them. Just tax them, and use that money to build out public transportation.
Very weird to crusade for the right of people who can barely afford their cars to be better than those who can't afford cars.
PM_me_your_math
A resident of NY is already one of most, if not the most taxed citizen in the country. You pay fed, state, city, and/or borough tax. Relative to the rest of the country, you pay the most for rent, mortgages, food, electricity, natgas, internet, tolls, and even toiletries.
And you want to tax these residents more, and dump the money into the black hole of state-run public transportation projects that take 10x the budget and 10x the time of any where else on planet earth? ...and that is with no guarantee that project would a) get finished b) not be a total clusterfuck like all the others.
analognoise
Hour and a half is no biggie? Is that one way?
That sucks more than having a car does by far. Even the last part about "your arms ache but you get used to it" - how is that for disabled people? How is it for the elderly? An extra hour and a half - what about if you have kids at home?
Honestly that... Blows?
If the options are to destroy the environment or to have to take an extra three hours daily to commute, I choose destroy the environment - smart people will probably fix it with science.
I thought about it - why would I rather destroy the environment than reduce cars? Because it's a lie - there's clearly no shared burden. Like as soon as humanity bans all privat jets, the entire cruise industry, etc, then maybe I'd consider it. But as it is, it's just one more "eh the poors will get used to it" - meanwhile we don't ban major contributions from sources that are rich people's enjoyment or profits.
wussboy
3 hours commutes or destroying the environment aren't the only two options. By changing the way we build cities, and by retrofitting the ones we've already built, we can make places where the walked/biked commute is less than a half hour and the environmental impact is slashed dramatically.
seanmcdirmid
A lot of problems can be solved via better urban planning, but most of us have little control over that. What we do have control over leaves us with a couple of options, but we have hope that maybe our grandkids will have more choices.
wussboy
Agreed. And I'm in the same boat. But I've taken the "best time to plant a tree was 40 years ago" approach and have started working in my community to bring about those changes.
pessimizer
To people who can't afford to drive, this just sounds like relatively wealthy people whining about being reduced to living like they have been the entire time.
If you want to reduce the relative privileges of wealthy people, tax them and redistribute or do a socialist revolution. Never crusade for the privileges of people with some money while ignoring the situation of the people with less money. In the limit, you'll end up crusading for the privileges of billionaires against the privileges of multi-billionaires. As activism, imo it's silly.
zeroonetwothree
Having more money lets you buy more of everything. Yet you are only concerned about roads (which aren’t even used by the poorest segment since they can’t afford a car)? Why not focus on making something more fundamental to existence free, like food or shelter?
Oh right it’s because it creates poor incentives and overuse (tragedy of the commons) exactly like we see with roads (and parking). If car drivers had to pay the full cost of the resources they use it would reduce wasteful driving substantially. And we could use money collected in that way to pay for transit (or just give it as a tax rebate to low income people if you prefer).
Tinyyy
Yea you’re exactly right, there’s a tragedy of the commons situation right now. You could either decrease the demand or increase the supply to fix this problem, and it seems pretty impossible to increase the supply (build a bridge across the Hudson? That’s crazy). So here we are.
zip1234
The average speed driving in Manhattan is something like 7mph. There is not enough space for cars. Congestion charge is such a no-brainer easy solution here.
nimbleplum40
Another bridge wouldn’t do much to fix supply since you’re still dumping cars into one of the most dense urban environments in the world.
The only sustainable way to increase the supply of trips into lower manhattan is increased public transit.
aqme28
Encouraging transit ridership does actually increase the supply. You get far far far more people moved via buses and trains.
Buses account for about 73% of people moved in the Lincoln tunnel, but only 10% of vehicles.
fellowmartian
Unironically I’d hate a new bridge across the Hudson around the Holland Tunnel, that area is the crown jewel of Manhattan and its seafront should be protected.
It’s also one of the few safe bike paths in the city where casual bikers would feel comfortable biking.
Additionally, we already have one Canal St in the area, we don’t need another.
Sorry for this small NIMBY rant.
bobthepanda
NIMBYism is not inherently a bad thing; it was originally coined by the waste management industry to describe opposition to local landfills and toxic waste dumps, which any sane person doesn't actually want to live next to.
(Yes, I know Europe and Japan build fancy incinerators with parks and whatnot that are very pleasant, but the odds of that being built in the US by penny-pinching private industry is nil.)
bradleyjg
The “poors,” as you so delightfully put it have nowhere to park in those parts of Manhattan. So they won’t be going there (leaving aside deliveries and taxis, but then the fee is a cost of doing business.)
The group this will hit the hardest are those with de facto immunity from parking tickets. Cops, teachers, members of certain trade unions, and so on.
However, lest you worry too much about these folk in light of automated speed and red light cameras they’ve taken to obscuring their license plates or buying fraudulent paper plates on the internet. Of course nothing is done about these effectively untraceable vehicles.
Tinyyy
I grew up in a city with insanely high taxes on cars and roads (Singapore). But you could get anywhere easily with the bus or MRT. In a rush? Your Grab taxi can get you there quickly and efficiently. I’m not sure why it’d be better to make everyone’s day worse instead. Does that really make the world a fairer place?
anotherhue
> out of a region of 28 million people, just an estimated 16,100 low-income people commute to work via car in Lower Manhattan, according to the MTA
pessimizer
Exactly. If those 16K really concern somebody, they should just issue them a pass based on income. And if capitalism means anything, the employers of those 16K will have to raise pay to attract people.
ZoomerCretin
There's nothing wrong with public transport. The subway is frequently faster than driving anyway.
bombcar
Discrimination is much easier once you take a racial aspect out and just use socioeconomic status instead.
pierat
Absolutely true. In fact this was the 1980s republican plan. Lee Atwater has a great hot mic moment about this.
You start out in 1954 by saying, “Ni*er, ni*er, ni*er.” By 1968 you can’t say “ni*er”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Ni*er, ni*er.”
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwa...
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And you also have New York City and the racist/classist bridges. Bridges were built too low for public transit to get out to Long Island. It did a VERY effective job at keeping black people and poor people away from the middle class and higher areas.
" In one of the book's most memorable passages, Caro reveals that Moses ordered his engineers to build the bridges low over the parkway to keep buses from the city away from Jones Beach—buses presumably filled with the poor blacks and Puerto Ricans Moses despised. The story was told to Caro by Sidney M. Shapiro, a close Moses associate and former chief engineer and general manager of the Long Island State Park Commission."
Who would have thought that building a bridge could be racist and classist?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-09/robert-mo...
mc32
Yes, they do! Everyone should be taking public transit, the poor as well --and if they prefer private transport, then it's time to pay up!
renewiltord
Yep, given sufficient externalities, this is true. As an example, watch this fictional response to the fact that better cars cost more:
Let's get the poors out of safe cars. The peasant class belongs in beaters, while the rich ride safe.
Consider the choices necessary to make that statement untrue.
lotsofpulp
You mean how the richer you are, the bigger (and safer) the vehicle you can afford?
I drive by many parents taking their kids wherever in old corollas or kias or other small car, and I see many parents at my kids’ daycare dropping their kids off in large suburbans/F150/Sequoia/etc.
renewiltord
Certainly. That's one way, but also poorer people own older cars.
An argument that rests on equality should support the idea that all people deserve the same car irrespective of how much money they have.
estebank
Equality would be to be able to go where you need to go, in reasonable time, cost and accomodation, regardless of class, race, gender or disability. Focusing on cars is over-indexing on one potential solution.
People want to move around. Cars are only one way of doing so.
beerandt
If you want safer vehicles across the board, get rid of cafe and other efficiency regulations.
At this point in the current regulatory framework, safety and efficiency are in direct competition.
pkulak
Wow. So much negativity. As far as I’m concerned, even if the city burns every dollar it collects, if this gets some cars off the island, it’s a win. It’s time to stop tolerating personal vehicles in our most dense urban centers.
isatty
It’s never that simple. There are loads of people for which a personal or work vehicle is a necessity. Public transport cannot, and is never designed to catch every edge case.
I’m all for better public transportation but strong statements and mishandled public funds just sways the support of the average joe.
nostrebored
It really is. Have you been in New York? In the area that this is being implemented in, you can absolutely survive without ever setting foot in a car.
Other cities should have been planned around density. Instead we have suburban hellscapes where kids can’t be kids and there’s no real community. The car has been the single most destructive piece of mass-adopted tech for urban planning and lifestyle.
If we have to start new cities to replace the disasters we created, better to rip off the bandaid now. Sucks that we used some of the best land in the country.
eBombzor
Couldn't agree more. I moved out of LA to get the fk away from car culture. Now I live and work near dt Seattle where everything is relatively walkable, and my car is used at most twice a month for random things that I honestly don't need anyways. Obviously Seattle is not even close to a real walkable city like Amsterdam but miles better than LA.
Going back to LA, it is exactly what you describe. Just a concrete hellscape. There are stretches where every single peice of the ground has a layer of concrete on it.
Don't even get me started with Houston.
hifromLA
I’m not going to say LA is not a car disaster, but LA does have dozens of walkable neighborhoods to be fair. It wouldn’t be apples to apples to compare Woodland Hills to Capitol Hill (for example).
And although community parks can be in short supply, there’s hundreds of thousands of acres of open space in the Santa Monica and San Gabriel mountains.
Tade0
> Instead we have suburban hellscapes where kids can’t be kids and there’s no real community.
I'm not American, but from my perspective that's just an easy target, and the real problem is here:
https://reason.com/2014/08/19/august-2014-reason-rupe-nation...
The title itself isn't particularly shocking - it's the 43% of Americans who are of the opinion that the law should require 12 year olds to be supervised while playing in public parks is, to me, the absolutely bonkers part here.
Not saying suburban sprawl is a good thing - personally I find this sort of zoning silly. It's just that this isn't the problem you want to focus on if you want kids to be kids.
