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The Streets Were Never Free. Congestion Pricing Finally Makes That Plain

nytimes.com

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Re: The Streets Were Never Free. Congestion Pricing Finally Makes That Plain

#141

Post by frosted-flakes »

ramraj07 wrote: post #57
dannyw wrote: post #3

It's sad to see congestion pricing in America. I had hoped that the long-lived cultural freedom of driving would keep it at bay for longer, but I guess not anymore. I live in Sydney. It takes a 45 minute drive to visit a family member, who is sick and homebound. To do so in the shortest and least congested route, I must pay 3 tolls: $14.85 total, one way; $30 dollars a trip. Public transport is not a suitable option.…

So your family member is across the city, I'm assuming there will be a minimum amount of time that you would take to visit them even if there was no traffic. Presumably, when you originally made whatever living arrangements you are in now, you factored that minimum time and was probably okay with that. That is, you essentially curbed your own freedom of movement based on some physical limits and other priorities. Pre…

> Presumably, when you originally made whatever living arrangements you are in now, you factored that minimum time and was probably okay with that.

Yeah, and he probably factored in the five minute walk to work too. It's not possible to optimise for every possibility.

Re: The Streets Were Never Free. Congestion Pricing Finally Makes That Plain

#142

Post by C1sc0cat »

the_gastropod wrote: post #51
Jorge1o1 wrote: post #31

The streets were never free. We paid for it with our tax money. (Not to mention our 22 trillion dollar public debt) I don’t think people expect streets to be free in the same way you don’t expect the police department to be free, the fire department to be free, public schools, etc. In any case, my point is, we paid for the streets with our tax money and our debt, so don’t masquerade this as some kind of “economic rec…

Bear in mind only ~45% of NYC residents own cars. Yet, we all pay taxes to pay for maintaining their infrastructure. Everyone paying taxes to support some is fine when that thing is beneficial to society at large (e.g., public education, fire departments, welfare, etc.) I don't think driving counts as an activity that should be subsidized by the taxpayer.

Would you allow card drivers to opt out of paying for the metro or busses then

Re: The Streets Were Never Free. Congestion Pricing Finally Makes That Plain

#143

Post by ghaff »

mattigames wrote: post #137
ghaff wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they should just build company dorms and make living and eating in them a condition of employment.

Yeah, living near where you work is totally the same as living there; they will miss losing 2 hours of every day of their lives due commuting so much.

And if I choose to do so (which, in my career I have rarely done so), that is my decision. Not my company's or some random busybody.

Re: The Streets Were Never Free. Congestion Pricing Finally Makes That Plain

#144

Post by lloydde »

mattigames wrote: post #108
lloydde wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a novel idea, but introduces worse problems of discrimination. You should not use candidates address or commute as criteria in hiring. I do see companies set up satellite or second offices. I do wonder if an companies of scale use proximities and travel time to influence renewing leases or moving office buildings. What do these formulas look like? What data do they use?

>You should not use candidates address or commute as criteria in hiring. Why not? You claim it like a truth without justifying it: A person living near a restaurant that want a job there should get it over someone just as qualified in the opposite end of the city.

I raise the topic of discrimination and instead of addressing it, you respond with a simple example. The person who creates the straw man should fill it.

If you use any criteria other than the qualifications of the job, you open yourself up to accusations of discrimination. Rightly so.

Outside of government, I haven’t seen equally qualified candidates. When government organizations achieves this, they do it be using fixed duration “contests”. Gov optimizes to minimize discrimination. This approach is not something that matches the needs of businesses, specifically as they are often competing for talent that will take another job if delay in offer, retention of other works who are burdened by the position not being filled, and business objects that will not be met or costs incurred if delayed.

The fact is that in all population centers cost increases closer to the center, many types of business and locations with shorter transit times to these desirable locations. In other words, the poor live furthest away from their jobs.

This isn’t even bringing in the topic of diversity, which is much more nuanced. Here though there is no argument that many groups live in communities and those communities take real space. In other words, distance from a business is unlikely to correlate to diverse communities.

Re: The Streets Were Never Free. Congestion Pricing Finally Makes That Plain

#145

Post by gipp »

patrickg_zill wrote: post #60

Congestion pricing is an admission that the fuel taxes are being used for other purposes than roads.

