Sam from Wendover did a very good job explaining why Congestion Pricing is the best solution to address this particular problem, including arguments on why this is not a regressive tax when you analyze it closely.
Canonical YouTube link so you can use your favorite Invidious/Piped instance https://youtu.be/B2j-LgcA7Gk
And same on nebula: https://nebula.tv/videos/wendover-the-battle-over-nyc-congestion-pricing/
Fixing traffic by… discouraging people from driving, lol. Well I’m not complaining.
Regressive tax. Yet another kick in the face of the lower class. Why not a progressive tax based on personal income? It works pretty well for speeding tickets in northern Europe.
This tax hits the rich more, which is good. Now there is more tax money to help the poor. Stop Advocating for making the rich richer
We can’t hold every type of tax-incentive based progress hostage because our culture won’t tolerate day-fines or other income-scaled penalties. I mean we could, but it wouldn’t make sense. This is a good program and it has an option for low income people to pay less. Furthermore we can always funnel money from rich to poor in other ways (e.g. through unrelated).
and it has an option for low income people to pay less.
You’ve never been poor have you. Its an extra 300 bucks talen away for no benefit, assuming they qualify for the low income benefit, and its 400 fliushed down the tubes if they dont.
There are a multitude of options to get into Manhattan for less money than driving, and they have higher throughput.
Maybe if you are that poor don’t pilot your personal vehicle into the congested parts of Manhattan, where you pay for parking on top of the general costs of your car such as insurance and fuel.
Take the subway like me and a million others.
Remind me your grand plan to institute day fines again?
Maybe if you are that poor don’t pilot your personal vehicle
And there it is. That privilege. “if you’re that poor”.
Remind me your grand plan to institute day fines again?
Progressive tax on a scarce resource based on income. Complete exemptions for disabled. Better rates for working poor than 25% off.
The fee is reduced based on income.
sort of. 50% off after the first ten trips per month if you reach a poverty threshold. Its still a big increase for any poor worker and it doesnt scale up to add cost for the rich bastards. So if you come in every weekday thats 4 weeks, 20 trips. 50% off after 10 trips means you get half off for 2 weeks. So its basically 25% off. Figure 20 bucks a day of new cost, now 25% off, = 300 bucks of new cost for a person who can prove they are in poverty. 400 if you cant. 400 is pocket change to a wealthy person and a whole lot for an hourly worker to start giving to MTA.
I’m all for reducing traffic, but yeah, how is this not at least partially regressive? Folks who can only afford to live in New Jersey but then have to work in NYC now have yet another new expense.
But maybe I’m not aware of just how ubiquitous subway stations are in New Jersey that go into NYC. Would it be an easy transition?
It’s my understanding that poor people in NYC already take public transit. It’s just the rich people who drive.
Besides, less traffic in NYC probably means cheaper parking, so people who have to drive will probably see their cost unchanged.
That’s not quite true https://www.cssny.org/news/entry/congestion-pricing-outer-borough-new-yorkers-poverty-data-analysis
There is a small percentage that are poor and will suffer more due to being out priced out of transit areas
That’s unfortunate. But does it balance out the better quality of living the poorer people who live in the city are going to have? Can it be mitigated by expanded bus lines?
I really don’t know. My gut says that this is still a net positive for equity, but don’t trust that guy, he’s an idiot.
I mean you’re just making efficient transportation something that wealthy people can just buy…
Private vehicles aren’t efficient, they’re convenient.
Your comment presumes that everyone has access to public transit that suits their needs. Many people do not.
Which would be the case if there was no caveats for people with low incomes and those with mobility concerns… however, there are discounts and even full on exemptions from the congestion pricing.
https://new.mta.info/tolls/congestion-relief-zone/discounts-exemptions
All those green lines aren’t supposed to be an example of efficient transportation? Is that not exactly what the author is trying to convey?
No, those coloured lines are just the traffic indicators on Google maps, green just means “traffic flowing normally”, red is “traffic jam”
You said “no” but everything after that said “yes”.
Traffic flow is efficient. Cars are (very often) not
Thank you
This is great, should be implemented in all cities. Most people who can use public transport should.
Not all cities are equal. Many have large areas with no public transportation available.
That’s also very easily fixable
I get suggested to drive for 11 minutes and ALSO take a lyft if I wanted to use public transportation to get to work.
Do you always go to work in the middle of the night on a Sunday?
That’s just when I browse Lemmy 🥲
So, what you posted is not really meaningful and representative of your daily commute, right?
I’m so confused about what’s wrong, the bus stop doesn’t suddenly get closer if I leave at 9am monday…?
Doesn’t seem to apply to your specific case but usually there’s a big difference between middle of the night vs. during the day. Even though I live in a city with a good public transit infrastructure, if I try to get to my workplace at three in the Morning on a Sunday I will still have a bad time:
vs.
That’s why your first screenshot didn’t really prove much.