AuryGlenz
I enjoy walkable cities. I don't live in New York, but I couldn't do my job as is without a car. I simply have too much equipment. There are probably many other people in the same position.
I feel like step A should be to build better transit, not punish drivers.
pkulak
I said “personal vehicles”, just fyi. Sounds like you’re describing a work truck.
AuryGlenz
Not really. I’m a photographer, not a plumber.
My Camaro is pretty full for weddings though, where I’m bringing all of my equipment + backups.
earthling8118
Perhaps you could think of it less as punishing drivers and more like stopping punishing everyone else for the sake of cars.
PM_me_your_math
Yea, trains can deliver the food to our stores in downtown! Or people can carry the pallets of food... Progress!
tehjoker
The main reason to have a personal vehicle now is that there's an ongoing pandemic and there are no mitigations. If people would do something about that, it would make more sense to reinvest in higher density environmentally friendly transit options.
nimbleplum40
Covid is no longer a threat for the vast, vast majority of people. If it is for you, that’s a big bummer (I mean that genuinely. A close friend of mine is immunocompromised due to chemo and it fucking sucks), but you can wear an N95 on transit or, better yet, pay the congestion charge and enjoy the _lower traffic_ commute than before.
tehjoker
Unfortunately, you are misinformed. Deaths are lower from acute infection (still hundreds a day), but long covid affects up to 20% of reinfected w/ omicron. It is currently unknown what the long term implications of infection are (but multi organ damage is documented, incl. cardiac/vascular issues and brain damage). Note that HIV presents w/ mild flu-like symptoms and kills 10 years later. Other viruses have long term implications. The gov. has abandoned you for the economy and you should be very angry. They killed a million of your fellow citizens to make the line go up.
automatoney
For those unfamiliar with NYC, street parking is free basically everywhere so the space cars take up is already heavily subsidized.
tarikjn
This 100%. Free public parking in NYC is the elephant in the room that no one wants to address. Tolls won’t fix that. In some areas of the outer boroughs, 40% of the traffic at any given time are people looking for a spot. The city also still hasn’t figured out utilization of the curb for deliveries and drop offs resulting in normalized double-parking almost everywhere. Curb space need to be efficiently priced and this would fix a host of issues — same goes for outdoor dinning, otherwise its value will be captured by landlords anyways.
macNchz
I anticipate the rollout of congestion pricing will wind up accelerating some changes to the way parking works: areas on the margins of the congestion zone will likely see a surplus of commuters looking to park where they can avoid the toll, which will have the effect of making proposals like paid resident parking permits much more palatable to car owners who currently oppose them.
seanmcdirmid
They really need to eliminate free street parking, especially in dense neighborhoods like midtown.
screye
NYC is remarkably car friendly for a place so unsuited for it.
The most expensive waterfront property in the world is cannibalized by 2 coastal roads in West St & FDR drive. Unlike Europe, the roads are littered with massive SUVs, clearly out of proportion from the roads and built environment around them.
When alternate means of transport and cars interact, cars get precedence. There are no BRT lanes, especially on the crowded LaGuardia -> JFK -> WTC -> Newark corridor. Cycling infrastructure in Manhattan is under-developed despite being completely flat and the availability of a robust bike-sharing setup.
MrMan
yeah this fact alone is so mind-bending. imagine if that waterfront on both sides of Manhattan you could just easily walk to with out the freeways! very sad.
dgrin91
In the city, especially downtown its basically not free anywhere. It's always metered. Only free at nights and weekends
automatoney
Maybe I'm oblivious to them, but I don't think I've seen meters in Soho/Chinatown/LES and I definitely don't remember them in the East Village. Are they more in the Tribeca/Fidi area?
marcja
The classic meters at every spot are largely gone and have been replaced by block-based, app-enabled meters run by ParkNYC [https://www.parknycapp.com/].
silverlake
$4.50 for 1 hr, $12 for 2 hr street parking.
pests
You can continue to buy in one hour increments to save a little too if you remember to keep checking the app.`
NovemberWhiskey
That's true in the outer boroughs, and on a lot of the streets above 59th but it's not at all true for downtown.
bob_theslob646
Can you please cite this because I don't think it's actually true. Park avenue is free but other areas charge you money per hour to park a car
xyzelement
It's a nice way for the city to make additional revenue, and to reduce driving by those who can't afford it.
Let's be real, nobody drives into Manhattan when a truly better option is available, so the only deterrent this offers is how much of a pain $20 really is for someone.
If I am a doctor or a wall street guy and driving saves me an hour a day, I am still gonna drive if that costs me an extra $20.
If I don't make a lot and $20 is a lot for me, maybe I'll suck it up and take the two busses and two trains that it takes to get to my job from my house in outermost queens.
Yeah 5% reduction in traffic volume sounds about right, it will come from the absolute poorest but of course the real play is the extra revenue from those who'll continue to drive in.
gWPVhyxPHqvk
I’m a Wall Street guy (well, my office is nearby on Broadway, I’m a dev, but easily able to justify an extra $20) and the thing is that driving in is almost never faster or easier than taking the train! The PATH, which starts in NJ where parking in cheaper, goes right into Lower Manhattan, and it’s a short walk to the office from there. Every time I’ve driven into Manhattan it’s slower than taking the train, except nights or weekends. I really don’t understand the type of person who drives a personal vehicle into Manhattan during the work week.
ethics13
Well, now it will be easier. Those poor sops who can't afford the new pricing are that much less on the road to compete with.
xyzelement
Likewise I've also never had a life where it made sense to me to drive in, but I recognize that others may.
Presumably their story sounds different than yours .
ethics13
>>If I am a doctor or a wall street guy and driving saves me an hour a day, I am still gonna drive if that costs me an extra $20.
And this really helps this WS guy who has freer roads without those who can't afford the pricing.
tacticalturtle
Why did the federal government have to sign off on this?
Assuming the tolls aren’t on federal highways, shouldn’t a state be free to decide where to enact tolls on its own roads?
jffry
AFAICT there are highways affected by this congestion charge. Federal Highway Administration's Value Pricing Pilot Program [1] is the means for state/regional/local governments to institute programs like this. The specific signoff was for an environmental assessment [2] showing that the proposed program complies with relevant environmental laws.
[1] https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/congestionpricing/value_pricing/ind...
[2] https://new.mta.info/project/CBDTP/environmental-assessment
evanb
42nd Street between the Midtown and Lincoln tunnels is part of I-495. That's why the last exit on the westbound LIE is #15, Van Dam street. Exits 1-14 are the avenues from the west side of Manhattan (where the numbers reset because 495 crossed a state boundary) to the east side. If you look carefully you will see I-495 signs on some streetlights or traffic lights.
CydeWeys
Because there are Federal highways in the impacted zone.
devb
In addition to other reasons given, the big one is interstate commerce.
fellowmartian
When I moved to NYC from Kyiv, I was actually surprised by how chill the traffic in New York is.
Obviously it can get annoying around bridges and tunnels, but outside those areas it’s pretty easy to get around, and I live on the west side of FiDi.
Not against this legislation, I think it’s a good idea, but I personally spent more time in traffic on Long Island, and upper Manhattan.
I don’t own a car though, I just rent when necessary.
dangus
This anecdote is basically another way of saying the incentives of urban design align and become self-fulfilling prophecies.
Suburban dwellers stuck in the automobile mindset automatically assume that big cities must have the most horrendous traffic. It's seems like a logical conclusion: if traffic in my 50,000 person suburb is horrendous, it must be downright horrific in the big city.
But that's not really how it works. In NYC one two track subway tunnel can handle 15 lanes-worth of car occupants.
Ironically, making transit, cycling, and walking more convenient than driving and "punishing" the automobiles actually makes traffic and driving more pleasant.
I think a lot of suburban folks would be really surprised that a two-lane 25mph road can comfortably handle traffic for neighborhoods that have 10x the density of a typical automobile-designed connected with large arterial roadways. When you design a place to only accommodate vehicles, vehicles are what you get.
toast0
I've not driven in NYC. But I've driven in LA, SF, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Milwaukee, maybe a bit in Dallas.
Big cities do have horrendous traffic in high density areas. Even if it's free flowing, there are intersections so often and pedestrians everywhere and so speeds are necessarily quite low. You wouldn't drive through there unless you don't have a choice; maybe the ferry lets off downtown and you need to get to the freeway from there, but usually you're driving through downtown to get to somewhere downtown, which means you need to park, which is also terrible.
Of course, NYC is bigger than I think, and there might be some parts where density is relatively less, but the only reasons to have a car there are if you're a cab/limo driver or if you're doing the cannonball run.
CSMastermind
I have driven in pretty much every major North American city and NYC isn't even in the top 10 of worst traffic or places to drive, there are some times and specific areas where it can get bad but I'd happily drive in NYC every day than have commute in Seattle.
I think at least in part that's due to the fact that bad drivers are scared away by New York so don't even attempt to drive there, or if they do they give up quickly.
NYC also has the only public transit system in the US that I don't mind taking so I'm sure that play a role as well.
sylens
To be fair, none of those cities have the transit infrastructure that NYC has. In fact some of them (LA, Dallas, maybe even Seattle) are cities I would classify as “car first”
donatj
Milwaukee is in my experience one of the best driving cities in the US. I've spent a significant amount of time there and very rarely encountered any kind of jam.
cyberax
> Suburban dwellers stuck in the automobile mindset automatically assume that big cities must have the most horrendous traffic.
Have you driven in Manhattan?
dangus
Why would I drive in Manhattan?
"Traffic" isn't just cars, it's also bikes, walking, and transit – it's the flow of people moving from one place to another.
bequanna
I guess I always thought the two challenges in the city were entering/leaving and parking.
