Nobody really wants to drive or park in that sort of congestion. If they would just make public transit better, then there would be less congestion naturally.
How could it be better?
New York City will charge drivers going downtown
271–280 of 700 posts
Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm all for it! It would suck for transit, though: 1. It has a higher CO2 footprint than small/medium EVs. 2. Transit forces people into smaller and denser housing, resulting in suboptimal living conditions. 3. Buses in particular result in excessive road wear&tear. It's really amazing that people say things like "car owners should not get subsidized" (by whom?), while talking about transit that is literally infeasib…
Car owners are already hugely subsidized. Toll roads cover only a tiny fraction of road maintenance. The rest is paid by taxpayers, even those who do not drive.
Could easily make the same argument when some city spends 3 billion to build a 4 mile subway extension.
The fare recovery rate is absolutely terrible in the US. Expecting 100% isn't exactly necessary, but NYC is at 20%.
Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's more reason for NJ residents to take issue with this. In central jersey, it costs at least $20/person for a round trip ticket. If you go with your family or a group of friends filling a 5 seat car, the train costs $100 just to get into the city and then get hit with whatever additional costs you have for the next few subway rides. Gas, parking, and carpool bridge/tunnel toll prices don't add up to anywhere ne…
Managing to leave out parking costs, which could easily be $50 in a garage is very convenient. Also, I'd eat my shoe if more than 5% of cars entering Manhattan had 5 people in them. I'd guess the number is sub 0.5%.
Yep. I used to work next to the Holland tunnel and the vast, vast majority of cars leaving the city at rush hour have exactly one occupant.
Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown
#274Hopefully 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.
It's hard to imagine a scenario in which a metal detector on the NYC subway is useful in a way that isn't extremely annoying to the millions of people who carry their laptops, phones, etc. with them to work each day.
(My only experience with a "metal detector" on a metro system is Bangkok's metro. The detector was unplugged at the first station, and everybody was waved past it at the second station.)
Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
The opposition from NJ is the double dipping of already high bridge and tunnel tolls along with the new congestion toll. They also have a really meager fixed discount for motorcycles which has diminished in value as the tolls have risen over the years.
Why should motorcycles have a discount? How big should it be in your opinion, and why?
Less wear on the roads (due to dramatically lower weight). Less space taken up, more efficient in urban scenarios. Tolls, especially bridge tolls, should scale with the weight of the vehicle.
Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown
#276A 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…
There's more reason for NJ residents to take issue with this. In central jersey, it costs at least $20/person for a round trip ticket. If you go with your family or a group of friends filling a 5 seat car, the train costs $100 just to get into the city and then get hit with whatever additional costs you have for the next few subway rides. Gas, parking, and carpool bridge/tunnel toll prices don't add up to anywhere ne…
Congestion charges work.
They discourage journeys taken by car; reducing traffic, easing pollution and improving health.
Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown
#277Hopefully 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.
What would a metal detector accomplish? There's something like 5-10 murders on the subway per year and those numbers are fairly stable, with small spikes around the pandemic when ridership went down drastically.
I'm all for a safer subway but your tone seems to imply that this is some out of control thing whereas it's extremely unlikely, statistically, that you will have any problem whatsoever on the subway.
Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown
#278We should just ban private vehicles in the city as well, bringing back more cyclists, walkers, and generally increasing metro usage.
Banning is equivalent to an infinite price. Better off setting a very high price, such that the revenue is far higher than the negative externality
Banning means you don't need to maintain the infrastructure. You can let people walk all down the street. The pavement doesn't need to withstand thousands of pounds of vehicles. And so on.
Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown
#279Earlier 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.
> The medium to long distance public transport for going out of the city is horrible.
Airports are far, but we have tons of buses and trains that take you out of the city (including a train that takes you to the airport).
Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown
#280Nobody really wants to drive or park in that sort of congestion. If they would just make public transit better, then there would be less congestion naturally.
I agree, but it goes both ways -- you need to reduce congestion to improve transit. In the past NYC has even suspended service around the Holland Tunnel because of gridlock[1]
[1] https://www.amny.com/news/mta-bus-traffic-holland-tunnel-con...