In SF they allocated some extra carpool lanes (taken from the total number of highway lanes) and started calling them “express lanes” instead of carpool lanes. Everybody cheered-- because transit hipstering is a great thing for the people who it actually works well for in our mediocre system. I guess everytone else is SOL. In SF it started out that you could still use them for free if you had 2 people in the car. Now its 3 people minimum to ride free, and the prices crept higher. Now you’ll very often see all non-express lanes stopped with traffic but the price for express lanes high and the express lanes clear of traffic-- that road throughput capacity underused. Its become a rich persons lane, at the cost of reducing capacity of the total system. When it got put in they said the max would be $8.00, shortly after they doubled that, with no max per day. Fees rack up since they charge over short distances. Now I’ve started seeing express lanes on main thoroughfares that arent highways.
Theres a patchwork of diconnected and not well thought out transit systems, with little hope of retrenching them to have usable coverage like NYC has. You’ll end up using an uber or taxi to get to your final destination most of the time, and parking at transit stations is difficult, time consuming, and expensive.
This is not the solution you think it is. It just makes things better for the rich, and does nothing for the poor and middle class. This is like the “clear” lane at the airport security. Once its in, its not going away. Pricing is not in the control of people who have your best interests at heart. If you’re poor, your time is not worth as much as a rich persons. They are commoditizing the hours of your life and many of you cheer for it. Without progressive pricing for this you’re just getting fleeced.
The funds created arent going toward new projects . They are used for road maintenance, enforcement, and debt repayment in the county where the road is This simply frees up general funds that had been used for that before these went in, so no direct benefit in terms of transit projects is mandated.
Also, those lanes were open to everyone for 2 months before they had everything online. There was absolutely no traffic those months. Once they turned on the scam lanes, traffic was back with a vengeance… Unless you paid.
That is expected. When a lane is added it fixes traffic for some time then it goes back to the same due to induced demand. Look at Texas and their 26 lane highway, it has not fixed their traffic problems and never will. It is always hard to move towards less car dependence, but it will never happen if we keep adding lanes.
As someone who takes public transit into SF every work day. It exists. It works. It’s faster than driving
It works.
It works for you in your current situation.
we need it to be more than this
That goes without saying?
As I understand it, poor and middle class people are already taking public transit. It’s the rich people who are driving in New York. This is making it easier for deliveries, taxis, buses, and emergency vehicles to get through by getting all of the entitled rich people off the road.
You think charging them 20 a day will get the rich off the road?
Looks like it is! (See above)
See the Congestion Pricing Tracker for day by day measurements of the impact on congestion.
I’m trying to see the big improvement but it looks like there’s only a few minutes at best difference in drive time going on. What don’t I understand?
Wait time is getting slashed across the board. An example: If in rush hour traffic, 8 minutes was added, but now it’s 3 minutes, that’s five minutes of car fumes and CO2 avoided, of more cars moving about, of goods being transferred. We’re not shaving seconds, we’re shaving literal minutes!
We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of vehicles. This is New York with millions of people. People, businesses, all these things are affected. If you combine this with other data, you might better see the outcomes.
This isn’t tiny incremental gains. From a economic/environmental/commerce standpoint, these are multipliers.
This is an incredible resource. Love stuff like this And I pin this comment if I had that power.
Now do the Van Wyck. Disincentivizing cabs, livery, rideshare, car service, whatever else constantly clogs that that few miles of road that takes 25-30 minutes could be done in five.
As long as that money is spent on public transit improvements, I think it’s a great idea for many large cities.
Yeah, that’s how we do it in Oslo. The road tolls mostly go towards funding transit and investments in bike and foot infra.
Sorry best we can do is 80% to the police department.
But we need more cops
And those cops need tanks.
And drones! With knife missles!
is spent on pubic transit
Hahahahahaha
Oh sorry, I thought you were joking. Of course they won’t
I certainly hope it won’t be spent on pubic transit, at least.
UberXXX
is there any particular reason you’re saying that besides cynicism? I am having trouble finding specifics, but there’s a lot of reporting that the MTA is expecting to raise $15 billion from congestion tolling to fund public transportation repairs and improvements and pretty much all of the proposals for this in the past required all of the revenues to be earmarked for use by the MTA
Mostly because tolls have always been a promise to improve infrastructure and then sometimes end up going to other things nobody wanted. A big one I hear about is my understanding that the NJ parkway toll promised that once the toll money made enough to pay for the highway it would be removed. Well, we all know how well that went… it’s just hard to hear anything they say and not go I’ll believe it when I see it.
People are so used to how bad things are they don’t trust improvement, even when it’s real.
don’t trust improvement
*By a corrupt government which has proven itself to mismanage funds as a default.
Can’t really speak to NYC local but time will tell. Although to give them credit, most NYers I’ve met enjoy their public transportation. But the admonishment of general government expenditure distrust is completely valid imo
NYC as an institution has many hard-working people at all levels dedicated to their communities.
