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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

#191

Post by drstewart »

pokeymcsnatch wrote: post #140
bparsons wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's the cost of having a functioning society. I don't have kids, yet I still pay school taxes because even though I'm not participating in that particular aspect of society, I still benefit from it. Public biking infrastructure wouldn't be possible without the roads and right-aways we already have for cars and pedestrians; someone only using a mile of roadway on their daily commute is benefiting from the entirety…

Your logic, as usual in the US, is predicated on cars being a de facto unassailable guarantee from God, and all other modes of transport being simply blessed to use them.

You don't need a road for public biking infrastructure. The BEST public biking infrastructure doesn't come anywhere near a road.

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

#192

Post by crooked-v »

jimmaswell wrote: post #76
bjourne wrote: post #17

I wonder if we (as a society) in the not too distant future can make driving embarrassing? My hope is that if someone sits alone in their big SUV stuck in traffic, pedestrians, cyclists and others will look at that person disparagingly. Like how people look at dog owners not picking up their dogs feces, cigarette smokers or how they look at obese people buying ice cream... Or how hypochondriacs who go to the doctor w…

Shame me all you want, I'm not biking my commute in 90/20 degree weather with a backpack full of stuff including a laptop and no reasonable way to listen to music when I have such a comfortable SUV-type car.

This is the whole reason congestion charges exist: to get people to weigh comfort and laziness against personal cost.

> no reasonable way to listen to music

...headphones?

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

#193

Post by crooked-v »

maxsilver wrote: post #189
crooked-v wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the cleanest, safest, most reliable, most convenient, and cheapest public transit that has ever been invented. But it's not public transit. It's private transit, because it's your car. Actual public transit will either not be subject to the congestion fees (buses) or will be able to split the fee across enough riders to make its effects negligible (taxis, Uber).

You own your shirt and shoes, does that make a Bus "private transit"? Cars are a form of public transportation whenever the public drives them on public roads and freeways. Public infrastructure does not become "private", just because a private individual is in it.

> Cars are a form of public transportation whenever the public drives them on public roads and freeways.

Incorrect.

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

#194

Post by com2kid »

maxsilver wrote: post #164
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.…

It's going to die. Urbanists have killed this freedom, it's only a matter of time. Everyone has forgotten all the benefits cars provide, and has focused solely on the drawbacks, just as cars became advanced enough to eliminate all of their problems in the first place. Today, in 2019, I drive a car that generates absolutely no pollution, makes no noise, is powered entirely by renewable wind electricity, and can drive…

> Today, in 2019, I drive a car that generates absolutely no pollution,

Break and tire dust are still environmental pollutants.

There is also a one time environmental cost to manufacture your car.

And when it comes to affordable housing, car infrastructure makes it very hard. Underground parking stalls in a major urban city can cost up to $30k each to build! And above ground parking lots in cities take up land that could be used for housing.

Not to mention wider streets are needed for cars, that is space that could be used for more housing and more commercial activity. If you visit the dense parts of London or Tokyo that are served by mass transit, you can see how smaller streets closer together leads to more livable cities.

> Now you should take a tram or bus, wait 80% longer on every trip

Depends on how well built out the infrastructure is. In cities with top tier public transit, subway cars are coming every 3 - 4 minutes, traveling underground, avoiding all traffic.

My car shows me the average speed of my trips. If I am driving through a city, I am lucky to average out 20mph. During bad traffic I can easily be at 10 or 12mph.

Mass transit doesn't have that problem. An underground line is always going to travel at the same speed. During rush hour it may be more cramped, but the travel time isn't any greater, unless the subway is full and you have to take the next one. Which comes in three minutes. Which is less time than I have waited at a single stoplight to make a left turn!

Newer cities have horrible designs. They streets are too wide, so there is less land, and housing costs more. They often have laws on the books about minimum parking requirements, so housing costs more to construct. They have requirements about parking for commercial businesses, so more of the city is devoted to places to park than actual business!

Strip malls are the worst possible example of this!

And if you start building low enough density, cities actually start losing money. Property taxes on parking lots are next to nothing, especially if they are free parking for businesses. But the city still has to run infrastructure to those parking lots, pay for maintenance on the surrounding streets, and pay for all the externalities of having more cars on the roads.

> They have less options on where to live, less options on where to shop, less options on where to send children to school, less options to simply consume less and spend less on anything at all).

If I can hop on a subway and get anywhere in a city in 30 minutes, I now have more choices of where to live! More choices of where to shop! As for schooling, look at Tokyo, where children regularly take the subway to school.

In a city without mass transit, if I am in one part of the city and I want to go to a shop in another, I have to decide if I really want to suffer through:

1. Walking back to my car 2. Navigating through traffic to my next destination 3. Finding parking there (possibly paying, and hoping there is parking!) 4. Walking from parking to my destination 5. Getting back to my car 6. Driving through more traffic to get home, or to my next destination

It sucks. In contrast, even a city like Boston with good but not great public transit[1], when I'm visiting Boston and some friends call me up and ask if I want to go see a movie, so long as the theater is on a transit line, the answer is sure! In a city without transit I have to worry about if I can get there given traffic at that time of day, in a city with mass transit, I know I can go.

