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New York City will charge drivers going downtown

cnn.com

501–510 of 700 posts

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#501
> Proposals range from charging vehicles $9 to $23 during peak hours, and it’s set to go into effect next spring.

That seems pretty expensive to me, but maybe that's typical of toll road prices these days. There are none where I live, so I don't have anything to compare to.

It's unfortunate that it's effectively a regressive tax.

There's an alternative that I like in principle, but I'm not sure if there's a way to actually implement it that wouldn't be a dystopian surveillance nightmare. The idea is that everyone in a region gets a fixed number of "car trip tokens" per week. You use one token every time you drive somewhere, regardless of how many passengers you have. Parents get tokens on behalf of their children, because they have to drive them places sometimes.

Unused tokens may be sold to people who want them through a public auction system. Employers who require their employees to be in the office must provide their employees with the tokens. This shifts the burden of transportation externalities on to the employers. Employees can either use the tokens or sell them if they decide to take public transportation or ride a bike instead. This gives them an incentive to not drive even when they're provided tokens for free.

The total number of tokens in the system can be set low enough that congestion is rarely a problem.

Handling out-of-state cars is a problem. Maybe they can just pay a fixed toll if there's no interstate agreement set up.

Maybe there could also be some rules like non-peak trips only use a half token, or oversized vehicles use 2 tokens.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#503

Forcing people to drive to an office just to type on a computer and take phone calls is the thing that should be disincentivized.

I suppose governments could mandate that businesses provide their employees with a stipend to cover tolls in addition to their regular wages if they require the employees to be in the office.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#504

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 are planning to spend something like $3B/mile to expand a single train line a few stops further north. > The MTA estimates they can put in platform doors like other developed world cities in only 1/3 of stations, at an average cost of $50M/station. > We spent something close to $10B building an entire new terminal for LIRR I'd love to see the itemized bills that add up to these values. We all know this isn't wha…

MTA costs make the Boston Big Dig look like a bargain, even at $22 billion.

I'm convinced, if they contract this out to first-tier construction firms from oversea that specialize in underground infrastructure (e.g. Europe, Japan, Korea), they can get the job done at 1/3rd the cost.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#505
post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Few ideas: Structure the fares to charge a premium for low volume riders. Work two days a week? Pay for 5. Collect fares. Raise bridge tolls. Drop construction cost drivers. Change liability laws, reduce MWBE requirements, mandated staffing levels, etc. There’s lots of potential areas. Just politically expensive to do.

What problem would you solve by a “drive twice, pay for five” scheme?

I think that would incentivize people to drive more, not less.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That’s what a subsidy is my dude. Dictionary definition: "a sum of money granted by the government or a public body to assist an industry or business so that the price of a commodity or service may remain low or competitive." What I have is NOT a subsidy. I use the resources, and I pay for them. I don't have people from New York paying for my fire department in Seattle. > Are you saying that if taxes pay for transi…

Do your taxes go towards the fire department even if you never have a fire? (Subsidy) Do your taxes go towards the public parks even if you don’t use them? (Subsidy) Do your taxes go towards public schools even if you don’t have kids? (Subsidy)

> Do your taxes go towards the fire department even if you never have a fire?

Fire departments provide protection from fire. I absolutely do use and depend on it.

> Do your taxes go towards the public parks even if you don’t use them?

This is indeed a subsidy. A pay-per-use system would allow to remove the subsidy. However, it's so small around here that it's inconsequential in the face of massive transit subsidies.

> Do your taxes go towards public schools even if you don’t have kids?

Nope. I will eventually have kids who will need schools. So not a subsidy.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#507
post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’d love to hear more about that. US unions seem broken in such interesting ways. Are they generally seen as a cost driver, apart from working to raise salaries and pensions?

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#508
post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s never that simple. There are loads of people for which a personal or work vehicle is a necessity. Public transport cannot, and is never designed to catch every edge case. I’m all for better public transportation but strong statements and mishandled public funds just sways the support of the average joe.

It really is. Have you been in New York? In the area that this is being implemented in, you can absolutely survive without ever setting foot in a car. Other cities should have been planned around density. Instead we have suburban hellscapes where kids can’t be kids and there’s no real community. The car has been the single most destructive piece of mass-adopted tech for urban planning and lifestyle. If we have to sta…

I enjoy walkable cities. I don't live in New York, but I couldn't do my job as is without a car. I simply have too much equipment. There are probably many other people in the same position.

I feel like step A should be to build better transit, not punish drivers.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#509
post #310

What if you live in the toll area? Do you have to pay everytime you drive?44 Toronto has considered putting in a congestion tax, but no one wanted to way in on how that tax would affect people living downtown.

In London, residents of the congestion change zone get a 90% discount on the congestion charge.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only a fraction of the US population work and thus commute. The fraction that doesn't work is either too young to pay taxes anyway, or they had used road commutes before they retired. Everybody else are within the margin of error. Additionally, if you are not using a car for commute, you're likely to be in the lower tax brackets and thus not paying (much) in taxes anyway. I had a paper looking at exact numbers book…

> Additionally, if you are not using a car for commute, you're likely to be in the lower tax brackets and thus not paying (much) in taxes anyway. To the contrary, those in the highest income brackets are the ones most likely to walk to work,[1] and also the most likely to be paying more in taxes. 1. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0739456X18796652 page 9, figure 'Work Trip Walking by Income and Density'

> To the contrary, those in the highest income brackets are the ones most likely to walk to work

Stop misrepresenting the data. High incomes are still most likely to DRIVE to work.

They are _more_ _likely_ to walk to work than lower incomes, but:

1. The difference is slight.

2. The absolute numbers are around 5% of trips.

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