Live data from Hacker News

NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

congestion-pricing-tracker.com

411–420 of 653 posts

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ele…

I mean, I'm definitely biased but I've been sick once since ~2015 and that was Covid I caught at a large anniversary celebration. Before that I was With crazies it's not that bad. I remember the bus getting pulled over once by a car with people with pipes/bats who beat a grandpa for getting in an argument with one of the guys prior. That was the only actually violent occurance over thousands of rides, however I still…

[deleted]

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#412
in a short amount of time , commute times will recover to baselines, or worse, the city will waste the additional revenue , the residents will be poorer , and leaders will pat themselves on be back.

Expresslanes made commute times worse . Little of the revenue went to the roads . Few of the roads were fixed .

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#413
post #136
post #29

While I'm sure congestion pricing will have a positive impact on traffic, I'd wait a little while longer to draw any conclusions, considering (1) the data is from a single day (2) lots of people aren't back from holiday travel and (3) there's a winter storm across the country and a decent amount of snow fell in Jersey/New York today, discouraging driving.

You can already extrapolate from the results from other cities who have implemented the policy, where it has been wildly successful at reducing congestion.

I thought London's traffic returned to the same levels as prior to their congestion pricing?

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#414
post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a car and live in Brooklyn. I usually take an Uber anyway because parking is a pain and/or expensive. So I was previously comparing: $0 car toll + $20-50 parking vs $0 car toll + $50 Taxi/Uber fare Now I am comparing: $9 car toll + $20-50 parking vs $1.50 Uber toll + $50 Uber fare That is - the fee is being passed onto riders anyway, so why should I pay a lower toll sitting in the back of an Uber than when dri…

Once the Uber drops you off, it's available to take someone else somewhere they need to go. Car services are an essential part of a total system that enables people not to have to drive. Personal cars are the opposite of that. It's one of those things about the way Americans think about transit that makes me insane, they try to assess the ROI of every single individual leg of a transit system rather than assess the s…

>For example they'll cancel late night bus service because very few people use it. Except that the people who do, are people who occasionally are forced to stay late at their job and rely on the bus running late. Once it's cancelled they have to drive to work every single day since they're not sure they won't be stranded. The 3-4 bus rides a month they used to take are exchanged for 22 private car trips because you cut back service.

That's a cute anecdote but is there any empirical evidence behind this? I'd imagine the people who commute downtown, stay late often enough that this is a concern, is willing to take the bus even though they have a car and can otherwise afford daily commute downtown (gas/parking), but at the same time can't pay for an uber on those late nights, is approximately zero.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#415
This is great, but I'd be more interested in seeing how congestion pricing impacts travel times for buses, specifically, (within and around the congestion zone, including express routes from the outer boroughs), as well as overall transit ridership.

@gotmedium, would you consider integrating:

1. MTA's Bus Time feed: https://bustime.mta.info/wiki/Developers/Index and 2. MTA bus/MNRR/LIRR/Access-A-Ride ridership feed: https://data.ny.gov/Transportation/MTA-Daily-Ridership-Data-... 3. Equivalent feeds for city-connected NJ transit services.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#416
post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a car and live in Brooklyn. I usually take an Uber anyway because parking is a pain and/or expensive. So I was previously comparing: $0 car toll + $20-50 parking vs $0 car toll + $50 Taxi/Uber fare Now I am comparing: $9 car toll + $20-50 parking vs $1.50 Uber toll + $50 Uber fare That is - the fee is being passed onto riders anyway, so why should I pay a lower toll sitting in the back of an Uber than when dri…

Once the Uber drops you off, it's available to take someone else somewhere they need to go. Car services are an essential part of a total system that enables people not to have to drive. Personal cars are the opposite of that. It's one of those things about the way Americans think about transit that makes me insane, they try to assess the ROI of every single individual leg of a transit system rather than assess the s…

I guess to me it just seems like you want to deter end users picking taxis/ubers over trains a bit more, and $1-2 is not going to do that when they are already paying 5-10x subway fare for their ride.

I can see by your example how over the course of the day the taxi/uber collects a lot of CPZ fees for the city, I just don't see the fee reducing anyone at the margin from using taxi/uber.

At the end of the day I'd love to see transit improve, and if all this does is reduce traffic for the well heeled who already are taking taxi/ubers.. I mean I win there too, but it doesn't feel great.

For the record when I commute it's always by transit, the problem is weekend/night service has degraded to the point that I feel forced to take taxi/uber quite often. I've lived in NYC nearly 20 years and have found, if anything, night/weekend service to be less predictable and more perplexing. This again harms the less well off even more, as they are more likely to be doing shift work / non-traditional workdays than your M-F 9-5er.

Just this weekend, yet again, I was trying to get around midtown and Apple kept telling me what should be a 6min trip would take 30min by train even though I was 5 seconds from subway entrance. I couldn't understand why, and went to MTA website and saw no alerts for the 6th ave line. Then I went to the live train time page and realized the problem - the 6th Ave line was running at 15min headways, so Apple had me walking 2 blocks to 8th Ave then to wait 15min for the train (possibly 30min if its a B/D and I needed an F/M). This was Saturday around dinner time. Just awful service.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#417

Although marginally better traffic might be a side effect of congestion pricing, its primary effect is a wealth transfer from lower- and middle-class residents of Manhattan, who must buy goods locally at higher prices, to MTA contractors and their labor unions, who already make construction on the New York subway far and away the most expensive in the world. Where is the congestion pricing tracker that measures the h…

Why would groceries be more expensive? Do you think a $25 fee makes any difference to a delivery truck loaded with $10k of products?

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#418

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.

ha, I drive / train into Manhattan from outside a lot so I'm by nature on the "edge", and this change if it reduces traffic makes me more likely to drive :)

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#419
post #398
post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seriously think NYC is the greatest city in the history of world civilization? Or is it sarcasm? I am asking this as NYC resident.

Of course I do. Ask any person living in New York, they'll tell you the same thing.

Where else have you lived?

I live in nyc today and whenever I hear people say that , it turns out they mean “New York City is the greatest city in the world of New York City and Waterloo, Wisconsin.”

And even then , I’ve seen photos of Waterloo… looks like the air is nice and breathable there. And apparently you can afford to rent a place on a normal salary.

You don’t have to agree but at least try and get out of your bubble. You don’t even know enough different people in New York City itself to support that claim, apparently.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#420
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now people on a budget will pay taxes to subsidize infrastructure that’s only accessible to the wealthy. It’s a massive scam perpetrated by the rich for the rich. Huh? The revenue from congestion pricing is used to pay for public transit. The rich people pay extra to subsidize transit for everyone else, which is exactly how things should work.

There’s a progressive aspect to drivers (higher income on average) subsidizing transit, but I worry that framing leads to drivers feeling they are paying for something that other people use. I prefer the framing that drivers should fund transit because drivers do use transit: NYC would be complete gridlock if transit went into a death spiral and straphangers switched to cars. Even if they never set foot on the MTA, d…

The drivers are paying for something they use: less-congested roads. In theory, if this is priced correctly, everyone is getting what they want: the drivers pay to not have to sit in traffic, everyone else benefits from that revenue to have better mass transit.
Post reply on HN