Thanks for making the streets in Manhattan with all those bike Lanes, then manufacturing this crisis.
The Streets Were Never Free. Congestion Pricing Finally Makes That Plain
291–300 of 375 posts
Re: The Streets Were Never Free. Congestion Pricing Finally Makes That Plain
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
But we already do that with homes, so why not be consistent and do it with cars? Anyway, making walking and cycling as crappy as possible by giving people congested, polluted, dangerous streets is pretty inconsiderate to poor people as is. And the article specifically mentions waivers for low income people.
Congestion makes cycling a little nicer, since the cars are slower and more predictable, and you’re the one zipping past them .
I've cycled in lots of congested cities. This isn't completely wrong, but it's like going from one to two when we should aim for ten.
But true, the _worst_ for cycling is very busy but still fast roads. Wilshire blvd on a Saturday comes to mind
Re: The Streets Were Never Free. Congestion Pricing Finally Makes That Plain
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
> don’t masquerade this as some kind of “economic reckoning” In New York, low-income New Yorkers who own a car (or live in the zone) will be eligible for a waiver [1]. People with disabilities, too, will probably be eligible for a waiver. (Some carve-outs are still being pinned down.) Taxis, Ubers, trucks and cars owned by people who opt to pay hundreds of dollars a month in parking are who will be taxed. Given the u…
> Taxis, Ubers, trucks and cars owned by people who opt to pay hundreds of dollars a month in parking are who will be taxed. Given the unusability of our streets, this seems closer to an economic reckoning than a political money grab. Taxis and Ubers are forms of public transportation, and likely reduce the overall number of cars on the road. Simultaneously, they reduce the incidences of drunk driving, providing posi…
> Taxis and Ubers are forms of public transportation, and likely reduce the overall number of cars on the road.
Taxis and Uber are most certainly NOT forms of public transportation. Both are owned and operated by third parties, not the public.
Re: The Streets Were Never Free. Congestion Pricing Finally Makes That Plain
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, what is the better alternative? Doubling the number of roads? Building ten or so elevated highways crisscrossing Manhattan?
Probably some mixture of the following tactics. ## Fix the subway (by which I mean make it more like Japan's rail): * Make loitering illegal, enforce it * A 'short loop' everything recorded space This is anti-vandalism / for crimes within a day * Since this is the US, safety barrier the train * In-city Automated circuits, automated schedule. There'd also need to be baked in maintenance, but I'm not an expert in subwa…
I'm not sure any of your "Fix the subway" suggestions does anything useful except the last one, which isn't as easy as it sounds.
Re: The Streets Were Never Free. Congestion Pricing Finally Makes That Plain
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Taxis, Ubers, trucks and cars owned by people who opt to pay hundreds of dollars a month in parking are who will be taxed. Given the unusability of our streets, this seems closer to an economic reckoning than a political money grab. Taxis and Ubers are forms of public transportation, and likely reduce the overall number of cars on the road. Simultaneously, they reduce the incidences of drunk driving, providing posi…
> Taxis and Ubers are forms of public transportation, and likely reduce the overall number of cars on the road. Taxis and Uber are most certainly NOT forms of public transportation. Both are owned and operated by third parties, not the public.
Public transportation does not mean owned by the public, but generally accessible to the public. Many trains are privately owned, including most trains in Japan (maybe all post 1987, when the national railways were privatized). These are still considered public transportation.
Re: The Streets Were Never Free. Congestion Pricing Finally Makes That Plain
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
The average traffic speed in Sydney is 55kph, so a 45 minute drive covers a distance of 25 miles. Taking the IRS standard deduction for gas and depreciation, you pay about $1 in operational costs for every $1 you spend in tolls. I understand that you would rather pay x than 2x, but this is not “cultural freedom”, it is haggling over a price. But the fact that we ignore the $1 in wear on the drive belt because that wo…
The standard deduction ($0.58/mi) is very high. The marginal cost of driving depends on how much you drive. Driving the US average 15,000mi/yr, you can buy a nicely-equipped Mazda 3, insure it, fuel it (at CA gas prices), and throw it away when the standard warranty expires every 5 years for $0.53/mi. This cost is dominated by the production of the car and goes down almost linearly to something like $0.25/mi before m…
I think most people these days highly undervalue a system of roads that allows anyone to go to one place to another for the low cost of road construction/maintenance. Before paved roads and trucking, railroads basically charged monopoly rates to farmers, business, etc and extracted all extra money from the system. Unless water transportation was available. In that case competition kept railroad rates in check.
