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Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

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Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#111

Post by hedora »

rdiddly wrote: post #97
hedora wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Bay Area, when they added the ability to pay a toll to use the HOV lane, and also extended the HOV lane hours to end at 10AM instead of 9AM, it immediately added 30-45 minutes to the 880 -> 237 commute from East Bay. Extending congestion hours by lowering road throughput is counterproductive, so saying “it smoothed congestion” is applying the wrong metric. At this point in time, we can measure door-to-door tim…

Improving your commute by car isn't the goal. The goal is to get you to stop doing it, or bear your share of the real costs for a change.

If the goal is to prevent people from commuting by car then we should just tear up or barricade all the roads. No need to invest in public transit, since that’s not part of the goal. From what I can tell, this is the actual policy the SF area has been implementing for the last decade.

I’d think a better goal is to minimize the average time and environmental impact of commutes, while maximizing the number of people that can use the transit system to commute (including cars, bikes, busses, trains, etc).

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#112

Post by frankosaurus »

tomohawk wrote: post #107
jonstewart wrote: post #47

In Northern Virginia outside DC, I-66 had been subject to directional rush hour restrictions on single occupancy vehicles. It was illegal to drive a car with just yourself for a few hours every weekday and you risked a ticket if you were caught. People put blow up dolls in their passenger seats. Last year they rolled out automatic congestion pricing for SOVs. All the news stories were about how the toll could hit a r…

An acquaintance of mine was unfamiliar with that area and accidentally drove through there - it's pretty easy to do. Got a $55 toll fee for the single use. Lesson learned - avoid doing any business down there if at all possible. Have to wonder what the cost here is. Acquaintance does lots of business, and now directs it elsewhere to areas that are less hassle.

> avoid doing any business down there if at all possible

Nobody goes there anymore, the congestion pricing is too high.

(With apologies to Yogi Berra)

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#113

Post by gnopgnip »

hedora wrote: post #109
nicoburns wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, has anyone computed the cost of the economic externalities here? Time shifting ones commute either has severe financial repercussions for the employer (lost productivity) or the employees (a decrease in effective wages). That, or companies implement flexible working hours, which allow time shifting without penalty.

That doesn’t work if you have kids. You miss seeing them in either the morning or evening, and the schools don’t time shift to match your schedule.

If you have kids and work either the kids can get to school without you needing to drive them and pick them up, or you need to have some sort of childcare.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#114

Post by reitzensteinm »

zaroth wrote: post #96

I agree with TFA’s premise, but some of the specific arguments present are faulty. Flat vehicle registration fees Excise tax is not flat, and sometimes a luxury tax on top even makes it progressive. These are registration fees paid to the town instead of the state. The storm sewer subsidy The complaint here is that pollution is contributed by commuters / travelers but cleanup is paid by locals. The travelers pollutin…

Converting a single gas car to a plug in hybrid has three times the impact of converting a hybrid to pure BEV, and the former is cheaper.

All of the economies of scale you get from BEVs you get from hybrids. If every car were a hybrid, an immense amount of lithium batteries would be required, vastly more than we use today.

It's hard to see the $7500 tax credit as little more than a gift to the rich, who can buy a Tesla because it's cool and virtue signal about being environmental. It's certainly not an example of thoughtful legislation.

I live in Australia, where I use public transport almost exclusively (Ubers filling the gaps). We don't subsidize Teslas here, which I've heard friends bemoan, but it makes me happy. The money is better off being spent elsewhere.

https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-vehicles/ev-e...

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#115

Post by rdiddly »

hedora wrote: post #111
rdiddly wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Improving your commute by car isn't the goal. The goal is to get you to stop doing it, or bear your share of the real costs for a change.

If the goal is to prevent people from commuting by car then we should just tear up or barricade all the roads. No need to invest in public transit, since that’s not part of the goal. From what I can tell, this is the actual policy the SF area has been implementing for the last decade. I’d think a better goal is to minimize the average time and environmental impact of commutes, while maximizing the number of people th…

Wow I never thought of that! Here I thought barricading the roads would solve everything! But you're right, people could actually still get where they're going but use bikes, buses, trains etc.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#116

Post by jdietrich »

jacques_chester wrote: post #60
bradleyjg wrote: post #34

I don't know about other cities, but to understand the strong political push back against congestion pricing in NYC requires a bunch of local context. Neither the rich+, nor the poor, nor the vast majority of the middle class regularly commute into Manhattan by car. The poor and the lower/middle middle class because parking is prohibitively expensive. The upper middle class and the rich because they either live in Ma…

For those outside NYC, it can be difficult to understand the sheer scale of this phenomenon ("placard abuse"). https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2018/12/28/streetsies-2018-placa... https://twitter.com/placardabuse

Muscovites would probably be sympathetic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Blue_Buckets

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#117

Post by kspaans »

zaroth wrote: post #96

I agree with TFA’s premise, but some of the specific arguments present are faulty. Flat vehicle registration fees Excise tax is not flat, and sometimes a luxury tax on top even makes it progressive. These are registration fees paid to the town instead of the state. The storm sewer subsidy The complaint here is that pollution is contributed by commuters / travelers but cleanup is paid by locals. The travelers pollutin…

The stormwater surcharge also help to nudge people whose property may contribute to excess runoff: large driveways, paved yards, larger houses, etc. This is currently a big problem in Toronto where flooding often occurs downtown (closer to the lake) during and after storms, largely due to houses further out and in the suburbs that have paved their front and back yards to make driveways.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#118

Post by matt4077 »

mberning wrote: post #101
matt4077 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well they don’t say, but I do take their inference. So you’re criticizing them for something they, as you admit, do not actually say. How is it their fault if the undisputed facts they state make you think of something that you consider wrong?

I am not criticizing or disputing their point that, for example, a person living in a low income area will pay a higher rate than a similar person living in a high income area. I do dispute that it is an inequity that needs to be “fixed”, which is the main thesis of the article. While I do consider it unfortunate, it’s not discriminatory or inequitable and should not be on the list.

I believe they may really be trying to show that the complaint about congestion pricing being unfair is silly by giving some other, equally silly, examples.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#120

Post by treis »

nihonde wrote: post #95
bradleyjg wrote: post #34

I don't know about other cities, but to understand the strong political push back against congestion pricing in NYC requires a bunch of local context. Neither the rich+, nor the poor, nor the vast majority of the middle class regularly commute into Manhattan by car. The poor and the lower/middle middle class because parking is prohibitively expensive. The upper middle class and the rich because they either live in Ma…

I live in lower Manhattan. My feeling is that every vehicle other than delivery trucks should be banned from the city. There is no compelling reason for anyone to drive in Manhattan. If people are commuting into Manhattan, they should take public transit to and from parking lots in Brooklyn/Queens/New Jersey. You will never convince me that there are low income workers who need to drive in the city as an essential pa…

>I live in lower Manhattan. My feeling is that every vehicle other than delivery trucks should be banned from the city.

How do you expect to get your plumbing fixed?

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