There doesn’t seem to consistently be TOO much traffic when you’re just trying to get around Manhattan.
ghaff
It depends a bit on when and where. But, yeah, all the choke points in and out and then finding/paying for parking are at least among the biggest pain points. I almost never drive to Manhattan from Massachusetts even though it would be faster from my house and that's driven in no small part by the pain of driving into Manhattan from the north.
fellowmartian
Yes, that’s been my experience as well.
tlogan
So rich people (who really do not care about few dollars) will be able to drive to downtown just for fun. while poor people who truly need to come to downtown by car will struggle.
This is an unfortunate reality of life: wealth equates to more available time.
okennedy
NYC, and Manhattan specifically, is one of the rare places in the country where having a car is almost virtually unnecessary. In downtown, cars are already playthings of the rich: Just parking the car during peak hours can run you hundreds dollars of per month.
The core of NYC has walkable infrastructure and an amazing public transportation infrastructure (at least compared to much of the rest of the country). For those commuting in from suburbs, park-and-rides are already a far more cost-efficient option.
fooker
>NYC, and Manhattan specifically, is one of the rare places in the country where having a car is almost virtually unnecessary.
As long as you are okay with spending all your time in the city.
The medium to long distance public transport for going out of the city is horrible.
MisterTea
Greyhound Buses and Amtrak don't count? I take the Amtrak to visit friends update and Maryland all the time. There's boat loads of stuff on long island as well, LIRR get you out there but it's not very walk friendly but awesome for biking.
fooker
>Greyhound Buses and Amtrak don't count?
They work as long as very few people take them.
dml2135
Compared to the rest of the world maybe, compared to the rest of the US, I struggle to think of anywhere better.
fooker
The point is you still need a car, and approximately half the people (instead of 60-75% like in other cities) own cars in New York.
insanitybit
> The medium to long distance public transport for going out of the city is horrible.
Airports are far, but we have tons of buses and trains that take you out of the city (including a train that takes you to the airport).
fooker
>Airports are far
That distance would be a 15 minute drive almost everywhere else.
pclmulqdq
It is now over a thousand per month for a dedicated space in Manhattan, and that seems to be about the right price.
jcranmer
A parking space takes up about 200 ft² (not counting things like the width of the travel lane between parking spaces), and office rent in Manhattan runs about $7-8/ft² each month.
Chances are, even at well over $1000/month, the parking infrastructure is still effectively below the cost of the space it takes up.
NovemberWhiskey
On the other hand, a parking space is a bare concrete slab, or even a lift holding several cars over a bare concrete slab; and an office building is ... not.
tmnvix
As I understand it, parking buildings are actually more expensive to construct due to the engineering requirements
_rs
There are plenty of garages in Manhattan with monthly rates around 500. It really depends on neighborhood
lotsofpulp
This “poor people will be affected more” is a tired refrain. That is always obviously true, given the consequences of being poor.
Not every solution can or has to solve the wealth/income gap. Solve congestion with one solution, solve wealth redistribution with another.
Wowfunhappy
Also, at least with congestion pricing, those wealthy drivers will be funding the public transit system for the rest of society.
nonethewiser
Trickle down?
Wowfunhappy
Quite the opposite, I'd call it a tax on the rich.
ironmagma
There's no evidence the taxes will be used to improve the public transit. Where are the current improvements to the public transit? Oh right, the subway hasn't been updated in 100 years.
rileymat2
Rationing by payment is only one strategy though. Choosing that strategy brings in wealth disparities. So it is fair to bring it up when that is the chosen strategy.
lotsofpulp
Everything brings in wealth disparities, except for redistributing wealth. That’s an inherent part of one person having more wealth than another, it allows them to buy more.
It is a waste of time to bring it up every single time. We know being poor sucks, but that is its own issue with its own solution separate from solving too many vehicles in certain parts of Manhattan at certain times.
nonethewiser
How does increasing free parking bring in a wealth disparity? Or increasing capacity or lowering the price of public transit?
lotsofpulp
> How does increasing free parking bring in a wealth disparity?
Increases distances between destinations, which means more energy and time to travel between them, which means higher cost.
> Or increasing capacity or lowering the price of public transit?
This would qualify as redistributing wealth.
grumpy_coder
The actual dollar amount also matters. London's charge has tripled since it was introduced. The unforeseen consequence of this type of charge is it becomes a lever to reduce traffic by forcing poorer people off the roads everyone pays for.
nonethewiser
How could this toll be anything of not that?
jeroenhd
Setting the price based on income can help prevent the problem without disparaging the poor. It works for traffic tickets in vaeious countries so it may just as well work in anti congestion systems. That's just one approach. You can also use monthly quotas that you can't buy your way around or other restrictions.
Of course I don't expect such approaches to be a very popular approach in America, but there are ways to do it. All you need to do is let go of the idea that anything can be gained through purely monetary means.
lotsofpulp
That is needlessly convoluted and leads to many externalities and unintended consequences.
Straight forward, simple, easy to implement and audit solutions are best for society.
Sure, let’s take wealth from richer people and give it to poorer people, but handle that via taxes, not via the road congestion pricing in certain parts of Manhattan.
paganel
> is a tired refrain.
Only non-poor people can say something as reactionary as that. Or people who are not friends or relatives with poor people. A populist backlash that will bring some of the middle-class egoism down is long over-due, and not only in the States.
ethanbond
I grew up quite poor in rural Arizona, now live in NYC, and I think they should congestion charge the absolute daylights out of anyone driving through Midtown. “This will hurt poor people” is a very very bad argument in this case.
There you go, point disproven.
nonethewiser
It’s obviously true though, isnt it? Poor people cant afford the ~$20 toll like a rich person can.
Wowfunhappy
If you're poor, you probably aren't driving in Manhattan in the first place.
And in all honesty, if you are driving in Manhattan, you should probably stop doing that.
ironmagma
If you're poor, you probably aren't eating anyway. And in all honesty, if you are eating, you probably should stop doing that.
If you're poor, you probably aren't getting your cancer cured anyway. And in all honesty, if you are getting chemotherapy, you probably should stop doing that.
See how none of this makes sense?
Jcowell
in the context of the area it does make sense. the Poor are majority in the outer boroughs and uptown manhattan with the only poor community I can think of near the area is in Chinatown and you would have to question: What is someone from chinatown doing with a car in FIDI? they’re not going to brooklyn since they would’ve taken the Williamsburg bridge or even the Queens Midtown tunnel. No way they’re looking to just chill at Battery Park or the seaport since the 6 train is right there.
Someone from the Bronx or Harlem could drive there for work but both places have public transportation options that makes driving not make much sense and neither places require going through downtown in order to access south brooklyn.
ironmagma
You seem to be making the argument there is no one like this. But if there is no one like this, what good will banning it do?
I think we all know people find it, for one reason or another, more appropriate to take a car despite the already large cost of doing so in Manhattan. People aren’t just behaving completely illogically. If someone is driving, it’s not because they just didn’t even consider taking public transit.
Wowfunhappy
> If someone is driving, it’s not because they just didn’t even consider taking public transit.
And in the process, they are polluting the air, making busses run more slowly, and (on average across the population) killing pedestrians. On an individual level, this person may indeed have concluded that driving is better for them than taking public transit. For society at large, however, public transit is almost always the better choice.
By making driving in Manhattan more painful for individuals, we bring it in line with the real cost for society.
ironmagma
Without ceremony, you have changed arguments. Originally you were saying those people simply don’t exist. As many a police investigator has noted, changing one’s stories is the surest sign of dishonesty.
But even if we ignore this, by induced demand, open streets will simply invite more traffic. The difference is the wealth distribution of the present traffic.
Wowfunhappy
> Originally you were saying those people simply don’t exist.
Sorry, when I said "if you're poor, you probably aren't driving in Manhattan in the first place," I didn't mean to imply that zero low-income people drive private vehicles there. However, I do believe that the population of drivers in Manhattan is overwhelmingly higher income.
Separately, I believe that the vast majority of private vehicles should be banned in Manhattan anyway (which is what I meant by "if you are driving in Manhattan, you should probably stop doing that). If I was God Emperor of New York, I would close 4/5 streets in Manhattan to vehicles, and restrict the remaining streets to commercial trucks, busses, taxis, ambulances, and individuals who can park in handicapped parking spots. This would ensure that those who actually do need to drive can do so efficiently.
If congestion pricing gets us partway there, that's a huge win in my eyes.
> But even if we ignore this, by induced demand, open streets will simply invite more traffic.
Great, then NYC can raise the price. They should keep raising the price until the roads are clear. Then they should give that money to the MTA to improve public transit, and further tip the scales against driving.
ironmagma
Doing that you’ll get a couple billionaires per hour. Why not just ban driving in the city altogether? (This isn’t just a rhetorical question, really, why not just do that instead of this BS?)
Ironically I think everyone knows the answer which is that this isn’t about congestion. This is about lining pockets as much as possible.
Wowfunhappy
No. As far as I'm concerned, nobody should be driving in Manhattan. Private vehicles shouldn't even be allowed here.
Congestion pricing is a compromise.
ironmagma
It’s a bad compromise, one that leads to gentrification instead of betterment. Just rip off the bandaid by banning cars.
mgbmtl
There are also rich and poor people using the subway. Improving it will improve the situation for everyone.
I'm (sincerely) curious though, who are the poor people affected? Parking downtown is crazy expensive, and there are already expensive tolls around Manhattan.
There are easy solutions though: charge by the weight/size of the car (the weight should already be on the car registration).
nonethewiser
> There are also rich and poor people using the subway. Improving it will improve the situation for everyone.
