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Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

nytimes.com

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Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#411

Post by jampekka »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #12
philipallstar wrote: post #9

The increased speeds are excellent for those who can afford the toll. This is a universal benefit of toll roads for those people.

And the investments in public transit and bike paths are excellent for those who can't. Such unalloyed win-wins are hard to find.

Whether there will be net increase in these investments remains to be seen. Even if the revenue does get into these investments, there's no reason it can't be offset by reduction in e.g. tax revenue investment, or even a tax cut. There's also no reason why investment couldn't be done without the congestion charge revenue.

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#412

Post by schwartzworld »

aynyc wrote: post #271

As a long time NYC resident who moved out during Covid but commute to work in the city. I definitely noticed less traffic on the streets and less noise. I see a lot of talk of other cities that don't have good public transportation. For example, between Flushing in Queens to 8th Ave in Brooklyn, there are privately run buses at affordable rate and get you there at half the time of trains. There are buses from a lot o…

Growing up in Jersey we called them jitneys. And no, they don’t have them in other cities.

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#413

Post by jampekka »

jmyeet wrote: post #33

I was living in London when congestion pricing was introduced and went into the West End the day before and the first day of and the difference was night and day. The difference along Oxford Street, Regent's Street, Green Street, etc was astounding. And in the 20+ years the evidence seems to back up how much of a net positive it has been. NYC congestion pricing took way too long because the New York Democratic Party…

> What's so bizarre to me is how many people have strong opinions on NYC congestion pricing who have never been and will never go to NYC.

Because NYC is gonna be used as a case for selling congestion charges elsewhere. This may cause decline in more effective and equitable policies like car bans and restrictions that are working really well in many places.

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#414

Post by ceejayoz »

rcpt wrote: post #346
KingMob wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Road lanes are like CPU cores. And like CPUs, adding more cores does not linearly scale up traffic capacity. In the case of CPUs, there's sync and communication overhead; for highways, there's more turbulence and slowdown generated by lane-switching.

Adding more lanes encourages more driving. That's why it never reduces traffic

Same with computers. More power and bandwidth and storage space has largely meant our apps and websites have grown to fill it.

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#415

Post by tilne »

kmeisthax wrote: post #108
HonestOp001 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The converse is how helpful cars are. It allows people to have the ability commute from areas they live at to where they work. It brings down the cost of living by expanding the commute availability circle, instead of driving up land values for the desirable areas.

Expanding the commute availability circle does not increase the supply of housing, because people build sparser neighborhoods with larger lawns. If you want to increase the supply of housing, you need higher density, not longer distance. What longer distance does is make the closer areas more valuable, because people will pay $$$ for a shorter commute. And for those who can't afford the closer housing, they get to pa…

> Expanding the commute availability circle does not increase the supply of housing, because people build sparser neighborhoods with larger lawns.

This is not true. It is true in some circumstances, but definitely not in all. The fact that it’s presented as absolute fact hurts the point you’re trying to make imo.

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#416

Post by jampekka »

listenallyall wrote: post #126
woodruffw wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These would be examples of normalization, not a slippery slope. The OP's example makes this clear (from "congestion pricing in NYC" to "they're going to take my car," not "congestion pricing in NYC" to "congestion pricing elsewhere"). (Regardless, I think the answer is simple: congestion pricing is only economically viable when an area is simultaneously congested and has alternative transportation methods that would…

Numerous politicians and advocates have suggested exempting electric vehicles from the NYC congestion pricing. Such vehicles are exempt in London. It isnt unusual for governments to start a program with one goal or purpose, then expand it (or use as a launching point) to achieve further goals, such as banning ICE vehicles. This is currently happening with cigarettes. Banning them at workplaces and other public places…

Over 300 recreationally used molecules have been banned outright by UN conventions alone. Not saying this is good, but cigarettes are very much an exception to the norm.

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#417

Post by sebstefan »

kortilla wrote: post #225
jcranmer wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were that delivery driver using a car instead of a bike, then your wife would likely be dead instead of in the ER. (At least in the US, having a driver's license is in no way, shape, or form an indication that the driver is capable of driving correctly, much less their willingness to do so.)

Car drivers are very routinely punished for running red lights. That is far less common than cyclists doing it.

"Cyclists Break Far Fewer Road Rules Than Motorists, Finds New Video Study" (https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2019/05/10/cyclists...)

Perhaps if there is a no bikelanes and cyclists are bothering you on the sidewalk you should walk in the middle of the road, as the real danger is bikes, right?

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#418

Post by neither_color »

eGP9jDq_nw wrote: post #376
neither_color wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These threads tend to devolve into, "Americans are so unsophisticated everyone else in the world is banning cars and turning downtown into walkable utopia" but what they really mean by rest of the world is a few crowded European cities. If you look at all the new rich mega cities built in the Middle East and East Asia cars continue to exist alongside good public transit as aspirational status icons and the preferred…

These USian supremacist talking points are the prime reason minorities feel unwelcome on this site

As an American who's fluent in Spanish, I got over this "debate" about what America means by acknowledging that the word America is a homonym.

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#419

Post by franciscop »

socalgal2 wrote: post #401
aynyc wrote: post #271

As a long time NYC resident who moved out during Covid but commute to work in the city. I definitely noticed less traffic on the streets and less noise. I see a lot of talk of other cities that don't have good public transportation. For example, between Flushing in Queens to 8th Ave in Brooklyn, there are privately run buses at affordable rate and get you there at half the time of trains. There are buses from a lot o…

In Japan there are almost only private buses. many are run by and around the private train companies as a way to get their trains to be more useful to more people like when a 25 minute walk from the closest station is a 10 minute bus ride and the busses come often enough to be convenient

The train companies in Japan, while private in name, can only be described as hybrid. They have massive gvmt concessions for land to build their malls and make profit. The gvmt also has a lot of direct and indirect influence on them (and the other way around). In fact I'm literally now in one cafe in one of those malls, I haven't used the train today but still a part of my money goes to the train company thanks to these concessions.

I'm not complaining BTW, love the train system here, it's only when someone tries to describe them as either a purely "private" or "public" company it's never so straightforward IMHO, so wanted to clarify.

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#420

Post by walthamstow »

josephcsible wrote: post #343
lesuorac wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the slippery slope has long happened and also gone away. There are a ton of roads with "turnpike" or "pike" in their name. Some cost money [1] others are free. What's the big difference between NYC's congestion pricing and the Florida Pike? I guess you can fight congestion pricing in order to slow the spread of toll roads but it's not the beginning of a slipper slope. Usage fees are a very old concept (price…

With regular toll roads, if you don't want to pay the toll, you can drive on a different road instead and still get to the same place at the same time.

The same time? Why does anyone use the toll road?
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