Things that are more inequitable than road pricing • Hacker News Board

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#211

Post by bradleyjg » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 12:03 AM UTC

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…

You only need to visit a busy Manhattan street corner during commuting times to immediately realize how inapplicable those calculations are. They’ll be hundreds, if not thousands, of people waiting to cross but they only get the light 25% of the time. The rest of the time and most of the space is devoted to a tiny number of people in cars each taking up a huge amount of space and time per person.

What would the charge per car have to be to cross that street corner to possibly equal out all the time being wasted by all those pedestrians (times their hourly rate) waiting for those cars? I have to imagine it would be in the thousands of dollars per intersection or more.

There aren’t very many people in the world whose time is so valuable that it outweighs hundreds of other people’s, especially given that a random person trying to get to work in Manhattan him or herself is likely to be decently productive on average.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#212

Post by k_sh » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 12:09 AM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #199

coryrc wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called a bus

A bus will not drop you off right in front of a specialist clinic for your weekly appointment. Also buses are incredibly hostile for wheelchair bound people, even if they are not meant to be. Seriously try boarding a bus during rush hour on a wheelchair - the driver has to help you and people have to move to give space for you, but in general it's an unpleasant and humiliating experience(people who are usually alread…

Paratransit is recognized in North America as special transportation services for people with disabilities, often provided as a supplement to fixed-route bus and rail systems by public transit agencies.[0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paratransit

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#213

Post by smileysteve » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 12:46 AM UTC

briandear wrote: post #146

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…

When every subway stop has elevators, then we cannot talk. Until then, try transporting kids or groceries using the subway. When the sidewalks are cleared of construction scaffolding, bike share racks blocking sidewalks or crazy grown adults dressing like Spider-Man, or psychotic homeless harassing people, then maybe we can talk. As far as climate change; if NYC went to zero CO2, it wouldn’t make a single bit of diff…

> Until then, try transporting kids or groceries using the subway.

I live in Atlanta, a place the NYTimes often writes about our lack of income mobility because of a lack of mobility[1]. I also live 2 blocks from the southernmost transit (midtown) connected grocery store that gets a lot of business from the poorer south side of the city.

So, when you say "try transporting kids or groceries on the subway" I (and transitively, the nytimes) ask, which kids? because it's not the 20% of Atlantans that are low income and that have kids and multiple hourly wage jobs that can readily afford the costs of a car -- and they're already doing it, in a city more sprawled than NYC and other cities.

[1]https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/business/in-climbing-inco...

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#214

Post by lostapathy » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 12:54 AM UTC

alistairSH wrote: post #124

gpm wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trades people can have legitimate reasons to need vehicles. Imagine your in charge of, say, taking care of a large planter. You need to bring with you: - Half a pickup truck of new plants - A few bags of fresh soil - A few shovels, buckets, a hose, and other similar tools They key is really just that vehicles are necessary to transport large quantities of stuff , regardless of whether or not it's a delivery vehicle.…

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).

The truck full of plants is delivering plants, so would nominally fit the definition of a delivery vehicle, at least when it's delivering things.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#215

Post by tartoran » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 1:19 AM UTC

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…

How about going from queens to NJ? Some people need to pass through Manhattan in order go somewhere else. Because it was designed this way unfortunately

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#216

Post by bradleyjg » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 1:37 AM UTC

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'm sorry it inconveniences you, but our society exists because we're willing to be slightly inconvenienced by our neighbors (especially those with different preferences than us) in exchange for certain benefits.

There's a certain amount of trading inconveniences that goes on in life. Think about an apartment building--maybe the guy in 4B has a dog that barks occasionally, the couple in 7D throws a big party twice a year, the woman in 2F hasn't bothered anyone in two years but back then she threw up all over the elevator and didn't clean it up, and so on. There's no explicit accounting but there's a rough justice. When that gets too far out of balance people get justifiably angry.

If you routinely drive in Manhattan and each time inconvenience thousands of people, how can you ever hope to balance those books?

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#217

Post by bradleyjg » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 1:51 AM UTC

tartoran wrote: post #215

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…

How about going from queens to NJ? Some people need to pass through Manhattan in order go somewhere else. Because it was designed this way unfortunately

I wouldn't count the highways. If you take the BQE to the Harlem River Drive to the George Washington, I'd call that fine. It's the people that want to drive a single passenger vehicle from Midtown tunnel or 59th street bridge to the Lincoln or Holland tunnels smack dab across some of the densest concentration of people in the entire country that ought to be highly discouraged.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#218

Post by Ericson2314 » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 2:16 AM UTC

ep103 wrote: post #186

nawitus wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hopefully the law would prevent such a thing :/. People in power have proposed such restrictions, but yes we'll see what we get.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#219

Post by Ericson2314 » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 2:29 AM UTC

ajkjk wrote: post #7

rocgf wrote: post #2

> parking meters don’t charge different rates to users based on their income; you have to pay the same amount to park your used Jetta as you do your new Mercedes [...] That’s inequitable. I guess it depends on which end of the political spectrum you are, but this sounds absolutely obscene to me.

The point of the article is that that would be ridiculous, right? I think most people people anywhere on the political spectrum would agree; that's why it was used as an example.

No, not all people would agree. It's coherent to think that a) government punishment should be the same for each recipient, b) we measure punishment (and thus it's "sameness") in terms of pain, and c) financial penalties need to be indexed against wealth/income to inflict the same amount of pain.

Sweden (I believe it is) in fact does this.

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Regardless, yes as the OP says if you think it's fair to charge a flat fine, then surely it's fair to charge a flat fee. The point is relative and thus holds whether you define fine equitability in terms of amount paid or difficulty in making the payment.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#220

Post by StudentStuff » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 2:34 AM UTC

zwayhowder wrote: post #206

jefftk wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Try getting a Ceili band to a gig :D I think the article is trying to get to this train of thought. We want X that requires a vehicle, instead of assuming that this is a zero cost activity lets factor in the cost of parking, mileage etc. Assuming for a moment that the total cost was an extra $200 any self respecting contra dance should be able to spread that out at $1-$2 per person. I grew up in a musical family and…

The opinions of businesses wrt parking are the same stateside, but legally it is the property owner's responsibility to build and maintain clean sidewalks, while street parking is part of the public-ally owned right of way (meaning it can be re-striped or removed at whim).

Its common in Seattle for the city to do basic maintenance on a sidewalk, and bill the property owner for the amount, as they failed to maintain their sidewalk (whether Ivy has overgrown the sidewalk, roots have uplifted it, or its become a public health hazard due to lack of cleaning).

It is really nice to walk on freshly steam cleaned or pressure washed sidewalks :P