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Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

nytimes.com

71–80 of 735 posts

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#71
post #36

Impressive how cars are harmful to society. This is just a small example. We should be more radical in preventing the use of individual automobiles. If it works in a country where the auto is so ingrained in the culture and lifestyle, it can work anywhere.

The converse is how helpful cars are. It allows people to have the ability commute from areas they live at to where they work. It brings down the cost of living by expanding the commute availability circle, instead of driving up land values for the desirable areas.

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#72
post #45
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about it more; if the vegan and steak options were ~equivalently priced - more would choose vegan than if it wasn't more expensive. The idea isn't to make it prohibitive; insofaras don't make the most environmentally-expensive choice also the cheapest. To compare it to traffic; everyone is miserable sitting in traffic; so giving people an excuse for a bit more WFH is a WinWin.

As a committed meat-eater: I have no idea what vegan food costs, as the label almost immediate makes me skip over them. To make me look at them, you'd have to make the non-vegan options prohibitively expensive.

I'll reword it. The idea isn't to make everyone skip meat; but to make the non-meat options more competitive. I say this as one with multiple briskets in my chest freezer waiting for some good weather.

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#73
post #45
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about it more; if the vegan and steak options were ~equivalently priced - more would choose vegan than if it wasn't more expensive. The idea isn't to make it prohibitive; insofaras don't make the most environmentally-expensive choice also the cheapest. To compare it to traffic; everyone is miserable sitting in traffic; so giving people an excuse for a bit more WFH is a WinWin.

As a committed meat-eater: I have no idea what vegan food costs, as the label almost immediate makes me skip over them. To make me look at them, you'd have to make the non-vegan options prohibitively expensive.

Well most raw vegan food is already way cheaper that raw meat:

Quality organic dry chickpeas, lentils, beans, soy etc… already are around 2€/kg where I live and when you add water they double/triple in weight so you end up at 1€/kg. You’ll probably eat a bit more weight than meat but still the price is nowhere comparable. Add some whole cereals instead of white bread for nutrition and better satiety: they’re more expensive but you got the price back on the quantity you eat (you won’t stuff yourself that much T165 bread or brown rice: the fibers will make you feel full super fast). And for the vegetable you usually can find stuff super nutritious for cheap : apples, leak, cabbages and alls sorts of oignons.

Even fancy organic quinoa is like 10€/kg but also double in weight and you only eat ~1.3 times the meat weight you’ll eat in meat-meal.

Industrial chicken is 5€/kg un the shop and "good" one 15€/kg. Quality beef is nowhere in that range.

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#74
post #36

Impressive how cars are harmful to society. This is just a small example. We should be more radical in preventing the use of individual automobiles. If it works in a country where the auto is so ingrained in the culture and lifestyle, it can work anywhere.

The converse is how helpful cars are. It allows people to have the ability commute from areas they live at to where they work. It brings down the cost of living by expanding the commute availability circle, instead of driving up land values for the desirable areas.

> It brings down the cost of living by expanding the commute availability circle

It does this by sweeping a lot of negative externalities under the carpet of society. There's no magic here.

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It is, indeed, much easier to do A/B testing online in environments you control than IRL.

(Purely hypothetically: one could identify 10% of the island as operating under the new rules and compare outcomes. This is politically fraught on multiple levels and also gives messy spatial results.)

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wealthy people do not need to travel as much as pleb....

Let travel for royalty be unimpeded and force the peasants to bike in the rain...

they can choose to be wealthy ( joke sorry )

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be really interesting if it turns out that something like this improves the city's overall economy by encouraging people to go to neighborhood businesses instead of driving all the way across town to go to whatever place is currently trending. I'm thinking here of when I lived in Milwaukee, WI. Milwaukee has a strong culture of driving across town to a small number of trendy neighborhoods. Which leads to hyp…

> extreme neighborhood-to-neighborhood prosperity disparities. It may also make running a business more expansive. It limits locations and pushes rent up.

I would assume any increase in desirability would be due to an increase in traffic and cash inflow to those businesses/area.

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#78
post #36

Impressive how cars are harmful to society. This is just a small example. We should be more radical in preventing the use of individual automobiles. If it works in a country where the auto is so ingrained in the culture and lifestyle, it can work anywhere.

The converse is how helpful cars are. It allows people to have the ability commute from areas they live at to where they work. It brings down the cost of living by expanding the commute availability circle, instead of driving up land values for the desirable areas.

The dispute isn't between walking and cars, or between stone age and modernity. Just that individual cars have a terrible externalities.

Impressive how public transport does not enter the mind of Americans.

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#79
post #3

Climate Town has an entertaining and informative video on this topic from last month: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEFBn0r53uQ

Great comment from that video: "When cars were banned from Central Park drivers whined and now we can't imagine it any other way." Everything is impossible until it is done.

It is fun to observe everything come to an equilibrium with positive outcomes until someone lights the atmosphere on fire.

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#80
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…

Oof, that sucks. Glad that delivery driver wasn't in a car though! Could've ended much worse.
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