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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

#361

Post by seadan83 »

cyberax wrote: post #107
zip1234 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure, let's charge methods of transportation based on negative externalities such as how much space they take, safety, and noise/particulate pollution.

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…

> 1. It has a higher CO2 footprint than small/medium EVs.

If mass transit _and_ also EVs are incentivized over petrol cars, that is not bad [1]

> 2. Transit forces people into smaller and denser housing, resulting in suboptimal living conditions.

My anecdotal experience is that areas around light rail stations gentrify and luxery style condominiums pop up like mushrooms around them. A 10 minute and consistent train ride into dowtown is compelling when that same journey can take 30 to 120 minutes by car (this is Seattle, it can take 20 minutes to just cross the U bridge and travel a quarter mile).

> 3. Buses in particular result in excessive road wear&tear.

If a bus is actually taking 50 cars off the road, and is traveling on lanes that are built for the excessive wear; then it is still a net benefit.

> "car owners should not get subsidized (by whom?)"

Point 3 discusses the wear and tear of roads. Drivers do not pay fully for the wear and tear of roads (and road construction, etc). Road funds come from many funds and car traffic does not generate enough in fuel and car-tab taxes to fully pay for roads. Hence, it is subsidized by other people that pay those taxes.

-----------

The comparison perhaps should not be also strictly of just buses against EVs.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#362

Post by bradleyjg »

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…

We spent something close to $10B building an entire new terminal for LIRR underneath an existing Metro North terminal when there was enough capacity to serve both out of the existing station. Bureaucratic squabbles between divisions of MTA serving LI & NY/CT were mitigated by spending $10B. Oh and for the average LIRR rider, despite having 2 Manhattan terminals they can get a train to, the net service has actually been reduced in terms of trains per day.

Not just trains per day. The synchronization at Jamaica has been totally destroyed. Commute times during peak hours on several lines have increased by 20%. That’s a lot of hours of human life destroyed by incompetence.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#363

Post by f33d5173 »

steveBK123 wrote: post #322
Reason077 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, London has looked at the platform screen doors thing a few times too and dismissed it as unaffordable. New lines get PSDs but there doesn’t seem to be a realistic prospect of retrofitting existing ones any time soon.

And yet NYC having built only a handful of stations in the last 40 years, couldn't be bothered to include them even there.

I imagine the difficulty would be in ensuring that the train lines up exactly with the doors. In that cade, retrofitting would need to apply to the train and control system, not just the platform itself.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#364

Post by School-Cotton »

comte7092 wrote: post #290
speakfreely wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Drivers always love to make this argument, but it presupposes that everyone already owns and insures a car. Have you ever been to New Jersey? The entire state is set up to make it as difficult as possible to live without a car.

That’s the point. Why does New York have to accommodate New Jersey and not the other way around?

Yes, but it’s complicated by the fact that a lot of infrastructure funding is done at the federal level, which should in principle care about people in NY and NJ equally.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#365

Post by ghaff »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #194
beebeepka wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you're the kind of person who throws away plastic bags and doesn't re-use them as trash bags, please have the decency to cut the handles. 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).

Meanwhile on this planet, the micron thick Walmart plastic plastic bags are not usefully reused as trashbags; and neither are most of the others. I don't really have a use in general for plastic bags that small and fragile except maybe in the car from time to time. To a first approximation, no one is cutting the handles and, even if they don't just toss them on the road, plenty of them surely end up blowing away out of municipal trashcans, etc. So the choice is not between reusable bags and plastic bags that are properly disposed of and repurposed, it's between reusable bags and plastic bags that are haphazardly disposed of.

But maybe haphazardly disposed of plastic bags are fine. That's just the real comparison point.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#366

Post by arrosenberg »

wizofaus wrote: post #346
acdha wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re not as bad as cars but they still take up a fair amount of space and pollute (noise, fumes) heavily. A modest discount seems appropriate but they definitely should still cost more than transit.

I'd be keen to charge vehicles based on noise pollution, but I'm not sure how feasible it is. Does anyone know if it's ever been trialed anywhere?

Seems like it would be easy enough - you register your car, each model has an average and max decibel rating. Your congestion charge includes a factor for that - Harley's pay a bigger markup and EVs pay next to nothing for that particular thing.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#367

Post by QIYGT »

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…

Even if the money is lit on fire, the reduction in cars entering the city will be a huge benefit.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#368

Post by returningfory2 »

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…

I agree with your points, but I don’t think they undermine congestion pricing. Even if you take all the congestion tolls and, like, toss them in the Hudson River, the program is still worthwhile. Just getting people to pay to drive into Manhattan is good in-and-of-itself.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#369

Post by steveBK123 »

f33d5173 wrote: post #363
steveBK123 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet NYC having built only a handful of stations in the last 40 years, couldn't be bothered to include them even there.

I imagine the difficulty would be in ensuring that the train lines up exactly with the doors. In that cade, retrofitting would need to apply to the train and control system, not just the platform itself.

There in lies the rub. Doing things is always harder than not doing things. Agreed.

They built a new line on second Ave with cavernous station mezzanines and couldn’t be bothered with doors there either. Track, signals, trains were all new.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#370

Post by markdown »

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…

> We have subway lines & trains wired up for 1 man operation but run them staffed with 2 due to union work rules.

It's a city of 8M people. What's the difference between 1 and 2 here, really?

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