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New York City will charge drivers going downtown

cnn.com

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Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#181

Post by renewiltord »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #122
renewiltord wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, given sufficient externalities, this is true. As an example, watch this fictional response to the fact that better cars cost more: Let's get the poors out of safe cars. The peasant class belongs in beaters, while the rich ride safe. Consider the choices necessary to make that statement untrue.

You mean how the richer you are, the bigger (and safer) the vehicle you can afford? I drive by many parents taking their kids wherever in old corollas or kias or other small car, and I see many parents at my kids’ daycare dropping their kids off in large suburbans/F150/Sequoia/etc.

Certainly. That's one way, but also poorer people own older cars.

An argument that rests on equality should support the idea that all people deserve the same car irrespective of how much money they have.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#182

Post by tarikjn »

automatoney wrote: post #60

For those unfamiliar with NYC, street parking is free basically everywhere so the space cars take up is already heavily subsidized.

This 100%. Free public parking in NYC is the elephant in the room that no one wants to address. Tolls won’t fix that. In some areas of the outer boroughs, 40% of the traffic at any given time are people looking for a spot. The city also still hasn’t figured out utilization of the curb for deliveries and drop offs resulting in normalized double-parking almost everywhere. Curb space need to be efficiently priced and this would fix a host of issues — same goes for outdoor dinning, otherwise its value will be captured by landlords anyways.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#183

Post by beebeepka »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #155
ghaff wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that's not the only metric. But, yes, cotton bags in particular are generally considered to have the most impact. (Somewhat ironically my nicest ones come from an environmental organization I belong to.) It probably, in general, falls into the category of performative environmentalism even if it led me to change behavior in a way I personally prefer most of the time. (It doesn't apply immediately around where I…

Yeah, I'm not sure cities should be legislating you to behave in a way that you personally prefer. They should be legislating things that are beneficial for the city and aren't preferable to people. Also, cotton bags emit about 7000-10000x as much CO2 as plastic bags, while the re-usable bags made from recycled plastic are in the hundreds - you can actually break even on CO2 with those bags if you are careful with th…

Do cotton bags (not the only option but you seem to enjoy this example) end up being thrown away after a single use? Are they often blown away by the wind and get stuck on trees? Do sea turtles mistake them for food?

We've been using the same bags (less than 10) for at least a decade.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#184

Post by MisterTea »

fooker wrote: post #177
okennedy wrote: post #117

Earlier 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…

>NYC, and Manhattan specifically, is one of the rare places in the country where having a car is almost virtually unnecessary. As long as you are okay with spending all your time in the city. The medium to long distance public transport for going out of the city is horrible.

Greyhound Buses and Amtrak don't count? I take the Amtrak to visit friends update and Maryland all the time. There's boat loads of stuff on long island as well, LIRR get you out there but it's not very walk friendly but awesome for biking.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#185

Post by mattlondon »

jmclnx wrote: post #25
cj wrote: post #12

See also: London congestion charge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_congestion_charge Singapore Electronic Road Pricing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Road_Pricing Stockholm congestion tax: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_congestion_tax

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.

I worked on the technical implementation of one of the London Congestion Charge contracts many years ago.

It was a huuuuuuge loss for IBM to implement, but I think their position was "we make a loss here, but then just need to do a search-and-replace for "London" to New York/Paris/Tokyo/Los Angeles and profit!" (I.e. no significant extra development). Suffice to say that didn't happen - it was built with zero customisation in mind. I personally blame it on the insistence that SAP was to be used for processing payments etc.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#186

Post by seanmcdirmid »

jupp0r wrote: post #143
tlogan wrote: post #110

So 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.

Not sure how familiar you are with the realities of driving a car in Lower Manhattan, but as somebody who has visited the place a few times, I can assure you that poor people cannot afford parking there on a regular basis already.

Midtown when I was there had free street parking (maybe it still does?), and it made more sense financially for my girlfriend at the time to drive rather than grab a train from Harlem to Hawthorne (north of white plains, the office wasn’t near the train station so that last link wasn’t really covered). I was honestly surprised driving was…so convenient in that part of NYC at least, but midtown is definitely not Manhattan, and also a reverse commute.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#187

Post by ricktdotorg »

mattlondon wrote: post #185
jmclnx wrote: post #25

Earlier 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.

I worked on the technical implementation of one of the London Congestion Charge contracts many years ago. It was a huuuuuuge loss for IBM to implement, but I think their position was "we make a loss here, but then just need to do a search-and-replace for "London" to New York/Paris/Tokyo/Los Angeles and profit!" (I.e. no significant extra development). Suffice to say that didn't happen - it was built with zero customi…

interesting! where did the SAP requirement originate? uk.gov not IBM?

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#188

Post by jeroenhd »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #119
tlogan wrote: post #110

So 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.

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.

Setting the price based on income can help prevent the problem without disparaging the poor. It works for traffic tickets in vaeious countries so it may just as well work in anti congestion systems. That's just one approach. You can also use monthly quotas that you can't buy your way around or other restrictions.

Of course I don't expect such approaches to be a very popular approach in America, but there are ways to do it. All you need to do is let go of the idea that anything can be gained through purely monetary means.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#189

Post by George83728 »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #155
ghaff wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that's not the only metric. But, yes, cotton bags in particular are generally considered to have the most impact. (Somewhat ironically my nicest ones come from an environmental organization I belong to.) It probably, in general, falls into the category of performative environmentalism even if it led me to change behavior in a way I personally prefer most of the time. (It doesn't apply immediately around where I…

Yeah, I'm not sure cities should be legislating you to behave in a way that you personally prefer. They should be legislating things that are beneficial for the city and aren't preferable to people. Also, cotton bags emit about 7000-10000x as much CO2 as plastic bags, while the re-usable bags made from recycled plastic are in the hundreds - you can actually break even on CO2 with those bags if you are careful with th…

Pros and cons for cotton bags:

Pros: Never spills my groceries onto the sidewalk when I'm walking home. Looks nice.

Cons: The CO2 emissions of producing... one square yard of cotton cloth. (Btw, how many pairs of pants do you own? Probably more than you need, I bet.)

Yeah, looks like I'll be sticking with my cotton bag.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#190

Post by seanmcdirmid »

tarikjn wrote: post #182
automatoney wrote: post #60

For those unfamiliar with NYC, street parking is free basically everywhere so the space cars take up is already heavily subsidized.

This 100%. Free public parking in NYC is the elephant in the room that no one wants to address. Tolls won’t fix that. In some areas of the outer boroughs, 40% of the traffic at any given time are people looking for a spot. The city also still hasn’t figured out utilization of the curb for deliveries and drop offs resulting in normalized double-parking almost everywhere. Curb space need to be efficiently priced and th…

They really need to eliminate free street parking, especially in dense neighborhoods like midtown.
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