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NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

congestion-pricing-tracker.com

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Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#201

Post by mh- »

bushbaba wrote: post #187
taatof wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's.. fine? It'd drive behavior modification if there was even a small risk of getting a citation. Today, there really isn't.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#202

Post by zip1234 »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #163
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.

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.

The externality of noise and smog for people living there is not priced in wait time for drivers.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#203

Post by donmcronald »

pixelatedindex wrote: post #189
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…

> I can’t help but feel like it’s a regressive tax

That’s exactly what it is. The richer you are, the better it is. Now people on a budget will pay taxes to subsidize infrastructure that’s only accessible to the wealthy. It’s a massive scam perpetrated by the rich for the rich.

Why stop with roads? Why not have congestion pricing for schools or hospitals or access to water? That way we only have to build enough infrastructure to serve the wealthiest half of society.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#204

Post by boroboro4 »

cyberax wrote: post #186
DrBrock wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

London average commute time is 38 minutes, quite comparable to 31 minute in Houston. I would argue you get much more spare time while using public transportation too, as well as so much needed walk time.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#205

Post by up2isomorphism »

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.

Paying additional tax to save an incompetent public funded infrastructure (MTA in this case) never works well.

At minimum, all MTA executives should be payed off before any such measures can be considered.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#206

Post by CSMastermind »

fuzzylightbulb wrote: post #196
dralley wrote: post #167

Fantastic. 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.

That is literally what the money is for

When I lived in NYC I paid huge amounts of money in taxes and as far as I can tell got very little for my money.

Until they can start using their enormous existing budget wisely I don't see any reason they should be given more money.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#207

Post by 0_____0 »

pixelatedindex wrote: post #189
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…

Anything that costs money is 'regressive' if you use your definition.

Sure, we could means test every toll and fee, but there's a different solution for that already - taxation.

There's a secret third option to congestion, which is you disallow some number of people at a time from using the facility, and people really don't like that one.

Dig deeper and you find it's a housing problem anyway. People can't afford to house themselves/their families in the cities they toil in. Build housing near jobs and there's less need to commute in from Tracy.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#208

Post by boroboro4 »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #199
cyberax wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

Manhattan is such a strange place to live. People are locked into something far off the normal ways of living, and they forget those other ways of life and look down on them (smaller less dense cities, suburbs, rural areas). Living in closets in high rises and moving around underground isn’t life. Having room for living, being able to get around quickly with private owned vehicles, and walking on grass instead of con…

Manhattan/NYC also provides you with truly diverse crowd of people around, cultural events and experiences, different food and many more.

NYC in general also have plenty of different neighborhoods with very different lifestyles and vibes.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#209

Post by randoomed »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #137
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.

It’s not popular on HN but this is the truth. Cars are fast, and they operate on your own schedule, and they don’t have to make a bunch of stops. There’s just no way transit can compete on travel time. Unless of course, a city decides to purposely underbuild roads relative to population (like what is induced with increased density) or purposely destroys car infrastructure, as San Francisco is doing with absurd speed…

Yes and no. Cars are indeed the fastest way to travel, if we disregard some aspects like the time needed to park and throughput limits. (also disregarding very large distances where high speed trains and airplanes out compete them)

So for spread out places with lost of space cars will usually be the fastest.

However if we look at dense city centres you have a lot of people competing for parking and a lot of people competing for road throughput.

Say we want to move from A to B, assuming infinite throughput the car is fastest. Take the same route, but it can handle only 200 cars/hour and 10000 people want to take it, we end up with a lot of cars waiting for each other. In this case, slower but more efficient modes of travel will be faster at getting all these people to their destination.

This leads us nicely to the Downs–Thomson paradox. When people in the above scenario start to take other modes of transport it reduces the load on our bottleneck. Eventually reaching an equilibrium where the speed of different modes of transport balances out (as people stop switching from one mode to the other)

The hate for traffic calming is an interesting point, as it assumes cars are the only thing that exists. Unfortunately our cars don't exist in a vacuum, but interact with other object in the world like buildings, and people. The goal of traffic calming is to make it so that other things are protected from cars. (mainly by lowering speed in places where there is lots of other stuff, you wont see traffic calming on a highway)

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#210

Post by afavour »

donmcronald wrote: post #203
pixelatedindex wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I can’t help but feel like it’s a regressive tax That’s exactly what it is. The richer you are, the better it is. Now people on a budget will pay taxes to subsidize infrastructure that’s only accessible to the wealthy. It’s a massive scam perpetrated by the rich for the rich. Why stop with roads? Why not have congestion pricing for schools or hospitals or access to water? That way we only have to build enough infra…

In NYC it’s nothing new. A parking spot is already completely unaffordable for the average worker so they don’t drive in anyway. The vast majority of folks affected by the congestion charge are wealthy, or businesses the serve the wealthy (who will pass on the cost).
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