Driving a Car in Manhattan Could Cost $11 Under Congestion Plan • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by woolvalley » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 10:36 PM UTC

dionidium wrote: post #227

akgerber wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many New Yorkers own cars for weekend trips or recreation, not commuting— if you've ever seen how long it takes for many cars to get dug out and moved in NYC after a snowstorm when alternate-side parking is suspended, this becomes very clear.

That represents an even bigger devotion to car ownership that does an insistence on commuting by car! These are people for whom car ownership is totally unnecessary, but who are willing to put up with enormous costs and hassles in order to keep a car available.

If you pay for a parking spot, it's not much of a hassle, just an expense. Renting cars can be fairly annoying and time consuming, especially when everyone else is renting them during the weekend.

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

#242

Post by ramblenode » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 10:41 PM UTC

ebikelaw wrote: post #140

This framing of the issue is typical for the mainstream press, however readers should note that this scheme changes nothing about the cost of driving. It only changes who pays, and how. Today everybody pays the costs associated with driving in Manhattan, even though driving in Manhattan is only practiced by a tiny minority of people. Congestion pricing will shift part of that burden to the people who cause it, which…

Your observation is true but also misleading. NYC residents also pay for the subway, bike lanes, and buses regardless of if they use them. Additionally, there are special taxes targeted at motorists like vehicle registration, bridge tolls, gas taxes, and sales tax on vehicles. I wouldn't be surprised if motorists were generously subsidized, but I also wouldn't say it's obvious without some accounting.

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

#243

Post by electricslpnsld » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 10:43 PM UTC

weatherlight wrote: post #99

Manhattan is 2 miles by 14 miles. Unless you are moving something heavy, there really is no reason not to use the Subway, it's faster, cheaper, and runs all night and all day. Not only that, the majority of New Yorkers do not own cars. I don't even know how to drive. I do, however, take buses and ride my bike. (In NYC you'll get ticketed if you ride your bike on the sidewalk ) In NYC, real estate is extremely limited…

> there really is no reason not to use the Subway

East-West across the park can be a bit of a pain on the train. If you're trying to get from the Upper West Side to the Upper East Side, a bus is going to be a faster choice than taking a train to midtown, transferring, and taking a train back up.

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

#244

Post by hartator » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 10:52 PM UTC

woolvalley wrote: post #240

hartator wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You have to live in a dysfunctional city for that to be a reality. In cities that are functional, you only have to deal with occasional crowding.

NYC, Paris, London, etc.

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

#245

Post by SamReidHughes » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 10:58 PM UTC

wan23 wrote: post #226

SamReidHughes wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it went over your head. The point that people live outside the city evaporates when their driving is useful to people inside the city. Only if they were driving through without stopping would there be validity to the idea that outsiders are taking advantage of the city.

Their presence is potentially useful but their driving is not. Each person who takes an empty seat on a bus into the city instead of driving is just as useful to people inside the city without causing traffic.

My reply was about whether residency mattered. You're taking about something different.

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

#246

Post by cpitman » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 11:29 PM UTC

vanjoe wrote: post #191

IIAOPSW wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or a car with a "banker cargo" vs a "barista cargo". When I take a toll road, it is with full knowledge of what my time is worth, and that most people can't justify it.

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

#247

Post by krschultz » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 11:46 PM UTC

BoorishBears wrote: post #233

rbcgerard wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

??? They NEED to drive in from NJ CT etc instead of taking public transit?

From my parent's house in CT you can get to Grand Terminal in NYC by: - Taking public transport only: 30 minutes of walking to the nearest bus stop (bus only on the hour btw). 20 minutes on the bus. 2 hrs 30 minutes on a train to Grand Central. All assuming bus and train time line up (they won't since the bus is hourly). - Driving and taking a train: Drive for 30 minutes and take a 2 and a half hour train ride to Gra…

It's foolish to count driving to the train station in CT. Any time the traffic is minimal into NYC, the parking at train stations is also empty. Really everything you cited is fairly naive for getting into and out of the city. Parking is ~$40 a trip unless you can get a street spot (which can be really hard to count on in most neighborhoods).

The optimal path is to drive to a train station close to NYC that has frequent service, park and take the train for the last bit. I used to use the Greenwich train station and it worked well. The same is true from New Jersey, you can park at Metropark or get dropped off in Seacaucus.

Source: I lived in CT for 3 years, lived in Manhattan for the last 5 years, bought a car and keep it in Manhattan for the last 6 months.

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

#248

Post by krschultz » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 11:51 PM UTC

SamReidHughes wrote: post #178

rayuela wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know guidelines frown against this kind of response, but this is one of the stupidest rebuttals I've ever seen on here...

Maybe it went over your head. The point that people live outside the city evaporates when their driving is useful to people inside the city. Only if they were driving through without stopping would there be validity to the idea that outsiders are taking advantage of the city.

There's a massive amount of "driving through" Manhattan. People in Queens / Brooklyn / Long Island heading anywhere west of Manhattan can be a cause of through traffic. The entire point of congestion pricing is to setup incentives so that people drive north or south of midtown rather than through it.

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

#249

Post by rahimnathwani » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 12:12 AM UTC

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…

"Congestion pricing is one of the most economically literate ways to improve traffic"

It depends how it's implemented. In London, it is a flat fee for the entire day, rather than based on time spent driving within the charging zone, or on distance.

More importantly, taxis, which drive around _all_ _day_ _long_ and thereby cause more congestion than private cars (which might be on the road for 1-2 hours) are exempt from the charge.

Rich people benefit from London taxis, but neither the taxi drivers nor the passengers pay the congestion fee.

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

#250

Post by njarboe » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 12:17 AM UTC

dionidium wrote: post #215

njarboe wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is directly in opposition to the goals of congestion pricing. Traffic engineering has some not-so-intuitive principles. Adding capacity, for example, increases congestion through a mechanism known as induced demand. We don't want to create more demand for private cars in Manhattan, so your suggestion supports an anti-goal.

Adding more capacity does not cause more congestion. That is not what the studies around induced demand state. Building more capacity allows more trips (obvious right) because, since there is less congestion or it is quicker to get somewhere, people will travel more. If you believe that people making trips by car is intrinsically immoral, then building more capacity for car trips is a bad idea. I rather think that traveling around in a car costs money and time, even if the roads are not jammed, so people won't generally just drive around for now reason. Being restricted on where and when to travel due to clogged travel paths is not a public good to strive for. People calling out "induced demand" anytime someone proposes building more capacity for on-demand point-to-point travel is just blinded by an ideology they probably don't even know they follow.

Would you be against instant teleportation at low dollar, environmental and energy cost from point-to-point? I might be if used between cities or countries. The world is already pretty homogenized. But for within cities it would be great. The main benefit of cites is to have a huge number of possible people to interact with and the projects (companies, museums, clubs, etc) those groups of people create. Supporting policies of making people waste time waiting, doing nothing useful, to control where and when they move around seems like a very misanthropic and authoritarian view of how the world should work.