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The streets were never free. We paid for it with our tax money. (Not to mention our 22 trillion dollar public debt) I don’t think people expect streets to be f

The streets were never free. We paid for it with our tax money. (Not to mention our 22 trillion dollar public debt) I don’t think people expect streets to be free in the same way you don’t expect the police department to be free, the fire department to be free, public schools, etc. In any case, my point is, we paid for the streets with our tax money and our debt, so don’t masquerade this as some kind of “economic reckoning” where the people are FINALLY going to have to pay for those roads the government’s been giving away for free for so long. Because that’s just not true.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> don’t masquerade this as some kind of “economic reckoning” In New York, low-income New Yorkers who own a car (or live in the zone) will be eligible for a waiver [1]. People with disabilities, too, will probably be eligible for a waiver. (Some carve-outs are still being pinned down.) Taxis, Ubers, trucks and cars owned by people who opt to pay hundreds of dollars a month in parking are who will be taxed. Given the unusability of our streets, this seems closer to an economic reckoning than a political money grab. (Crowded streets have all kinds of nasty externalities. I live in the zone. Crowded streets mean lots of honking at all hours of the day and night. It means the constant smell of brake pads at street level. When I look out of the window and see a stranded ambulance, it's a reminder of the risk my loved ones and I will face when the day comes when we need an ambulance. Et cetera.) [1] https://710wor.iheart.com/content/2019-04-01-congestion-pricing-budget-approved-by-new-york-state/ https://710wor.iheart.com/content/2019-04-01-congestion-pric...
- hourislate 8y ago
  How do people feel on a congestion fee for sidewalks. Too many people on sidewalks in NYC making them almost unusable. If you want to walk on a sidewalk during the busiest times you should pay a congestion fee. Why would we stop at just roads?
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > Too many people on sidewalks in NYC making them almost unusable One, pedestrian congestion doesn't exhibit traffic congestion's negative externalities. (You have to get to trampling-risk densities before that occurs.) Two, "sidewalk passes" have no precedent. Congestion pricing has lots of precedent [1]. Three, this is a problem getting attention [2]. America has spent decades throwing lanes at traffic. Not all of that was a waste. Similar effort has yet to broadly benefit pedestrians. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congestion_pricing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congestion_pricing [2] https://www.thevillager.com/2019/04/grassroots-group-calls-for-shared-streets/ https://www.thevillager.com/2019/04/grassroots-group-calls-f...
    - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
      The area around Penn station reaches trampling risk densities five days a week.
      - scrose 8y ago
        Funnily enough, the area around Penn station allocates nearly 80% of the space there to cars, which carry only a tiny fraction of the people traveling through daily. For anyone not familiar with the Penn area, check out this Streetfilms video to get an idea of how lopsided the street allocation is: https://vimeo.com/268616894 https://vimeo.com/268616894.
  - alex_anglin 8y ago
    Two reasons would be that ealking doesn't pollute and is healthy activity.
  - scrose 8y ago
    Because 20 people can and do fit into the same space that a single SUV occupied by one person takes up trawling for a fare through Midtown, yet 70+ percent of the streetscape is allocated to accommodate that SUV. Also keep in mind pedestrians have to share space with sidewalk planters, outdoor seating, trash bags, and many times, cars parked partially on the sidewalk, making the usable walking space less than 10% of the size of the total street space, yet still allowing exponentially more people to move faster than the cars the street was designed for.
- nickles 8y ago
  > Taxis, Ubers, trucks and cars owned by people who opt to pay hundreds of dollars a month in parking are who will be taxed. Given the unusability of our streets, this seems closer to an economic reckoning than a political money grab. Taxis and Ubers are forms of public transportation, and likely reduce the overall number of cars on the road. Simultaneously, they reduce the incidences of drunk driving, providing positive externalities. Taxing trucks, used for transporting groceries, goods, and packages to the city, will increase the cost of each of these goods. The increase in grocery prices serves as a regressive tax on all people living within the congestion pricing zone. The failings of the subway and train infrastructure are due to mismanagement on the part of the MTA and untenable, collectively bargained contracts. At the same time that driving within the city will become more expensive, these forms of transport have been reducing service within the city and to the surrounding regions while simultaneously increasing fares. [0] https://medium.com/@johnnyknocke/the-mta-loses-six-billion-dollars-a-year-and-nobody-cares-d0d23093b2d8 https://medium.com/@johnnyknocke/the-mta-loses-six-billion-d... [1] https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/local/article/Cuts-to-Metro-North-could-impact-more-than-12516146.php https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/local/article/Cuts-to-Metro... [2] https://jalopnik.com/new-york-wont-shut-down-a-major-subway-line-now-but-it-1831464730 https://jalopnik.com/new-york-wont-shut-down-a-major-subway-... [3] https://trid.trb.org/view/384171 https://trid.trb.org/view/384171
  - dondawest 8y ago
    It’s well established that Uber and lyft INCREASE the amount of cars on the road (and thus congestion) because they incentivize non-car-owners to take car trips they wouldn’t normally take. Uber and Lyft lead to a net INCREASE in cars on the road, not a decrease.
