We should just ban private vehicles in the city as well, bringing back more cyclists, walkers, and generally increasing metro usage.
New York City will charge drivers going downtown
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Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown
#162So rich people (who really do not care about few dollars) will be able to drive to downtown just for fun. while poor people who truly need to come to downtown by car will struggle. This is an unfortunate reality of life: wealth equates to more available time.
If you are so poor with a car but can afford gas that a few dollar toll will wreck you, you really should just take public transportation. There will be rare legit cases but when was the last time they made everyone happy with decisions?
Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, rich people do things for fun. Poor people struggle. It’s not a particularly deep or useful insight. What do you think should happen here instead since you’re so disappointed with the current plan? No charge for drivers going downtown? A dynamic charge based on social status/wealth?
> A dynamic charge based on social status/wealth? That's one I like actually, maybe something like the blue book value of the car? I recently moved out of NYC but I remember looking forward to the congestion charge because I loved taking my greyhound to the union square dog run, which was driving distance for me. 20$ wasn't enough to affect my plans to do that, and less traffic would actually make my life way easier…
> That's one I like actually, maybe something like the blue book value of the car?
Suppose two people make the same amount of money. One chooses to buy a cheaper car and pays higher rent for a nicer apt. The other, the opposite. Under your pricing scheme, you're unjustifiably charging two persons of equal means different rates.
You can adjust this many ways. One person gets a cheaper car but spends more on luxury vacations or invests more aggressively or spends large sums eating at nice restaurants often or buys expensive clothes or or or etc.
Edit: Lastly, why should we be charging expensive cars more? A BMW M4 is, by all measures, much less irritating to have to share the road with than a large SUV or Ford F-250 (god forbid it's also lifted). Tolls should scale with vehicle size and weight and when vehicles have poor fuel efficiency, not the sticker price.
Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
3 hours commutes or destroying the environment aren't the only two options. By changing the way we build cities, and by retrofitting the ones we've already built, we can make places where the walked/biked commute is less than a half hour and the environmental impact is slashed dramatically.
A lot of problems can be solved via better urban planning, but most of us have little control over that. What we do have control over leaves us with a couple of options, but we have hope that maybe our grandkids will have more choices.
Agreed. And I'm in the same boat. But I've taken the "best time to plant a tree was 40 years ago" approach and have started working in my community to bring about those changes.
Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yea you’re exactly right, there’s a tragedy of the commons situation right now. You could either decrease the demand or increase the supply to fix this problem, and it seems pretty impossible to increase the supply (build a bridge across the Hudson? That’s crazy). So here we are.
Unironically I’d hate a new bridge across the Hudson around the Holland Tunnel, that area is the crown jewel of Manhattan and its seafront should be protected. It’s also one of the few safe bike paths in the city where casual bikers would feel comfortable biking. Additionally, we already have one Canal St in the area, we don’t need another. Sorry for this small NIMBY rant.
NIMBYism is not inherently a bad thing; it was originally coined by the waste management industry to describe opposition to local landfills and toxic waste dumps, which any sane person doesn't actually want to live next to.
(Yes, I know Europe and Japan build fancy incinerators with parks and whatnot that are very pleasant, but the odds of that being built in the US by penny-pinching private industry is nil.)
Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown
#166So rich people (who really do not care about few dollars) will be able to drive to downtown just for fun. while poor people who truly need to come to downtown by car will struggle. This is an unfortunate reality of life: wealth equates to more available time.
Public transit has always been the cheaper option. This just makes the difference a little larger.
> Public transit has always been the cheaper option.
Only if don't value your time.
Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown
#167Hopefully this money goes to policing the subway too, people have a lot of valid safety concerns leading them to take their car or a cab.
In India, you have to pass through a metal detector to ride the metro. It seems like in US, we are trending towards needing to do the same thing.
Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
NYC, and Manhattan specifically, is one of the rare places in the country where having a car is almost virtually unnecessary. In downtown, cars are already playthings of the rich: Just parking the car during peak hours can run you hundreds dollars of per month. The core of NYC has walkable infrastructure and an amazing public transportation infrastructure (at least compared to much of the rest of the country). For th…
It is now over a thousand per month for a dedicated space in Manhattan, and that seems to be about the right price.
A parking space takes up about 200 ft² (not counting things like the width of the travel lane between parking spaces), and office rent in Manhattan runs about $7-8/ft² each month.
Chances are, even at well over $1000/month, the parking infrastructure is still effectively below the cost of the space it takes up.
Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I saw London doing that, I expected cities in the US to start that. I am surprised it took so long. I expected this because of the push of toll roads to make people use EZPASS. Depending upon the City, I think this makes sense. But, in the US, I wonder if this will cause another mass migration of people out to the suburbs ? In the US, people are more addicted to their SUVs than heron addicts are to their drug.
You sir, know nothing of heroin and it's work.
Or maybe you underestimate the addiction to cars? Because I've seen plenty of both and I find the comparison apt
Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
This “poor people will be affected more” is a tired refrain. That is always obviously true, given the consequences of being poor. Not every solution can or has to solve the wealth/income gap. Solve congestion with one solution, solve wealth redistribution with another.
> is a tired refrain. Only non-poor people can say something as reactionary as that. Or people who are not friends or relatives with poor people. A populist backlash that will bring some of the middle-class egoism down is long over-due, and not only in the States.
I grew up quite poor in rural Arizona, now live in NYC, and I think they should congestion charge the absolute daylights out of anyone driving through Midtown. “This will hurt poor people” is a very very bad argument in this case.
There you go, point disproven.