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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

#181

Post by electric_muse »

chroma wrote: post #154
gpm wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument against here that I find most compelling is that the externalities of you driving your car are so insanely huge that it should be priced into the range of ridiculousness. Things that you have to consider (The numbers attached are completely made up and probably off by multiple orders of magnitude in most cases, but are to make the point that you should be assigning costs to these things. Then you should…

It's circular logic to assume the externalities are ridiculous, therefore we must price cars into the realm of ridiculousness. If you want your argument to be more than cheering against cars, you should actually calculate the externalities and you should do so for competing modes of transportation. Heck if you're talking about noise pollution, someone dribbling a basketball is far more distracting to me than the whit…

Interesting point. We don’t even need to talk about basketballs. I find buses in New York to be a lot noisier than personal vehicles.

Even if you take into account the multiplied factor of personal vehicles that would otherwise (possibly) be on the road, the sounds would be much more spread out.

When I’m having an al fresco meal in the city, I never notice the cars. The snarling and snorting buses interrupt conversations.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#182

Post by nihonde »

jedberg wrote: post #137
nihonde wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expand my original post from “delivery trucks” to “small trucks/vans on demonstrable business”. Also, other than for major construction, no more semi-trucks in the city. And electric buses ASAP. They’re the loudest and dirtiest vehicles out here. And definitely no more tour buses. That would make this city soar in terms of places people want to live and visit.

> And definitely no more tour buses. You do realize tourism accounts for a great deal of income for NYC, yes?

You don’t need poorly-maintained double-decker ICE buses to have tourism. You also don’t need to accommodate fleets of tour buses on the narrow streets of Manhattan. Drop them off in Dumbo and let them walk or ferry over. They probably need the exercise anyway. Seriuosly though, I really doubt banning tour buses will have an appreciable effect on tourism here.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#183

Post by nihonde »

electric_muse wrote: post #131
nihonde wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My compelling reason is that I live in Manhattan and frequently make trips to visit family that are not well served by public transportation. And when I'm there, I prefer using a vehicle to get around. I often return to New York with a carful of groceries, luggage, etc. I've tried this via public transit -- it's a miserable affair. The utility of a personal vehicle for me is very high -- perhaps substantially higher…

I’ve owned a car in the city before. It’s also an insane hassle and an extravagant expense. I live just fine without a car now. If I need to drive out of the city, I rent.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#184

Post by jonstewart »

hedora wrote: post #70
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…

> Commuters have effectively time-shifted, alleviating and smoothing congestion. It has been so effective that the length of I-66 subject to this treatment will be extended. 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). I suspect those num…

You should read something about it before you speculate idly:

"In August 2018, speeds on I-66 averaged 56.2 miles per hour, compared to 52.7 miles per hour for the same time period in 2017."

https://blog.arlingtontransportationpartners.com/one-year-of...

Also, bear in mind the Metrorail orange line runs along I-66, so mass transit is available. The DC region's workforce is highly educated and many workers have a decent degree of freedom about their schedule. It sounds like people have also been carpooling more, too. That goes to your point about raising peak throughput -- the easy way to avoid paying the toll is to have someone along for the ride, too, which doubles throughput (at a minimum; have a full car and whoa, Nellie). How many billions would it cost to double throughput for SOVs?

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#185

Post by jdavis703 »

gambiting wrote: post #170
alistairSH wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modify the original post to "nobody needs to commute in a personal vehicle" and it works. The truck full of plants is a commercial truck (it might be personally owned, but should be getting reimbursed for mileage).

Well. I'd exclude disabled people from this group of "nobody". For many people with disabilities a car is usually the only real way to get anywhere.

What kind of disabilities are we talking about? Because I’m pretty certain that to a blind person a car won’t help them much, and in fact probably makes life in general more dangerous. Further poor people who have a mobility impairment are often forced into dangerous situations, such as operating a motorized wheel chair in mixed automobile traffic instead of being able to use a dedicated bike lane (yes I’ve seen this many times).

