221–230 of 375 posts
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But, unless they're driving an electric car, wouldn't we expect that they do in the form of gas taxes?
In most states, EV owners pay a lot more in registration fees to make up for the gas tax disparity.
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> Congestion pricing doesn't actually fix any of that, it just squeezes even harder on the people who the lack of alternatives Every other city's experience with congestion pricing shows decreased car use in favor of alternatives. Effects on local grocery prices were minimal. And in the end, revenues paled in comparison to the health, infrastructure, policing, quality of life and economic costs of traffic congestion.
> Every other city's experience with congestion pricing shows decreased car use in favor of alternatives. Suppose the forest is on fire and instead of spending money to put the fire out, we just ignore it. Then a bunch of wolves come into the city to flee from the fire. Someone suggests that we introduce bears to the city in order to drive out the wolves. Many people point out what a terrible idea that is, but some c…
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> 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…
This (like most other flat consumption taxes) is a regressive tax. It is a stated policy goal of the ruling party to reduce income inequality, not increase it.
The disabled are a group with very inflexible transportation demand, in that they are very unlikely to change their behavior in response to higher prices (because they can't); we already make a whole ton of legal accommodations for them like handicapped parking, and this fits into that overall policy.
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> Every other city's experience with congestion pricing shows decreased car use in favor of alternatives. Suppose the forest is on fire and instead of spending money to put the fire out, we just ignore it. Then a bunch of wolves come into the city to flee from the fire. Someone suggests that we introduce bears to the city in order to drive out the wolves. Many people point out what a terrible idea that is, but some c…
Yes, urging people to walk/cycle/bus instead of driving around in single-passenger cars is exactly the same as filling your city with bears.
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On the other hand, drivers pay ~$.45 a gallon in gas tax, and at least 30% of that goes to the MTA.
Usage taxes (gas and registration fees) only cover 54% of road expenditures in New York. The other 46% comes out of the public fund that could be spent elsewhere.[1] 1. https://taxfoundation.org/statelocal-road-spending-covered-u...
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> 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…
There's also that not all vehicles are going to tear up roads in the same way. Why would it be fair for trucks and what not to pay the same flat fee despite causing far more wear and tear on the roads?
Your argument would result in the poor and disabled being priced out of driving on the road.
How much does tire pressure matter in that? If two vehicles have the same weight and number of tires taking the load, evenly distributed among the tires, but one of them runs with higher tire pressure, it will have a proportionately smaller contact area, and so a proportionately higher ground pressure.
In general, a tire supporting weight W at pressure P will have a contact area A such that P x A = W.
I'd expect total road damage to depend on both area and pressure. Pressure would determine whether you are going to damage the surface, and area would determine how big an area will damaged.
For causing cracks that lead to potholes, I'm not sure area matters as much as the pressure, so am curious about lighter vehicles with high pressure tires.
My car has a pressure of 32 psi. Back when I was a regular bike commuter [1] my bike had a pressure of 110 psi.
Wikipedia has a nice table of the ground pressure of several things [2]. Some excerpts, in psi:
4 Diedrich D-50 T2 drilling rig
8 Human male
15 M1 Abrams tank
25 1993 Toyota 4Runner
25 Adult horse
30 Passenger car
40 Mountain bike
90 Road racing bike
470 Stiletto heel
So...trucks being more damaging than cars is quite believable. More interesting is different kinds of passenger cars. Honda's recommended tire pressure for a Civic and a CR-V, e.g., are largely the same range. Does this mean a CR-V is not much more damaging than a Civic?
And where do bikes with high psi fit in? The have the pressure of a delivery truck, but have a much smaller contact area. Is there some minimal area needed before even high pressure damages the road, so bikes are OK? Or is it just that because the areas is smaller it takes longer to cause enough cumulative damage for people in cars to notice?
[1] when I lived in flat Cupertino. That died when I move to Seattle and found that fat people on bikes don't get along well with hills.
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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…
You proposal a complex system, but use simple examples. Assuming you have equally qualified candidates, which you don’t because you can’t afford to wait, how large of an incentive and in what industries? How do you address the “other side of the track” situation? This quickly has all the markings of discrimination.
You disagree that the only considerations for a position should be the ability to do the job? Incentives is the flip side of discrimination.
The poor is just one impacted protected class by your proposal. Working elders also make different choices in living arrangements including location.
You also assume business mobility.
What regions have this utopia?
I post something like this every time the congestion pricing subject comes up. We have congestion pricing in Minneapolis / St Paul and it just works. If I'm in a hurry, I have the option to choose to use the priced lane. We're rolling it out to all of the major highways (it's on 3 of them so far). I wish we had it on more lanes on all highways already, because what is the point of having a 60mph road if most of the t…
"We have congestion pricing in Minneapolis / St Paul and it just works. We're rolling it out to all of the major highways." Aren't these two very different things ? I own a home in MPLS and I don't know anything about congestion pricing there. I think you must be talking about the lane restrictions on the freeways ? Congestion pricing, as it is in London, and as is being discussed for NYC, is the concept of the city…
Only if you are driving a car. Walk, ride a bike, take public transportation. In other words, make the folks causing the problem pay for it. This seems reasonable.
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…
If the public space were reconfigured to accurately reflect the taxpayer makeup, then you would see a lot less space dedicated to cars and a lot more dedicated to pedestrians, mass transit, and non-automobile transportation options like bicycles and e-scooters.