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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

#641

Post by ghaff »

genewitch wrote: post #611
ghaff wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Furthermore, the 80% urban stat from the US census gets routinely misinterpreted. Just going through some property line details with a couple neighbors on collectively about 75 acres plus adjacent conservation land. The census considers this urban. And, as you say, Urban != dense city downtown.

yes, the cutoff for "urban" to not is 2000 housing units in an area. I don't consider that urban, 2000 homes is a decent "town". This is just "othering" of people who live more than 25 minutes from a metro which is what i consider "urban". i am 25 minutes from my nearest metro, and the metro population is smaller than the city i grew up in in california, population-wise. my point is, talking about Berlin and then car…

Without looking it up, I think it's also related to adjacency to a significant metro. But, yeah, the US census uses a binary classification that makes a lot of people assume "urban" means a big walkable city when, in reality, it often includes very dispersed exurbs (including places many would consider basically rural) that are never going to be serviced by public transit among other things.

So a lot of people tend to translate 80% urban into 80% cities which is manifestly not true, and even less dense cities.

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#642

Post by immibis »

epistasis wrote: post #137
timewizard wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you have children or did you live alone?

As someone with children, I can not imagine the bliss of living in Manhattan and being able to do things without needing a car. Car-centric urban planning is hell with kids. You have to load them up into the car for any small trip. You can't walk or bike anywhere because cars make it so dangerous. My only regret about living in the US is this car hellscape that is so hard to avoid. It's mandated by law, not chosen by…

And, presumably, you have to take your children to places, because they can't drive.

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#643

Post by enaaem »

mplanchard wrote: post #183
jmclnx wrote: post #8

Seems to be working fine, I know the large city about 60 miles from me looked at this, and I am all for it. But its mass transit is a awful mess, at times walking is faster that taking a subway. I wish they would start this, but its politics is such a mess nothing really gets done there. New Ideas there gets implemented far slower than then ideas in Roman Catholic Church.

Transit always seems to be kind of a chicken and egg problem. You can’t have good transit unless you have good ridership, and you can’t have good ridership if you don’t have good transit. Everywhere I know of in the US with decent transit already had it before the culture of car dominance really took hold, so it was already good enough to maintain sufficient ridership to stay good. Does anyone know of anywhere that m…

The free market model is to built transit first. You buy cheap land somewhere and build a rail line or metro to it, so the land value increases. At the same time you develop your real estate there. That's how it began with American rail towns and it is also why Japanese rail and metro companies are also real estate investors.

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#644

Post by Chris2048 »

dahart wrote: post #640
Chris2048 wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that wasn't a fatality. How often do people get robbed while driving in the highway. For that matter, how many who came to harm on the highway were speeding vs random subway assaults.

People get robbed at gas stations, convenience stores, parking lots, and streets at fairly high numbers. I’m not sure what we’re comparing or debating here, but does your example actually count as a “robbery” if they died first? Would it not have happened if they hadn’t died? The anecdote you brought doesn’t seem to reflect on safety at all, it’s unclear what relevance it has. Speed is absolutely a huge factor in dri…

> People get robbed at gas stations, convenience stores, parking lots, and streets at fairly high numbers

Not where I live. the comparison/debate is:

> In contrast, the transit systems I've seen in Europe and Asia appear well maintained, clean, and relatively safe.

I think the point is, although (public) necrophilia is rare, so presumably is access to dead bodies, so the fact this happened is telling.

> does your example actually count as a “robbery” if they died first?

Of course it fucking does. picking someone's pockets is also robbery even if no confrontation is involved, and I'm pretty happy this guy is being charged with "attempted rape"; the fact the guy was dead doesn't make it not rape.

> The anecdote you brought doesn’t seem to reflect on safety

you don't see a correlation between safety, and the presence of people you cannot trust to be around?

> speed is absolutely a huge factor in driving injuries, one of the biggest. Again not sure how or even why to compare that to assaults on the subway

Speed, or speeding i.e. inappropriate levels of speed. The comparison is that an individual can control their speed, and the authorities can police it. There's not much you can do if you run into the wrong person on the subway.

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#645

Post by JumpCrisscross »

lazide wrote: post #433
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cars aren't nearly as loud as sirens and garbage trucks Guess what forces emergency vehicles to fire their sirens, or garbage trucks to linger.

bwahaha this is so ridiculous.

You’re really claiming that a congested street isn’t meaningfully more noisy than an uncongested one, including in terms of frequency and duration of horns and sirens?

