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

gothamist.com

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

#191

Post by occz »

Twirrim wrote: post #47
jefftk wrote: post #8

When I see things like: > Bus speeds also increased after the tolls were turned on. The Manhattan-bound B39 bus, which crosses the Williamsburg Bridge, ran 28% faster compared to a similar January week last year. Other buses like the SIM24 and and the M50 saw increases in speeds, as well. I wonder how much cherry picking there is. Did they give the B39 because it's the most improved? Or for some other reason (especia…

Not sure if NYC would do the same stunt, but London saw an amazing improvement in traffic flow after congestion charge was introduced. Turned out for several months prior to it they'd been slowly shifting the timing of lights to make things less optimal, and then reverted the day congestion charge went live.

What a weird thing to lie about.

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

#192

Post by Over2Chars »

vlovich123 wrote: post #186
wongarsu wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In any city that isn't hopelessly car-dependent there is some kind of rail to bring in commuters. A subway, tram, light rail, passenger rail, often a combination of all of them. Once you have a stable system to bring in commuters, adding a couple parking lots to stops on the outskirts for "out of towners" is pretty easy. The rest is just about not removing all the streets. You also need enough roads for emergency veh…

Are you sure that’s not a path dependency that’s difficult to undo? Retrofitting this into a place like the Bay Area seems impractical given how bad public transit is there chronically.

The public transit quality reflects the government quality.

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

#193

Post by occz »

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.

This might seem like a good idea at first, but it would essentially result in complete gridlock as the roads fill up with circulating self-driving cars.

No, there's definitely a better solution for this - using self-driving trains to move people.

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

#194

Post by Over2Chars »

wat10000 wrote: post #126
vlovich123 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re not incorrect per se, but it’s important to note that deliveries into downtown would be important for it to be a thriving destination for shopping, residential or business. Not to mention space for heavy equipment to come in to do repairs and construction. Minimal maintenance corridors may not be enough. You also need public transit options into it as well as transportation solutions for “out of towners” who d…

Some cities manage fine with very small roads. Sometimes there isn’t exactly a road at all, but rather a pedestrian area that can be used for deliveries and such when necessary. American city centers are overprovisioned on roads by probably a factor of 10 or more. Ironically, fixing that would be excellent for local businesses, and they’re usually the ones opposing it because they think there’s no way to get customer…

@wat1000 perfectly said. And the small businesses are the most easily frightened by well financed campaigns that make them afraid their business will shutter if car based traffic is even slightly reduced.

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

#195

Post by Over2Chars »

epistasis wrote: post #115
vlovich123 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re not incorrect per se, but it’s important to note that deliveries into downtown would be important for it to be a thriving destination for shopping, residential or business. Not to mention space for heavy equipment to come in to do repairs and construction. Minimal maintenance corridors may not be enough. You also need public transit options into it as well as transportation solutions for “out of towners” who d…

In Ancient Rome, private vehicles were banned during the first ten hours of the day. Doing the same for nearly all commercial deliveries would make a lot of sense today too. A huge number of delivery trucks are massively oversized and inappropriate for their task. Charging for oversized vehicles might wake some business owners up to more carefully evaluating their costs and making more rational choices. Heavy equipme…

The small difference between Ancient Rome and the governments of SF and NYC is that ancient Rome had good government.

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

#196

Post by HDThoreaun »

occz wrote: post #188
blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

42k people in the U.S die per year from being hit by drivers, and far more get injured. There's no credibility to your statement, whatsoever.

[flagged]

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

#197

Post by pfg_ »

wongarsu wrote: post #101
vlovich123 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re not incorrect per se, but it’s important to note that deliveries into downtown would be important for it to be a thriving destination for shopping, residential or business. Not to mention space for heavy equipment to come in to do repairs and construction. Minimal maintenance corridors may not be enough. You also need public transit options into it as well as transportation solutions for “out of towners” who d…

In any city that isn't hopelessly car-dependent there is some kind of rail to bring in commuters. A subway, tram, light rail, passenger rail, often a combination of all of them. Once you have a stable system to bring in commuters, adding a couple parking lots to stops on the outskirts for "out of towners" is pretty easy. The rest is just about not removing all the streets. You also need enough roads for emergency veh…

You can also have fully closed streets open to emergency vehicles as long as a path is kept clear

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

#198

Post by occz »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #196
occz wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

42k people in the U.S die per year from being hit by drivers, and far more get injured. There's no credibility to your statement, whatsoever.

[flagged]

That's a different topic than whether driving is absolutely safe or not. It's been proven that it's very much not.

It's of course easy to be abstract and talk about the value of lives versus your favourite mode of transportation.

Would you have the same opinion if the deaths were concentrated to your particular branch of the human family tree? Everyone else gets to drive. Is the value proposition still as clear to you?

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

#199

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

starspangled wrote: post #156
Daishiman wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a non-informational take which is just ahistorical, as evidenced by the fact that just 30 years a lot of European cities were very much car-centric and were much more awful by pretty much every metric than they are today.

About one in every two households in Amsterdam own a car. I would bet many that don't use taxi services themselves now and again, and almost everybody would indirectly rely on roads used for deliveries, workmen, emergency services. And that's about the best case for a European city. It's comparable to New York City. Paris, London, Prague -- higher. The reality is that these romantic notions people have of cities not…

And yet, if you walk around Amsterdam or Rotterdam you see a lot of bicycles and trams and pedestrians, and very few cars.

Cars certainly exist, but they are clearly not used by default for everything.

Contrast with my recent visit to New Jersey. The hotel was surrounded on all sides by parking lots and multi lane roads). There was no sidewalk.

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

#200

Post by omnimus »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #176
gpm wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Youve just invented a new job which is dummy human who is cheaper than parking lot who drives all day around city in otherwise empty cars.
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