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New York City will charge drivers going downtown

cnn.com

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Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#511

Post by throw3823423 »

SSLy wrote: post #293
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.

Excuse my European understanding, but isn't it the state's right to make such policy, and isn't it NY's not to care about it too?

This is a great example of how, even when one buys the idea of giving rights to individual states over the federal government, the US state borders are rather unnatural. Someone living in Jersey City and someone living in Manhattan have an incredible amount of shared economic interests. However, the Manhattan resident shares a state government with people living in Buffalo instead. This happens in plenty if places in the US: We have more than one multi-state megalopolis, and along with it, metro areas over a million residents that are split in such a way that they count little in their respective state governments.

In most of Europe, borders have had a whole lot of time to align economic development and political organization. But the US, unlike its corporations, is against reorgs. The fact that we even get to discuss state rights for something that could be a municipal matter is, in itself, a problem.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#512

Post by throw3823423 »

SllX wrote: post #201
cronix wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also the county government layer that cities must adhere to in addition to state/national.

Hmm, depends a lot on the State. You can generally make two generalizations about local governments in the United States: they are local governments and you can’t make any other generalizations about them because everything depends on the State and sometimes a locality’s specific circumstances. In California, municipalities do not adhere to the counties they are in, the county is a legal subdivision of the State whic…

In practice, there are no explicit constitutional protections for municipalities. So really, it's all states that can stomp on municipal legislation with impunity if they really felt like it. There might be a state constitution or two on the way, but those are easy to change, and many a state government is capable of either outright ignore constitutional changes brought in by voters, or do some aggressive deception in the drafting of summaries for constitutional propositions as to make them seem to do the opposite of what they really do. See a recent, pro-gerrymandering change to the Missouri constitution, which talked about independent commissions and cutting political donations, but really overrode earlier anti-gerrymandering language, and gave the governor total control over the process.

So broadly, the rights of local governments only go as far as the whims of the state government and the courts anyway, across the board.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#513

Post by xbar »

elihu wrote: post #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 ac…

A regressive tax that burdens NYC citizens in the interest of business. The voices of the outer boroughs have been quelled.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#514

Post by twelve40 »

woodruffw wrote: post #264
bilalq wrote: post #200

Earlier 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…

In addition to what others have said: everything you've said is a reason to lower end-user public transit costs, not lower car tolls. A well-structured scheme here would simultaneously disincentivize individual car traffic and use some of the funds from that disincentivization to subsidize public transit.

yeah, but - guess what? - nobody is even talking about it, just inventing new ways to punish the car owners offering no improved options.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#515

Post by pkulak »

Auracle wrote: post #508
nostrebored wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I said “personal vehicles”, just fyi. Sounds like you’re describing a work truck.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#516

Post by throw__away7391 »

tharne wrote: post #166
aqme28 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public transit has always been the cheaper option. This just makes the difference a little larger.

> Public transit has always been the cheaper option. Only if don't value your time.

[flagged]

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#517

Post by kuschku »

pcurve wrote: post #504
ryandrake wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Even in Düsseldorf, building an entire new subway tunnel for several lines through downtown was about a billion euros. Hamburg's new Hafencity lime was in a similar price range, and the new U5 will be as well.

New York for some reason is spending 10× that.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#518

Post by kuschku »

nmfisher wrote: post #487
kortilla wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 2 are not redundant. One just does the extremely difficult job of closing the doors which can in no way be done by the driver due to the immense mental burden it would require. Subways all over the world operate with just one employee and surprisingly don’t just derail and kill millions. Maybe take your FUD elsewhere.

Singapore MRT actually operates with zero drivers!

As does Nuremberg U3!

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#519

Post by kalleboo »

cyberax wrote: post #379
acdha wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> What you should be looking at are the averages on bus routes where the buses run regularly and aren’t blocked by solo drivers Le sigh. If you want more bus passengers in each bus, you either need to run buses with longer intervals (making them completely useless) or you need to pack people together. Packing people together densely enough to make buses work inevitably requires living in small apartments. The US in t…

> Le sigh. If you want more bus passengers in each bus, you either need to run buses with longer intervals (making them completely useless) or you need to pack people together. Packing people together densely enough to make buses work inevitably requires living in small apartments

This is not my experience. Living in a village of around 2000 pop in Sweden with pretty much only single-family houses with gardens. The whole village was within 15 minutes walk or bike within one of 3 bus stops to a bus service that went into the city every 20 minutes during the day, with double-length buses during peak hours. The buses had a very healthy occupancy rate.

You just have to make sure to design towns around the transit instead of around cars. US suburbs are really hard to retrofit transit into, with designs that actively subvert it

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#520

Post by nimbleplum40 »

cyberax wrote: post #506
nimbleplum40 wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

You said you’re in Seattle? If so, you have quite the parks department… It’s certainly not inconsequential. https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/FinanceDepartm...

Also, if your public schools receive funding from people who do not currently have kids in school (no kids, kids already graduated, kids in private school, etc.) it’s subsidized. To claim otherwise is to redefine words.

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