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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

#581

Post by LeanderK »

post-it wrote: post #490
Spooky23 wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If nobody is driving, why is it congested? New York City is the hub of a region that represents like a quarter of the US population. Like many other regions, you start cutting off the hub and the central business district dies. Commuting is one aspect. Tourism. Business meetings. Medical care. I live in Queens. Getting a family member to MSK for treatment or getting a meeting in the city via public transit is a 4 hou…

Tourists certainly don't drive in Manhattan. They don't want to get stuck.

Isn't it easier for tourists to just take public transit instead of renting a car? You probably won't find parking next to the empire state building...

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#582

Post by matchbok »

cyberax wrote: post #492
rfrec0n wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One average US citizen produces around 20 tons of CO2 per year. A bus needs 3 of them working full-time. This completely dwarfs the emissions due to fuel use. Are you trying to say that these people wouldn't already exist without the bus? So everytime we commission a new bus, 3 fully grown licensed drivers appear in a flash of smoke from the storage compartment of the bus?

> Are you trying to say that these people wouldn't already exist without the bus? No. They would be doing other productive things. But right now, they have to spend their productive power on driving buses. This is simply a huge waste of human potential.

Are you a troll account? Or a joke? Can’t tell. Either way the sanctimonious rants devoid of facts are entertaining.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#583

Post by post-it »

LeanderK wrote: post #581
post-it wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tourists certainly don't drive in Manhattan. They don't want to get stuck.

Isn't it easier for tourists to just take public transit instead of renting a car? You probably won't find parking next to the empire state building...

Much easier. I've only visited NYC twice, and both times I took transit into Manhattan. The first time, on my way out of NYC, I accidentally drove over a bridge into Manhattan and it was very stressful.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#584

Post by Symbiote »

amphitoky wrote: post #539
eastbound wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One line in Paris, 2 in Toulouse, Lyon, it’s even more funny that it was built in the 1991 without drivers, truely futuristic.

even Budapest has an autonomous line

There are many.

List: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_driver-less_train_syst...

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#585

Post by csomar »

samstave wrote: post #372
cj wrote: post #12

See also: London congestion charge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_congestion_charge Singapore Electronic Road Pricing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Road_Pricing Stockholm congestion tax: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_congestion_tax

Re: Singapore - Have you ever been to Singapore -- _ ALL _ their public transport/flow control systems are #1 in the world IMO ; * The roads are pristine * The take city planning to the next level (anecdote at end) * Vehicles cost a boatload - but thats because all other transport is amazing -- Singapore is a hot a humid climate - a small city-state with lateral constraints. But they new that they were going to doubl…

The roads in Singapore are okay but nothing in their infrastructure is spectacular. Where Singapore wins is coverage. They have a pretty good coverage of the whole city but this is not unique to Singapore. Paris has good coverage too. So does Tokyo.

Imo, Singapore was hyped too much and also it doesn’t scale (it’s a small island city)

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#586

Post by acdha »

josephcsible wrote: post #481
nimbleplum40 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What a bunch of bullshit. How so? I live in lower Manhattan. I go to work, the gym, parks, restaurants, bars, movie theaters, etc. all without a car. > Nothing can help hellscapes like Manhattan. Lol. Don’t move to Manhattan then. Some of us enjoy it. Some of us prefer it over the suburbs. You don’t have to. No one is forcing you.

> Some of us prefer it over the suburbs. You don’t have to. No one is forcing you. A lot of people say suburbs are bad and that we need to get rid of them.

Suburbs are unequivocally bad for the environment but saying they shouldn’t be subsidized isn’t saying they should be banned. A high fraction of our problems could be solved with market mechanisms to capture the cost of externalities like carbon emissions or habitat destruction, so those factor into people’s buying decisions. Tolls are one of the most important mechanisms for cities to do this because much of the 20th century was spent redesigning cities for non-residents at the expense of the local economy, tax base, health, and quality of life for residents.

We’re seeing this happen partially as the insurance industry adjusts to climate change drives flooding and fires but it’s incomplete and needs to be combined with zoning reform in many cities.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#587

Post by jacobr1 »

woodruffw wrote: post #436
steveBK123 wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See these are better examples! But also, it's easier to find fault in the actions of someone who takes action. And especially to judge them based on the values of our time rather than theirs. It's hard to fault anyone since for bad major road/transit/bridge/tunnel projects because there really haven't been any! And we look at things like projects NOT built by Moses and ask - if they were so good, so obvious, and Mose…

> And especially to judge them based on the values of our time rather than theirs. More than a few of Moses' projects were egregious, even for his time. What made Moses a great (as in powerful) urban planner was his ability to mold policy decisions to his values, not the values of the neighborhoods that he bulldozed, much less the values of the elected officials who represented those neighborhoods. > how many people…

> What made Moses a great (as in powerful) urban planner was his ability to mold policy decisions to his values, not the values of the neighborhoods that he bulldozed, much less the values of the elected officials who represented those neighborhoods.

I think this is key. Regardless of the values, we have built up a system where everyone can veto a project, or require more studies and concessions such that the price increases significantly. So we end up in an equilibria that nobody particularly wants, where nothing gets done, and the few projects that squeak-in cost too much.

We need better mechanisms to solve the collective action problems. A more consolidated transit authority, with more unilateral power, that nevertheless still had an elected odd member board with majoritarian decision making power would potentially do it. But a big part of the problem is that we can't fundamentally satisfy everyone. We need to optimize everyone's interests and compensate where we can't, but consensus on this stuff is rarely possible.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#588

Post by diebeforei485 »

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…

If there's 5 people in the car, clearly the optimal solution is to pay the congestion fee. You'll also have less traffic to deal with.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#589

Post by rufus_foreman »

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…

Where's this bus going?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnE08Dvx-Cg

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#590

Post by seanmcdirmid »

rafram wrote: post #574
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Midtown when I was there had free street parking (maybe it still does?), and it made more sense financially for my girlfriend at the time to drive rather than grab a train from Harlem to Hawthorne (north of white plains, the office wasn’t near the train station so that last link wasn’t really covered). I was honestly surprised driving was…so convenient in that part of NYC at least, but midtown is definitely not Manha…

> I was honestly surprised driving was…so convenient in that part of NYC at least, but midtown is definitely not Manhattan, and also a reverse commute. Midtown Manhattan isn’t Manhattan?

I’m not sure why I knew it as midtown then, but the area I’m talking about is the north side of Central Park where Columbia university is. Harlem is the closest train stop to get to Westchester county. According to wiki it’s called the upper west side of Manhattan.

It could have been by girlfriend’s apartment was actually in midtown and I’m misremembering it’s proximity from the university? But even the more northern point is considered Manhattan, so I was mistaken on that count (even if it was on the border with Harlem).

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