191–200 of 700 posts
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Sure, as long as you consider externalities like congestion. That would suggest charging for passage through congested areas (the subject of this thread), and subsidizing mass transit in congested areas.
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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…
Straight forward, simple, easy to implement and audit solutions are best for society.
Sure, let’s take wealth from richer people and give it to poorer people, but handle that via taxes, not via the road congestion pricing in certain parts of Manhattan.
A big proportion of the opposition is coming from New Jersey where former Governor Chris Christie systematically diverted public transit funding to constructing more roads leaving NJ Transit with a maintenance backlog, inadequate infrastructure and unhappy workers who were poached by the MTA. This resulted in a mismatch where the infrastructure is designed to favor driving on one side of the river and a fee designed…
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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.
Do your cotton bags have over 5000 trips to the grocery store over the last decade? If not, you may be carbon negative compared to single-use plastic bags (not counting the re-usability as trash bags).
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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.
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I didn’t make a quantitative claim, just a qualitative one based on anecdotal evidence. I put about 1000 miles a year on my car, but I paid a lot of money to get to the point that I could do feasibly that. I’m not unusual in this either, a lot of rich techies go for urban car-light lifestyles if they can afford it. The above studies seem to only focus on the poorest of the poor, and not the lower middle class. Conges…
I mean, the answer is that this is New York City, not Seattle, where parking is going to cost you $30+ in the areas affected by the congestion charge. So we've already limited the discussion to the pretty well-off. Per the article itself: "But out of a region of 28 million people, just an estimated 16,100 low-income people commute to work via car in Lower Manhattan, according to the MTA." Probably easier to find a wa…
My comment about poorer people being more affected I believe is still valid even if it’s the right thing to do. The people who are forced to commute by car generally don’t have better options.
It would be much worse if they tried this in Seattle, but we also need it as well, it just won’t be something only the rich are suffering (like in NYC).
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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.
Rationing by payment is only one strategy though. Choosing that strategy brings in wealth disparities. So it is fair to bring it up when that is the chosen strategy.
It is a waste of time to bring it up every single time. We know being poor sucks, but that is its own issue with its own solution separate from solving too many vehicles in certain parts of Manhattan at certain times.
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 would love to see London-tier transit in the United States, but until our bureaucracies can solve about a dozen or so hard problems, plans like this will remain all stick, no carrot.
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Have you been to New York? The subway is the mode of transportation for nearly everyone and it works great. I wouldn’t say cars are the successful mode of transportation in New York at all
Describing the NYC subway as "working great" is an amazing twisting of the truth. The only thing good about it is that it isn't as bad as public transport in Long Island. Otherwise, good luck going anywhere on time without having to add 30 minutes - an hour of waste just standing around. The discomfort and cost of public transportation would be at least somewhat tolerable if there was anywhere near as much of an emph…
just to add some real numbers, we can look at the actual NYC subway data from MTA's march 2023 report[0] page 12:
* ~3.7m subway riders in march 2023
* 84.7% of riders arrived at their destinations within 5min of schedule
* 83.3% weekday on-time performance
* 85.6% weekend on-time performance
A big proportion of the opposition is coming from New Jersey where former Governor Chris Christie systematically diverted public transit funding to constructing more roads leaving NJ Transit with a maintenance backlog, inadequate infrastructure and unhappy workers who were poached by the MTA. This resulted in a mismatch where the infrastructure is designed to favor driving on one side of the river and a fee designed…
The reality is that this ends up being a regressive plan where high income earners benefit and everyone else just has to deal with increased burdens.