Exactly. Just like more parking would improve it for everyone.
mgbmtl
Parking doesn't scale well. It would just improve the situation for a few people, temporarily.
jupp0r
Not sure how familiar you are with the realities of driving a car in Lower Manhattan, but as somebody who has visited the place a few times, I can assure you that poor people cannot afford parking there on a regular basis already.
seanmcdirmid
Midtown when I was there had free street parking (maybe it still does?), and it made more sense financially for my girlfriend at the time to drive rather than grab a train from Harlem to Hawthorne (north of white plains, the office wasn’t near the train station so that last link wasn’t really covered). I was honestly surprised driving was…so convenient in that part of NYC at least, but midtown is definitely not Manhattan, and also a reverse commute.
rafram
> I was honestly surprised driving was…so convenient in that part of NYC at least, but midtown is definitely not Manhattan, and also a reverse commute.
Midtown Manhattan isn’t Manhattan?
seanmcdirmid
I’m not sure why I knew it as midtown then, but the area I’m talking about is the north side of Central Park where Columbia university is. Harlem is the closest train stop to get to Westchester county. According to wiki it’s called the upper west side of Manhattan.
It could have been by girlfriend’s apartment was actually in midtown and I’m misremembering it’s proximity from the university? But even the more northern point is considered Manhattan, so I was mistaken on that count (even if it was on the border with Harlem).
rafram
Harlem is also a neighborhood of Manhattan. Manhattan is the entirety of Manhattan Island plus Marble Hill (a tiny neighborhood on the mainland to the north).
sigstoat
if you’re rich enough you just pay somebody else to run the errand or drive you around in an even larger vehicle.
stop freaking out about rich people being able to get something nice. they can already afford nice things. look at the overall costs/benefit analysis of the policy.
nonethewiser
You bring up a good point. It makes door dash even more expensive and even more a luxury for well off people.
Also, the argument was never that rich people cant afford nice things. So while concluding they can is easy and correct, its not accomplishing anything.
m3kw9
If you are so poor with a car but can afford gas that a few dollar toll will wreck you, you really should just take public transportation. There will be rare legit cases but when was the last time they made everyone happy with decisions?
paulcole
Yes, rich people do things for fun. Poor people struggle.
It’s not a particularly deep or useful insight.
What do you think should happen here instead since you’re so disappointed with the current plan? No charge for drivers going downtown? A dynamic charge based on social status/wealth?
BoorishBears
> A dynamic charge based on social status/wealth?
That's one I like actually, maybe something like the blue book value of the car?
I recently moved out of NYC but I remember looking forward to the congestion charge because I loved taking my greyhound to the union square dog run, which was driving distance for me. 20$ wasn't enough to affect my plans to do that, and less traffic would actually make my life way easier when I took him there.
There were plenty of people like that: totally unaffected by whatever a reasonable toll is, and actually more likely to drive if they enact it.
-
At the end of the day I don't buy that in a city like NYC we'll see the type of effect congestion pricing has had in other less connected cities. Here owning a car is already expensive, parking already cost more than people pay in rent in some places, etc. It's like stacking a regressive tax on a regressive tax, it doesn't really have the same effect.
wcarron
> That's one I like actually, maybe something like the blue book value of the car?
Suppose two people make the same amount of money. One chooses to buy a cheaper car and pays higher rent for a nicer apt. The other, the opposite. Under your pricing scheme, you're unjustifiably charging two persons of equal means different rates.
You can adjust this many ways. One person gets a cheaper car but spends more on luxury vacations or invests more aggressively or spends large sums eating at nice restaurants often or buys expensive clothes or or or etc.
Edit: Lastly, why should we be charging expensive cars more? A BMW M4 is, by all measures, much less irritating to have to share the road with than a large SUV or Ford F-250 (god forbid it's also lifted). Tolls should scale with vehicle size and weight and when vehicles have poor fuel efficiency, not the sticker price.
BoorishBears
You'll always be able to imagine cases where a broad toll doesn't perfectly align with a narrow goal, why even waste energy listing them out?
Instead consider how you get the toll to actually do something: in the case of a congestion charge it's by making driving in Manhattan expensive enough to reduce how much it happens for as many people as possible.
Regardless of the corner cases you can imagine, there are more people who drive an M4 that would be unaffected by a $20 charge rate than there are people who drive an 430i. So increase the cost for the people with M4 and you've made your toll strictly more effective... even if there are people who can afford M4s and chose to drive a 430i.
wcarron
One could also just make the base rate $150/day and then you'll definitely make it untenable for as many people as possible, which is apparently the goal. This leads to an outcome which is you think is an unfair distribution. But luxuries are necessarily for those who can afford them.
The 'cost' of the action is the same. A vehicle in the city is a vehicle is a vehicle and therefore the toll should be flat, unless that type of vehicle in particular causes more damage to roads or empirically worsens outcomes like traffic or pollution relative to other types of vehicle. Charging people more because they are wealthier is unfairly discriminatory.
BoorishBears
Their goal isn't to make it impossible, it's to reduce it. They want you to really need to drive, not just do it because it's convenient.
It seems you might not familiar the actual toll to start, it carves out a lot of special cases for that reason: people with certain incomes are exempt if they already live in the area, ride-shares have special rules, they excluded corridors around the edges of the city, etc.
You're also confused on cost here. It's not cost to the city they're trying to change with a toll (that'd be nonsensical) it's cost to the driver. If cost is hard for you to follow, think of it as "attractiveness".
They want driving to be unattractive, not impossible, not untenable... just unattractive.
TheCleric
> regressive tax
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
BoorishBears
It does, but if you'll elaborate on your incorrect understanding I'd be happy to educate you: https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/fhwahop08040/cp_prim5_...
> most forms of transportation finance—fuel taxes, sales taxes, and tolls—are regressive forms of taxation in that they burden the poor more than they do the rich.
TheCleric
I agree with you, and the source, that most transportation taxes are regressive. Where you lose me is that THIS one is. Driving into Manhattan isn't something the vast majority of poorer commuters are doing.
bradleyjg
Where are these poor people who truly need to come downtown by car parking?
MengerSponge
I imagine there are literally thousands of them (/s)
kepler1
What's your point?
Everything with a price is unkind to poor people.
So you can't do anything that affects poor people? What rule/principle are you suggesting then, to get anything done?
dragontamer
Every time I go to NYC, I say F### the traffic, I'm taking the subway.
Traffic is horrible, subway is more than usable. Just walk.
krasin
> So rich people (who really do not care about few dollars) will be able to drive to downtown just for run while poor ones which need it will suffer.
The first part is true, the second part not necessarily so, if combined with improved subway. Theoretically, it should be even possible to setup the system, where these taxes on cars to downtown directly fund subway expansion and modernization.
sacnoradhq
This is the problem of toll roads and express lanes and creating a pseudo private system that monetizes the public commonwealth. Public-private partnerships are another cash grab.
aqme28
Public transit has always been the cheaper option. This just makes the difference a little larger.
tharne
> Public transit has always been the cheaper option.
Only if don't value your time.
throw__away7391
[flagged]
nonethewiser
It is literally this. Decongesting the streets for rich people.
satvikpendem
We should just ban private vehicles in the city as well, bringing back more cyclists, walkers, and generally increasing metro usage.
RobinL
Banning is equivalent to an infinite price. Better off setting a very high price, such that the revenue is far higher than the negative externality
rightbyte
For practical reasons I guess you want to be able to move furniture etc. That is about the only time you need a motor transport in dense cities?
HWR_14
Banning means you don't need to maintain the infrastructure. You can let people walk all down the street. The pavement doesn't need to withstand thousands of pounds of vehicles. And so on.
robben1234
>The pavement doesn't need to withstand thousands of pounds of vehicles.
It has. It'd be illegal and extremely dangerous to design a city without properly functioning infrastructure for emergency services, garbage disposal, physically impaired accessibility. Also very inconvenient to not include commercial deliveries and public transit into that list of essential road use scenarios. Most of the vehicles performing these services are heavy.
For the most part only private ICE cars are light enough to be a drop in a bucket on the road maintenance. Private EVs, and especially EV SUVs, are likely making an impact on the maintenance schedule though.
hnboredhn
I sorta hope they find some streets or avenues to convert to bike lanes. I do sorta feel like having a congestion fee without much added ways to get around for pedestrians leaves the typical person unchanged from this.
ars
You can't ban private vehicles because it's difficult to get to the rest of NY without transiting through Manhattan.
You would essentially be cutting most of NY off from the rest of the world.
kylehotchkiss
Hopefully this money goes to policing the subway too, people have a lot of valid safety concerns leading them to take their car or a cab.
In India, you have to pass through a metal detector to ride the metro. It seems like in US, we are trending towards needing to do the same thing.
brailsafe
I would assume you're right in NYC, but I feel like this claim is made A LOT to sort of excuse car driving in many cities with different degrees of transit availability and threat risk. I feel like most of the time it's more accurate to say "people fear for their safety" rather than that their concerns are actually valid.
Fear can be driven by only a few extreme examples that get a lot of coverage, meanwhile a lot of the time it would be much more likely to be concerned for the likelihood you'll get into a terrible car accident.
I'd doubtful that there's some sufficient level of policing that would make fearful people change their mind, because they're not jsut overcoming what they perceive to be extreme risk, but also overcome what they perceive to be very comfortable travel. Much like how to lose weight, you can't just go and do a bicep curl once in a while, you have to totally change your diet and habits for the long-term.
welshwelsh
Violent crime might be rare, but unpleasant interactions with strangers are common.
Panhandling, for example, can make people feel unsafe. You can never be sure how a person will react if you say no. It's illegal to panhandle on the subway, but still happens all the time.
brailsafe
I guess my point was the delta between how unsafe people are and how unsafe they feel. While it's important to build and improve systems like transit in a way that helps people feel comfortable, a whole lot of any given car driving majority that would make an argument against safety are probably some of the same people who'd buy a gun to ward against a hypothetical situation where someone is targeting them with another gun.