    - nickles 8y ago
      > It’s well established that Uber and lyft INCREASE the amount of cars >> Our findings provide evidence that after entering an urban area, ride-sharing services such as Uber significantly decrease traffic congestion time, congestion costs, and excessive fuel consumption. To further assess the robustness of the main results, we perform additional analyses including the use of alternative measures, instrumental variables, placebo tests, heterogeneous effects, and a relative time model with more granular data. We discuss a few plausible mechanisms to explain our findings as well as their implications for the platform-based sharing economy. [0] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2838043 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2838043
- C1sc0cat 8y ago
  So why are you penalising those with off street parking ?
  - scrose 8y ago
    Parking, whether on street or off-street doesn't relate to congestion pricing. Congestion pricing charges for the luxury of driving into one of the most densely populated and well-served areas of transit in the country. Charging people to offset a negative externality they are entirely responsible for should not be conflated with penalization.
    - andromeduck 8y ago
      On street parking is taking up space that could have been use for transport or housing.
- mruts 8y ago
  The carve-outs are precisely the problem with the congestion pricing. If everyone in mid-town just had to pay a flat fee, fine, that seems somewhat fair. But now every interest group is rent-seeking and going to lobby to be exempt. That's the unfair and corrupt part, not the fee. NYC having congestion pricing isn't the most unreasonable thing in the world. Some might say it's long overdue. But the legislature doesn't have the political will or want to actually implement a fair, flat fee. Instead, the people who don't fit into a easily defined interest group will have to pay, and everyone else will get to drive for free. If I have to pay to drive, then everyone else should to, regardless if they are poor, disabled, rich, taxis, ubers, or whatever.
  - azernik 8y ago
    "Rent-seeking" is not a very descriptive label. This (like most other flat consumption taxes) is a regressive tax. It is a stated policy goal of the ruling party to reduce income inequality, not increase it. The disabled are a group with very inflexible transportation demand, in that they are very unlikely to change their behavior in response to higher prices (because they can't); we already make a whole ton of legal accommodations for them like handicapped parking, and this fits into that overall policy.
    - mruts 8y ago
      It's not like having carve outs makes it any less regressive. It just allows the government to paper over a very complex problem with a naive and simple "solution". Unfortunately, this sort of thinking has been the dominant mode in politics and legislation since, I dunno, the Roman empire? Riddle your laws and regulations and tax-codes with exemptions and deductions and carve-outs so you can please the people who put you in power and who will keep your in power. And since almost everyone is part of some random interest group (and many, part of a lot interests groups like married home-owning couples with kids), it usually works.
      - azernik 8y ago
        If "poor people" is your interest group, then by definition it makes the tax less regressive!
- Spooky23 8y ago
  You'll have less congested streets when the utility of being in Manhattan is less valuable than dealing with Manhattan.
- closeparen 8y ago
  Progresssive taxation means low income people already pay less for roads.
  - chrisdhoover 8y ago
    Except the funding that comes from gas taxes.
