Driving a Car in Manhattan Could Cost $11 Under Congestion Plan • Hacker News Board

Re: Driving a Car in Manhattan Could Cost $11 Under Congestion Plan

#171

Post by lewis500 » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 6:23 PM UTC

lazerpants wrote: post #58

nwah1 wrote: post #7

Congestion pricing is one of the most economically literate ways to improve traffic, and those funds can be used to improve infrastructure. It isn't so different from surge pricing in ridesharing apps. There is a narrowmindedness on the part of opponents of both congestion pricing and surge pricing, because they are ignoring the obvious point that if they weren't paying the fees they'd be paying in terms of time. Not…

I'm always surprised by the only-in-this-circumstance libertarian philosophy of people who support congestion pricing. I think if you took the exact same logic and applied it to say, schools, supporters would feel completely differently about it. Example: It's really hard to get your child into certain public schools in NYC. Why not start charging $3k a year per child (much less than private schools) at high demand s…

There are already tolls on lots of roads and bridges, and you have to pay to park in public parking garages and street spaces. You have to pay to enter national parks, get services from municipal utilities, ride transit, use the courts, register your vehicle, etc. There is nothing philosophically wrong with the government charging people money to use its property and services. No rule of thumb really helps you decide outright whether something the government provides should be free. What you have to do is to evaluate whether in each case pricing makes sense and how much to charge. Roads are free mainly because they are difficult to charge and because for most roads there is no point to doing so, as most roads are uncongested nearly all the time. Downtown Manhattan is an exception and thus requires a special solution.

It's okay to believe public schools should be free and still support congestion pricing. Congestion pricing has demonstrated that it works at solving road traffic externalities. In London it has saved many lives from reduced accidents, both in and around the charging zone. In Stockholm it has reduced asthma attacks substantially. The New York subway needs lots of upgrades and congestion pricing will pay for some of them (although it would be nice if they could get their costs under control).

Public schools are doing fine being free and paid for by taxes. By way of fairness, I guess one could argue that since every kid by law has to go to school they should be free. But I think we actually have the free system simply because it has worked for a long time. There are problems with education quality in the US, but they aren't due to how schools are paid for. We know that because there are better schools in other countries that are still free. By contrast, downtown streets are as crowded and polluting and dangerous as they are mainly because they are free.

Re: Driving a Car in Manhattan Could Cost $11 Under Congestion Plan

#172

Post by njarboe » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 6:28 PM UTC

tlrobinson wrote: post #73

lazerpants wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always surprised by the only-in-this-circumstance libertarian philosophy of people who support congestion pricing. I think if you took the exact same logic and applied it to say, schools, supporters would feel completely differently about it. Example: It's really hard to get your child into certain public schools in NYC. Why not start charging $3k a year per child (much less than private schools) at high demand s…

Discouraging driving has other benefits such as reducing pollution, noise, space needed for parking, etc. The good schools are going to be filled no matter what, so trying to assign them the fairest way possible makes sense.

Probably more that 50% of what makes a school good are the students that go to them. Once this is realized, fairly assigning students to the good schools becomes problematic.

Re: Driving a Car in Manhattan Could Cost $11 Under Congestion Plan

#173

Post by ebikelaw » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 6:34 PM UTC

lewis500 wrote: post #157

I wrote a history of downtown congestion pricing a few months back: https://medium.com/@lewislehe/a-history-of-downtown-road-pri... Since then I've written it as an academic paper with a lot more material.

Thanks, that is a great contribution to the discussion. I hope in the coming years these charging schemes will be so common that cataloging them becomes impossible!

Re: Driving a Car in Manhattan Could Cost $11 Under Congestion Plan

#174

Post by rayuela » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 6:34 PM UTC

SamReidHughes wrote: post #155

rbcgerard wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also not noted is the portion of people driving in new york city that do not live in new york city...

They're driving in so that the people living there don't have to drive out.

I know guidelines frown against this kind of response, but this is one of the stupidest rebuttals I've ever seen on here...

Re: Driving a Car in Manhattan Could Cost $11 Under Congestion Plan

#175

Post by paganel » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 6:37 PM UTC

smnscu wrote: post #164

paganel wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Surprised that NYC doesn't have service in tunnels. They don't? Damn, then the internet and telecom and providers in the States are really f*cking their customers up, pardon my French, but that's the gentlest way to put it. Let's say that I can understand that the US is a big country and that you cannot lay fiber over such big of an area as dense as it happens in certain parts of Europe, but to not have metro tunne…

I'm gonna guess you also live in Bucharest. Not really a fair comparison, since our Internet is so absurdly (considering nothing else works properly) amazing [1]. ^_^ Jokes aside, yeah, that's what you get when there's a lot of money at play and a longstanding monopoly [2]. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Telephone_Company

Yeah, I think both Orange and Vodafone only started taking tunnel coverage seriously once RCS&RDS started providing free WiFi inside the stations for their residential cable and internet subscribers. Until then doing Internet coverage inside all the tunnels was presented to us, customers, as “too difficult”

Re: Driving a Car in Manhattan Could Cost $11 Under Congestion Plan

#176

Post by IIAOPSW » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 6:37 PM UTC

matwood wrote: post #156

lazerpants wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always surprised by the only-in-this-circumstance libertarian philosophy of people who support congestion pricing. I think if you took the exact same logic and applied it to say, schools, supporters would feel completely differently about it. Example: It's really hard to get your child into certain public schools in NYC. Why not start charging $3k a year per child (much less than private schools) at high demand s…

> Why is congestion pricing okay when applying the same philosophy to other matters of public good isn't? Good question. Will we see sayings like "Save Road Neutrality"? Net neutrality is something that prevents ISPs from practicing a form of congestion pricing (zero rating, charge more for certain packets, etc...), yet the death of net neutrality has been likened to the death of the internet. One of things I struggl…

Thats not really the same at all because the question with net neutrality revolves around being charged for the content of the data. No one is proposing congestion pricing which charges you based on the content of your vehicle.

