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In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

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Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

#381

Post by yannyu »

taeric wrote: post #363
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You run in very different social circles than I do. The only complaint I have ever heard about California's high speed rail plan (as a life-long Bay Area resident) is how damn long it's taking because of the yokels claiming it'll annoy their cows and almonds.

My assertion is most people arguing online about this do not live near the impacted areas. Happy to be proven wrong on this. I just have a lot of sour taste to the whole thing with how many people constantly harp on public transit, but then want me to see their brand new car.

Two things can be true:

1) I wish we had better rail transit in the bay area and to the areas surrounding the bay

2) I have to own a car to get to places in Northern California

These don't seem like remotely contradictory positions.

Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

#382

Post by l1tany11 »

t_tsonev wrote: post #340
pif wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is actually the case! That's why your choice of tires on online sites gets so smaller as soon as you tuck the "electric/hybrid vehicle" case!

Specialized EV tires are also optimized for drag and noise, wear is just a factor. Anecdotally speaking I'm at over 80k km on a set of EV tires with at least 20k more to go. The issue has more to do with driving style and engine power than any other factors.

100%. Tire technology is a real thing. Tires have advanced a ton in the last 10 years. But driving style is the biggest thing. Some people can only get 10k miles out of a set of tires, while others with the same car and tires get over 40k.

But they do care about tire wear a lot, they know the acceptable wear life for the class. A couple years ago I bought a set of Pirelli tires that were ~50% off because they were an older version; hoping I’d get some benefit. Unfortunately they had half the life and were a bit worse in every way than the newer tires I had before and after.

Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

#383

Post by yannyu »

autoexec wrote: post #367
afavour wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This debate has been done to death. And it's always, always a vague group of people who are apparently affected. Never specific examples. And, as we see here, there's always an appeal to class warfare: "it's hurting the poors". And it's always by someone who wishes to speak on behalf of those poor people, never actually the people themselves. Only 2% of lower income outer borough residents (around 5,000 people) drive…

> And it's always, always a vague group of people who are apparently affected. Never specific examples. Someone on the other side of the country is only going to see the way this will impact the lives of people like them. They aren't going to say "Clearly this policy has impacted the household budget of NYC plumber Mitchell Tnenski" They don't know Mitchell. They know that congestion pricing coming to their city woul…

> They know that congestion pricing coming to their city would hurt them in very real ways.

But why should they even care to begin with? Just because the news and media made them aware of congestion pricing? This is the whole problem, that local issues are made mainstream news media specifically to cultivate fear and anger in people that literally have no skin in the game and a completely different lifestyle.

Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

#384

Post by taeric »

yannyu wrote: post #381
taeric wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My assertion is most people arguing online about this do not live near the impacted areas. Happy to be proven wrong on this. I just have a lot of sour taste to the whole thing with how many people constantly harp on public transit, but then want me to see their brand new car.

Two things can be true: 1) I wish we had better rail transit in the bay area and to the areas surrounding the bay 2) I have to own a car to get to places in Northern California These don't seem like remotely contradictory positions.

Largely fair. Ish. If you are dreaming of Tokyo level public transit, though, you are dreaming of far fewer cars for the people that live there.

Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

#385

Post by GuinansEyebrows »

subpixel wrote: post #239
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #199

I'm curious how congestion pricing became a national issue. The strength of conviction people have about this policy–almost either way, but certainly among those against–seems to scale with distance from the city. Nobody in Idaho gets uppity about New Jersey's tolls. But they have strong, knowledge-free, almost identity-defining opinions about congestion charges. Is it because it's a policy that's worked in Europe an…

Cars are en extension of some Americans' identity and driving is something they feel utterly entitled to. I've lived all over the world and in NYC for decades so it seems silly to me. Bust most Americans have never seen or ridden an effective form of public transport. So they view congestion pricing as an infringement on their rights and quality of life.

> Cars are en extension of some Americans' identity

i hear this a lot and i also feel like this population is declining very significantly for a lot of reasons (cars that people care about are unaffordable, most cars on the road tend to fit into one of a very small number of categories, people find other ways to navigate depending on where they live, people don't do as many activities out of the home that require a vehicle, etc). at what point does the real population of car enthusiasts become small enough to be irrelevant in public policy and infrastructure decisions?

Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

#386

Post by OkayPhysicist »

taeric wrote: post #363
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You run in very different social circles than I do. The only complaint I have ever heard about California's high speed rail plan (as a life-long Bay Area resident) is how damn long it's taking because of the yokels claiming it'll annoy their cows and almonds.

My assertion is most people arguing online about this do not live near the impacted areas. Happy to be proven wrong on this. I just have a lot of sour taste to the whole thing with how many people constantly harp on public transit, but then want me to see their brand new car.

The SF-LA transit project isn't a replacement for driving, it's a replacement for flying. Cars are replaced by local transit, the CA high speed rail line goes through a whole lot of nothing (read: the worst farmland they could route through) between SF and LA. Are you sure you live around here if you're this off-base with the basic premise?

Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

#387

Post by yannyu »

taeric wrote: post #384
yannyu wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two things can be true: 1) I wish we had better rail transit in the bay area and to the areas surrounding the bay 2) I have to own a car to get to places in Northern California These don't seem like remotely contradictory positions.

Largely fair. Ish. If you are dreaming of Tokyo level public transit, though, you are dreaming of far fewer cars for the people that live there.

It's a chicken and egg issue. We don't build dense, mixed-use housing and commercial, we don't build transit. There's no way to live a Tokyo-like lifestyle in 95% of California. And the places where you can are often exorbitantly expensive.

Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

#388

Post by CryptoBanker »

ceejayoz wrote: post #371
CryptoBanker wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The loans backed by congestion pricing revenue weren't taken out until this year https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-07/ny-mta-ge... That money you're talking about was money that was already spent to implement congestion pricing

One specific loan was taken out this year. (And planning tends to preceed the actual loans.)

Planning is not the same as spending

Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

#389

Post by bluGill »

taeric wrote: post #366
bluGill wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to defend myself (similar to what I said in a different thread): I live in an area that would be marginal for high speed rail, but I still want it. If the US can get a great high speed rail network it would make sense to bring that to me, but as one of the last lines built! If CA can't build a good HSR where it should obviously work out there is no way it is worth trying here. They have to make the mistakes and…

Don't get me wrong. I used transit for the majority of my career. Biked for as much of it. Love the ideas. The VAST majority of people I would see have conversations about this seem to want others to take transit so that traffic is better for them in their car.

The vast majority of people I know have never lived where there was a transit system that would be useful for them. So of course they want other people to use it without planning on using it themselves. Give them a system that is worth using and they will use it (there will be a multi-year delay before they try/start using it though).

Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

#390

Post by seg_lol »

lkbm wrote: post #2

> Particulates issued from tailpipes can aggravate asthma and heart disease and increase the risk of lung cancer and heart attack. Globally, they are a leading risk factor for premature death. Minor nitpick, but tailpipes aren't the primary source of emissions. The study is about PM2.5[0]. which will chiefly be tires and brake pads. Modern gasoline engines are relatively clean, outside of CO2, though diesel engines s…

I wonder if it is the `congestion` itself that causes the PM2.5 spike. More stop and go traffic, more brake dust, more tire dust?
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