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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

#261

Post by airstrike »

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 do you propose the CEO of a Fortune 500 company should get to his meetings with his team? On a bus?

Ban cars and you make NY terrible for business. And if you haven't noticed, Manhattan exists for business. Everything else is either necessary for that goal or an unintended consequence.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#262

Post by airstrike »

nihonde wrote: post #179
GhostVII wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like it might be easier to eliminate parking, rather than ban vehicles. If there was no street parking, a lot of people would have no choice but to park outside of Manhattan. That would also still allow taxis and ride sharing to drive people from the subway to wherever they needed to go.

I’m good with that plan too. I wake up every morning to giant trucks beeping in reverse because the street parking blocks them turning a corner. And thirty jerks who drove in from Long Island are honking their horns behind that truck. Every day!

This literally every day... and I live on the 30th floor

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#263

Post by zaroth »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #225
zaroth wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The credit applies to both PHEV and EVs. It’s based on the kWh capacity of the battery.

Right, so a Prius plug-in hybrid gets a $2500 tax credit, whereas a Tesla gets $7500. If the idea is to build an economy of scale for electrification of vehicles, I don't believe this makes sense. Pushing hard to make everything hybrid would do a lot more good.

There are PHEVs with batteries big enough to claim the full $7,500. By definition they will be luxury cars because batteries that big are really expensive.

But batteries that big are also an order of magnitude less expensive than about 10 years ago.

The benefits of battery scaling accrues to everyone, even the small PHEVs and plain old hybrids.

The credit is based on how much battery you are buying. The Feds pitch in about 10-15% of the capital and the consumer pays the rest. This is a great force multiplier for a gov’t subsidy program which gets $10b in EV revenue stimulus for every $1b invested.

A bigger subsidy for cheaper cars would be an interesting welfare program (why buy cars for poor people though, versus just giving free public transit passes?) but it wouldn’t achieve the force multiplier of encouraging consumer spending the way the current subsidy does by only paying 10-15% of the cost, and paying more the bigger the battery, not just more based on the price of the vehicle.

There’s also a lot of infrastructure that you don’t really incentivize (like large scale charging infrastructure) if everything is just plain hybrid, because there’s not enough consumer demand for plugs everywhere.

Getting EV above 1% starts tipping the scales to encourage places to install chargers. More chargers allows that next 1% to adopt that much easier. The richer early adopters can afford the inconvenience of a $5k electrical upgrade to their garage, or going out of their way to charge, etc. They are paving the way toward mass adoption.

Just a few years ago EVs were decried as entirely impractical and novelties. Now I have one as my daily driver and I would never imagine going back.

Hybrids are nice but EV is a paradigm shift. I’m glad the subsidy targets battery capacity and the future it envisions.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#264

Post by Johnny555 »

masonic wrote: post #243
Johnny555 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

try transporting kids or groceries using the subway. When I lived in an area where I could commute by subway, I had a full service grocery store and several smaller specialty markets (a produce market, a butcher and a bakery) on my way home (well I had to get out one stop early to pass the butcher). I see plenty of parents with kids on the subway -- though none of them have the full-size strollers you see coming out…

Though now I just buy groceries online and have them delivered ... which requires more road use than people stopping by the store on the way home. (Round trip vs. one way)

Does it? A truck uses around the same road space as a car, so if it removes one person in the neighborhood's round trip to the store (not everyone has a grocery store on their way home from work), then it's a net win. Even if everyone makes a small side trip to go to the store on the way home from work, that one truck can replace ~50 side-trips to the store.

Though in my case, I usually alternate between bus and bike to work, so if I did drive to the store, it'd be a round trip. If I bike to the store, it means a round-trip from home since I usually have one or 2 commuter panniers on the bike when I go to work, and don't want to haul the empty trailer all the way to work and back.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#265

Post by jacobolus »

masonic wrote: post #244
jacobolus wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't believe you You don’t believe that I travel by bus/subway/etc. and don’t feel unsafe? There are people of all ages, ethnic groups, social classes, occupations, etc. riding transit throughout the Bay Area every day: foreign tourists; nannies with strollers; pensioners buying groceries; businesspeople commuting; high school students; sports fans; families taking luggage to the airport; ..... There are certain…

and the occasional mugging There were three BART homicides in five days last July.

Yes there are very rare rapes and even stabbings in transit stations, and that is terrible. Just like the same crimes are terrible on the street, at stores, in public parks, at offices, or at homes.

There are also 400 traffic deaths and 2000 traffic injuries per year in the Bay Area.

Statistically, the BART is a very safe way to travel.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#266

Post by Karrot_Kream »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #259
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, many people prefer it -- everyone who uses it does. And everyone who drives prefers to drive. Because they both have the option to do the other thing. There are many parts of the US where this isn't the case, because cars are the only transportation available. That said, I think you're wrong about these strongly held preferences. There a decent amount of people who just want to get to where they're going and do…

> There are many parts of the US where this isn't the case, because cars are the only transportation available. There are few places that have no level of at least bus service. And bicycling and walking are generally considered mass transit, which you can do in every part of the US I'm aware of. The number of places accessible only by car is negligible. But the mass transit in many places is terrible , to the point t…

> You could get them to prefer the bus there by making the car trip take three hours or cost $100, but what good is that? Whose life does it improve?

