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Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

nytimes.com

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Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#61

Post by aidenn0 »

taeric wrote: post #26
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people's preferred method You have some evidence of this?

To be fair, I think this is just definitional? If you would normally do one behavior, but an increased cost to it causes you to do something else; I think it is fair to say the first would be your preference? Now, if it was claimed as a superior method, that would be different. I could easily see it being people's preference as much from habit and availability as from any active preference. Certainly few people want…

I don't think revealed preferences are the only reasonable way to define "preference."

To use an extreme example: Does the homeless alcoholic divorcé really prefer to be homeless and divorced?

For a more abstract example, consider games like the Prisoner's dilemma, where "both defect" is worse for both players than "both cooperate" but choosing to defect always improves the result for a player. Surely both players would prefer the "both cooperate" solution to the "both defect" but without some external force, they end up in a globally suboptimal result.

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#62

Post by horv »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #7

Not to settle on "It's bad" but their so called "results" seems completely obvious. The congestion policy is disincentivizing/suppressing people's preferred method by making it unaffordable to some, and unappealing to some. We already know that we can use policy to push people away from their preferred to a less preferred method. The items listed in green are mostly obvious as people seek alternatives. It's like high…

> In the long run, yes, maybe things will be net better for all, when the $45M per year has had a chance to make alternative transportation methods to be not just policy enforced, but truly _preferred_ option.

The article highlights that was $45 million in the month of March alone:

"In March, the tolls raised $45 million in net revenue, putting the program on track to generate roughly $500 million in its first year."

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#63

Post by bryanlarsen »

RhysU wrote: post #57

Congestion isn't limited to cars. My pregnant wife was hit yesterday in SoHo in broad daylight by a delivery driver on an e-bike. He ran a redlight. He hit her in a crosswalk. She was wearing a bright orange dress. She was not on a phone or listening to music. She went flying ass over teakettle. We spent 6 hours in the ER yesterday evening to make sure our unborn baby was okay. Fortunately, everyone is OK despite her…

In other forums there are lots of complaints about the NYC crackdown on e-bikes. NYC has taken steps to discourage their use. Maybe not enough, but definitely more than in most other parts of the country.

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#64

Post by RhysU »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #63
RhysU wrote: post #57

Congestion isn't limited to cars. My pregnant wife was hit yesterday in SoHo in broad daylight by a delivery driver on an e-bike. He ran a redlight. He hit her in a crosswalk. She was wearing a bright orange dress. She was not on a phone or listening to music. She went flying ass over teakettle. We spent 6 hours in the ER yesterday evening to make sure our unborn baby was okay. Fortunately, everyone is OK despite her…

In other forums there are lots of complaints about the NYC crackdown on e-bikes. NYC has taken steps to discourage their use. Maybe not enough, but definitely more than in most other parts of the country.

Stand on a corner in NYC and count the moving violations the e-bikes commit. Running lights and stops. Going the wrong way. Etc.

These aren't subtle infractions of the law. Tell me why automated traffic enforcement cameras don't target them.

As a motorcyclist, e-bikes piss me off to no end.

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#65

Post by aidenn0 »

explodes wrote: post #4

Wouldn't it be nice if policy changes were accompanied by an A/B testing plan to evaluate their impact? I have always thought so. I have also seen a major pitfall of A/B testing that real humans can hand-pick and slice data to make it sound as positive or negative as wanted. Nonetheless, the more data the better.

> Wouldn't it be nice if policy changes were accompanied by an A/B testing plan to evaluate their impact? I have always thought so. I have also seen a major pitfall of A/B testing that real humans can hand-pick and slice data to make it sound as positive or negative as wanted. Nonetheless, the more data the better.

Policies have different effects depending on how likely people judge them to be long-term changes. Construction along a route will cause people to temporarily use alternative forms of transportation, but not e.g. sell their car or buy a long-term bus pass.

Yes, the inability to know counterfactuals will make judging policies more subjective than we might like. The closest we get to A/B testing is when different jurisdictions adopt substantially similar policies at different times. For example, this was done to judge improvements from phasing out leaded-gasoline, since it was done at different times and rates in different areas.

