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Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

nytimes.com

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Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#281

Post by bee_rider »

mancerayder wrote: post #260
neither_color wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These threads tend to devolve into, "Americans are so unsophisticated everyone else in the world is banning cars and turning downtown into walkable utopia" but what they really mean by rest of the world is a few crowded European cities. If you look at all the new rich mega cities built in the Middle East and East Asia cars continue to exist alongside good public transit as aspirational status icons and the preferred…

There are plenty of cars in Paris and London. It just feels as though people walking are a priority more than they are in NYC. Cars feel compelled more often outside of NYC, where they also block intersections and park next to crosswalks and block visibility.

The only well-designed cities in the US are college towns (and even then, only some of them).

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#282

Post by lmm »

kmeisthax wrote: post #100
neves wrote: post #36

Impressive how cars are harmful to society. This is just a small example. We should be more radical in preventing the use of individual automobiles. If it works in a country where the auto is so ingrained in the culture and lifestyle, it can work anywhere.

NYC is an extreme outlier. The city itself is older than America, older than the British colonies even. It was built by the Dutch . It's infrastructure is closer to Tokyo's[0] than any other American city. Congestion charge works in NYC because anyone driving solo into Manhattan is either an idiot or a cop[1]. In any other city, congestion charge would be an effective tax on mobility, because every other city is so c…

> In any other city, congestion charge would be an effective tax on mobility, because every other city is so comically car-dependent. You might as well just raise the gas tax. Most cities don't even have a downtown to protect from cars, they're just suburban sprawl forever.

Nah. Almost any city built pre-motor-car has a decent downtown that can make for a starting point. And these things grow when policy supports them.

> Existing stroads must be segmented into feeder streets and high-speed roads with ramp lanes on and off.

Nah, this would just result in a wave of urban highway building that also drained transit budgets.

The way forward is to make street parking permit-only, give permits to existing but not new residents, and allow development. Do that and the rest will sort itself out.

> - Require all new streets above the speed limit for (formerly) residential zoned streets have dedicated lanes for bikes and transit vehicles. The lanes must be segmented for safety. The transit lanes can start off as BRT and then get upgraded to LRT cheaply. If you don't want to run a BRT system then rent the lanes to private transit companies.

BRT is a spook that has never worked (or rather it's worked very well in diverting transit efforts and stopping effective transit).

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#283

Post by dripdry45 »

I wonder if adding congestion pricing in small cities to certain intersections or stretches of road would work the same way. if people really want to go through the busiest intersections or areas, then they’re going to have to pay a little bit.

Then people question whether they are going to go through, or pay a little bit to keep up the infrastructure if they do.

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#284

Post by jwagenet »

autoexec wrote: post #185
bunderbunder wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be really interesting if it turns out that something like this improves the city's overall economy by encouraging people to go to neighborhood businesses instead of driving all the way across town to go to whatever place is currently trending. I'm thinking here of when I lived in Milwaukee, WI. Milwaukee has a strong culture of driving across town to a small number of trendy neighborhoods. Which leads to hyp…

I can understand why poor families might save enough money to make the trip across town to a nice restaurant or a high end shop in a wealthy neighborhood they could never afford to live in. I can't understand how making it prohibitively expensive for poor people to drive into those nice neighborhoods will result in them becoming rich enough to open fancy restaurants and shops in their own poor neighborhoods where no…

I don’t understand. This family saved to afford a fancy meal, parking, and possibly tolls, but can’t afford the congestion pricing?

It’s not about bringing fine dining to every neighborhood, but if it costs (money or time) more for the poor and rich alike to leave their neighborhood business owners could be incentivized to step up their game.

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#285

Post by atkailash »

nradov wrote: post #215
david-gpu wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear that noise pollution in Manhattan has gotten better since congestion pricing started. Cities aren't loud; cars are loud.

Cars aren't nearly as loud as sirens and garbage trucks. Whenever I stay in a dense city those tend to keep me up at night.

[dead]

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#286

Post by atkailash »

efavdb wrote: post #247
digbybk wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also excellent for those public transport riders who can't afford car ownership.

For completeness, might as well add not excellent for those who have a car, find driving more convenient, but can’t afford the toll.