[1] Compared to Seattle, Boston has great public transit, but whenever I talk to anyone from Boston they complain about it, so I'll avoid calling it "great" even though from my perspective I love using it when I'm there!

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

#195

Post by yonran »

I think Emily Badger sort of misses the point. A scarcity tax is completely different from a user benefit fee for road maintenance. For public goods, it’s a good thing for the government to subsidize the fixed costs of the public good. But where there is traffic, the road is not entirely a public good anymore and we are already paying the cost of congestion, but the price is in the form of time and inconvenience rather than dollars. A congestion charge converts the time price into a monetary price. It makes sense to charge a congestion charge because it is merely harnessing a price that drivers already pay and using it to improve the city.

The same is true for land value taxes. Tenants pay the scarcity price for land anyway (in the form of land rent) regardless of the level of tax, so the government might as well harness that energy and use it to benefit all the people instead of a few.

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

#196

Post by CaptainDecisive »

clairity wrote: post #109
dondawest wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Senior citizens love this plan.

maybe just speak for yourself? the seniors i know walk more than the juniors i know. senior folks will happily share their opinions with you, so no need to speak for them.

Your comment is interesting because it hadn't even occurred to me that the parent comment might be being sarcastic. I thought the emphasis on love was being serious. My experience is older folks (maybe 80 and up? Not really sure) start to lose confidence or ability with driving and give it up. Hence need to walk and take public transport. So less cars and a more walkable neighborhood is a win for them as well as everybody else :-)

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

#197

Post by kfarr »

nradov wrote: post #175
moorhosj wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are getting lots of comments, but the most obvious reason is that the act of driving on a road degrades it much faster than walking on a sidewalk. Thus, it needs to be repaired more frequently. Increase the number of cars and the frequency of repair (i.e. costs) increases.

Passenger cars cause virtually zero damage to city streets. All of the degradation comes from heavier vehicles.

They do kill people tho

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

#198

Post by jimmaswell »

crooked-v wrote: post #192
jimmaswell wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shame me all you want, I'm not biking my commute in 90/20 degree weather with a backpack full of stuff including a laptop and no reasonable way to listen to music when I have such a comfortable SUV-type car.

This is the whole reason congestion charges exist: to get people to weigh comfort and laziness against personal cost. > no reasonable way to listen to music ...headphones?

Listening to headphones while bicycling isn't safe, and playing it from a speaker where everyone around you will hear it feels rude.

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

#199

Post by mruts »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #41
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…

> don’t masquerade this as some kind of “economic reckoning” In New York, low-income New Yorkers who own a car (or live in the zone) will be eligible for a waiver [1]. People with disabilities, too, will probably be eligible for a waiver. (Some carve-outs are still being pinned down.) Taxis, Ubers, trucks and cars owned by people who opt to pay hundreds of dollars a month in parking are who will be taxed. Given the u…

The carve-outs are precisely the problem with the congestion pricing. If everyone in mid-town just had to pay a flat fee, fine, that seems somewhat fair. But now every interest group is rent-seeking and going to lobby to be exempt. That's the unfair and corrupt part, not the fee.

NYC having congestion pricing isn't the most unreasonable thing in the world. Some might say it's long overdue. But the legislature doesn't have the political will or want to actually implement a fair, flat fee. Instead, the people who don't fit into a easily defined interest group will have to pay, and everyone else will get to drive for free.

If I have to pay to drive, then everyone else should to, regardless if they are poor, disabled, rich, taxis, ubers, or whatever.

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

#200

Post by nickles »

zjaffee wrote: post #186
nickles wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Taxis, Ubers, trucks and cars owned by people who opt to pay hundreds of dollars a month in parking are who will be taxed. Given the unusability of our streets, this seems closer to an economic reckoning than a political money grab. Taxis and Ubers are forms of public transportation, and likely reduce the overall number of cars on the road. Simultaneously, they reduce the incidences of drunk driving, providing posi…

Ubers have been shown to increase vehicle miles driven, which in turn means a decline in the use of public transit. Historically the big tax on cars was an 18% tax on parking in NYC, but considering that more and more people are taking Ubers instead of driving themselves, we are still effectively subsidizing uber use in a way we aren't for regular driving.

> Ubers have been shown to increase vehicle miles driven

As other comments have said, the effects on congestion are controversial [0][1].

> which in turn means a decline in the use of public transit

Not necessarily. If a trip would not have occurred otherwise, then there would be no decline in public transit utilization (subway lines seem to be closing with increased frequency recently, and people may have no other means of returning home). Of course, this would point to increased congestion.

> the big tax on cars was an 18% tax on parking in NYC, but considering that more and more people are taking Ubers instead of driving themselves

Would eliminating street parking further this policy? On many streets, it would allow for 1-2 additional lanes to be created.

[0] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2838043

[1] http://www.schallerconsult.com/rideservices/automobility.pdf

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