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NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

congestion-pricing-tracker.com

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Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#181

Post by ufmace »

RHSeeger wrote: post #152
nine_k wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, SF, the home of both some of the most powerful NIMBYs and the most outlandish "social justice" experiments. I feel for this once wonderful, poor city. As a consolation, I must say that e.g. NYC was also handled miserably, say, in 1980s. Despite that, it rose from the filth, and is now fine, even outright enjoyable here and there. I think that SF will also shake off its current insanity, and will turn back into a…

> Despite that, it rose from the filth, and is now fine Well, except for the people being pushing in front of subways to their death, or lit on fire in stations. The subways stations are getting dangerous enough, even in "not bad" areas, that people are avoiding them.

Out of about 3.5 million riders a day. Meanwhile, nobody pays any attention to the roughly 250 people who die in car crashes every single year in the NYC metro area. If you're so worried about safety, we should ban cars entirely instead of just taxing them a little.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#182

Post by ars »

leetcrew wrote: post #119
ars wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I'm curious about is if business in the Manhattan will be lessened as a result of less people there. I know the goal is less cars, rather than less people, but I want to see if that's actually what will happen. As someone who doesn't live in Manhattan I wish there was a better way to go basically anywhere in New York without entering Manhattan. Every single road, bus, and subway goes through this super dense are…

I've thought about the same thing and concluded this basically reduces to "why do economies organize around dense urban cores"? pretty much any business that can afford to will want to rent space in the barycenter of a metro area. that's what manhattan is to the NYC metro. when the vast majority of daily trips are into and out of that dense core, that defines the most economic routes for building transit. beltways/by…

The downside is it creates a conflict between the city and the rest. The city is like "we want transit, everyone else go away". The rest are like "we want to give you business but your policies drive us away", and "we want transit, but we are forced to get a car because transit is only in the center".

It's an unnecessary conflict - just add some transit that doesn't revolve around the city center. This reduces the number of people just passing through the center and creating unnecessary stress, and it make transit possible for more people.

Manhattan is like a black hole - it sucks in every single transit from as far away as Massachusetts. Try to travel by public transportation from virtually anywhere nearby without going through Manhattan. You can't and it's unnecessary traffic.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#183

Post by woodruffw »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #166
nfRfqX5n wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How do you propose they do that? NJ doesn't levy NY's taxes, NY does.

(To my understanding, NJ gives every resident an equivalent income tax credit for the taxes they pay in NY. Given that they can't stop NY from taxing its own employees, this would mean they'd effectively need to double income taxes for NJ residents.)

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#184

Post by atoav »

Projectiboga wrote: post #170
scarab92 wrote: post #150

Earlier 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.

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 consequence…

Sure it is going to have consequences, but so does not doing anything as well.

Not to be that guy, but from a European standpoint the clear answer is: If you make driving cars into the big city expensive, if you still wanna get people there you need to give them other, cheap, more space-efficient ways of getting there. Public transport, bus lines, trains, stuff that Asian megacities do as well.

Or you can build even more lanes and parking lots, because that worked out great and was without any consequences so far /s

I am not saying I trust in the success of NY congestion pricing, but that has nothing to do with the measure (it is fine) and everything to do with how how half-assed it might be implemented. But elsewhere similar concepts work just fine. But hey, so does healthcare..

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#185

Post by what »

maxwellg wrote: post #85
taatof wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I'm obviously exaggerating by saying "never", the list is much smaller than it needs to be, and you have some misleading things on that list. Chinatown subway station is great. Better connects SF residents and it's exactly what I want to see more of in SF. - Van Ness BRT? That project started in 2003. It took 20 years to complete. Not exactly the poster child of solid transit improvements in SF, except if you i…

I provided a list of the biggest ticket items from the past few years. If you want to only look at projects that increase transit availability, reliability, or speed within SF County, check out the Muni Forward projects. Usually half a dozen lines are prioritized each year. https://www.sfmta.com/projects/muni-forward I live in the Richmond, so I've been positively affected by the improvements to the 38/38R (although…

What actually improved about the 38? They moved the stops to the other side of the intersection, which saves maybe 1 minute along the entire route.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#186

Post by cyberax »

DrBrock wrote: post #148
cyberax wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. Most agencies have a problem of people realizing that wasting life in buses is not worth it. Transit can never compete with cars on speed in well-designed cities.

