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Driving a Car in Manhattan Could Cost $11 Under Congestion Plan

nytimes.com

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Re: Driving a Car in Manhattan Could Cost $11 Under Congestion Plan

#191

Post by vanjoe »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #176
matwood wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is congestion pricing okay when applying the same philosophy to other matters of public good isn't? Good question. Will we see sayings like "Save Road Neutrality"? Net neutrality is something that prevents ISPs from practicing a form of congestion pricing (zero rating, charge more for certain packets, etc...), yet the death of net neutrality has been likened to the death of the internet. One of things I struggl…

Thats not really the same at all because the question with net neutrality revolves around being charged for the content of the data. No one is proposing congestion pricing which charges you based on the content of your vehicle.

Carpool lanes, different tolls for commercial vs personal. I think these are essentially doing that.

Re: Driving a Car in Manhattan Could Cost $11 Under Congestion Plan

#192

Post by free652 »

baldfat wrote: post #158
chimeracoder wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Time for me to get on the train and go to NYC one way is 2 hours plus, so over 4 hours round trip. It is 50 miles away from my old home. Cost is $27 round trip (off peak) or $38.50 (peak) for the ticket. So taking the train is convenient and I love it but it ruins the rest of my day. Put another way, with congestion pricing, you have two options: * Pay $27-$38.50 (total) for a four hour round-trip on public transit…

My WHOLE point is the cost is ridiculous. People paying $5000 to $12000 a year to commute to work in NYC. It also makes it more difficult to get around. I grew up in Danbury, CT and probably 20% of the city works in NYC and I now live in Allentown, PA and know several that work there full time and it takes 30 minutes to get to a train station to NYC. I had one full time job in Manhattan when I was 18 and commuted eve…

Move to NYC! Problem solved. And on serious note - local pay NYC income tax, commuters don't.

Re: Driving a Car in Manhattan Could Cost $11 Under Congestion Plan

#193

Post by ufo »

cseelus wrote: post #52

I find concepts of road space rationing like in Beijing to be more fair.[1] This plan for Manhattan will obviously only stop people with low financial power from driving, although they might already have paid for these roads via taxes and duties. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_space_rationing_in_Beij...

São Paulo has a similar system in place since 1996, where each vehicle has one day a week where they are banned from using the roads during peak times.

My understanding is that it doesn't really help that much because even with the rationing the tendency is still to saturate the roads with cars. São Paulo is one of the cities with the worst traffic congestion in the world. Additionally, rich people can bypass the rationing by purchasing additional vehicles.

Re: Driving a Car in Manhattan Could Cost $11 Under Congestion Plan

#194

Post by eldavido »

maxerickson wrote: post #75
lazerpants wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always surprised by the only-in-this-circumstance libertarian philosophy of people who support congestion pricing. I think if you took the exact same logic and applied it to say, schools, supporters would feel completely differently about it. Example: It's really hard to get your child into certain public schools in NYC. Why not start charging $3k a year per child (much less than private schools) at high demand s…

I think it's just more acceptable for roads to be a limited resource than for quality schools to be a limited resource. It's not a logical argument, it's values.

I'm not sure if I agree or not but I think this is a very insightful comment.

This is the level on which this conversation needs to take place - what's important? Are some things more important than others? It's not strictly about dollars and cents, or how to pay for it.

For what it's worth I think they're about equally important. There's no such thing as "an alternate road system", you either have one, or you don't. And I also think there's a place for people who don't have kids, who make a considered decision not to fund schools but want good roads so they can go places and get to work.

This is meat and potatoes politics: tradeoffs, values, what we think is important and are willing to pay for.

Re: Driving a Car in Manhattan Could Cost $11 Under Congestion Plan

#195

Post by randomsearch »

QuarterReptile wrote: post #135
maxsilver wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is congestion pricing okay when applying the same philosophy to other matters of public good isn't? I think the real root of the problem is that congestion pricing is never okay in matters of public good, we've just conditioned ourselves to believe that infrastructure is this special case of impossible problem to solve, so our terrible workaround to this artificial problem sometimes seems begrudgingly reasonabl…

The immediate problems of infrastructure are two-fold: funding and the matching of supply and demand. Ignore the environmental ramifications for the moment and kick that can to your kids like everyone else does. Supply and demand solves itself. The solution is staring right back at you any time you drive around a city at 5PM local. The funding could be solved by taking more money out of general revenue from income an…

Building more roads creates more traffic i.e. more “demand”. This is the unforeseen problem with road building schemes. The solution is mass transit and city planning to reduce road commuting.

