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New York City will charge drivers going downtown

cnn.com

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Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#521

Post by nayuki »

closeparen wrote: post #466
steveBK123 wrote: post #282

My main concern as NYer is the governments inability to build transit, and not for lack of money. NY will find it relatively easy to institute a new tax on drivers, but will the billions collected actually make transit better in any tangible way? NYC is also hamstrung by having its streets controlled locally by our DOT, but our transit & bridges controlled by a state agency. We just caved (again) entirely to the tran…

Congestion pricing is good insofar as it deters driving. We do need to get our heads out of our asses with respect to the logistics of converting dollars to transit infrastructure, but that's basically independent. Congestion pricing revenue could be given to your favorite charity, redistributed as a citizen's dividend, or lit on fire. The important thing is that as the marginal driver the amount you have to part wit…

You're right. Congestion pricing affects the psychology of the driver, regardless of where the money goes - even if it's set on fire (thus causing a minuscule amount of deflation).

To assign the congestion money to a specific project, like public transit, is an act of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_accounting .

I would say that putting the money into the city's general fund is the least bad solution. This is because if congestion monies were put to a specific program like public transit / subsidies for the poor / etc., it becomes more complicated to ensure that those programs receive enough funding but also not too much.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#522

Post by sacnoradhq »

tlogan wrote: post #110

So rich people (who really do not care about few dollars) will be able to drive to downtown just for fun. while poor people who truly need to come to downtown by car will struggle. This is an unfortunate reality of life: wealth equates to more available time.

This is the problem of toll roads and express lanes and creating a pseudo private system that monetizes the public commonwealth. Public-private partnerships are another cash grab.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#523

Post by hifromLA »

eBombzor wrote: post #497
nostrebored wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is. Have you been in New York? In the area that this is being implemented in, you can absolutely survive without ever setting foot in a car. Other cities should have been planned around density. Instead we have suburban hellscapes where kids can’t be kids and there’s no real community. The car has been the single most destructive piece of mass-adopted tech for urban planning and lifestyle. If we have to sta…

Couldn't agree more. I moved out of LA to get the fk away from car culture. Now I live and work near dt Seattle where everything is relatively walkable, and my car is used at most twice a month for random things that I honestly don't need anyways. Obviously Seattle is not even close to a real walkable city like Amsterdam but miles better than LA. Going back to LA, it is exactly what you describe. Just a concrete hell…

I’m not going to say LA is not a car disaster, but LA does have dozens of walkable neighborhoods to be fair. It wouldn’t be apples to apples to compare Woodland Hills to Capitol Hill (for example).

And although community parks can be in short supply, there’s hundreds of thousands of acres of open space in the Santa Monica and San Gabriel mountains.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#524

Post by eastbound »

kuschku wrote: post #518
nmfisher wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Singapore MRT actually operates with zero drivers!

As does Nuremberg U3!

One line in Paris, 2 in Toulouse, Lyon, it’s even more funny that it was built in the 1991 without drivers, truely futuristic.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#525

Post by timeon »

steveBK123 wrote: post #334
agotterer wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite a few of our transit problems today are actually because of the choices Robert Moses made. However, he certainly is responsible for the rapid growth of the transit system and did a great job consolidating power and getting stuff done. * He had the chance to buy the land and put transit along many highways in queens and Long Island but said that people would prefer to drive so he passed on the opportunity. Acqui…

I'm well aware of his history, and it's always interesting to me how few bad things people can point to that he actually did.. when weighed against all the transit/bridges/tunnels/highways build under his watch. I mean the first thing is a crime of omission, made in basically every other city of the country - where have we seen land be purchased along highways to build transit done anywhere in this country? Even new…

So what do you think about Jane Jacobs?

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#526

Post by nayuki »

cyberax wrote: post #492
rfrec0n wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One average US citizen produces around 20 tons of CO2 per year. A bus needs 3 of them working full-time. This completely dwarfs the emissions due to fuel use. Are you trying to say that these people wouldn't already exist without the bus? So everytime we commission a new bus, 3 fully grown licensed drivers appear in a flash of smoke from the storage compartment of the bus?

> Are you trying to say that these people wouldn't already exist without the bus? No. They would be doing other productive things. But right now, they have to spend their productive power on driving buses. This is simply a huge waste of human potential.

And individual people driving themselves is not a waste of human potential?

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#527

Post by [deleted] »

Auracle wrote: post #508
nostrebored wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is. Have you been in New York? In the area that this is being implemented in, you can absolutely survive without ever setting foot in a car. Other cities should have been planned around density. Instead we have suburban hellscapes where kids can’t be kids and there’s no real community. The car has been the single most destructive piece of mass-adopted tech for urban planning and lifestyle. If we have to sta…

I enjoy walkable cities. I don't live in New York, but I couldn't do my job as is without a car. I simply have too much equipment. There are probably many other people in the same position. I feel like step A should be to build better transit, not punish drivers.

[deleted]

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#528

Post by Jolter »

eggy wrote: post #438
acdha wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re not as bad as cars but they still take up a fair amount of space and pollute (noise, fumes) heavily. A modest discount seems appropriate but they definitely should still cost more than transit.

They do not pollute heavily fume-wise, and most motorcycles other than Harleys or sport bikes with racing exhausts with the dB component removed are not that loud. I get 60 mpg and the engine is efficient. A car gets half or less that mpg, so is 2 to 3X more polluting than a motorcycle when you have 1-to-1 driver/passenger comparison. 2 people on a moto is even better than a car.

Most motorbikes I’ve been near have had significantly more smelly exhaust than a modern car. I don’t think their catalytic converters are as efficient, or maybe they’ve been broken?

Anyway, I don’t think the fees aim to improve pollution, just congestion.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#529

Post by Jolter »

arrosenberg wrote: post #366
wizofaus wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be keen to charge vehicles based on noise pollution, but I'm not sure how feasible it is. Does anyone know if it's ever been trialed anywhere?

Seems like it would be easy enough - you register your car, each model has an average and max decibel rating. Your congestion charge includes a factor for that - Harley's pay a bigger markup and EVs pay next to nothing for that particular thing.

It’s too easy to modify the exhaust on a motorcycle, so I don’t think this would be practical. Local laws here are very strict about noise levels, and vehicles are inspected regularly, yet still there are a lot of drivers with modified machines that can wake up the dead when revved.

Re: New York City will charge drivers going downtown

#530

Post by nostrebored »

xyzelement wrote: post #477
nostrebored wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good — let drivers pay for their share of infrastructure and space required to support their existence. So much space in NYC is taken up by roads and parking, subsidized by people who don’t use it.

I am curious whether you actually live in NYC. In the parts of the city this article is talking about, there's no free parking during busy times. Those lanes are reserved for either special parking situations (teachers, police), business (loading/unloading trucks, taxi stands) or turn into driving lanes. It happens that on Sundays and evenings, that capacity isn't needed and is given over to parking. 30 years in NYC,…

Price per square foot in Manhattan, a parking spot is a steal.
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