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Because cars in Manhattan are a blight on livability and safety. There are only a handful of reasons to legitimately have a car in Manhattan; off the top of my
by beisner 9y ago
Because cars in Manhattan are a blight on livability and safety. There are only a handful of reasons to legitimately have a car in Manhattan; off the top of my head: moving large items, transporting those with mobility issues, getting from specific subway dead zones to other parts, and leaving manhattan altogether. There is an enormous (albeit overloaded and dilapidated) public transit infrastructure allowing people to both move throughout the city and come into the city from basically anywhere in the tri state area. And even if direct transit options into the city aren’t spectacular, you can drive to any of the thousands of park-and-ride locations on the cheap and take public transit from there.
There are legitimate life circumstances that necessitate driving around manhattan, and I would be more than happy to exempt those from congestion pricing. And I have no problem with Taxis and buses and delivery vans operating, as they have high utilization. But private cars cause so many problems in manhattan, including danger to pedestrians (which make up the bulk of people in the city at any given time), noise pollution, air pollution, and inefficiency for legitimate ground transport/logistics, that I have no problem disincentivizing the use of them in Manhattan with large tolls. There’s a certain hubris required to be the only occupant in a vehicle in manhattan when the public transit infrastructure is so expansive and affordable.
And don’t even get me started on all the wasted space dedicated to parking that could be used for public space, business, bicycle lanes, etc...
- nogridbag 9y agoEveryone keeps talking about Manhattan, but the GWB bridge serves more than Manhattan. I don't have any numbers to back this up, but I would guess the vast amount of traffic over the bridge serves commuters between Jersey and the other boroughs.
- beisner 9y agoI'd actually wager that the vast majority of people commuting in from Jersey work in Manhattan, rather than the other boroughs. I grew up in central Jersey, and everyone I knew who commuted in on NJ Transit (along the Northeast Corridor line) were commuting into Manhattan. If you worked in Queens or Brooklyn, you'd live somewhere on Long Island. If you worked in the Bronx, you'd live in Westchester (or north). Some fraction of people have longer commutes, but my guess is that it would be a tiny one. You are correct, the GWB serves a diverse set of areas (I only take the GWB to get from Jersey to Westchester), but it's not the only means by which cars get into NYC. Regarding why everyone talks about Manhattan, it's because it's where a huge fraction of people in NYC live and work. While there are only 1.6 million permanent residents of Manhattan, the population during the day swells to around 4 million due to commuters and visitors. The outer boroughs, while busy in their own right, operate on a completely different scale (population actually decreases during the day), because they're so spread out.
- nogridbag 9y agoDon't forget the other direction. I commute from Queens to Jersey daily so my perspective might be biased. While I don't have to pay the GWB going towards Jersey, I still have to pay the toll going home (along with RFK or Whitestone). Looks like I pay between $400-$600 per month just in tolls.
- beisner 9y agoMy apologies on the commute, can't be pleasant to go through all that traffic. I don't think the the GWB tolls are congestion-based though, they're more for maintenance of the infrastructure that hundreds of thousands of people drive over daily. From my understanding of business in NJ, there are relatively few people doing your sort of commute, so perhaps with congestion prices in Manhattan, the amount of wear on the GWB and related infrastructure (along with maintenance costs) might decrease, which could result in reduced GWB tolls.