NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker • Hacker News Board

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#641

Post by saagarjha » Thu, Jan 09, 2025, 1:38 AM UTC

cyberax wrote: post #639

saagarjha wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can't afford to spend $20 every time they want to go anywhere.

The thing is, a transit trip's true cost is also around $20 in SF and Seattle. It's just that perverse incentives hide it from users. Waymo taxis deserve the same level of subsidies. It won't be happening any time soon because it'll be a death knell for transit, and will leave thousands of city employees without work.

This isn’t true, unless you’re willing to consider the subsidies that cars get when it comes to putting in and maintaining roads and doing urban planning around half the city being car surfaces.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#642

Post by asoneth » Thu, Jan 09, 2025, 3:03 AM UTC

dleink wrote: post #520

asoneth wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Others have mentioned the unfairness of asking taxpayers to subsidize drivers. This is particularly egregious in Midtown Manhattan where many taxpayers are not drivers and many drivers are not (local) taxpayers. But even as a driver I prefer when cities place an efficient price on parking. Otherwise, if parking is too cheap compared to demand it costs time and stress circling the block to find a place to park. Market…

Any examples of cities that have done a good job on this?

It's been ages since I've driven there, but SFpark[1] was (and maybe still is?) considered the gold standard in demand-based pricing.

One interesting finding from the initial research reports was that it achieved the goal of improving availability while at the same time lowering the average meter price, which is nice because it drives home that the purpose is maximizing efficiency, not revenue.

And despite my using it as an example above, Midtown Manhattan actually does this reasonably well, especially in contrast with trying to park in the Upper East/West Side or Harlem.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SFpark

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#643

Post by mr_00ff00 » Thu, Jan 09, 2025, 3:18 AM UTC

stemlord wrote: post #594

mr_00ff00 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people paying the congestion fees are the rich that live in the suburbs and drive into the city.

It is expected that fees will also be passed down to non-wealthy locals by services whose vehicles need to utilize these roads as well-- they will raise their prices

You are wealthy if you are using private car services like that.

Most normal New Yorkers use the subway

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#644

Post by stemlord » Thu, Jan 09, 2025, 4:06 AM UTC

mr_00ff00 wrote: post #643

stemlord wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is expected that fees will also be passed down to non-wealthy locals by services whose vehicles need to utilize these roads as well-- they will raise their prices

You are wealthy if you are using private car services like that. Most normal New Yorkers use the subway

You don't understand: plumbers, electricians, facade repair, any business that requires wholesale goods shipped to them in a truck are all things that will ultimately pass the cost to normal people. Increased cost of living will help ensure every last "normal New Yorker" is squeezed out of the area

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#645

Post by 7e » Thu, Jan 09, 2025, 5:12 AM UTC

Great. Step two: NYC should force Lyft and Uber to buy taxi medallions for each car. There are way too many of idle cars trolling around, taking up space and polluting.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#646

Post by evgen » Thu, Jan 09, 2025, 8:29 AM UTC

freejazz wrote: post #413

occz wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It has not. Traffic levels are down 15-20% while number of visitors to the inside of the congestion zone has increased. Traffic speed inside the zone has also increased slightly.

Overall, London's example shows that congestion pricing works as advertised.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#647

Post by Mawr » Thu, Jan 09, 2025, 6:56 PM UTC

cyberax wrote: post #186

DrBrock wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We appear to have very different definitions of "well-designed cities". Cars are the least efficient form of mass transit yet devised. They take up inordinate amounts of space to move very few people. This creates unavoidable congestion problems at very realistic levels of urban density, problems which are only solvable by enabling people to use viable alternatives. This is why the subway and buses in Manhattan move…

> We appear to have very different definitions of "well-designed cities". No comparable European city is even close to Houston in average commute time. Go on, fact check me. > This is why the subway and buses in Manhattan move 5x and 2x more people respectively per day than cars. Manhattan is a hellscape that needs to be de-densified (with some neighborhoods preserved as museums of human folly).

> No comparable European city is even close to Houston in average commute time.

Even if that is true, average commute time is just a single factor. There's also health, cost, comfort, the environment, safety. Comparisons using a single metric are simply invalid.

> Go on, fact check me.

Ok.