I never had these fears, the car I already had was just the easier option, until it broke down. If someone were to consult me about my transit experience (albeit in a very different place) I'd tell them "Ya, sometimes there are panhandlers, sometimes there are super drunk people, but tbh I can't remember any specific examples because they're just random background noise from time to time". Meanwhile there are plenty of times I've almost been killed by cars in relatively mundane situations that I can remember specific examples of, including those I almost caused while driving and making a trivial mistake.
Should people be more concerned about hypothetical discomfort resulting from someone asking for money, or the very predictable consumption of time, energy, money, and every day life altering risk of one wrong move by anyone around them?
The latter doesn't mean I never drive, but for the 2-3 weeks a year I might need one, I just rent it, and then I'm reminded of why I don't want one, but it's nice sometimes.
woodruffw
It's hard to imagine a scenario in which a metal detector on the NYC subway is useful in a way that isn't extremely annoying to the millions of people who carry their laptops, phones, etc. with them to work each day.
(My only experience with a "metal detector" on a metro system is Bangkok's metro. The detector was unplugged at the first station, and everybody was waved past it at the second station.)
insanitybit
What would a metal detector accomplish? There's something like 5-10 murders on the subway per year and those numbers are fairly stable, with small spikes around the pandemic when ridership went down drastically.
I'm all for a safer subway but your tone seems to imply that this is some out of control thing whereas it's extremely unlikely, statistically, that you will have any problem whatsoever on the subway.
o1y32
Sorry to break the news, that's not going to happen in the foreseeable future.
itsmartapuntocm
I feel safer riding MARTA here in Atlanta than driving with the other lunatics on the highway.
elihu
> Proposals range from charging vehicles $9 to $23 during peak hours, and it’s set to go into effect next spring.
That seems pretty expensive to me, but maybe that's typical of toll road prices these days. There are none where I live, so I don't have anything to compare to.
It's unfortunate that it's effectively a regressive tax.
There's an alternative that I like in principle, but I'm not sure if there's a way to actually implement it that wouldn't be a dystopian surveillance nightmare. The idea is that everyone in a region gets a fixed number of "car trip tokens" per week. You use one token every time you drive somewhere, regardless of how many passengers you have. Parents get tokens on behalf of their children, because they have to drive them places sometimes.
Unused tokens may be sold to people who want them through a public auction system. Employers who require their employees to be in the office must provide their employees with the tokens. This shifts the burden of transportation externalities on to the employers. Employees can either use the tokens or sell them if they decide to take public transportation or ride a bike instead. This gives them an incentive to not drive even when they're provided tokens for free.
The total number of tokens in the system can be set low enough that congestion is rarely a problem.
Handling out-of-state cars is a problem. Maybe they can just pay a fixed toll if there's no interstate agreement set up.
Maybe there could also be some rules like non-peak trips only use a half token, or oversized vehicles use 2 tokens.
xbar
A regressive tax that burdens NYC citizens in the interest of business. The voices of the outer boroughs have been quelled.
neilv
> Proposals range from charging vehicles $9 to $23 during peak hours, and it’s set to go into effect next spring.
Sounds like a giveaway of use of public streets to the wealthy.
kazinator
Charging drivers for going downtown is effectively a thing in most cities everywhere due to parking. The only drivers not paying to go a downtown just about anywhere are ones just going for a cruise, without stopping to do any business for any length of time.
Here is a better idea: ban driving from downtown entirely, except for certain service vehicles.
NovemberWhiskey
Placards.
xyzelement
By the way, the congestion of the city makes life much easier for bikers and pedestrians than if the vehicles were moving faster, all things considered. Non-car NYers instinctively jaywalk and otherwise dominate the city because we don't have to deal with anything moving too fast. Other cities may have faster traffic and relatively fewer cars, but they are still way less walkable than NYC and scarier w/o a car.
As I mentioned in another post, this is mainly a way to extract more revenue from the 95% (their own projection) of people who will continue to drive in the city. The 5% that will be priced out... I am not totally sure how noticeable that will be. Busses aren't going to all of a sudden fly down the avenue just because a handful of poor shmuks now have to take 2 busses and 2 trains to get to their job.
nostrebored
Good — let drivers pay for their share of infrastructure and space required to support their existence. So much space in NYC is taken up by roads and parking, subsidized by people who don’t use it.
xyzelement
I am curious whether you actually live in NYC.
In the parts of the city this article is talking about, there's no free parking during busy times. Those lanes are reserved for either special parking situations (teachers, police), business (loading/unloading trucks, taxi stands) or turn into driving lanes. It happens that on Sundays and evenings, that capacity isn't needed and is given over to parking.
30 years in NYC, I didn't ever feel this resentfulness that your post implies. I didn't have a car but I benefited from taxis, ubers, deliveries, ability for people to visit, etc etc etc. I assume that people who chose to drive into the city do so because it's their best option. For my lifestyle in NYC, I could always walk to work and taxi/train to get laid, but that's not everyone's situation.
The self-righteous hatred of cars and roads and parking is weird.
nostrebored
Price per square foot in Manhattan, a parking spot is a steal.
xyzelement
I am not sure what you are comparing to what here.
Reason077
Good move. London has done this for many years with its congestion charge zone (and, more recently, the T-charge for high-emissions vehicles). Helps cut down on traffic congestion, reduces air pollution, and helps raise funds for transport projects.
Jemm
What if you live in the toll area? Do you have to pay everytime you drive?44
Toronto has considered putting in a congestion tax, but no one wanted to way in on how that tax would affect people living downtown.
Symbiote
In London, residents of the congestion change zone get a 90% discount on the congestion charge.
xyst
Would be nice if we can as a country move away from car centric transportation. Tolls do nothing but put a tax on the poor. Rich (or well off) people will continue to pay the toll and their lifestyle won’t change.
Now slowly remove highways, reduce street ROWs, invest in bike lanes, bus infra, train infra, shaded areas, and make living in the city more attractive while penalizing suburban people with extremely long commutes.
Over time habits will change. Hopefully a migration back into the city and getting rid of costly suburbs
LeanderK
The whole situation seems quite chaotic for me, as I've read here in the comments. Different tolls on different tunnels/roads, different transit providers etc. It seems suboptimal.
I wonder why this is not better designed? At least the public transit situation can be improved, I think. While public transit in germany is quite complicated, I think it stems from a similar federalistic design and maybe the solutions can be translated?
We usually have local public transit owned on the local level, with regional rail owned by the state or the federal railroad company. So different actors like MTA or NJ transit, as I've understood (are there more?).
But we usually have another layer, a transport association. For example in munich it's the mvv, which is owned by the state of bavaria, the city of munich and the neighbouring districts, or the VBB in Berlin, owned by the state of Berlin, the neighbouring state of brandenburg and the districts of berlin and neighbouring of berlin in brandenburg. The transport association usually doesn't own tracks or rail cars, but it's responsible for uniform pricing, ticketing, coordinating schedules and distributing the money to the actual transit providers, which can be federal, local or the state (or multiple states as with berlin).
It is quite complicated and usually in germany nobody knows the difference between the transit providers and the transit association etc., but maybe this system can be translated? It usually leads to a situation where the transport association is perceived as a uniform system and hides the federalists structure behind a common front, and also as a common actor and formal way to coordinate on the future of the system between the different actors.
xyzelement
I assumed "downtown" means below 14th st or something like that - an unusual area to focus congestion charges on.
They are actually talking about all of downtown and midtown - south of 60th street - which is yea the busier part of the city, just not what an actual NYer refer to as "downtown"
jijji
NYC is overrated... The good people left decades ago. If you are one of the unfortunate ones who has to actually take the train every day downtown, I can't tell you how many times I've been in fist fights in the train simply because I was wearing a suit on the wall street train, or the christopher street PATH train. People spit on you, they want to fight because you represent corporate america. The trains are BS. Better learn jiu jitsu before getting on one. lol.
giantg2
Nobody really wants to drive or park in that sort of congestion. If they would just make public transit better, then there would be less congestion naturally.
paulgb
I agree, but it goes both ways -- you need to reduce congestion to improve transit. In the past NYC has even suspended service around the Holland Tunnel because of gridlock[1]
[1] https://www.amny.com/news/mta-bus-traffic-holland-tunnel-con...
giantg2
Unless they use other methods or restructure the current infrastructure.
insanitybit
How could it be better?
giantg2
Cheaper, cleaner, on-time, expanded service (times and locations), and better safety (either real or precieved).
dangus
There's an important concept to the success of city planning: the alignment of incentives.
When transit is faster and cheaper than driving, people don't drive as much. The individualistic personal freedom of the automobile doesn't outweigh those practical aspects of getting around. People generally make pretty logical decisions about what they want to do.
I'm definitely in favor of congestion charges in certain areas of NYC. If you're downtown in a car you are taking up some incredibly valuable real estate that could be alternatively dedicated to space for human beings.
I think about cities that have implemented taxes for disposable plastic bags. I find it somewhat hilarious how many people consider these policies to be anti-freedom government money-grabs. They make a libertarian's blood boil!
Even assuming those folks are correct, it doesn't really matter, because these taxes are incredibly effective. It's eye-opening to see how a nearly insignificant tax (literal pennies per bag) changes the behavior of everyone.
In cities with bag taxes, cashiers don't default to throwing your stuff in a bunch of bags, they ask you what you want first. Without the bag tax, some people who don't even have a strong preference to receive bags will end up with them just because the cashier put their items inside automatically. Then, customers start bringing their own reusable bags, use their existing backpacks and totes that they already own, and/or people will just carry a few items without a bag. The end result that the tax was going for has occurred regardless of how mad the individualists get: thousands of single-use disposable items stay out of landfills.
This is the same idea for congestion charges: people in NYC who might default to taking an Uber or taxi to get somewhere that's often the same speed or faster to get to on a subway or bus are going to think twice, because there's the psychological knowledge that their behavior is being punished, even if only by a few dollars or cents.
ghaff
>Even assuming those folks are correct, it doesn't really matter, because these taxes are incredibly effective. It's eye-opening to see how a nearly insignificant tax (literal pennies per bag) changes the behavior of everyone.