That said, I would say that congestion pricing could be a good thing for road building as it gives a value on building new ones. Hopefully the Boring Company can have some success and get tunneling prices down. Then with some idea of how much people will pay to not sit in traffic, we can get some tunnels built and start enjoying life again instead of sitting on congested freeways.
With enough high-speed tunnels one could convert all surface roads to max 25 mph mixed use and return the earth to the people like all those anti-car people dream of. Work for the win-win outcome.
Re: The Streets Were Never Free. Congestion Pricing Finally Makes That Plain
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the whole reason congestion charges exist: to get people to weigh comfort and laziness against personal cost. > no reasonable way to listen to music ...headphones?
Listening to headphones while bicycling isn't safe, and playing it from a speaker where everyone around you will hear it feels rude.
Trekz Titanium. Or any other brand of bone conduction headphone. They sound quite good for the price and the fact that I can hear everything else around me at full volume.
Re: The Streets Were Never Free. Congestion Pricing Finally Makes That Plain
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
> don’t masquerade this as some kind of “economic reckoning” In New York, low-income New Yorkers who own a car (or live in the zone) will be eligible for a waiver [1]. People with disabilities, too, will probably be eligible for a waiver. (Some carve-outs are still being pinned down.) Taxis, Ubers, trucks and cars owned by people who opt to pay hundreds of dollars a month in parking are who will be taxed. Given the u…
> Taxis, Ubers, trucks and cars owned by people who opt to pay hundreds of dollars a month in parking are who will be taxed. Given the unusability of our streets, this seems closer to an economic reckoning than a political money grab. Taxis and Ubers are forms of public transportation, and likely reduce the overall number of cars on the road. Simultaneously, they reduce the incidences of drunk driving, providing posi…
> Taxis and Ubers are forms of public transportation
Not under any definition of public transit I've heard. Lyft and uber are private companies that exploit labor in unsustainable ways to compete with actually efficient forms of public transit. Taxis are much closer to being actual public transit as their cost reflects the inefficiency of having a devoted driver, but they are still not owned by the government and are disproportionately available to the rich.
Busses are public transit and actually reduce congestion. Uber and lyft are well-marketed and vc-funded luxury services. They cause congestion proportional to their users, i.e. orders of magnitude more congesting than buses.
Re: The Streets Were Never Free. Congestion Pricing Finally Makes That Plain
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
So your family member is across the city, I'm assuming there will be a minimum amount of time that you would take to visit them even if there was no traffic. Presumably, when you originally made whatever living arrangements you are in now, you factored that minimum time and was probably okay with that. That is, you essentially curbed your own freedom of movement based on some physical limits and other priorities. Pre…
> Presumably, when you originally made whatever living arrangements you are in now, you factored that minimum time and was probably okay with that. Yeah, and he probably factored in the five minute walk to work too. It's not possible to optimise for every possibility.
Cities are valuable in part for the high variety of interactions possible with so many different people. We should figure out how to do fast point-to-point individual transportation for cities. If you live in a city and meet someone interesting, you should be able to be friends with them without one of you having to move.
The US should spend some money researching this possibility. There used to be ideas of moving sidewalks, jet packs, flying cars, etc. These probably won't work but small, high-speed, electric pods in tunnels might.
Re: The Streets Were Never Free. Congestion Pricing Finally Makes That Plain
#300The streets were never free. We paid for it with our tax money. (Not to mention our 22 trillion dollar public debt) I don’t think people expect streets to be free in the same way you don’t expect the police department to be free, the fire department to be free, public schools, etc. In any case, my point is, we paid for the streets with our tax money and our debt, so don’t masquerade this as some kind of “economic rec…
The article does not claim that the government was giving away roads for free. It says that the true economic cost has been hidden such that decisions around it and other infrastructure have not had to account for that cost.