Oh well then. Either spend less on the train (also saving money on gas and maintenance) or stay in suburbia. We pay a premium to live in the city, much more than the $9 so I’m not gonna shed any tears that it’s not much less convenient for someone to not drive

Driving is almost always more convenient on many levels, so it’s not really the best argument start from “it’s just easier”

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#287

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

aynyc wrote: post #271

As a long time NYC resident who moved out during Covid but commute to work in the city. I definitely noticed less traffic on the streets and less noise. I see a lot of talk of other cities that don't have good public transportation. For example, between Flushing in Queens to 8th Ave in Brooklyn, there are privately run buses at affordable rate and get you there at half the time of trains. There are buses from a lot o…

>>> I'm curious, do other larger cities where commercial is concentrated into one area not have a private mini-bus(es)?

It turns out, there are some private buses. Take for example, Santiago, Chile. It succeeded in terms of profits and customer satisfaction. The problem is they do not survive. There comes a time when they don't pay sufficient "political capital" and get taken over (nationalized) by local politicians.

The result of the private bus system nationalization by socialists is macabre, at least this the Santiago case. First, the newly minted public bus service went from $60M USD profits, to massive $600M in losses [1] overnight. That is a negative 10x return. And service declined as well. [1] But that in itself is not a new story.

Now, fast forward ~12 years. The system bleeds so much money that the govt is forced to increase bus fares. The increase in fares activates the biggest riots the country has seen in decades [2]

Out of the riots, one young protester rises to the top. He comes with ideas of a new constitution. He is a young socialist leader. A certain Gabriel Boric [3], who had ran and won for president of University of Chile Student Federation against the leader of the Communist Party of Chile [4]

So now we come full-circle: A working private bus service was replaced by socialist politicians into a public bus system that hemorrhaged 10x more money than it earned previously in actual profits. The public bus funding crisis and subsequent fare hikes led to massive riots, which were a direct on-ramp for a socialist to ascend to power as president of Chile. In short, successful private local bus enterprise was replaced with a socialist bus system, which then proceeded to implode. This implosion of a socialist idea led to the spread of even more socialism, but now at a national level.

This chain of events from beginning to end, only took 20 years.

[1] https://www.econtalk.org/munger-on-the-political-economy-of-...

[2] https://www.scmp.com/news/world/americas/article/3033688/cha...

[3] https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-03-12/gabriel-...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_boric#Role_in_the_Esta...

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#288

Post by tetromino_ »

epistasis wrote: post #272
tetromino_ wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As someone with children, I can not imagine the bliss of living in Manhattan and being able to do things without needing a car. Lifting a 2 toddler stroller up and down narrow, crowded NYC subway stairs is the exact opposite of bliss. Perhaps you are unaware that many subway stations still don't have elevators (or escalators, for that matter) - only stairs. And where the elevators exist, it seems half the time they…

We bought a very fancy and expensive 2 toddler stroller when we had two toddlers and it saw almost no use because it was a hassle pretty much everywhere. I advise all new parents to avoid purchasing one until there's a proven need, and I don't know any other parents that thought it was a good idea to purchase one. I'm sure it's great for some kids, but certainly not mine or even most kids. I honestly don't understand…

> I honestly don't understand the use case for it

You have 2 toddlers. You frequently wish to take them to visit friends / parks / supermarkets / libraries / doctors / coffee shops / whatever other places near your location. Such places happen to be 10-20 minutes adult-speed walk from you. Kids are young enough that they cannot reliably walk towards a fixed goal for 10+ minutes, and certainly not at adult speed; they often get either tired or distracted or decide they want to go somewhere else. Kids are old and heavy enough that neither of them can be carried in a carrier. Optimal solution: 2 toddler stroller.

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#289

Post by tomhow »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #169
ackfoobar wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm generally sympathetic to arguments that are "we will fall down the slippery slope." But as someone who has spent too much time stuck in traffic, I WANT congestion pricing to spread. It's just basic economics that people end up paying for a "free" resource with time - grossly inefficient.

[flagged]

> Right, because you’re an elitist

Please stop this style of commenting. You've been here long enough to know it's against the guidelines.

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#290

Post by KingMob »

sorcerer-mar wrote: post #222
echelon wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-driving cars are going to turn America's car-centric "hellscape" into a superpower with untold second order benefits. Everything will be connected and commutable, especially the suburbs. Automated, on-demand delivery will become a part of everyday life. Instead of busses and semis, we'll have small pods for smaller cargo and small parties. Highways will turn into logistics corridors, and we'll route people and g…

just one more lane bro I swear that's it it's just one more lane then the traffic will go away

Road lanes are like CPU cores. And like CPUs, adding more cores does not linearly scale up traffic capacity.

In the case of CPUs, there's sync and communication overhead; for highways, there's more turbulence and slowdown generated by lane-switching.

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