EDIT: I'm not saying wheelchair-bound and other similar people should be banned from driving. Like today, we can add wheelchair-only parking accommodations. In fact, restricting traffic to only people with a genuine need will make their trips faster.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#186

Post by ep103 »

nawitus wrote: post #138
tgb wrote: post #51

I think most of the comments here are misunderstanding the article. It seems to be saying "Don't say congestion pricing is inequitable without also saying that these are things that we already have are inequitable." It's meant as a counter-argument to people saying "but congestion pricing is regressive against poor people therefore we shouldn't have it." So if you think that gas pricing should not have to be based on…

The main flaw with this article is that it's reasonable to think that since car transportation is already expensive for the poor that there shouldn't be even more costs for the poor. In "realpolitik" one can't really vote for "congestion charges but only if we remove tax A from the poor". So yes, people can acknowledge that many things about transportation are inequitable while still believing that congestion charges…

The main flaw of this article is if we add congestion pricing to manhattan to help pay for upgrading the MTA, Cuomo will just take that money when he next raids the MTA funds for some new upstate pork-barrel measure.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#187

Post by gpm »

chroma wrote: post #173
gpm wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can find any studies that take the context of Manhattan (or anywhere else in the first world with similar population density really) I'd be happy to look at them. The study you're looking at doesn't do so. So while I assume that it's a perfectly valid study it really doesn't apply.

I could use that same logic to refute a study showing public transportation is cost-effective as long as that study wasn't done in San Francisco. It would be an obviously incorrect argument in that case, and that is also true in your case regarding cars. The study's numbers are far more connected to reality than your made up numbers. You are making an isolated demand for rigor.[1] 1. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/0…

I'm not making an isolated demand for rigor, because I'm demanding everything we do does not include clear systematic biases in one direction. I'm making a global demand for the most minimal amount of rigor you could possibly use and not necessarily arrive at incorrect answers.

Your study has a clear systematic bias (edit: Actually it doesn't even say what you claimed it did, but if it did it would have a clear systematic bias), that most costs scale with population density, and it was done studying an area (the US) with a much lower population density than the area at hand (manhattan). Assuming your study is entirely correct, its answer is incorrect when applied to the problem at hand. You would have to be an idiot to rely on it because the only way it is "right" is by being incorrect by the right amount in the right direction by sheer chance.

Likewise, if you tried to apply a study about public transportation done in the middle of the Sahara Desert to San Francisco, I would call you an idiot.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#188

Post by jefftk »

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…

> 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.

I recently played for a contra dance in Manhattan. My band members and I drove in a small car, with a sound system, keyboard, and other instruments. I would have been happy to pay some sort of toll/charge/fee/tax but any other way of getting our equipment to and from the gig would be far more expensive and a lot of a hassle.

(My family doesn't have a car, and I commute to work on the subway)

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#189

Post by throwaway2048 »

jdavis703 wrote: post #185
gambiting wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well. I'd exclude disabled people from this group of "nobody". For many people with disabilities a car is usually the only real way to get anywhere.

What kind of disabilities are we talking about? Because I’m pretty certain that to a blind person a car won’t help them much, and in fact probably makes life in general more dangerous. Further poor people who have a mobility impairment are often forced into dangerous situations, such as operating a motorized wheel chair in mixed automobile traffic instead of being able to use a dedicated bike lane (yes I’ve seen this…

You realize other people can drive the car?

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#190

Post by jacobolus »

chroma wrote: post #169
jacobolus wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Riding the train, subway, trolley, or bus and walking a couple blocks at each end is a heck of a lot “better” than sitting in traffic or driving 20 times around the block hunting for a parking space. Even moderately dense urban areas are inherently poor places for personal automobiles, whose infrastructure wastes tremendous amounts of space. The more neighborhoods are optimized for human-scale activity and pedestrian…

> Life in a place where all or nearly all trips can be made without needing to drive a car is very pleasant, especially for anyone who isn’t an able-bodied high-income adult. I've found the exact opposite to be true. Cars are great because they mean you'll never come in contact with crazy vagrants. For a few years I tried taking public transportation in the bay area, but I gave up because I had too many encounters wi…

In practice, cars are dramatically more dangerous (both for their occupants and for bystanders) than transit.

But the widespread use of transit by the poor which you note here is great evidence for my claim that cars are not an effective means of transportation for low-income people.

If people are screaming at you or smoking meth on the bus, that’s indicative of broader social problems which aren’t really solved by changing the transportation system. American society does a really terrible job at providing housing, drug treatment, and other social support for people with mental health problems.

For what it’s worth, I ride buses, trams, the subway, etc. all around San Francisco on a daily basis with my 2-year-old, and haven’t ever felt threatened. My general impression is that many yuppies feel unreasonable amounts of fear / disgust when they come into brief social contact with the homeless or mentally ill. YMMV.

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