- mancerayder 8y ago
  Disabilities should get a waiver. There is already a special license plate and a placard. But now, low-income? There are problems: . You can be low-income and still own a car, and still be near public transport. Why would you be incentivized to own a car, first off, and drive it into a congested area? . It's not the "low-income" exception that's the last exception. There are tens of thousands of City-provided placards for teachers, firefighters and civil servants with an unspoken rule by the police to never ticket them, even if parked illegally. This, plus the idea of exceptions just smell like another foray into a De Blasio handing something out for please one union or group or another. These are parking placards, and I used that example to demonstrate what happens when we pick and choose winners and losers - what criteria do we go by, in a city of 8.5M? Which group suffers the most? . There are low-income allowanced for things such as HPD buildings and other subsidies. I know people who make (as a couple) half a million dollars a year who still own real estate with income restrictions, because the income was only verified Year 1 and it became de facto voluntary in the years after that. . A huge percentage of people are low-income in this City. And hold on just a second - you're low income but you're spending how many hundreds of dollars a month on a lease, gas, maintenance, and so forth for a far, and insurance in one of the most expensive insurance markets? Have people lost their senses to not question that?
- Scoundreller 8y ago
  > In New York, low-income New Yorkers who own a car (or live in the zone) will be eligible for a waiver [1] I’m going to be that guy. Why not write them a cheque whether they drive or not?
the_gastropod 8y ago
Bear in mind only ~45% of NYC residents own cars. Yet, we all pay taxes to pay for maintaining their infrastructure. Everyone paying taxes to support some is fine when that thing is beneficial to society at large (e.g., public education, fire departments, welfare, etc.) I don't think driving counts as an activity that should be subsidized by the taxpayer.
- dcosson 8y ago
  If you ever order something online or get food delivery or take a taxi or uber you do use the roads, and the number of people who do those things somewhat regularly is a lot closer to 100%. But you might still be using the roads a lot less than someone who drives to and from work every day. So some combination of tax money and tolls/congestion pricing seems to make the most sense from this usage based angle.
  - the_gastropod 8y ago
    Absolutely! And as long as those delivery trucks, taxis, etc. pay the congestion pricing, it'll get priced into their services too.
    - leetcrew 8y ago
      while we're at it, let's make the congestion pricing proportional to some power of vehicle weight so that it also reflects the cost of road maintenance.
      - v_lisivka 8y ago
        Drivers pay fuel taxes already. Fuel taxes are proportional to vehicle weight and power. IMHO, it better to tax normalized_areanormalized_weightnormalized_congestion . For example, if vehicle is 30% spacer than average, has 50% more weight per space than average, and uses road at peak hour when road usage is 50% more than average, then it should pay 1.3 x 1.5 x 1.5 = ~3x tax. If owner want to reduce tax, then it should use smaller, lighter car, and use it at off-peak hours, e.g. 0.9 x 0.9 x 0.5 = 0.4.
CalRobert 8y ago
OK, how about "it's a way to make sure people who need the road most are the ones who get to use it" Kind of how parking meters are FANTASTIC because they mean I can finally get a damn space for the rare occasion when I rent a van or car and need to park in front of my flat. I just wish they'd raise prices on my street because it's still tough sometimes.
- WillPostForFood 8y ago
  "it's a way to make sure people who need the road most are the ones who get to use it" It is too regressive to achieve that end. If you have a lot of money, it is a trivial cost for convenience. If you are poor, but would really benefit from road access, you still may not be able to afford it. You could easily frame this as "keep the poor off the road so the rich don't have to deal with traffic".
  - deleted 8y ago
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  - CalRobert 8y ago
    But we already do that with homes, so why not be consistent and do it with cars? Anyway, making walking and cycling as crappy as possible by giving people congested, polluted, dangerous streets is pretty inconsiderate to poor people as is. And the article specifically mentions waivers for low income people.
    - closeparen 8y ago
      Congestion makes cycling a little nicer, since the cars are slower and more predictable, and you’re the one zipping past them.
      - CalRobert 8y ago
        I've cycled in lots of congested cities. This isn't completely wrong, but it's like going from one to two when we should aim for ten. But true, the _worst_ for cycling is very busy but still fast roads. Wilshire blvd on a Saturday comes to mind
zacharyautin11 8y ago
You missed the point. The article shows the reality that direct costs to consumer would have resulted in fewer auto sales. Instead we have sprawl and more cars than children.
josephorjoe 8y ago
It will be interesting to see what impact this all has other than raising money, which I hope will actually go to improve public transit. Driving in manhattan is already such a miserable experience, I'm not sure that $10 adds enough extra misery to significantly reduce weekday traffic, but I could certainly be wrong about that (and hope I am). I haven't seen any real breakdowns on "who is driving around manhattan on a Thursday" but it seems to me that it is mostly taxis, car services, buses, and commercial vans/trucks -- almost all of whom can absorb or pass on the costs.
bparsons 8y ago
Some people use the roads a lot more than others. Those people should pay their fair share. Someone who commutes in an SUV from Fairfield to Manhattan every day should have to pay much, much higher fees than someone who rides their bike from Greenpoint to Brooklyn heights. Once (particularly wealthy) people are made to incur the true cost of their lifestyle choices, the hope is that better choices are made.