Re: Driving a Car in Manhattan Could Cost $11 Under Congestion Plan

#177

Post by QuarterReptile » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 6:38 PM UTC

KhanMahGretsch wrote: post #113

isoskeles wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> only-in-this-circumstance libertarian philosophy Wouldn't libertarian philosophy, taken to its logical end, imply private schools and private roads, where you pay whoever owns the school/road to use it? But if we're going to have some public schools and roads, there's more of a moral principle behind the former than the latter. I would be uneasy with congestion pricing public schools because the moral principle the…

>Wouldn't libertarian philosophy, taken to its logical end, imply private schools and private roads, where you pay whoever owns the school/road to use it? That is correct, though the government still has a major role to play in enforcing their citizens rights. If a private company were to build a poor-quality and dangerous road, this would amount to an act of violence towards the drivers, thus the government would ne…

I can't tell if we disagree, but I would attack this from a different angle. Libertarians clearly want less power concentrated at a central level, but it's not clear why that should carry down to every single entity that can be called government. If kids call their parents the government for the home, should libertarians be opposed to parental authority?

I think it would be a fair statement that libertarians favor a strong family unit (certainly not its alternative, the dystopian sci-fi separation of children from parents at birth.) Households run in ways that are almost entirely communist. So why should this non-profit collaboration stop at the front door? I don't think a libertarian has to be opposed to every unit of government that dares to call itself government.

So let's say you abolish your municipal government, but you don't have money to pay for private schools, security, road building and welfare. Maybe you have a neighborhood watch for security, a group of neighbors who fill potholes, and a church that provides rudimentary welfare and schooling. Is that government? Maybe it seems similar, but libertarians would argue that government is a monopoly on force, and that doesn't sound like what's happening here.

But maybe a few people in town saved money to buy some livestock, and now they're having problems with coyote/mountain lion attacks. The obvious solution is to have the neighborhood watch carry guns, if they weren't already. After all, if they're already out, may as well kill two birds with one stone. So now you have a neighborhood watch who's also the gun-carrying livestock protection. You can't help but notice that now the neighborhood watch is the only guy carrying a gun around, and that probably makes you less likely to mess with him. Is that a monopoly on force yet?

What about if there are enough herders in town to start paying that guy full-time, and he's used for neighborhood watch too (since he's already out, after all?)

Hopefully you can see where I'm going; people will naturally band together to solve community problems, and that needn't always be via a for-profit venture. I think it's a misunderstanding of libertarian ideology to suppose that you have to be opposed to all levels of government, and it's a misunderstanding by those inside and outside of that movement.

When you realize that most of the popular functions of government are performed by the local (or maybe state) governments, you have to think libertarians could gain a lot of support by re-framing themselves in that way, and it doesn't seem like they would be compromising.

Re: Driving a Car in Manhattan Could Cost $11 Under Congestion Plan

#178

Post by SamReidHughes » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 6:40 PM UTC

rayuela wrote: post #174

SamReidHughes wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're driving in so that the people living there don't have to drive out.

I know guidelines frown against this kind of response, but this is one of the stupidest rebuttals I've ever seen on here...

Maybe it went over your head. The point that people live outside the city evaporates when their driving is useful to people inside the city. Only if they were driving through without stopping would there be validity to the idea that outsiders are taking advantage of the city.

Re: Driving a Car in Manhattan Could Cost $11 Under Congestion Plan

#179

Post by toast0 » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 6:40 PM UTC

paulgb wrote: post #130

rayiner wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm always surprised by the only-in-this-circumstance libertarian philosophy of people who support congestion pricing. We have congestion pricing for schools. Try buying a house near one of the good elementary schools in DC or Chicago.

That may act functionally as a congestion tax for the home buyer, but instead of the tax going to the state where it can be used to fund other schools it ends up being an arbitrary transfer of wealth to homeowners who bought before the school was built.

In addition to property taxes mentioned by others, many jurisdictions have a transfer tax on the value of the property transferred. A jurisdiction would do well to have high demand schools at different levels in different areas, to encourage families to move, and pay transfer tax :)

Re: Driving a Car in Manhattan Could Cost $11 Under Congestion Plan

#180

Post by QuarterReptile » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 6:42 PM UTC

nwah1 wrote: post #32

bob_theslob646 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not disagreeing with you about the economic point, but will kindly disagree with you in terms of spending. Let's just say New York does not have a great history of spending on infrastructure. A recent New York Times piece, mentioned that the price of labor on infrastructure projects is 5 times more expensive then anywhere else in the world. It just blows my mind that people in the NYC area are willing to put up with…

I agree the costs are high. That is largely a result of the high cost of living. There's additional economically literate funding methods which account for that. For instance, when infrastructure is built, it causes surrounding land values and rents to rise. It is possible to use that rising value to pay for the infrastructure, via a special assessment. There is also an issue where the people with the worst infrastru…

To further support your point, not only is it possible to use that added value to pay for infrastructure, but that's historically how it was done back when infrastructure projects had to be profitable (because they were private.) Today, the most similar thing might be the ski resort that is largely profitable because of the sale of slope-side condos.