The mayor, however, is a worthless self-serving piece of shit that sold out to foreign nationals, and a good chunk of the city elite are corrupt one way or another.
It’s a very, very mixed bag.
Ugh, I hate how true that statement is.
Man you’re really gonna hate the real world once you get out here
Less cars is the answer! And in what transit is concerned I would say that convenience is very important. Like in Netherlands they got bike locking stations. Not simply a tube that you lock your bike into which is screwed to the front door of a building and fits 3 bikes. I’m talking massive building with an automated system that keeps your bike secure for when you get out of work after the train ride. And restrooms… With cleaning.
Wonderful news for people with porches or flexible schedules.
Hey! I’m woahkin hee-ah!
Are we sure that it’s causing people to take alternative transit more vs just… Not going to Manhattan though? I’m all for it, just worth studying more.
It’s been widely studied in other cities already. Studying it more is ok, but at some point you gotta wonder whether we need all that many studies about whether water is wet, or if the resources and manpower could be better spent elsewhere.
The congestion zone only covers lower and midtown Manhattan. Most traffic not heading to that part of Manhattan is either going to take I-95 through Harlem, I-87 through upstate New York, or I-278 through Staten Island and Brooklyn.
You don’t need to study it more.
Either way, the policy is working as intended; there are fewer superfluous car trips being made to lower manhattan. If people are deciding not to go over a $9 fee, I don’t think they really needed to go that badly.
That’s incredibly short sighted. How long before companies realize that they aren’t paying employees enough to live in NYC or deal with the congestion tax and the company has no choice but to leave NYC altogether? Then tax revenue declines and the city is short on the budget!
If you understand that the congestion tax (and lets face it, it’s a tax) goes up in years 3 and 5, you’ll realize that this isn’t going to get better. I commute to work in NYC every day and drive my personal vehicle probably once a month. It was never cost effective to drive into NYC. Someone who’s already paying $850 for parking, $300 for bridge tolls and the cost of their car is not worried about the extra $9/day.
Oh and BTW, the first day of the congestion tax was a snowstorm so no one was driving in anyhow!
That’s why the congestion pricing revenues ought to be spent on improving public transit, to maintain the tourist economy.
Can anybody tell me how much a drive through the congestion priced road would cost? Like a straight line?
It’s not so much a congestion prices road, it’s a zone. So anytime you enter that zone you pay $9 unless you make less than like $60 k then it’s like $4-5, and emergency vehicles are free.
That sounds pretty reasonable actually.
$9 for cars, no matter if you go one block in or all the way through. And no daily charge for staying there multiple days, only charged when you enter.
Could they make it more expensive for cars that enter the zone once and drive around all day (Uber)
They actually made it cost less for them. They can either pay the $9 each day or choose $1.50 for each trip (passenger pickup/dropoff) they make within the zone
Kinda unfair tbh
Roads aren’t fair
That’s super reasonable, and if it actually helps it’s probably fantastic. I wonder if things like emergency response times will significantly improve as a result.
It’s like $9
Good.
inb4 the supreme court rules that congestion charging is unconstitutional and furthermore that public transport, too, is unconstitutional.
“Ladies and gentleman of the committee, I put it to you: thousands, perhaps millions, of American songwriters have written about missing their truck. How many have written about missing the bus? I rest my case.”
Counterpoint, “the wheels on the bus in fact, go round and round.”
Objection! Does the baby on the bus not likewise go wah wah wah?
If the founding fathers didn’t explicitly mention it in the Constitution then clearly it’s unconstitutional.
Pooping is unconstitutional.
But removing the separation between chruch and state is, any part of the constitution (ex: Article six, the first amendment, the fourteenth amendment, and multiple supereme court rulings on the constitution) are clearly just liberal lies
Congestion pricing bad, private tolls good
Thanks Lars.
Exhaust Now Vents Directly Into Cab: EPA says, “For your health!”
Just out of curiosity, does anyone know the average fare of getting from NJ to NYC by train?
Depends on where you’re starting from. From my town, it’s about $8.50 each way to/from Penn Station, and it’s usually a 35-40m ride (edit: assuming NJTransit is on time, lol), with roughly hourly trains on weekdays and every 2h (plus a transfer) on weekends.
If you’re starting from down in (e.g.) Princeton, though, it’s going to be more like $19.
My tiny rural japanese train has hourly trains (and like 6 running about 10min apart during rush hour). That’s nuts to me.
Is there some kind of monthly transit pass you can buy to make it cheaper overall for regular users?
Yes, but it’s not a huge savings. 10% on a weekly pass (so only worth if if you’re coming in all 5 days) and maybe 25% for a monthly (assuming you’re in 20 days in the month).
Hoboken to Manhattan on the PATH is 2.75$.
For real? I didn’t know it was that cheap…
Hoboken
Isn’t that a street fighter move?
