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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

#171

Post by amyames »

Breza wrote: post #167
asdasdsddd wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

SF only approves something like 3-4 new housing construction projects a month for its 800,000 or so population. If I have that wrong, just chime in.

So even if you lucked out and acquired land , inherited it , or whatever . It could be years before you can do anything with it. If you even have the money to build on it.

Parking is the only rent you might be collecting on it.

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

#172

Post by SoftTalker »

shiroiushi wrote: post #135
Ar-Curunir wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s just pure nonsense. Have you been to, like, any major non-American city? People just take public transit, or walk, or, live in downtown

This entire comment section is simultaneously hilarious and sad to read, because it's obviously a bunch of myopic Americans who have never ventured outside of America and have no clue how other cities in the world work. Honestly I try to avoid commenting in forums like this because it's so fruitless: it's just like trying to have a rational discussion about vaccines (or anything really) with a bunch of Trump follower…

All large European cities have a lot of traffic, public transit notwithstanding. And in the small towns, most people have a car because public transit is not economical in sparsely populated areas.

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

#173

Post by etrautmann »

ciabattabread wrote: post #110
etrautmann wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wouldn't that increase driving relative to other forms of transportation?

Cold encourages suburbanites to stay in their warm home instead of going on a night out.

I would imagine that’s a tiny portion of the total traffic in midtown?

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

#174

Post by Breza »

apothegm wrote: post #26

Hopefully this means improved response times for emergency vehicles, which have been pretty bad and getting worse due to traffic. I imagine we’ll start to see data in that in a couple months.

I hadn't thought about this part. I work with healthcare data for a living. I'll have to keep an eye out for changes once the 2025 records come across my desk.

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

#175

Post by Breza »

doubled112 wrote: post #91
Over2Chars wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With these fancy AI systems, they could read the license plate and see the registered value and go from there. My beef is with gas taxes, for which the $100k electric car owner pays none of and which are highly regressive to poorer ICE car owners. I suggest they should be abolished.

If that AI system looked too close at my car, I'd be worried it would feel obligated to pay me.

Ha, reminds me of when I lived in a place with a property tax on cars right after undergrad. I appealed my valuation and included pictures of my car and odometer. They wrote back saying I didn't need to pay any car tax.

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

#176

Post by jakelazaroff »

gpm wrote: post #161
jerlam wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Perhaps there should be some sort of vacancy tax where the operators of driverless cars are charged for every mile they drive without a human passenger.

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

#177

Post by bpye »

Over2Chars wrote: post #31
xyst wrote: post #23

In addition to the obvious improvements to pedestrian safety with less vehicles on the road. Air quality in these areas is going to improve vastly. This needs to be implemented in every major metropolitan area.

San Francisco "thought about it" as far back as 2019 and couldn't get their act together to pull it off: https://www.sfcta.org/downtown I'm guessing that Uber and other car based services all threatened to stop funding their re-election campaigns if they did it.

Vancouver, BC is another city that considered it - but the incumbent mayor lost the last election, partly due to the issue.

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

#178

Post by daft_pink »

I’m curious what the real impact of this is as it only shows what the reduction in people entering the district is and not a reduction in traffic rates on any given street.

I’m surprised that they are allowed to have these rules as it appears to give preferential treatment to non-residents who don’t live in a district vs residents who live in a district, which runs counter to general principles that roads in America that are funded by all of our tax dollars should treat drivers equally and not offer preferential treatment to residents.

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

#179

Post by jakelazaroff »

nine_k wrote: post #106
HDThoreaun wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have Manhattan traffic death numbers?

Yes. They are basically zero: https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/stats/traffic-data/traffic-fat... Citywide car fatalities were like 12 / year. Subway fatalities, from crime or otherwise, seem too rare to have actual stats; I found only one article saying about a fatal attack in March 2024, and none for prior years. In general, crime on the subway seems rather low, though apparently growing: https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/a…

That is year to date. There are on average around 250 traffic fatalities per year city-wide: https://archive.is/2025.01.03-112032/https://www.nytimes.com...

Meanwhile, there have been around 50 murders on the subway, total, since 2020.

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

#180

Post by dymk »

fooker wrote: post #121
dymk wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how Tokyo functions? I guess people just die waiting for an ambulance or in a fire. See this part of the comment you’re replying to - > Yes we need some roads, but cars driving in the heart of downtown as normal transit?

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.

Who cares about news articles? If you're worried that dense cities are dangerous, then back it up with some statistics about deaths per capita due to EMS delays.
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