Re: Driving a Car in Manhattan Could Cost $11 Under Congestion Plan

#196

Post by lewis500 »

ebikelaw wrote: post #173
lewis500 wrote: post #157

I wrote a history of downtown congestion pricing a few months back: https://medium.com/@lewislehe/a-history-of-downtown-road-pri... Since then I've written it as an academic paper with a lot more material.

Thanks, that is a great contribution to the discussion. I hope in the coming years these charging schemes will be so common that cataloging them becomes impossible!

Currently Vancouver is also seriously considering a scheme. I do believe they are going to implement one.

Singapore is also switching over to a satellite-based per-km charge.

Re: Driving a Car in Manhattan Could Cost $11 Under Congestion Plan

#197

Post by ars »

rthomas6 wrote: post #42

This is one of the only places in the US where public transportation is kind of good. Many people in NYC don't own a car and don't even know how to drive. It boggles my mind the amount of people complaining about how expensive it is to drive to Manhattan. ...Why did you drive in the first place? Unless you need to carry something large/heavy, there's no real reason to drive there. Just park, take a cab/train there, a…

> Why did you drive in the first place? Unless you need to carry something large/heavy, there's no real reason to drive there

The biggest problem with Manhattan is that it's hard to get to the rest of NY without going through Manhattan.

If they fixed that, a TON of the traffic would be alleviated.

Re: Driving a Car in Manhattan Could Cost $11 Under Congestion Plan

#198

Post by thedirt0115 »

ars wrote: post #185
moogleii wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would counter that while driving is certainly a privilege, the roads themselves are a right, or a public good, comparable to schools. So regardless of what hoops you have to jump through to purchase and license your car, once jumped, the roads are analogous to the schools. FWIW, roads were for people first, not cars.

> FWIW, roads were for people first, not cars. That isn't true. They are for people. First people in wagons, then people in cars. But always for people.

I think by people they meant pedestrians, a la https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history

Re: Driving a Car in Manhattan Could Cost $11 Under Congestion Plan

#199

Post by [deleted] »

njarboe wrote: post #170
nwah1 wrote: post #7

Congestion pricing is one of the most economically literate ways to improve traffic, and those funds can be used to improve infrastructure. It isn't so different from surge pricing in ridesharing apps. There is a narrowmindedness on the part of opponents of both congestion pricing and surge pricing, because they are ignoring the obvious point that if they weren't paying the fees they'd be paying in terms of time. Not…

I think most people would support congestion pricing, if all the money collected went to building more road capacity. The people paying to get a fast trip now would be seen (and actually be) supporting faster trips for everyone in the future. Right now it just builds more resentment toward the 1%. Unfortunately this situation is not really possible today as places that so congested to want to use congestion pricing o…

[deleted]

Re: Driving a Car in Manhattan Could Cost $11 Under Congestion Plan

#200

Post by rsynnott »

hartator wrote: post #148
rsynnott wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing how habit-forming driving seems to be. A friend was recently talking about a colleague of his who lives right next to a tram stop and works right next to another stop on the same tram line. 20 minute tram journey, tram every five minutes at peak time. And instead they drive an hour to work at rush hour, because they're from a rural area and are used to driving. Makes no sense to me at all...

I think you have to live in big city and have taken public transportation on a daily basis, to understand the frustations, the dalays, the insecurity, the smell, the crowdness, and the freedom reducing of it.

I've been taking public transport in a largish city (1.5 million people) for most of my life. I really don't get the problem (except with certain infrequent and unreliable bus routes, but I'd hold that against those routes, not public transport in general). On the other hand, I'd hate to be dependent on a car.
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