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New York City will charge drivers going downtown

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Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#331

Post by exhilaration »

bilalq wrote: post #200
superseeplus wrote: post #172

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…

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…

This is great for New Jersey, let's keep those dining and tourism dollars local, build up more businesses, create jobs so people don't have to commute to NYC. Time to bring in a new NBA team!

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#332

Post by miley_cyrus »

Jolter wrote: post #250
Spooky23 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s going to kill the city. It’s just going to push businesses out at a bad time. This doesn’t have anything to do with traffic - it’s a way to try to extract more money for the MTA. Money won’t fix the MTA’s money woes; the unions will just slurp any available cash.

I suppose you have a better idea for financing the investments, instead of congestion tax?

He's saying it's not going to finance any "investments" - the extra money is just going to the unions.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#333

Post by acdha »

cyberax wrote: post #308
pessimizer wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. It has a higher CO2 footprint than small/medium EVs. This is too misleading to be unintentional. I don't know if you're comparing buses to small/medium EVs 1:1, but even if you aren't, the environmental footprint of replacing all bus services with EVs would be extraordinary. > 2. Transit forces people into smaller and denser housing, resulting in suboptimal living conditions. Transit doesn't force people into ho…

> This is too misleading to be unintentional. It's not misleading. On average, buses in the US carry around 15 people. A car carries around 1.5, so the raw multiplier is just 10. But wait, there's more! ALL buses have an incredibly polluting component that is fundamental to their functionality: the driver. You need around 3 drivers to cover the useful service time (from 5am to midnight). And drivers are POLLUTING AS…

> On average, buses in the US carry around 15 people. A car carries around 1.5, so the raw multiplier is just 10.

Buses in the US are largely avoided due to the last century spent prioritizing suburban car commuting over everything else. What you should be looking at are the averages on bus routes where the buses run regularly and aren’t blocked by solo drivers. That means that the floor for a bus is 10:1 but it can easily rise to 50-70:1 with cheap policy changes (e.g. put a $500 camera on the bus to ticket drivers and suddenly headways improve by 50%). In contrast, the large EVs people are actually buying will never become more efficient over the lifetime of the vehicle.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#334

Post by steveBK123 »

agotterer wrote: post #305
steveBK123 wrote: post #282

My main concern as NYer is the governments inability to build transit, and not for lack of money. NY will find it relatively easy to institute a new tax on drivers, but will the billions collected actually make transit better in any tangible way? NYC is also hamstrung by having its streets controlled locally by our DOT, but our transit & bridges controlled by a state agency. We just caved (again) entirely to the tran…

Quite a few of our transit problems today are actually because of the choices Robert Moses made. However, he certainly is responsible for the rapid growth of the transit system and did a great job consolidating power and getting stuff done. * He had the chance to buy the land and put transit along many highways in queens and Long Island but said that people would prefer to drive so he passed on the opportunity. Acqui…

I'm well aware of his history, and it's always interesting to me how few bad things people can point to that he actually did.. when weighed against all the transit/bridges/tunnels/highways build under his watch.

I mean the first thing is a crime of omission, made in basically every other city of the country - where have we seen land be purchased along highways to build transit done anywhere in this country? Even new bridges built by allegedly progressive administrations continue to neglect putting in train tracks.

The second one is obviously morally wrong, though even that is in dispute. Many "parkways" built at that time had similarly short bridges, look to the Merritt Parkway in CT for example. Also, you can presently get there by bus - https://new.mta.info/guides/beaches/jones-beach In fact, it seems it was accessible by bus when it opened, including having bus drop offs advertised in the opening story - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-09/robert-mo...

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#335

Post by nimbleplum40 »

cyberax wrote: post #308
pessimizer wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. It has a higher CO2 footprint than small/medium EVs. This is too misleading to be unintentional. I don't know if you're comparing buses to small/medium EVs 1:1, but even if you aren't, the environmental footprint of replacing all bus services with EVs would be extraordinary. > 2. Transit forces people into smaller and denser housing, resulting in suboptimal living conditions. Transit doesn't force people into ho…

> This is too misleading to be unintentional. It's not misleading. On average, buses in the US carry around 15 people. A car carries around 1.5, so the raw multiplier is just 10. But wait, there's more! ALL buses have an incredibly polluting component that is fundamental to their functionality: the driver. You need around 3 drivers to cover the useful service time (from 5am to midnight). And drivers are POLLUTING AS…

Do you have citations for those numbers? They don’t match what I’ve heard in the past so I’m curious to learn more.

