Pigovian taxes WORK, and are in many cases desirable, something lolberts just seem unable to get their heads around.
Pigouvian*, this is a regressive tax though that is probably unnecessary as the other studies referenced or linked in this thread show.
is it? i dont see the relevant other studies, and my initial assumptions would be that the median subway user is lower income than the median car driver in NYC, so transfering funds from car drivers to subway improvements would be progressive.
However NYC's transit is notoriously bad at spending, so not sure it would achive that. Which studies linked in this thread are you refering to? I cant see them.
The question becomes how critical is X and is there a close alternative. In this case I'd say for 95% of people yes driving is easily substituted by NYC's public transit options.
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What percentage of the road traffic do you think they constitute? How much of the value of the truck full of expensive seafood do you think the congestion charge represents? How many extra deliveries can a single driver make when they spend less time stuck in congestion?
Reducing the number of cars on the road helps everyone: we tend to focus on the enormous quality of life and health benefits to residents but it also helps everyone who doesn’t have the option of not driving, too. Ambulances getting stuck in congestion less is a win. Deliveries which can’t be done using cargo bikes similarly benefit from reducing the single greatest source of delay: cars.
Why does everyone immediately pivot to EVs on this subject, instead of (looks around) gargantuan SUVs and trucks everywhere, due to peculiarities of US policies regulating SUVs more leniently than cars on fuel efficiency?
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This is wrong. Exact weights vary with trim levels, but Model are around 4000 lbs. and Suburbans are around 6000 lbs.
working class people are predominantly using public transit to get around nyc this claim has been debunked many times and anyone with eyes can see who the private drivers in NYC are
Very few poor people drive into lower Manhattan. And people whose work requires them to drive in that area (delivery drivers, plumbers, etc.) come out ahead. One of the first NYT stories after congestion pricing was rolled out had multiple quotes from tradesmen reporting that they're saving an hour or more a day and prefer the new system.
There was also an endless parade of NY Post stories about how Manhattan restaurants would suffer because their customers couldn't just drive in from Long Island and New Jersey.
Minor nitpick, but tailpipes aren't the primary source of emissions. Spend some time in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City or a very dense city in Asia and then come back here. Let me know if you change your mind.
I won't change my mind about emissions in NYC . NYC is full of modern, western cars. Two-stroke engines are terrible , classic automobiles are terrible, cars with no emission regulations will tend to be terrible. Cars in NYC will have catalytic converters and other technologies to reduce tailpipe emissions.
The notable source of bad tailpipe emissions in NYC are heavy diesel trucks, which, to my understanding, produce a large proportion of tailpipe particulates (and NOx) in the US, despite being a small fraction of overall vehicles on the road. There are strong correlations with heavy truck traffic and asthma rates.
There was a study published about how much air pollution dropped in NYC during the COVID lockdown. PM2.5 was found to have dropped 36%. However with more robust analysis, this drop was discovered to not be statistically significant. I would caution anyone reading this who is tempted by confirmation bias. Source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7314691/
That's a very surprising finding since the drop in traffic was very noticeable. I wonder where the PM2.5 is coming from?
Pigovian taxes WORK, and are in many cases desirable, something lolberts just seem unable to get their heads around.
Pigouvian*, this is a regressive tax though that is probably unnecessary as the other studies referenced or linked in this thread show.
TIL that word.
I wish as a society we'd use this form of taxation more, and widely applied taxes less. In theory insurance is supposed to have the actuarial people who figure it out and properly price the choices in, but it's also surprising how crude they can be-- lumping very distinct situations as "the same". eg aggressive drivers are only penalized after they hurt someone, like the phrase "no harm no foul" (until there is harm). It'd be better if telemetry was collected and penalized in realtime.