- pokeymcsnatch 8y ago
  That's the cost of having a functioning society. I don't have kids, yet I still pay school taxes because even though I'm not participating in that particular aspect of society, I still benefit from it. Public biking infrastructure wouldn't be possible without the roads and right-aways we already have for cars and pedestrians; someone only using a mile of roadway on their daily commute is benefiting from the entirety of the transportation infrastructure that everyone has been paying into equally despite their level of use. The guy biking or even walking to work every day I'm sure orders food occasionally, buy groceries, pays for utilities, or otherwise participates in commerce, all of which require roads and vehicles. He's getting a massive benefit from something he doesn't directly use.
  - komali2 8y ago
    I don't think your op was arguing against roads, I think they were more arguing that the cost algorithm is wonky for those roads - for some reason, people that chose the significantly more road- and space- and environmentally- damaging option of the SUV while on that road are paying the same to use it as the bicyclist.
    - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
      The cost structure of most roads is that the cost is in having them exist independent of how much they're used. Most of what causes road maintenance to be required is weather rather than traffic. Moreover, if you have an empty road that nobody is using, you can't save up the unused capacity and use it later. And as for the environmental damage, that is clearly the bailiwick of fuel taxes rather than congestion pricing. So the only thing congestion pricing could be good for is to reduce congestion, i.e. suppress demand. But you don't want to suppress demand -- you don't want people to stay home instead of patronizing local businesses etc. The problem isn't too much demand. Demand is good. The problem is insufficient supply. In some cases, particularly in suburban areas, when there isn't enough supply you can solve it by expanding the roads. In urban areas you typically end up with alternatives like increasing housing density near mass transit hubs, to shift the demand away from the roads because there isn't space to expand them. But in any case what you want isn't to eliminate the demand, it's to satisfy it somehow. Because once you have enough supply to satisfy the demand, you no longer have congestion.
wutbrodo 8y ago
You must not have had many conversations about transit policy. Anecdotally, it's by far the majority view to treat the costs of car infrastructure as handed down from God for free, often in the same conversation as complaints about a given transit system making less revenue than its costs and thus failing to justify its existence. Just because the dynamic implied by the article is irrational doesn't mean it isn't ubiquitous. Most people are horribly stricken with status quo bias, and the costs of car infrastructure and usage is one of the worst examples I've seen of special-casing costs and taking them for granted.
seanmcdirmid 8y ago
You can’t just pay for roads as a one time thing. You have to continuously pay for them. Also, congestion pricing is less about revenue and more about discouraging demand (meter parking on the street is often the same).
andys627 8y ago
If you order a Big Mac at McDonalds and hand them $0.25, you haven't paid for for your Big Mac.
madrox 8y ago
This is true, yet it seems there is an economic recking. It just isn't this straightforward. Tax money does pay for it, but taxes are created by people who get in that position by being popular with the people they're taxing. It's in their best interest to keep taxes as low as possible. This can create races to the bottom where we are, as you say, running at a deficit just to keep the lights on. The people running the budget have been kicking this can down the road (no pun intended) for a while. Simply put, our taxes are paying for it, but they're underfunded for the level of planning and improvement needed. Congestion is a failure to scale. Something to think about as Tax Day approaches...especially if you think your taxes are too high.
seattle_spring 8y ago
> We paid for it with our tax money. I hate this argument so much. It comes up all of the time when chronically underfunded national and state parks say they need to raise prices. "buT muH taX doLLarS alReaDy PaY for MAH PARKS!!" Doubly true for places that add quotas and lotteries to curb overcrowding delicate areas. This is the exact same situation: Your tax dollars paid for part of it, sure, but not close to enough to support what is needed. Therefore you either need to pay more to either increase capacity or reduce impact.