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#646

Post by genewitch »

ghaff wrote: post #641
genewitch wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, the cutoff for "urban" to not is 2000 housing units in an area. I don't consider that urban, 2000 homes is a decent "town". This is just "othering" of people who live more than 25 minutes from a metro which is what i consider "urban". i am 25 minutes from my nearest metro, and the metro population is smaller than the city i grew up in in california, population-wise. my point is, talking about Berlin and then car…

Without looking it up, I think it's also related to adjacency to a significant metro. But, yeah, the US census uses a binary classification that makes a lot of people assume "urban" means a big walkable city when, in reality, it often includes very dispersed exurbs (including places many would consider basically rural) that are never going to be serviced by public transit among other things. So a lot of people tend t…

> Consistent with previous decennial censuses, changes were made to criteria classifying urban areas following the 2020 Census. Key changes to the Census Bureau’s urban area concept and criteria include:

> The use of housing unit density instead of solely population density. The minimum population threshold to qualify as urban increased from 2,500 to 5,000 or a minimum housing unit threshold of 2,000 housing units.

> The jump distance was reduced from 2.5 miles to 1.5 miles for 2020. Jump distance is the distance along roads used to connect high-density urban territories surrounded by rural territory.

> No longer distinguishing between urbanized areas and urban clusters. All qualifying areas are designated urban areas.

We agree (i think), i'm just quoting the census bureau document.

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#647

Post by biorach »

gottorf wrote: post #503
biorach wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A how common is it for people to be thrown off the platform into an oncoming train in NY?

Not common. From what I've read, each year, 50-80 people are killed on the tracks (either by hitting trains or touching the third rail), with only a handful being caused by somebody else pushing them onto the tracks.

ok so very uncommon. why are you even bringing it up?

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#648

Post by AtlasBarfed »

ben7799 wrote: post #566

Car speed in the zone.. that graph is really telling, showing that in NYC cars never really travel faster than even the slowest bicyclist, and slower than a modest runner. That alone tells you this is the right path. All that infrastructure and work for cars to not actually allow anyone to travel fast. 9mph is very very slow even for the weakest/most timid cyclist.

I wonder in NYC if elevated bike trails could be built economically that separate bikes from cars, or at least provide a "superhighway" for them. Maybe even a suspension scheme of sorts.

With e-bikes and e-scooter, I would actually argue that New York City should build underground tunnels, well, the overall goal of being able to enable these types of very efficient compact transportation to get from various parts of the major boroughs at an average speed of about 15 mph

I believe this will provide enormous livability benefits. Or you elevate the entire tunnel.

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#649

Post by genewitch »

soperj wrote: post #633
genewitch wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New York City has more people in it than the 4 most populated metro areas in Italy. Italy has ~3x the population of the state of New York, half the population of the state lives in NYC area .

So they need it more than Italy. You can handle wayyy more traffic without cars on the road than you can with.

in context, i am specifically talking to “the US can't imagine itself without cars” point here and in my other reply upthread. I live ~36 hours from Los Angeles, driving at legal highway speeds, assuming no stops or delays. It's all about perspective. California is larger than germany. New York isn't a small state by any stretch of the imagination, unless you're comparing it to texas, alaska, or california. The car/public transportation stuff in the US is partly because of the ruralness of the country in general, plus culture. A lot of people have the idea that public transit is for the poors.

Re: Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

#650

Post by gaadd33 »

cpersona wrote: post #473
gotoeleven wrote: post #135

It's nice that all those numbers are up, but it would be great also to see some metrics that attempted to measure the overall utility of the change. Something like avg time spent commuting, or really commute_time * dollars_spent_commuting^B where B is some parameter for the relative utility of time and money. Of course B is different for everyone but something like this could be attempted. Stated another way, if they…

I would add another metric: how are businesses doing since the change? I was walking around the city on a Wednesday evening and it was utterly eerie how empty it felt. This past weekend seemed to be the exact opposite thanks to the nice weather, but I haven't seen that level of emptiness. I notice empty storefronts and anecdotally, I feel like there is an increasing number. I have a friend who opened a store downtown…

Empty storefronts in lower Manhattan have become more prevalent especially as Walgreens has been downsizing their Duane Reade locations and banks have reduced branch numbers. Historically I've heard that landlords try to hold out for high rent paying large corporations but in the past few years there are less and less of those tenants. Also I'm sure it's tied to the 10 year lease renewal/rent increase cycle.

Anecdotally, I notice a lot more foot traffic in Fidi than last year and far less traffic when I do need to take a taxi or uber. It seems like greater foot traffic would be a benefit for your friend's store unless it's a destination store that sells large products (furniture/appliances/etc).

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