Yep. People have discovered that it's pretty easy to make it a habit to carry a small bag if you live in a city and just keep some bags in the car if you're driving to the store--and it's generally a lot nicer tote than a pile of thin plastic bags. Yeah I forget every now and then if I'm walking in a city, but I still don't need plastic 95% of the time and it's a better experience once you get used to it.
bdw5204
Or you just don't bother shopping in stores and just order from Amazon instead? Or you take the train/drive to somewhere where they still have free bags?
Since the area where I live put in a paper bag fee and banned plastic bags a few months ago, I make far fewer shopping trips and I definitely don't go on a random shopping trip while I'm out walking because I'm not paying the bag fee as a matter of principle. Every single additional barrier you put up to people shopping in physical stores whether it's a bag fee or "you must wear a mask to shop in this store" or whatever just drives more people to online shopping and accelerates the death of physical stores.
pclmulqdq
That nice bag also accounts for >300x more CO2 than the plastic bag it replaced.
ghaff
Well, that's not the only metric. But, yes, cotton bags in particular are generally considered to have the most impact. (Somewhat ironically my nicest ones come from an environmental organization I belong to.)
It probably, in general, falls into the category of performative environmentalism even if it led me to change behavior in a way I personally prefer most of the time. (It doesn't apply immediately around where I live and mostly use recyclable bags out of preference.)
pclmulqdq
Yeah, I'm not sure cities should be legislating you to behave in a way that you personally prefer. They should be legislating things that are beneficial for the city and aren't preferable to people.
Also, cotton bags emit about 7000-10000x as much CO2 as plastic bags, while the re-usable bags made from recycled plastic are in the hundreds - you can actually break even on CO2 with those bags if you are careful with them and make sure they don't break before the ~300th use.
beebeepka
Do cotton bags (not the only option but you seem to enjoy this example) end up being thrown away after a single use? Are they often blown away by the wind and get stuck on trees? Do sea turtles mistake them for food?
We've been using the same bags (less than 10) for at least a decade.
pclmulqdq
If you're the kind of person who throws away plastic bags and doesn't re-use them as trash bags, please have the decency to cut the handles.
Do your cotton bags have over 5000 trips to the grocery store over the last decade? If not, you may be carbon negative compared to single-use plastic bags (not counting the re-usability as trash bags).
ghaff
Meanwhile on this planet, the micron thick Walmart plastic plastic bags are not usefully reused as trashbags; and neither are most of the others. I don't really have a use in general for plastic bags that small and fragile except maybe in the car from time to time. To a first approximation, no one is cutting the handles and, even if they don't just toss them on the road, plenty of them surely end up blowing away out of municipal trashcans, etc. So the choice is not between reusable bags and plastic bags that are properly disposed of and repurposed, it's between reusable bags and plastic bags that are haphazardly disposed of.
But maybe haphazardly disposed of plastic bags are fine. That's just the real comparison point.
pclmulqdq
A lot of those bags get re-used to line small trash bins and dispose of dog poop (or other gross things like rotten food), despite how thin they are. You may be privileged enough to pay for bin liners and dedicated dog poop bags, but they are an extraneous expense for many people when plastic bags will do.
I agree that nobody is cutting the handles, but the reuse is a lot more prolific than you think. Even so, they are indisputably more environmentally friendly than cotton bags.
George83728
Pros and cons for cotton bags:
Pros: Never spills my groceries onto the sidewalk when I'm walking home. Looks nice.
Cons: The CO2 emissions of producing... one square yard of cotton cloth. (Btw, how many pairs of pants do you own? Probably more than you need, I bet.)
Yeah, looks like I'll be sticking with my cotton bag.
pclmulqdq
You do you. Just don't try to force people through legislation to adopt your style. Nobody wants to ban your cotton bag.
George83728
> Nobody wants to ban your cotton bag.
Really? Well that's good to hear. Because earlier it seemed like you were agitating against cotton bags with remarks about their 10000x CO2 emissions and remarks like "god forbid reusable cotton bags". So you see, I get a little defense of my bags.
I know your anti-cotton remarks are not themselves proposals for legislative bans, but online agitation about an idea is how many such bans start. E.g. the plastic straw bans started as people making a big deal online about turtles getting straws stuck in them. So please understand, when you start using such strong rhetoric against cotton bags, I see fit to defend them.
estebank
In a lot of places, the push for alternatives to single use plastic bags go beyond their carbon footprint at manufacture. Disposable bags end up littering cities, which can block drains and cause other issues. Is banning them heavy handed? Maybe. Does it work? I'd say so.
pclmulqdq
If only that sort of littering weren't already illegal...
How about we enforce that law?
Where I live now, plastic bags are very common at the grocery store, and yet none of them end up on the street. I have also seen police pull someone over for throwing trash out their car window. When I lived in New York City, even the cops threw their trash onto the street, and practically nobody gets a ticket for littering. That is why there is so much litter. It's not the bags.
pclmulqdq
> I think about cities that have implemented taxes for disposable plastic bags. I find it somewhat hilarious how many people consider these policies to be anti-freedom government money-grabs. They make a libertarian's blood boil!
> Even assuming those folks are correct, it doesn't really matter, because these taxes are incredibly effective. It's eye-opening to see how a nearly insignificant tax (literal pennies per bag) changes the behavior of everyone.
I am a libertarian-minded person who takes issues with these taxes and related plastic bag bans. My gripe is that the alternatives to plastic bags are pretty much universally less green, and both plastic pollution and total CO2 spent on grocery bags go up when a bag tax/ban enters. Flimsy plastic grocery bags get re-used as garbage bags. Paper bags, and god forbid reusable cotton bags, emit much more CO2 per use than single-use plastic bags, even if you re-use your paper bags a few times and re-use your cotton bag 100 times. They make no sense, from an environmental perspective.
They are effective at changing behavior, which could be what you mean by "effective," but they do not change behavior in an environmentally positive direction.
wizofaus
I never thought reducing emissions was the reason for trying to reduce disposable plastic bag usage, though I don't doubt many might believe it does.
pclmulqdq
The messaging I saw in NYC when the ban was coming in was all about carbon footprint. Do you think the reason is reducing plastic pollution? Because it went up in Australia after their plastic bag ban, since those plastic bags were replaced by heavier plastic bin liners:
https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/retail/plastic-bag-...
I think the "bailey" of plastic bag ban proponents is the sea life that gets stuck in plastic bags, but there is no way they would have gotten a ban passed on the back of the impact to sea life.
wizofaus
I wouldn't exactly pay to much attention to news.com.au as a reliable source for whether a pro-environmental policy has been effective. I'm personally skeptical about the likely overall effectiveness of plastic bag bans, but I've seen no evidence that increased use of bin liners has somehow made plastic pollution worse here- and for me it is absolutely the blight of seeing loose bits of plastic ending up in the natural environment (both in and out of the ocean) that I'm most keen to see reduced.
pclmulqdq
It's usually your opponents who hold you accountable for your failures. There are plenty of primary sources available for the claims in that article.
zeroonetwothree
Libertarians are usually much more in favor of taxes to on externalities rather than outright bans. So I dispute your characterization.
I agree with the rest of the post though, I think taxing externalities is the right thing to do. Cars have gotten a gigantic subsidy for far too long. A car is allowed to take up 140 sq ft of land for free in one of the most expensive places on earth.
dangus
In my experience people who claim they are libertarians are against all forms of government regulation and taxation.
But it doesn't really matter to me if my characterization of libertarians isn't 100% accurate because I have no respect for anyone who calls themselves libertarian in any way.
That ideology is a swirling bag of contradictions and people who claim to be libertarian usually just circle back around to being anti-regulation, pro-laissez faire capitalist, pro-consumption, anti-worker conservatives who don't want to admit that they share a bed with the more ugly side of that ideology.
pclmulqdq
> In my experience people who claim they are libertarians are against all forms of government regulation and taxation.
> But it doesn't really matter to me if my characterization of libertarians isn't 100% accurate because I have no respect for anyone who calls themselves libertarian in any way.
Tell me you've never spoken to a libertarian without telling me you've never spoken to a libertarian.
dangus
Do libertarians even exist? I'm being serious.
osigurdson
Forcing people to drive to an office just to type on a computer and take phone calls is the thing that should be disincentivized.
elihu
I suppose governments could mandate that businesses provide their employees with a stipend to cover tolls in addition to their regular wages if they require the employees to be in the office.
osigurdson
I suspect governments want it both ways: property tax and road tax. Naturally all in the name of doing something good for the citizens.
fennecfoxy
Nothing new, London has congestion charge/ULEZ, it works decently well apart from the Tory corruption that allows all the assholes here to drive giant range rovers/SUVs in London, they should've banned new registrations drivable in London for SUVs in like mid 2000s or something.
leach
Taxi and Uber drivers watching all their income for the night evaporate to the tolls
NovemberWhiskey
Living in the part of Manhattan that's covered by this, I'm absolutely looking forward to paying $17 to drive a quarter-mile to the FDR early on a Sunday morning /s.
The thing that's interesting is that the average vehicle on the roads in lower Manhattan (in my experience) is not a luxury car. It's a taxi or a ride share or a delivery truck (or other commercial vehicle: contractors etc) or what is essentially an economy or mid-tier private vehicle.
EDIT: not a popular observation apparently.
zhoujianfu
Now, ideally they take the revenue from the congestion charge and distribute it evenly among the residents!