Also, everything about density in relation to quality of life is pretty subjective. Luckily, we have cities for both! You’re free to live in Houston while those of us that prefer dense urban environments can live in New York and take transit.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#336

Post by jrockway »

cyberax wrote: post #308
pessimizer wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. It has a higher CO2 footprint than small/medium EVs. This is too misleading to be unintentional. I don't know if you're comparing buses to small/medium EVs 1:1, but even if you aren't, the environmental footprint of replacing all bus services with EVs would be extraordinary. > 2. Transit forces people into smaller and denser housing, resulting in suboptimal living conditions. Transit doesn't force people into ho…

> This is too misleading to be unintentional. It's not misleading. On average, buses in the US carry around 15 people. A car carries around 1.5, so the raw multiplier is just 10. But wait, there's more! ALL buses have an incredibly polluting component that is fundamental to their functionality: the driver. You need around 3 drivers to cover the useful service time (from 5am to midnight). And drivers are POLLUTING AS…

Let's be honest, it's far from factual that dense housing is problematic in any way. It's just your opinion, and you're mad about it because you stand to lose the most in a world where you have to pay cash for your externalities. The sewer and water system to your house is subsidized. Snow removal from your cul-de-sac is subsidized. Most people couldn't afford the suburbs if someone else wasn't paying for those things (usually future generations).

Many people enjoy living in a dense environment, as evidenced by how much they'll pay to do so. It's objectively better for the Earth, and pretty enjoyable for the people that choose that path.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#337

Post by MandieD »

ericmay wrote: post #224
comte7092 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regressive if you ignore all of the other costs associated with driving. Drivers always love to make this argument, but it presupposes that everyone already owns and insures a car. At the end of the day it’s car dependence that is regressive.

Yea it also ignores that if everybody stopped riding the $100 train then you’d never actually be able to drive into the city, let alone park anywhere for under $100. Also, this is a deliberate choice. They can improve train services and lower costs. Idk why people who ostensibly are market oriented are so fixated on current prices and assuming they can’t change or be improved upon. Germany is an example $49 for a tic…

The 49 EUR/month ticket in Germany covers all local transit, and you can generally piece together regional trains to get across the country if you’re patient, but it doesn’t cover the InterCity Express, InterCity, or some long-distance regional trains.

So it’s a good way not to worry about how Berlin transit pricing works if you’ve already have a Deutschlandticket to cover a Nuremberg-area commute, but getting to Berlin from Nuremberg still requires an ICE ticket… or a lot of patience.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#338

Post by evanb »

tacticalturtle wrote: post #96

Why did the federal government have to sign off on this? Assuming the tolls aren’t on federal highways, shouldn’t a state be free to decide where to enact tolls on its own roads?

42nd Street between the Midtown and Lincoln tunnels is part of I-495. That's why the last exit on the westbound LIE is #15, Van Dam street. Exits 1-14 are the avenues from the west side of Manhattan (where the numbers reset because 495 crossed a state boundary) to the east side. If you look carefully you will see I-495 signs on some streetlights or traffic lights.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#339

Post by nimbleplum40 »

cyberax wrote: post #302
klipt wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transit is completely feasible without subsidies if the transit company owns the land near the stations, which generate generous rents. Of course if the land is owned by other people, the increase in value provided by transit should be recaptured through a Land Value Tax which is then used to fund the transit.

> Transit is completely feasible without subsidies if the transit company owns the land near the stations, which generate generous rents. So basically, you want to subsidize transit by making the transport authority be a slumlord. Got it. There are no unsubsidized urban transit services in the US. Even operating costs are not paid from fares. And new transit construction is COMPLETELY subsidized. I live in Seattle an…

There are also no unsubsidized fire departments, police departments, public schools, public parks, etc. Analyzing only the first order costs/benefits is really not a good way of analyzing any infrastructure project.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#340

Post by ryukafalz »

cyberax wrote: post #311
kelnos wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Car owners are already hugely subsidized Around 80% of all commutes in the US are by car. You can't subsidize 80% of the population. Drivers simply pay for their road use through various taxes, and not directly.

> Drivers simply pay for their road use through various taxes, and not directly.

Taxes that are also paid by those who don't drive, yes?

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