Good, I was hit by a car in NYC while on a bike and it caused a fracture. If this reduces congestion, then I support it because I could have easily died. However, this was accompanied by hikes in public transit pricing. I don't think transit officials are acting in good faith when it comes to their moral arguments and just want to justify raising taxes for the poor.
NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker
161–170 of 653 posts
Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker
#162[flagged]
You know what’s more unsafe in than the subway in NYC? Walking across a road in NYC.
You sound like you don’t live in the area.
Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's highly unlikely to result in positive effects. I would be hoping that it only harms NYC economic condition "a little", as the best case outcome. This falls solidly in the "it sounds good but causes significant negative unintended consequences" bucket of regulation, like the rest of NYC's many regulations that led up to this point.
Why do you think that? Congestion pricing is a way to price an externality, which is usually a good thing compared to externalities being free.
The externality is already "priced in" to the traffic. People who can wait in traffic or can't afford not to wait in traffic do so, and people who want to skip out can as well.
Congestion pricing, like many fees and regulations, is a regressive tax, because the overhead seeps into all goods and services and it impacts the poor most of all and the rich not at all.
Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do we get around? To get downtown I have to take two busses and then bart (or two busses but it takes longer because there are a lot more stops). The kicker: I'm not even in a suburb, I live in SF! All we do in SF is make car driving worse, we almost never make public transit better. At least NYC has a plenty good enough train system. I end up WFH anyway, largely because it's annoying to get to an office downtown…
> All we do in SF is make car driving worse, we almost never make public transit better. In the last half decade we've seen the opening of the Salesforce transit center, the Chinatown subway station, the Van Ness BRT, the Caltrain Electrification Project, BART expansion to Berryessa, 800 new BART cars, and hundreds of smaller projects. You can see a full list of SFMTA projects at https://www.sfmta.com/sfmta-projects
And before that: https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/8df1z7/after_...
Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker
#165Good, I was hit by a car in NYC while on a bike and it caused a fracture. If this reduces congestion, then I support it because I could have easily died. However, this was accompanied by hikes in public transit pricing. I don't think transit officials are acting in good faith when it comes to their moral arguments and just want to justify raising taxes for the poor.
The people paying the congestion fees are the rich that live in the suburbs and drive into the city.
Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
Living in the suburbs is perfectly fine; I think a perfectly virtuous outcome here would be that people keep living in the suburbs if they wish, but have adequately funded suburban rail and bus transit into the city. An important piece of context is that NYC has some of the US's best suburban transit, including three different suburban rail systems (NJT, MNRR, LIRR) and one non-subway interurban rapid transit system…
Problem is, none of the money from congestion pricing is shared with NJ transit/infra
NJ needs to stop its commuter residents paying NY income tax, particularly those doing WFH more than half the year. They can boost NJT with that pile of money.
Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker
#167Fantastic. That's step one, now fix the public transit, and make it safer and cleaner, so that people actually enjoy using it consistently rather than just needing to do so.
Do that and NYC will be a much, much nicer city to live in.
Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
SF put in 33 speed cameras in known locations, and are aiming to install 900 more by the end of this year. As a bonus to speeders, speeds in excess of 100 mph will incur a $500 speeding ticket, though that may have unintended consequences.
what unintended consequences?
The real unintended consequence is that cities ultimately don’t like to run them. They’re effective, and thus the revenue the city is expecting disappears. In they end they become costs rather than revenue sources.
Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you think that? Congestion pricing is a way to price an externality, which is usually a good thing compared to externalities being free.
The externality is already "priced in" to the traffic. People who can wait in traffic or can't afford not to wait in traffic do so, and people who want to skip out can as well. Congestion pricing, like many fees and regulations, is a regressive tax, because the overhead seeps into all goods and services and it impacts the poor most of all and the rich not at all.
In the absence of pricing, people who do not want to wait cannot opt out of traffic, so the rebuttal here seems imperfect.
Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's highly unlikely to result in positive effects. I would be hoping that it only harms NYC economic condition "a little", as the best case outcome. This falls solidly in the "it sounds good but causes significant negative unintended consequences" bucket of regulation, like the rest of NYC's many regulations that led up to this point.
Why do you think that? Congestion pricing is a way to price an externality, which is usually a good thing compared to externalities being free.
There is only one singular goal written into the enabling law for this Congestion Tax, renenue for the NYC MTA transit system's capital plan. They have to raise one billion dollars per year. Any reducing congestion or any altering of pollution were only part of getting Federal approval. Now the only purpose is to raise money with 5 years of hikes already scheduled. This is going to uave drastic unintended consequences. I predict a theatre and retail recession. And more office divestment if this regressive tax isn't repealed or forced to focus on emissions or some non revenue goal.