- e1ven 8y ago
  Sure, personally I think it's worth increasing taxes nearly any amount to keep public roads freely available to everyone. Rather than charging everyone and giving some people waivers, increase the taxes with a progressive tax rate, where low-wage people pay less. If you want to take them out and force everyone to use public transportation that's one thing - But if they exist they ought to be subsidized to ensure everyone can use them. We need more economic equality, not less, particularly when to comes to such important things as basic infrastructure.
  - paulgb 8y ago
    We could have all the money in the world for infrastructure and not fix the congestion problem. There's a hard limit to how many cars can physically fit on the roads at a time, and the number of people who want to use the road at rush hour exceeds that limit. Given the cost of driving in NYC, using congestion pricing to pay for transit would almost certainly be a move that increases, not reduces, equality.
    - e1ven 8y ago
      I'm all for reducing the traffic, but I think having the streets be only for the wealthy is among the worst ways to solve that problem. In a way it's analogous to any other resource allocation problem. There are lots of approaches other than "richest wins"
      - 8y ago
CydeWeys 8y ago
As a Manhattan resident, I'm paying a LOT of my tax money for the streets. And I barely get to use them, because like the majority of my fellow Manhattanites, I don't own a car. If the public space were reconfigured to accurately reflect the taxpayer makeup, then you would see a lot less space dedicated to cars and a lot more dedicated to pedestrians, mass transit, and non-automobile transportation options like bicycles and e-scooters.
- DamnYuppie 8y ago
  You do realize that most of the streets in Manhattan were laid down well in advance of the rise of automobiles. In fact they were laid out when carriage and pedestrian traffic were the only options! I believe this map is from 1821! https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3804n.ct001389/ https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3804n.ct001389/
  - atoav 8y ago
    Yet in terms of space usage the streets take HP far more space for far less people. There is necessary traffic within highly populated areas (deliveries, public transport, locals, ...) and there is totally unnecessary traffic e.g. a single person in a SUV taking up the space of half a bus or 20 pedestrians.
- deleted 8y ago
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akira2501 8y ago
> where the people are FINALLY going to have to pay for those roads the government’s been giving away for free for so long. The article also makes the annoying case that there are those who live in apartments and dwellings that have to pay for parking by code, but don't use that parking because they don't drive; however, this entirely fails to take into account the effect on the city as a whole. Parking and road access isn't about individuals, it's about making an entire metropolitan area functional. While these people may not drive and thus are seemingly cheated out of tax money, I have to ask, where do they get their groceries and other goods? How do they expect medical services to reach them in an emergency? How do they expect commerce to occur within an arms reach but at reasonable prices? We all pay for the roads because we all use them, whether we as individuals own a vehicle or not.
- kadendogthing 8y ago
  >Parking and road access isn't about individuals, it's about making an entire metropolitan area functional. You don't need cars for a metro to be functional. This is purely a 1st world construct that we've burdened ourselves with. It can and should be undone. >where do they get their groceries and other goods? From stores in the neighborhood. There is typically truck access and back alley ways for things to get unloaded. If there is not, most roads have some wiggle room to them where the truck can pull over. >how do they expect medical services to reach them in an emergency? Via the road. But you don't need parking for emergency vehicles. Not sure what world you're in, but emergency services don't just throw their hands up in the air if all the parking spaces are taken. Not sure why you think they'd act any different with less parking. It's a really funny example, to be honest. >How do they expect commerce to occur within an arms reach but at reasonable prices? Not having a car free's up a lot of money. Assuming you think the cost of goods would rise to some absurd amount, it'd still be way, way cheaper to pay for those goods in comparison to getting cheap goods because you own a car, and forcing the entire community to pay for miles and miles and miles of road. >We all pay for the roads because we all use them Roads aren't going away. We just probably need less of them, and we need to not construct our cities and metro's with a "car's first" attitude. Because it just shifts the costs elsewhere, for absolutely no gain and quite a few negatives. You know what's great? Not having to drive 30 minutes somewhere. That's 30 minutes I can spend walking out in the sunshine. Not dealing with traffic while risking life and limb, and not paying a boat load of money to go buy $20 worth of goods.
intopieces 8y ago
The article does not claim that the government was giving away roads for free. It says that the true economic cost has been hidden such that decisions around it and other infrastructure have not had to account for that cost.
