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NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

congestion-pricing-tracker.com

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Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#311

Post by psychlops »

cosmic_quanta wrote: post #301
psychlops wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$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.

The thing about congestion is that reducing the number of drivers slightly (e.g. 10-20%) could eliminate congestion by 100%! This is the same way it works for electrical congestion. So you need pricing which will make a few people reconsider driving, who were on the edge of using public transit anyway.

Interesting point, I'd believe it. I suspect the demographic that is driving instead of using public transit is quite small.

Driving for a commute isn't really possible in Manhattan unless the company provides parking. And those parking spots are reserved for executives. This group of people are price insensitive.

Passing through Manhattan can frequently save an hour of time in traffic elsewhere, those commuters will just see the fee as a higher toll.

All three major airports never tied directly to a subway, opting instead for airtran systems which create complexity and cost time. I suspect this causes a base level of traffic.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#312

Post by alamortsubite »

Lanolderen wrote: post #283

I wish people would focus more on scooters and motorcycles than moving people in busses. Coming from a place with decent and cheap public transport, no one likes it. It'll never be as fast, you'll always be closed in a bacteria greenhouse with strangers, there will always be crazies, it'll never have the exact path you need, you don't have as much control over it.. For the past year I've been commuting on a motorcycl…

You're way overplaying the dangers of "crazies" and "the bacteria greenhouse" with respect to travel by motorcycle or scooter (or even automobile). I agree with your point that we should encourage these modes of transportation over cars, but I'd add it will be electric bikes that finally turn the tide on traffic congestion in cities (and all the other great benefits that come with doing that). Just don't tell the electric bike people that they're essentially riding motorcycles.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#313

Post by Xylakant »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #281
randoomed wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

> 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 premise here is that travel time can be the only trade off, but suppose we make a different one: Stop…

Public transport is already largely cheaper than owning a car in many places, yet people drive. One good example to study is Germanys 50 EUR Ticket - now 58 EUR. It's a flat rate for all of Germanys public transport, including regional trains. You can get anywhere in Germany with this, and 58 EUR is not even remotely achievable as monthly cost for a car. Yet, while it has increased ridership, the majority of people drive.

The problem is that transportation system quality matters more for a lot of people. The problem ends up as people owning a car for the last mile - that is from the rapid transit to their porch. And once they own a car, the calculus changes - you already incure the cost for the car.

So what you need is a reliable way to get door to door - and that requires more than slapping down a few light rail tracks. It requires connections that cover the last bit as well - and they will often run unprofitable. In the end, building such a system requires the (political) will to regard public transport as a common good infrastructure like road that gets paid from taxes and is not considered an enterprise that (could potentially) make money. In the end, this could also be made free, but free alone will not make that happen.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#314

Post by bluGill »

close04 wrote: post #247
cj wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Wouldn't the price of the car, fuel, insurance, maintenance, etc. dwarf the congestion tax? So the car itself is the worst part about the driving experience?

Maybe. Used vs new cars have vastly different costs. Generally tolls are far more than fuel cost where they exist. Insurance is - in the us - charged per year with unlimited use.

there are some who the charge would be significant (long paid off reliable used car) while others who it is a drop compared to the othes costs (new luxury car)

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#315

Post by whakim »

taatof wrote: post #53
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.

How do we get around? To get downtown I have to take two busses and then bart (or two busses but it takes longer because there are a lot more stops). The kicker: I'm not even in a suburb, I live in SF! All we do in SF is make car driving worse, we almost never make public transit better. At least NYC has a plenty good enough train system. I end up WFH anyway, largely because it's annoying to get to an office downtown…

> All we do in SF is make car driving worse, we almost never make public transit better. At least NYC has a plenty good enough train system.

Except that SF public transit is actually pretty good. East-West transit works extremely well via buses and MUNI depending on whether you live in the northern or southern part of the city. Bay Wheels is extremely affordable and makes a lot of sense for short trips in a city of SF’s size. BART has its limitations but it also generally pretty good. Sure, SF public transit could be better, but I’d actually argue the problem is that driving in SF isn’t hard enough - many people have great public transit options but refuse to use them because we haven’t forced them to reprogram their car-brains.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#316

Post by fragmede »

walthamstow wrote: post #295
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's plenty more space in the up and down direction. Bridges and tunnels could be used to add car or other vehicle capacity.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#317

Post by alamortsubite »

insaneirish wrote: post #155
comprambler wrote: post #20

Congestion pricing can work to dissuade individuals from living in the burbs, only if there is controls on real estate to deal with the influx of people moving inward. The other benefit is an increase of mass transit usage, which is a plus? I personally took a cab from Newark to Laguardia at MIDNIGHT and it took 40 min to cross into Manhattan to get to the Queens-Midtown tunnel. Just a new level of traffic. Was fun g…

> I personally took a cab from Newark to Laguardia I don't understand why anyone would ever attempt to do this. Was it truly the only option?

I did JFK-EWR coming back from HND one time. Not the only option but probably the best, all things considered. That's life in the fast-paced, slam-bang, laugh-in-the-face-of-death world of non-revving.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#318

Post by bluGill »

nine_k wrote: post #122
leetcrew wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

buses and cars compete for the same right of way. improving one mode necessarily comes at the cost of the other, but many more people can be moved with a bus. trains would be even better, but people don't like to see the price tag. almost not worth discussing honestly. this has become yet another factionalized holy war over the last decade.

I wish we had more trains where it's still possible to route them in shallow tunnels that are cheap to build by excavations, say, in many parts of Brooklyn. (The 2nd Avenue extension had to pierce rock at rather serious depths.)

The problem is political not technical. People don'tewant thair streets block by construction for a couple years and so make up reasons against it. New york is easy as nothing archeolorical evists to worry about (north america generally lacks minerals to make things of interest from they used things that decayed long ago.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#319

Post by izacus »

ars wrote: post #45
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.

What I'm curious about is if business in the Manhattan will be lessened as a result of less people there. I know the goal is less cars, rather than less people, but I want to see if that's actually what will happen. As someone who doesn't live in Manhattan I wish there was a better way to go basically anywhere in New York without entering Manhattan. Every single road, bus, and subway goes through this super dense are…

Car people did the same hand wringing when my nations capital outright banned cars in the city center. After a few years it turned out, that the business grew because the place became more pleasant for folks to go to.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#320

Post by walthamstow »

fragmede wrote: post #316
walthamstow wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There's plenty more space in the up and down direction. Bridges and tunnels could be used to add car or other vehicle capacity.

This thread is about transportation, not office or resi space.

Edit - I see you've changed your message. How does a bridge over water add road capacity to a peninsula?

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