Eumenes
Hopefully this comes to NYC: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12011507/ULEZ-Blade...
busymom0
This would probably get challenged in court as an undue infringement on mobility rights. Only the rich will be able to afford mobility because of this.
mock-possum
A regressive tax?
jasmer
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teakweazel
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Slava_Propanei
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ldehaan
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DirectorKrennic
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metalforever
What about people with disabilities.
occz
People with disabilities thrive in areas with reduced car traffic. Many people with disabilities are unable to drive and as such benefit from prioritized public transportation, and many small electric vehicles that are appropriate for people with disabilities can use bicycle infrastructure. This covers the vast majority of the needs of people with disabilities - the small remainder can be granted exceptions.
No yank-tanks are required to accommodate people with disabilities - quite the opposite, car-oriented infrastructure limits their agency in society.
robin_reala
Put an exemption in place: see https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/congestion-charge/discounts...
jmclnx
I do not know about London (UK), but there is a lot of corruption here in the US with handicap plates. So I can see a lot of people (like politicians and maybe police/fire) families getting this special exemption.
ericmay
Exceptions are a thing. Also how do people with disabilities live in other countries and move around? These are easy scenarios to address.
We also shouldn't force everybody to drive a car everywhere they need to go just because some tiny percentage of people may need a car to drive around. Frankly, we'd probably have fewer disabled people in the first place if they had to move around more.
giraffe_lady
What about them? Many of them can't drive, how are you working to address the inequalities caused by that? Because of regressive asset cap laws many of them can't own a personal vehicle that suits their needs without losing access to their critical health care.
Disabled people have lots of current issues with the current system. It's possible you're already working to address those but if not this doesn't seem like an honest concern.
thx-2718
" At the same time, cities should develop bike stations and tramways for people to move around quickly in car-free areas, paid for by gas taxes, which should be raised, and road tolls, which should also be raised."
Huh? If no one is driving who is paying gas taxes? Road tolls everywhere?
raldi
If no one is driving, we can take the unbelievable amount of public spending currently going into subsidizing automobile traffic and redirect it to fund public transit.
thx-2718
I don't have a problem with doing that. Of course how you get public transportation into rural communities is a bigger challenge but we don't have to have society be based around the car.
My issue is that the previous post said they would pay for public transportation and walkable carless cities through increase gas taxes and road tolls.
raldi
An increase in gas taxes and road tolls would make people drive less, requiring less road maintenance, traffic policing, etc, and allow buses to move more efficiently, freeing up funding that can then go into improving transit.
thx-2718
If your over all take home is lowering though eventually you don't have money to repair the sidewalks and the bike racks and so forth because no one is driving anymore to pay for it.
Or you raise the cost to ride public transportation or pay for those things from somewhere else (like property taxes).
raldi
You seem to think the government makes money when someone drives a mile, but in fact it loses money — significantly more than if that person had taken transit instead.
The fewer miles people drive, the more money the government has available for other things.
thx-2718
> The fewer miles people drive, the more money the government has available for other things.
Yes if everything else is kept the same. People's income. Business profits. Etc.
However you're overlooking the point spending on transportation infrastructure which is to get resources from one location to another.
People drive to work where their income is taxed. Businesses have things delivered to them to sell and have ways to get customers to them. So now the business is paying taxes. And people use that income they earned to pay for rent or own a home so there's property taxes.
Now let's just remove the way people get about to doing all those things because that would save the government money from spending money on transportation.
Oh great no one is going in to work. No one is going to business or shop. No one is paying taxes. But hey we saved a bunch of money by not building roads.
Please read that I am not opposed to changing our society to be less car dependent (obviously for the environment it is better)
I am objecting to the notion that you can pay for a carless society by just not paying for roads or by imposing taxes on cars more without raising taxes or fees elsewhere.
raldi
> Now let's just remove the way people get about to doing all those things
No, congestion pricing removes the obstacles slowing people down from doing all those things. Take for instance a plumber who still has to drive around. Yes, they have to pay the congestion charge, but they also spend way less time stuck in traffic and can probably bill an extra job or two that day. Same for UPS drivers, etc.
> No one is going to business or shop.
Actually, studies from all over the world consistently show that when you make driving less attractive, it's a net positive for merchants: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-13/every-stu...
thx-2718
Except those plumbers are not going to get anywhere faster now because there's pedestrians and bikes everywhere but I digress since it's not relevant.
Regardless what you're saying completely ignores my actual objection here. Which is paying for infrastructure through something that you just eliminated.
raldi
It’s paying for infrastructure through cost reduction.
thx-2718
> Now let's just remove the way people get about to doing all those things because that would save the government money from spending money on transportation.
ZoomerCretin
People will still drive, just not in downtown areas.
thx-2718
If you raise the price of driving higher the the number of drivers lower. Will the increase revenue from the pricehike overshoot the loss in revenue from less drivers on the road?
You've also effectively eliminated owning a car in the city. So now you're asking rural residents to pay for more expensive gas and more expensive toll roads while giving all that money to people living in the city.
I have a feeling politically that would be rather unpopular.
ZoomerCretin
There's not a single state in the country where tolls and taxes pay for all road upkeep expenses. There's not a single state in the country that raises taxes and tolls automatically when revenue drops.
Very few people drive in the NYC area anyway. I think 30% of people? It's not a big deal.
thx-2718
But we want to pay for tramways and bike stations and our nice carless city through raising taxes on automobile transportation (which just plummeted because of above policies).
elmerfud
Yes I agree let's fundamentally eliminate the right of free travel from place to place through the public thoroughfares on the conveyance of your choice. Because it's that pesky fundamental concept that we have of freely moving about through cities through county borders through state borders without being stopped and harassed that's actually the fundamental problem of it all. So instead of just pissing around and banning cars from using the roads that their taxes pay for let's just eliminate the entire concept of allowing people to move from place to place without permits and papers. Because that is a great model for a country to have.
But we're talking about New York city so you've already granted the port authority wide latitude and restricting your movements and controlling the population.
digbybk
Years of auto and oil industry propaganda has deluded people into equating freedom of movement with car ownership. My freedom of movement is violated when the subway isn’t moving. For people on a bus stuck in traffic, their freedom of movement is violated by a government that incentivizes car ownership and creates gridlock. As a cyclist, my freedom of movement is violated by reckless drivers putting my life at risk, supported by a government captured by the auto industry, failing to build real infrastructure that enables that freedom the way it does for car owners. Not only car owners pay taxes, by the way. Particularly in Manhattan.
pierat
Common American reply. It's turned into "freedom".
Public transit can easily be 1st class transit with freedom, as long as it's prioritized as such. When transit has to fight with vehicles, it's strictly worse, and discourages usage.... Unless you're in the poverty class and have to.
Roads are high speed infrastructure to get from 1 area to the next. We call them highways and interstates. WE NEED THOSE.
Streets are the downtown, slow speed where human scale stuff happens. It's also where transit should be. These are also needed.
Those 2 or 4 lane highish speed abominations where businesses are loosely connected by asphalt oceans are "stroads". They do both a street and a road terribly, induce sprawl, and are terrible for anyone not in a vehicle.
And sheesh, with your polemic, depriotizing motor vehicles doesn't cause you to lose freedom... AS LONG AS OTHER MODES OF TRANSIT ARE EASIER/BETTER.
nkrisc
But you’re still free to travel there as often as you like, for however long you like, any reason you like, and you don’t have to tell anyone about it.
I’m not allowed to drive my car on sidewalks or bike paths, but that doesn’t mean we live in some dystopian nightmare where the right to free travel is restricted and I have to show papers everywhere I go.
kodah
> The first step to rid ourselves of our, dare I say, enslavement to our car-centric way of life is to make car ownership as expensive and inconvenient as possible. I hope more cities follow. Start closing off entire areas to cars.
I'm pretty sure GP is responding to this, which while I appreciate the transparency, is atrocious. Creating negative incentives just makes people angry, and generally surfaces a lot of inequality.
I just went on a long haul train ride with my dad who is heavily disabled. The people on the train were nice but trains are very clearly built around the concept of able bodied people. There's a single bathroom for disabled people and it's inside one of the sleeper rooms. He basically had to sequester himself in his room for 24 hours. Meanwhile, my dad can drive a car.
Maybe before we go making hyperbolic statements that are sure to encourage decision making that results in gross inequality we should think about the basics of a problem first.
zeroonetwothree
I think cars have a lot of advantages like the one you mention (and others, eg much less crime risk). But we can pull back on the car obsession a little bit, we’ve gone kind of crazy the past 100 years and made some awful cities. I think cars should be an option, they just shouldn’t be the only reasonable one.
kodah
I agree. I walk, take the train, ride my bike, or ride the bus whenever possible. I've adapted a good portion of my life to that thinking, including buying a more expensive house that I could do those things.
But a lot of folks in this thread came to defend someone who analogs cars to enslavement and championed making them so expensive people can't afford them.
wussboy
Your free travel is free only because its true cost is heavily subsidized and carefully hidden. Pay what it costs and you can travel all you want. I’m done with my tax dollars paying for your bad habits. “Free” my ass.
jazzyjackson
Given "using the roads that their taxes pay for", OP seems to be under the impression that gas tax just about covers it. Difficult to find an unbiased source but iirc gas tax covers 30-50% of whats spent on roads
Of course, like other infrastructure, its not necessarily meant to pay for itself directly, so long as economic growth makes up for it, but I think there's many cases where adding another lane to thr highway costs more than it enables. Frankly a lot of the road construction seems like a grift to me - how many hours can we take to resurface this section of the interstate ? Easy place to pour money - the roads always need repair, and yet, with all the bridges and tunnels failing with inadequate upkeep, one wonders if the money ever touches the ground.
zeroonetwothree
The real cost of roads is in the space you take up that other cars cannot (at least in any area with significant population density). And that’s not paid for at all.
pierat
How are motor vehicles subsidized?