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#66

Post by rimunroe »

RhysU wrote: post #57

Congestion isn't limited to cars. My pregnant wife was hit yesterday in SoHo in broad daylight by a delivery driver on an e-bike. He ran a redlight. He hit her in a crosswalk. She was wearing a bright orange dress. She was not on a phone or listening to music. She went flying ass over teakettle. We spent 6 hours in the ER yesterday evening to make sure our unborn baby was okay. Fortunately, everyone is OK despite her…

> Meanwhile, I get to pay $9 MORE to drive my licensed, registered, insured vehicle on increasingly narrow roads filled with increasingly negligent 2-wheeled asshats because it's the preferred business model.

It sounds like measures to limit the danger of electric bikes might be warranted, but that’s a separate issue. Even if electric bikes are a problem I’d be shocked if they came anywhere close to causing the pedestrian fatality rate of cars (even when controlled by frequency of use) in an urban environment, not to mentioni the additional impacts of things like emissions (including non-tailpipe), noise, space, etc. of cars. I don’t know much about motorcycle statistics. I can imagine the group that rides motorcycles might be less likely to hit pedestrians than those of e-bike riders, but I don’t know.

If we have to choose only one of these problems to tackle at a time—which we don’t!—I’d rather they tackle the one which is killing hundreds of people a year.

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#67

Post by Calwestjobs »

shadowgovt wrote: post #20
Calwestjobs wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

test A - before test B - after what are you talking about ?

Generally, that's considered to introduce counfounding factors on the time axis ("did we see improvement because we changed something or because flu season hit and people stayed home") that you'd prefer to mitigate by running your A and B simultaneously. But in the absence of the ability to run them simultaneously, "A is before and B is after" can be a fine proxy. Of course, if B is worse, it'd be nice if you could o…

yes, but how the hell he proposes to make A/B testing of "whole Manhattan policy"? build another Manhattan just for test? makes no sense. whole manhattan is important. not 5%. so no 5%. a/b test can be done only for things which affect one person, like for example GUI etc, big group under test but effect on individuals,

in such big scale a/b test is tool to deceive, not to get to right conclusion

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#68

Post by bunderbunder »

jannyfer wrote: post #56
bunderbunder wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not an A/B test because it has no way of controlling for broader economic trends over time. How do you figure out if what you're seeing is because of that one thing that changed, or the enormous list of other things that also changed around the same time? A more valid design would be randomly assigning some cities to institute congestion pricing, and other cities to not have it. Obviously not feasible in pract…

That would be a bad design for an A/B study (and NYC congestion pricing is not a “study” anyway), because cities are few and not alike and have an enormous list of other things that are different. What NYC equivalent would you pick? In any case, not every policy change needs to be an academic exercise.

Yup, that is indeed a part of the problem. You'll notice I did say, "Obviously not feasible in practice."

I've got a textbook on field experiments that refers to these kinds of questions as FUQ - acronym for "Fundamentally Unanswerable Questions". You can collect suggestive evidence, but firmly establishing cause and effect is something you've just got to let go of.

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#69

Post by stemlord »

aidenn0 wrote: post #65
explodes wrote: post #4

Wouldn't it be nice if policy changes were accompanied by an A/B testing plan to evaluate their impact? I have always thought so. I have also seen a major pitfall of A/B testing that real humans can hand-pick and slice data to make it sound as positive or negative as wanted. Nonetheless, the more data the better.

> Wouldn't it be nice if policy changes were accompanied by an A/B testing plan to evaluate their impact? I have always thought so. I have also seen a major pitfall of A/B testing that real humans can hand-pick and slice data to make it sound as positive or negative as wanted. Nonetheless, the more data the better. Policies have different effects depending on how likely people judge them to be long-term changes. Cons…

please don't quote the entire comment you're replying to

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#70

Post by aclatuts »

explodes wrote: post #4

Wouldn't it be nice if policy changes were accompanied by an A/B testing plan to evaluate their impact? I have always thought so. I have also seen a major pitfall of A/B testing that real humans can hand-pick and slice data to make it sound as positive or negative as wanted. Nonetheless, the more data the better.

The real world isn't A/B tests. No government is going to spend millions on equipment and infrastructure on a congestion zone because some engineers are like "Let's just test this out. I have done zero research on what could possibly happen, but it would be fun to see what the results are."
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