reaperducer 8y ago
I don’t think people expect streets to be free in the same way you don’t expect the police department to be free, the fire department to be free, public schools, etc. One of the (many) reasons the Civil War was fought was because the north believed in taxpayer-paid free-to-use roads in order to boost commerce and general welfare. The south wanted almost all roads to be privately-owned toll roads. Although I understand the need for congestion mitigation, in a lot of ways the nation's road system is regressing.
stdcli 8y ago
I don't think you understand. Congestion pricing explicitly exposes the costs of the streets. Price spikes due to congestion create market signals for competition to come in and make it cheaper. Right now, you have no clue where your taxes go, nor do you get a cent by cent breakdown of how much went to each cost. There is an enormous amount of economic waste in state and federal budgets before considering 10yr government contracts where incumbents almost always win because of the exorbitant amount of one off acomodations made during the previous decade, but most u.s. government contract bids by law require to entertain 3 bidders before most of the time choosing the same one. Also, by the way, uber works this way. The price will go up for 5 drivers when 100 people need the same 5 drivers as opposed to if 3 or 5 people need them. Alot of economic incentives are made here: 1. More drivers will come to the space because the pay is good. 2. People who can't afford it arent going to pay this congestion price making it possible for drivers to even attempt to prioritise etc. It also helps drivers prioritise. Do they really need to drive. It also helps competition come in and make up this economic gap if there is one. Also, NY energy pricing market, as well as California, Texas and MISO region all operate on real time energy markets using "congestion costs" as one of the frameworks to expose pricing based on demand. The only difference is: 1. You actually get to see an objective algorithmic breakdown of WHY the cost is what is. Try asking the government for that now for street costs....ha 2. The transparent pricing exposes market signals for competition to come compete, for a lower price, making a more economic system both which over time 1. lower prices for consumers (in this case people who use the streets) 2. Create a more efficient system (if a road system is inefficient, and that is the root cause) as a result of 1. In the long run, this is a positive move in the right direction towards governments being more transparent about where costs are allocated. It's a far cry from being able to vote by knowing where your tax money actually goes, but it's a step in the right direction and it doesnt completely divorce government from competition to keep exorbitant costs in check on the government side.
jtd514 8y ago
That is not completely accurate. Streets are primarily funded by excise taxes on gasoline. So yeah, the roads were never free, there is a usage tax on it. Electric vehicles change this dynamic to the point where we need to just charge for use directly.
behindmyscreen 8y ago
More like people are finally going to feel the fiscal responsibility for their road use in a much more direct way.
akgerber 8y ago
The majority of New Yorkers don't own cars, yet the vast majority of NYC road space (and maintenance expense) is dedicated to the small number of people who drive in Manhattan, making the city more dangerous, noisier, and more polluted for the non-driving majority. Without congestion pricing, the non-driving majority is subsidizing those who choose to make Manhattan a worse place to be by driving in it!
megy 8y ago
We paid for it, but only drivers get to use it. And when they aren't using it, they are off limits. And on top of that, they are incredibly dangerous, with a million direct deaths a year. And in a lot of cities, roads take up more space than private residences. Such a huge waste.
- trophycase 8y ago
  Oh and cause sprawl and are harmful to development of cities.
throwaway284721 8y ago
How much you pay in taxes does not depend on how much you use roads. So it doesn't incentivise people to use roads less. That's the point of road congestion pricing.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > How much you pay in taxes does not depend on how much you use roads It's certainly not unrelated to what you pay in gas taxes.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

> don’t masquerade this as some kind of “economic reckoning” In New York, low-income New Yorkers who own a car (or live in the zone) will be eligible for a waiver [1]. People with disabilities, too, will probably be eligible for a waiver. (Some carve-outs are still being pinned down.) Taxis, Ubers, trucks and cars owned by people who opt to pay hundreds of dollars a month in parking are who will be taxed. Given the unusability of our streets, this seems closer to an economic reckoning than a political money grab. (Crowded streets have all kinds of nasty externalities. I live in the zone. Crowded streets mean lots of honking at all hours of the day and night. It means the constant smell of brake pads at street level. When I look out of the window and see a stranded ambulance, it's a reminder of the risk my loved ones and I will face when the day comes when we need an ambulance. Et cetera.) [1] https://710wor.iheart.com/content/2019-04-01-congestion-pricing-budget-approved-by-new-york-state/ https://710wor.iheart.com/content/2019-04-01-congestion-pric...