Couldn't find any reliable data, could you cite your sources? What I have found is a few sources with wildly different data, e.g.:

- [1] puts Houston at 42 minutes, very different from your claim of 28 minutes.

- [2] claims the average time for the EU is 25 minutes.

Most of the sources I've found are based on self-reported data (surveys) so I do not put much weight on them. Do you have any sources that provide reliable data?

[1]: https://www.theworldranking.com/statistics/125/traffic-commu...

[2]: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/d...

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#648

Post by Mawr » Thu, Jan 09, 2025, 7:16 PM UTC

cyberax wrote: post #581

Xylakant wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that throughput per lane of cars is very limited in comparison to everything else. A single car line can transport about 2000 persons per hour. A single bus lane about 9000, a single bike lane 14000 - if you dedicate the space to pedestrians, we’re at 19000 and light rail goes beyond that at 22000 and more. (See page 3, https://www.static.tu.berlin/fileadmin/www/10002265/News/Pre... , German only) This…

> The problem is that throughput per lane of cars is very limited in comparison to everything else Bullshit. You are a victim of propaganda. In reality, a car lane can carry 2000 people per hour with an average car load. With mild car-pooling, it's easy to increase it to 6000 people per hour. A bus in the US has an average load of just 18 people. So with 10 buses per hour, you get just 180 people per lane per hour. E…

> In reality, a car lane can carry 2000 people per hour with an average car load. With mild car-pooling, it's easy to increase it to 6000 people per hour.

The average car occupancy in the US seems to be around 1.5. How would increasing that be easy? You would have to somehow convince the majority of the population to change their habits, that does not sound easy in any way.

> A bus in the US has an average load of just 18 people.

In the US, a country that has invested heavily into car infrastructure at the expense of public transport. All you're saying is the underfunded public transport in the US sucks. We all know this, but it has no relevance to public transport in general.

> Transit sucks and will always suck. It's pure math.

The simple math here is the number of cars goes up linearly as population increases, which is unsustainable. Meanwhile, public transport only gets more and more efficient.

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#649

Post by seaofliberty » Thu, Jan 09, 2025, 8:48 PM UTC

randomopining wrote: post #637

seaofliberty wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they have a job, dummy. Are you for real? Subways are not safe and it is terrible to go by subway when you can travel with car everywhere. If you make $120k in NYC supporting a family of 3 (husband, wife, 1 kid), you are left with almost $1k with extremely tight budget. Now, $9 a day will cost you (22 days * 9 * 11 month) = $2,198. Not everyone values time. Poor people, lower middle class and middle class nee…

Subways are very safe, you obviously don't live or have spent much time in NYC. Millions of people ride them daily. Office workers making $$$, teens, everybody. Driving is likely less safe. And you still didn't tell me why somebody is driving into Manhattan below 60th st, 5 times a week. To commute? What type of job would it be?

A woman was set on fire by illegal alien. What are you talking about Subway being safe? Obviously you do not care because woman was not from Privilege race aka White. There have been hundreds of deaths for no reason where people were pushed on the Subway. I don't (and won't) post gore but look it up. It is horrifying.

You are the one who do not live or travel within NYC.

Why go below 60th? Because they want to be in the office or have some work to do? Why there are millions of parking

Re: NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

#650

Post by RHSeeger » Sat, Jan 11, 2025, 11:29 PM UTC

ufmace wrote: post #181

RHSeeger wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Despite that, it rose from the filth, and is now fine Well, except for the people being pushing in front of subways to their death, or lit on fire in stations. The subways stations are getting dangerous enough, even in "not bad" areas, that people are avoiding them.

Out of about 3.5 million riders a day. Meanwhile, nobody pays any attention to the roughly 250 people who die in car crashes every single year in the NYC metro area. If you're so worried about safety, we should ban cars entirely instead of just taxing them a little.

Oh, ffs. I was replying the comment that the subways stays are "fine". They're not fine, they're more dangerous than they were 20 years ago; more dangerous than they should be. The subway system in NYC is of great benefit to the city and it's residents. But it could certainly stand a fair amount of improvement.

And banning cares from the city completely would be moronic, causing incredible harm to pretty much every aspect of it. I'm not "so worried about safety" that I would want to destroy the city, and your putting forth a strawman argument implying I am adds nothing to the discussion.