Road maintenance and expansion is not really the point. It's not like midtown has a bunch of extra room to build new roads. It's more of an admission that eventually you're just gonna bump into hard physical constraints that no amount of money in the world is gonna help you get past.

Re: The Streets Were Never Free. Congestion Pricing Finally Makes That Plain

#146

Post by wutbrodo »

Jorge1o1 wrote: post #31

The streets were never free. We paid for it with our tax money. (Not to mention our 22 trillion dollar public debt) I don’t think people expect streets to be free in the same way you don’t expect the police department to be free, the fire department to be free, public schools, etc. In any case, my point is, we paid for the streets with our tax money and our debt, so don’t masquerade this as some kind of “economic rec…

You must not have had many conversations about transit policy. Anecdotally, it's by far the majority view to treat the costs of car infrastructure as handed down from God for free, often in the same conversation as complaints about a given transit system making less revenue than its costs and thus failing to justify its existence.

Just because the dynamic implied by the article is irrational doesn't mean it isn't ubiquitous. Most people are horribly stricken with status quo bias, and the costs of car infrastructure and usage is one of the worst examples I've seen of special-casing costs and taking them for granted.

Re: The Streets Were Never Free. Congestion Pricing Finally Makes That Plain

#147

Post by mattigames »

lloydde wrote: post #144
mattigames wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You should not use candidates address or commute as criteria in hiring. Why not? You claim it like a truth without justifying it: A person living near a restaurant that want a job there should get it over someone just as qualified in the opposite end of the city.

I raise the topic of discrimination and instead of addressing it, you respond with a simple example. The person who creates the straw man should fill it. If you use any criteria other than the qualifications of the job, you open yourself up to accusations of discrimination. Rightly so. Outside of government, I haven’t seen equally qualified candidates. When government organizations achieves this, they do it be using…

>The fact is that in all population centers cost increases closer to the center, many types of business and locations with shorter transit times to these desirable locations. In other words, the poor live furthest away from their jobs.

Jobs only attract people that can survive with the income it returns, meaning nobody is going to take a job from a poor person living in the opposite end of the city if living near the location costs more than what is being paid; meaning the proposed incentive still works because this poor person still gets the job over some other poor person living in a near-by city willing to commute from there.

Re: The Streets Were Never Free. Congestion Pricing Finally Makes That Plain

#148

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Jorge1o1 wrote: post #31

The streets were never free. We paid for it with our tax money. (Not to mention our 22 trillion dollar public debt) I don’t think people expect streets to be free in the same way you don’t expect the police department to be free, the fire department to be free, public schools, etc. In any case, my point is, we paid for the streets with our tax money and our debt, so don’t masquerade this as some kind of “economic rec…

You can’t just pay for roads as a one time thing. You have to continuously pay for them.

Also, congestion pricing is less about revenue and more about discouraging demand (meter parking on the street is often the same).

Re: The Streets Were Never Free. Congestion Pricing Finally Makes That Plain

#149

Post by mattigames »

ghaff wrote: post #143
mattigames wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, living near where you work is totally the same as living there; they will miss losing 2 hours of every day of their lives due commuting so much.

And if I choose to do so (which, in my career I have rarely done so), that is my decision. Not my company's or some random busybody.

"I made the decision!" is not an argument, the ability to make decisions (e.g. I decided to run you over!) bear no weight if it goes against a better alternative rule for everyone else.

Re: The Streets Were Never Free. Congestion Pricing Finally Makes That Plain

#150

Post by hcurtiss »

bparsons wrote: post #131
Jorge1o1 wrote: post #31

The streets were never free. We paid for it with our tax money. (Not to mention our 22 trillion dollar public debt) I don’t think people expect streets to be free in the same way you don’t expect the police department to be free, the fire department to be free, public schools, etc. In any case, my point is, we paid for the streets with our tax money and our debt, so don’t masquerade this as some kind of “economic rec…

Some people use the roads a lot more than others. Those people should pay their fair share. Someone who commutes in an SUV from Fairfield to Manhattan every day should have to pay much, much higher fees than someone who rides their bike from Greenpoint to Brooklyn heights. Once (particularly wealthy) people are made to incur the true cost of their lifestyle choices, the hope is that better choices are made.

But, unless they're driving an electric car, wouldn't we expect that they do in the form of gas taxes?
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