We appear to have very different definitions of "well-designed cities". Cars are the least efficient form of mass transit yet devised. They take up inordinate amounts of space to move very few people. This creates unavoidable congestion problems at very realistic levels of urban density, problems which are only solvable by enabling people to use viable alternatives. This is why the subway and buses in Manhattan move…

> We appear to have very different definitions of "well-designed cities".

No comparable European city is even close to Houston in average commute time. Go on, fact check me.

> This is why the subway and buses in Manhattan move 5x and 2x more people respectively per day than cars.

Manhattan is a hellscape that needs to be de-densified (with some neighborhoods preserved as museums of human folly).

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#187

Post by bushbaba »

taatof wrote: post #69
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All we do in SF is make car driving worse, we almost never make public transit better. Same happening here in my smallish (~300k peeople) capital of a small eu country... Too many cars? More expensive parking! Less parking! More expensive parking! Less parking! More pedestrian-only streets, and even more cars around that... And the buses? They suck. The city is roughly star-shaped.. want to go from one leg to anoth…

Sounds right. Here in SF, instead of police pulling over people who speed and run stop signs, we're getting rid of parking spots within 20ft of intersections so people speeding and running stop signs can see if they're about to kill a pedestrian. Could raise a fortune for public transit if we enforced traffic laws and used that money.

There’s a cost of policing, and a significant amount of ticket revenue goes to court fees. Not everyone pays their ticket.

Likely it’d not raise a fortune and the ticketing revenue would mostly offset the cost of enforcement.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#188

Post by rafram »

taatof wrote: post #69
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All we do in SF is make car driving worse, we almost never make public transit better. Same happening here in my smallish (~300k peeople) capital of a small eu country... Too many cars? More expensive parking! Less parking! More expensive parking! Less parking! More pedestrian-only streets, and even more cars around that... And the buses? They suck. The city is roughly star-shaped.. want to go from one leg to anoth…

Sounds right. Here in SF, instead of police pulling over people who speed and run stop signs, we're getting rid of parking spots within 20ft of intersections so people speeding and running stop signs can see if they're about to kill a pedestrian. Could raise a fortune for public transit if we enforced traffic laws and used that money.

> we're getting rid of parking spots within 20ft of intersections

This is called daylighting, and it’s a very good idea. The rest of your comment was just snark, and I assume you know that road improvements don’t have anything to do with law enforcement, but I just want to emphasize that daylighting is going to be a huge positive for the city.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#189

Post by pixelatedindex »

maxwellg wrote: post #11

I'm incredibly hopeful that NYC congestion pricing pays off in a big way - and that we start to see it in other cities across America. I really, really want congestion pricing in downtown SF. During rush hour, cars block the box and slow down busses, with cascading effects.

Look at the carpool lanes in the Bay Area. It’s as much as $9 for a couple of miles around the Palo Alto / Atherton area and there’s no lack of cars. Then there’s like another $5 or something between that area and Santa Clara.

Maybe it will work in NYC, but in the Bay Area I can’t help but feel like it’s a regressive tax because people who already have the money will continue their ways and pay but people who are on a budget now have to wait longer to get anywhere in the peninsula.

SF has a ton of folk coming from quite a ways away and it can easily take 2x the time if using public transit. Outside of rush hour Caltrain can take 1.5-2h, and Bart from Berryessa isn’t quick (plus contending with BART delays).

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#190

Post by cyberax »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #124
cyberax wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. Most agencies have a problem of people realizing that wasting life in buses is not worth it. Transit can never compete with cars on speed in well-designed cities.

I guess by 'well designed cities' you mean 'cities with copious amounts of parking' For certain high frequency routes in Chicago, I never minded sitting on the bus to get across town. At least once I got off I didn't have to find a parking spot. Now wasting life waiting for a bus is another story.

> I guess by 'well designed cities' you mean 'cities with copious amounts of parking'

Yup. Wide roads, plenty of parking, distributed industry and office space, low density.

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