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43K fewer drivers on Manhattan roads after congestion pricing turned on

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Re: 43K fewer drivers on Manhattan roads after congestion pricing turned on

#161

Post by gpm »

jerlam wrote: post #102
modeless wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roads are useful, but what I really think we should get rid of is parking lots. When cars can drive themselves we should build over all the lots and knock down the garages. The cars can spend the day on the road and the night parked outside the city. There should be zero parked inside the city.

If the cars can't park, then they're clogging up the roads and preventing them from being used as intended for transportation. I am fine with parking lots as long as they're not publicly funded and are taxed just as every other parcel in the city. And on-street parking should be prohibited.

In fact I'd say that self driving cars will mean that it's important that parking is not more expensive than simply driving in circles. You can bet that companies will drive self driving cars in circles to store them while not in use if it's cheaper than parking, and that takes up both more space, and higher value space.

Re: 43K fewer drivers on Manhattan roads after congestion pricing turned on

#162

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

nomel wrote: post #52
buzzy_hacker wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You joke, but critics were literally saying this. Stuff like "it's only $9, people will just ignore that and continue to drive"

To be fair, they were mostly right, since 93% continued to drive. This is commute tax for the wealthy, and a time tax for lower income people. B39 only crosses the bridge, so there's waiting/transfer on both sides. Commute is generally 2-5x more time by public transport there, with all the stops.

The key point is that traffic is basically exponential in number of cars. Roads have a capacity below which there's almost no traffic, and above which capacity stays constant (or goes down). The amount of traffic in a city without congestion charging is the amount caused by the last couple percent of drivers most willing to wait in traffic. By introducing a fee that switches the decision for that small group of people, everyone else's commute gets a noticeably shorter (including all the people that were taking the bus previously).

Re: 43K fewer drivers on Manhattan roads after congestion pricing turned on

#163

Post by pclmulqdq »

wat10000 wrote: post #130
fooker wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tokyo barely makes it into the top hundred by population density. Also yes, for most large cities you can find news articles about people dying in fires or because of an ambulance getting delayed.

Funny how you don’t see articles about people dying in fires because they live on a suburb that’s 10% as dense as it should be and so the fire station is 3x farther away than it should be. No real surprise, though. People love stories where you can point to a few people and say, they’re the ones who did this. It’s much less fun when it’s systemic and no one person or group can be blamed.

Police response times in my "10% as dense as it should be" suburb (a place that would be the poster child for everything urbanists hate) are 3x faster than they are in NYC. That is largely due to having high mobility through the town. In pure distance terms, I live about 20x further from the police station, though.

The average door-to-door time between my house and the nearest level 1 trauma center is 10 minutes shorter than it would be when I lived in Manhattan. It turns out that having the paramedics wait for an elevator really cuts into their response time. A level 3 trauma center is 25 minutes closer (there are no level 3 trauma centers in Manhattan).

https://patch.com/new-york/new-york-city/nypds-slow-response...

Cities are built for average-case living, and that is fine until you need it not to be.

Re: 43K fewer drivers on Manhattan roads after congestion pricing turned on

#164

Post by wat10000 »

steele wrote: post #150
wat10000 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charging money for services is “innovative”? I know the hacker set likes to reinvent other industries and call it new, but this is rather extreme.

Just say you're a landlord

Give me free stuff. If you say no you’re a landlord.

Re: 43K fewer drivers on Manhattan roads after congestion pricing turned on

#165

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

redandblack wrote: post #6
knowitnone wrote: post #3

[flagged]

this is totally true - subsidizing the rich by the poor I always thought congestion pricing was always mis-priced, and it should be tied to income/wealth. The only way to do this is to let the poor apply and get free electronic tokens and get that missing 43k back. fyi - my MD can easily manage a 10x the mid-town tolls

Poor people in NYC don't have cars.

Re: 43K fewer drivers on Manhattan roads after congestion pricing turned on

#166

Post by redandblack »

breadwinner wrote: post #37
redandblack wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is totally true - subsidizing the rich by the poor I always thought congestion pricing was always mis-priced, and it should be tied to income/wealth. The only way to do this is to let the poor apply and get free electronic tokens and get that missing 43k back. fyi - my MD can easily manage a 10x the mid-town tolls

Should everything be tied to income/wealth? Taxes and college tuition are already tied to income/wealth. Why not food, housing, travel, clothes, healthcare, even drinking water? At that point wealth will stop to have any meaning.

Yes - if we financialize all public services, then it makes sense to use income/wealth to subsidize (re-distribute to be more precise) the poor.

I remember reading a few weeks back that UK is getting the railroads back to public ownership - not sure if that is true, but would like to hear from UK readers on the impact of financialization (aka privatizing) of public utilities.

I am not a fan of public ownership - but a supported of public subsidies for utilities - transport / electricity / heat / water and in this case roads

Re: 43K fewer drivers on Manhattan roads after congestion pricing turned on

#167

Post by Breza »

asdasdsddd wrote: post #160
redox99 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This line of thought is pretty silly. Claiming that the city is subsidizing X billions because some public space is free. The land there is so valuable because it's desirable. Sure, NYC could sell central park for a bazillion dollars. But the land there is so expensive because central park exists. If it were sold and became buildings, the price of sq ft in Manhattan would massively drop.

Except in downtown SF there are dozens of giant empty lots, some are just abandoned, some are flat lots used for 6hrs a week for event parking.

We still have a few of those here in DC. I've always assumed they're just a way for the owner to hold onto the real estate until it's time to sell.

Re: 43K fewer drivers on Manhattan roads after congestion pricing turned on

#168

Post by redserk »

dottjt wrote: post #157
redserk wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this policy is only feasible in cities with decent public transportation. I’d struggle to list any more than 1-2 other American cities where this could be done though. A lot of cities that do have public transportation seem to have extremely frustrating (i.e. multiple transfers) gaps if you aren’t using the system to-and-from work.

Again, public transport is usually not feasible if you have a severe medical condition.

Agreed. I think this is one area I’d hope to see exceptions for on any implementation.

I can’t attest to how fair of a process this is, but MTA seems to be giving medical exceptions some lip service:

https://new.mta.info/tolls/congestion-relief-zone/discounts-...

Re: 43K fewer drivers on Manhattan roads after congestion pricing turned on

#170

Post by Breza »

modeless wrote: post #77
jmward01 wrote: post #38

Roads in cities are such a waste of space. A long time ago I did a quick survey of SF and found something like 20% of the land was dedicated to cars. Some articles from people here that talk about this [1] [2] [3]. That is the most subsidized land on the planet but people don't think of it that way. They think roads are free so any tax to use them is wrong. That space could be helping out the city in so many ways but…

Roads are useful, but what I really think we should get rid of is parking lots. When cars can drive themselves we should build over all the lots and knock down the garages. The cars can spend the day on the road and the night parked outside the city. There should be zero parked inside the city.

I'm not sure if people will want to deal with long wait times for their car to drive to them. Imagine watching the end credits roll at a movie theater only to be gripped by the sense of dread that you forgot to call your car during the climactic fight scene and now you'll be waiting half an hour for it to drive from the suburbs.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of reducing car dependency, I'm just not optimistic that self driving cars will help.

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