----------------------
Loosely enforced speed limits
Arbitrary setting of speed limits
Free, off-street parking mandated in building codes
Low Housing density induced sprawl and car requirement
Exempting pickup trucks and SUVs from emissions laws
Lack of vehicle safety laws to protect pedestrians and cyclists
Aftermarket products exploit a lack of regulations
Mandatory Insurance law: payout requirements
A mortgage interest deduction drives suburban sprawl
Tax laws favor car ownership
Tax formulas favor car commuting over public transit, biking, and employer van pools
Pedestrians have limited ability to sue drivers
Pedestrians can’t sue car makers for defects
Hit and runs are rarely prosecuted
Out-of-pocket car expenses don’t cover the cost of roads
.... Is this a good start, wussboy?
zeroonetwothree
I would say the two factors of free parking and free road use far eclipse the rest.
zeroonetwothree
This is a gigantic strawman. Having some limited car free areas like downtown cores has nothing to do with free travel. There are already plenty of areas you aren’t allowed to drive. And car-free areas can make a downtown area so much more pleasant, for example Mountain View closed down just a few blocks on one street in its downtown and that alone makes it 10x better to visit.
jazzyjackson
weird take
I am free to move across borders, it's my car that requires paperwork and requires that I submit to detainment and harassment by any cop I happen to pass by.
Having a car is great for doing your own thing on your own schedule, but it's also an expensive liability. I'd rather live in a world where I'm not compelled to take on this liability just to get across town.
alexwennerberg
> But we're talking about New York city so you've already granted the port authority wide latitude and restricting your movements and controlling the population.
This is a bizarre argument. Cars are heavily policed: they must be registered and licensed. The state tells you where you can park it, and your ability to operate it is completely controlled by the state and can be taken away from you. In order for car infrastructure to function, there is a huge increase in police presence in people's lives to enforce traffic rules, parking, etc. None of this is true of, say, walking, biking, or taking transit, all of which are pretty unregulated, even in New York City.
MrMan
[dead]
endisneigh
Charging should be a function of either car book value as well
jupp0r
The point is to reduce traffic and raise revenue.
endisneigh
Yes, more reason to adjust to car book value.
jupp0r
Do expensive cars create worse traffic?
endisneigh
No but their drivers can pay more thus increasing revenue for public transit, like income all taxes should be progressive :)
jupp0r
From the article:
"Drivers who make less than $50,000 a year or are enrolled in certain government aid programs will get 25% discounts after their first 10 trips every month. Trucks and other vehicles will get 50% discounts during overnight hours."
endisneigh
Good start but nothing about luxury vehicles :)
lkbm
Surely if you're concerned about identifying how rich someone is, using value of their car is a much worse proxy than using their actual income.
endisneigh
Sure, let’s do that then. But just so you know excise tax is a thing and uses book value
codegeek
You will be surprised to know that lot of real wealthy people drive normal cars. People who buy flashy cars in America, majority of them finance/lease it and probably couldn't afford it to buy in cash which is what u need to be able to do if ur buying a car.
shrubble
So despite the massive ridership of the subway and the fully paid infrastructure and rights of way from 100 years ago, it can't throw off enough cash for modernization of its systems?
And instead politicians decide to tax the successful mode of transportation, which is cars. Note that given the density and NY gas taxes, it is a certainty that cars in this area generate surplus cash.
lom
I’m sorry what? Cars are the most subsidized thing in America today, you can’t speak of success when they get billions of blank checks handed to them in many different ways. See here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092180092...
Meanwhile public transit: https://www.apta.com/research-technical-resources/research-r...
bequanna
From your first link:
> The true scale of social costs is rarely considered…
Yep, that is pretty much what I was expecting. Some hand waving and lecturing about qualitative, subjective externalities.
This is social commentary and opinion pretending to be science.
xnyan
Are you arguing that when a car parks on the street, there's no actual value to that parking spot? The article is just arguing that there are externalities related to car use, and I'm confused how you conclude these externalities do not exist. Is it the use of the word social that makes you uncomfortable?
bootwoot
Pedestrian and bike deaths are climbing [0]. 44% of New Yorkers are considered rent burdened [1] and sure as fuck can't afford a car in the city. Cars can only be considered a successful mode of transportation from a fairly wealthy and elite perspective of a car owner in New York. If you have the cash for the car itself and off-the-street parking, sure, it's probably great. But for everyone else it makes daily life of walking and biking in the street significantly more dangerous with no clear reciprocal benefit.
[0] https://www.curbed.com/2023/04/its-already-been-a-deadly-yea....
[1] https://wherewelive.cityofnewyork.us/explore-data/housing-co...
colejohnson66
I see ads on the LIRR all the time from NYC saying "we love having a driver's license for everything but driving". The city doesn't hide that it wants to get rid of cars. I don't blame them; cars in the business district are a nightmare for pedestrians and drivers.
wussboy
Cars don't and can't scale and we waste staggering amounts of space and infrastructure on what would be better utilized and more profitably spent on walkability.
MAGZine
wut? in manhattan, calling 'cars' the successful more of transportation is very weird. the train is almost always faster, cheaper, and more consistent. The pitfalls are accessibility sucks (most stations are not ADA compliant), and frequency drops off later at night, but if you just plan a little it's not a big deal.
raldi
Driving is hugely subsidized. This proposal is simply to slightly reduce that subsidy, which will continue to be hefty.
elijaht
Have you been to New York? The subway is the mode of transportation for nearly everyone and it works great. I wouldn’t say cars are the successful mode of transportation in New York at all
shrubble
In terms of paying enough taxes to sustain further use, is how I should have phrased it. Why can't the subway fund its own improvements?
zip1234
Road user fees don't even cover half of the cost of roads let alone make up for all the negative externalities.
dotnet00
If we're complaining about the costs of negative externalities, are we also considering the value of the positive externalities?
zip1234
The benefits are why people would pay the price of the negative externalities. If not deemed to be worthwhile, there are other means of transportation that have less negative externalities.
dotnet00
Describing the NYC subway as "working great" is an amazing twisting of the truth. The only thing good about it is that it isn't as bad as public transport in Long Island. Otherwise, good luck going anywhere on time without having to add 30 minutes - an hour of waste just standing around.
The discomfort and cost of public transportation would be at least somewhat tolerable if there was anywhere near as much of an emphasis on timeliness as there is in, say, Japan. As it stands though, the public transport is the one thing I miss least and hate most about the city.
ricktdotorg
> Describing the NYC subway as "working great" is an amazing twisting of the truth. The only thing good about it is that it isn't as bad as public transport in Long Island. Otherwise, good luck going anywhere on time without having to add 30 minutes - an hour of waste just standing around.
just to add some real numbers, we can look at the actual NYC subway data from MTA's march 2023 report[0] page 12:
* ~3.7m subway riders in march 2023
* 84.7% of riders arrived at their destinations within 5min of schedule
* 83.3% weekday on-time performance
* 85.6% weekend on-time performance
ars
This all might be true - but despite that, it takes half an hour to drive to the airport, and an hour and a half by subway + train.
And for family groups the public transport is more expensive, even when including parking (or paying an Uber).
tick_tock_tick
Give me p90, p95, etc. While less frequent those are the events people remember not the other 3 days it worked.
estebank
Let's say you travel every week day once on each direction (480 trips). The average person will be off their expected arrival time by more than 5 minutes on 72 trips. Of those 72, how many are over, let's say, half an hour? In Buenos Aires I could say that those kind of delays are something that I would experience maybe 12 times a year. They happen, they stand out, they are annoying, but I've also been stuck in traffic for that long, about as often.
dotnet00
I highly doubt the accuracy of that, the ~one time per month during weekends that I have to travel to the city, the subway and busses were so unreliable with timing that it's easier to just take the LIRR to the nearest place to my destination, ignore the busses and walk the remaining miles.
josephcsible
In other words, if you rely on public transit to get to work, you can expect to be late about 4 times per month.
nimbleplum40
If you rely on driving through manhattan you’re going to be late much more than that! Or just leave a bit earlier. Same thing people do with transit.
nimbleplum40
How much money do freeways make directly? How about local roads? Last I checked local roads produce zero revenue. Should we get rid of them?
GartzenDeHaes
First we had segregated roads for the rich, then airports and and terminals, and now it's full on cities. Welcome to dystopia.
nimbleplum40
Ironically, public transit (which congregation pricing encourages!) is way less segregated, at least in NYC. Subway cars into Manhattan are filled with everyone from low-income workers to high paid investment bankers. Moms with kids, elderly. Immigrants from all kinds of countries speaking many languages.
digbybk
You’re allowed to come to New York. Just leave your car at home.
GartzenDeHaes
You're allowed to drive on the $10 a mile toll road, just use your credit card.
coin
The part about airports is valid
My main concern as NYer is the governments inability to build transit, and not for lack of money.
NY will find it relatively easy to institute a new tax on drivers, but will the billions collected actually make transit better in any tangible way?
NYC is also hamstrung by having its streets controlled locally by our DOT, but our transit & bridges controlled by a state agency.
We just caved (again) entirely to the transit unions in the last contract negotiation. We have subway lines & trains wired up for 1 man operation but run them staffed with 2 due to union work rules.
We have for years instead of building elevators, paid 3rd party access-a-ride minibus/van drivers to provide Uber-like service to anyone in need.
We are planning to spend something like $3B/mile to expand a single train line a few stops further north.
The MTA estimates they can put in platform doors like other developed world cities in only 1/3 of stations, at an average cost of $50M/station.
We spent something close to $10B building an entire new terminal for LIRR underneath an existing Metro North terminal when there was enough capacity to serve both out of the existing station. Bureaucratic squabbles between divisions of MTA serving LI & NY/CT were mitigated by spending $10B. Oh and for the average LIRR rider, despite having 2 Manhattan terminals they can get a train to, the net service has actually been reduced in terms of trains per day.
We basically need a modern era Robert Moses to consolidate NYC DOT/MTA/Port Authority and whatever other agencies and bring us into the modern era.