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NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

congestion-pricing-tracker.com

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Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#291

Post by potato3732842 »

tshaddox wrote: post #216
cj wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it does, if you remove price from the equation!

Sure, but that’s a dismissive interpretation. It’s a bit like saying “sure, a cinema that refuses to sell more tickets than it has seats leads to a better cinema viewing experience, but only if you remove price from the equation!”

It boggles my mind (by which I mean "you should feel dirty for employing a dishonest rhetorical trick like that") that you can call his take dismissive when you simply ignored the area that is regressing (cost) in order to facilitate the tradeoff.

Cost is explicitly being traded away here to facilitate improvement in other areas. That's the whole point of implementing the toll/tax!!!!!

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#293

Post by asukumar »

seaofliberty wrote: post #110

[flagged]

You are absolutely wrong. Do you even work in Manhattan? If you stand outside Fulton St. or Wall St. stations at 8:30am you’ll see that the vast majority of “Wall St. Bros” take the subway to work.

I’ve worked in the World Trade Center for 5 years now and I don’t recall any coworkers who drive to work.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#294

Post by kethinov »

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

Would be nice if they made transit better first instead of making driving worse first.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#295

Post by walthamstow »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #287
walthamstow wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's difficult because I've never had Comcast (I pay my £10/month BBC fee that hasn't gone up in years with pleasure) but I'd probably start by saying that Comcast is not a scarce good.

If it wasn't scarce then it would be cheaper. The problem is that it is scarce, artificially, as a result of regulatory capture etc. Which is the same reason housing in places like SF is so expensive. Artificial scarcity as a result of zoning rules that make construction prohibitively expensive or otherwise inhibit it from increasing the housing supply. Houston metro has more people than SF metro, so why does housing…

To bring us back onto the topic, Manhattan is a scarce resource, and there's nothing artificial about that fact.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#296

Post by steveBK123 »

I think the biggest thing CP is going to do in NYC is end toll shopping. There were previously some pretty obvious arbs available to people trying to get off LI.

The biggest policy failure of CP though to me is that they left taxi/uber relatively unscathed. Often the majority of traffic is taxi/uber, so make the surcharge on them a fraction of what individual drivers pay is kind of nonsensical.

Are we trying to minimize traffic (so tax call cars) or parking (so tax taxi/uber less since they don't have to park in Manhattan?). It smells of lobbying mostly.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#297

Post by walthamstow »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #284
walthamstow wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're looking for non-regressive ways to share scarce resources, you're going to struggle. In Tehran, for example, only license plates ending with an odd number can drive on Mondays, even numbers on Tuesdays.

> If you're looking for non-regressive ways to share scarce resources, you're going to struggle. It's not actually that hard. You fund them through general taxes rather than fares. Then how much you pay is proportional to how much money you make -- even a flat tax does at least that -- as opposed to the largely fixed amount that corresponds to the amount the average person has to move around in order to live an ordin…

That's how to pay for it, sure. But I said share the resource. Not everyone who wants to drive at a given time can do so, there simply isn't enough space. How does your plan help _share_ the resource? Who gets to use the roads at 8am when everyone wants to?

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#298

Post by alephnerd »

master_crab wrote: post #289
WillPostForFood wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1851?

1850-1950s. But just as importantly this time frame also happened to be before the NIMBYists stepped in (which is arguably more consequential).

Much of SF didn't even exist until the 1930s-50s. For example, most of Sunset and Richmond is tract housing built during that era - before then it was sand dunes and chicken farms.

People underestimate how new much of the Western US is. For example, Dallas only began expanding in 1891 after the railways were built, LA was a small town until the 1910s-30s era expansion, modern San Jose only formed in the 1960s-70s after absorbing dozens of farming towns like Alviso and Berryessa, Seattle was mostly sand dunes until they were leveled in the 1900s-30s).

Because of how new it was, most of the cities are planned primarily with cars in mind - especially after the 1930s era Dust Bowl Migration and the 1940s-60s era economic migration. Same thing in much of Canada and Australia as well, which saw a similar postwar expansion.

> before the NIMBYists stepped in

NIMBYism in SF only really began in the 1970s onwards.

While NIMBYism is now elitist, it initially started out as part of the civil rights movement ("urban redevelopment" was often a guise for razing historically Black, Hispanic, and Asian neighborhoods in that era - for example much of Japantown/Fillmore) as well as the early environmental movement (eg. Sierra Movement, Greenpeace), which was opposed to profit motive compared to modern YIMBY+Greentech model.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#299

Post by psychlops »

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.

$9 per day isn't going to make anybody change their route. A round trip on the subway costs $5.80.

IMHO, they would need to push higher than $50 to get drivers to blink.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#300

Post by screye »

jmyeet wrote: post #25

I happened to be living in London when congestion pricing was brought in and the difference on day 1 in the West End was like night and day. I believe it's never gone back to the pre-congestion pricing levels. I fully expect similar in Manhattan. The social media response has been particularly interesting. Predictably, there are a lot of non-NYCers who simply object to the slightest inconvenience to driving in any fo…

All studies show that free public transit is a bad idea. There is a reason no country provides it. People mis-treat free things. When you ask them to pay for it, it enforces civic contracts. With contactless terminals in place, a free MTA benefits no one. It's also difficult to get additional funding to improve something that's free.

An MTA monthly pass is 130$. That's the price of a single uber round-trip to JFK. NYC also allows employers to provide commuter benefits tax-free.

It's cheap enough.

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