It improves the lives of all those who are agnostic to their mode of transportation but want to get to their destination faster. The carrying capacity of a bus or a train is much higher than individual cars. It also saves cost on road maintenance because the amount of road strain / person decreases.

> That's the point. If you want more people to take the bus, don't make it worse to drive, make it better to take the bus.

In a perfect world, of course. We'd make separate bus roads, bicycle roads, and car roads, and then the road user would select their mode and their road and be done with it. In reality, budgets are limited. Prioritizing a car solution makes it worse for busses and bicyclists to use the same road. While a train can be a good non-disruptive alternative, it is extremely expensive to initially invest in.

I'm also not exactly sympathetic to allowing car drivers free access to the space they take up on the road when space is a limited quantity.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#267

Post by jefftk »

thoughtfunction wrote: post #195
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…

That is a form of delivery vehicle in a way, right?

Sort of, but it's not registered as "commercial", driven by a professional, or anything else people would normally think of as a "delivery" vehicle. Like, if you call any vehicle that moves things from place to place a delivery vehicle then everyone who drives to the grocery store to buy milk is operating a delivery vehicle.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#268

Post by masonic »

Johnny555 wrote: post #264
masonic wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though now I just buy groceries online and have them delivered ... which requires more road use than people stopping by the store on the way home. (Round trip vs. one way)

Does it? A truck uses around the same road space as a car, so if it removes one person in the neighborhood's round trip to the store (not everyone has a grocery store on their way home from work), then it's a net win. Even if everyone makes a small side trip to go to the store on the way home from work, that one truck can replace ~50 side-trips to the store. Though in my case, I usually alternate between bus and bike…

  Does it? A truck uses around the same road space as a car
Well, if you ignore fuel consumption, pollution, and parking impact. Anyway...

  so if it removes one person in the neighborhood's round trip to the store
No, I was referring to the specific "on my way home" use case you referred to... which is the typical case. If you stop by the store on the way home, you aren't adding a trip in either direction. Having delivery adds two trips, from and to. Two trips vs. zero.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#269

Post by mcv »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #260
mcv wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, many people who have flexible hours still somehow choose to spend time in traffic jams. Considering congestion pricing has been proven to work, I really think that's the right way to encourage people either to drive at different times, or out of their cars and into public transit or bikes.

> No, many people who have flexible hours still somehow choose to spend time in traffic jams. That is not evidence of a preference for sitting in traffic, it is evidence of a need to drive at that time for a reason other than work schedule. Which is only relevant for the subset of people with that constraint. You don't actually need everyone to stop driving during rush hour -- that wouldn't even be efficient. You onl…

  > Congestion pricing works in the same way that hiring someone to throw bricks off
  > an overpass into car windshields during rush hour would work.
That is a horrible comparison. Horrible in two different ways.

  > The first is that it can only really improve one thing -- traffic during peak
  > times -- which only really matters to the people who are still driving at those
  > times, who then have the benefit offset by the cost of the congestion charge.
It improves general mobility. Less traffic jams, and money to invest in alternatives. People can still drive during peak times but reduce the cost and congestion by carpooling. People can take other forms of transport, and people can drive at a different time. The end result is that everybody still gets to where they need to be, but without getting stuck in traffic for an hour.

I don't disagree with your alternatives, but they have already been tried and haven't solved the problem. Maybe more money is needed to do it better? Congestion pricing can provide that. But it also helps to encourage people a bit more. A lot of people take the car because it's what they're used to, and they simply hope traffic won't be too bad. But with a little push, they'll be a bit more likely to try public transport. And with more people using it, there will also be more demand to improve it.

Living closer to work/working closer to home would of course be best, but again, it's not something that has worked so far. Some people don't have that luxury, and some people simply don't want to for other reasons.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#270

Post by erik_seaberg »

masonic wrote: post #268
Johnny555 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it? A truck uses around the same road space as a car, so if it removes one person in the neighborhood's round trip to the store (not everyone has a grocery store on their way home from work), then it's a net win. Even if everyone makes a small side trip to go to the store on the way home from work, that one truck can replace ~50 side-trips to the store. Though in my case, I usually alternate between bus and bike…

Does it? A truck uses around the same road space as a car Well, if you ignore fuel consumption, pollution, and parking impact. Anyway... so if it removes one person in the neighborhood's round trip to the store No, I was referring to the specific "on my way home" use case you referred to... which is the typical case. If you stop by the store on the way home, you aren't adding a trip in either direction. Having delive…

Depends on zoning. If each customer has to go a mile out of their way, but each customer's home is within a mile of the next, the traveling salesman route (start at the store, visit each home, finally return to the store) is shorter and doesn't need to happen during rush hour.
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