hourislate 8y ago
How do people feel on a congestion fee for sidewalks. Too many people on sidewalks in NYC making them almost unusable. If you want to walk on a sidewalk during the busiest times you should pay a congestion fee. Why would we stop at just roads?
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > Too many people on sidewalks in NYC making them almost unusable One, pedestrian congestion doesn't exhibit traffic congestion's negative externalities. (You have to get to trampling-risk densities before that occurs.) Two, "sidewalk passes" have no precedent. Congestion pricing has lots of precedent [1]. Three, this is a problem getting attention [2]. America has spent decades throwing lanes at traffic. Not all of that was a waste. Similar effort has yet to broadly benefit pedestrians. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congestion_pricing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congestion_pricing [2] https://www.thevillager.com/2019/04/grassroots-group-calls-for-shared-streets/ https://www.thevillager.com/2019/04/grassroots-group-calls-f...
  - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
    The area around Penn station reaches trampling risk densities five days a week.
    - scrose 8y ago
      Funnily enough, the area around Penn station allocates nearly 80% of the space there to cars, which carry only a tiny fraction of the people traveling through daily. For anyone not familiar with the Penn area, check out this Streetfilms video to get an idea of how lopsided the street allocation is: https://vimeo.com/268616894 https://vimeo.com/268616894.
- alex_anglin 8y ago
  Two reasons would be that ealking doesn't pollute and is healthy activity.
- scrose 8y ago
  Because 20 people can and do fit into the same space that a single SUV occupied by one person takes up trawling for a fare through Midtown, yet 70+ percent of the streetscape is allocated to accommodate that SUV. Also keep in mind pedestrians have to share space with sidewalk planters, outdoor seating, trash bags, and many times, cars parked partially on the sidewalk, making the usable walking space less than 10% of the size of the total street space, yet still allowing exponentially more people to move faster than the cars the street was designed for.
nickles 8y ago
> Taxis, Ubers, trucks and cars owned by people who opt to pay hundreds of dollars a month in parking are who will be taxed. Given the unusability of our streets, this seems closer to an economic reckoning than a political money grab. Taxis and Ubers are forms of public transportation, and likely reduce the overall number of cars on the road. Simultaneously, they reduce the incidences of drunk driving, providing positive externalities. Taxing trucks, used for transporting groceries, goods, and packages to the city, will increase the cost of each of these goods. The increase in grocery prices serves as a regressive tax on all people living within the congestion pricing zone. The failings of the subway and train infrastructure are due to mismanagement on the part of the MTA and untenable, collectively bargained contracts. At the same time that driving within the city will become more expensive, these forms of transport have been reducing service within the city and to the surrounding regions while simultaneously increasing fares. [0] https://medium.com/@johnnyknocke/the-mta-loses-six-billion-dollars-a-year-and-nobody-cares-d0d23093b2d8 https://medium.com/@johnnyknocke/the-mta-loses-six-billion-d... [1] https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/local/article/Cuts-to-Metro-North-could-impact-more-than-12516146.php https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/local/article/Cuts-to-Metro... [2] https://jalopnik.com/new-york-wont-shut-down-a-major-subway-line-now-but-it-1831464730 https://jalopnik.com/new-york-wont-shut-down-a-major-subway-... [3] https://trid.trb.org/view/384171 https://trid.trb.org/view/384171
- dondawest 8y ago
  It’s well established that Uber and lyft INCREASE the amount of cars on the road (and thus congestion) because they incentivize non-car-owners to take car trips they wouldn’t normally take. Uber and Lyft lead to a net INCREASE in cars on the road, not a decrease.
  - nickles 8y ago
    > It’s well established that Uber and lyft INCREASE the amount of cars >> Our findings provide evidence that after entering an urban area, ride-sharing services such as Uber significantly decrease traffic congestion time, congestion costs, and excessive fuel consumption. To further assess the robustness of the main results, we perform additional analyses including the use of alternative measures, instrumental variables, placebo tests, heterogeneous effects, and a relative time model with more granular data. We discuss a few plausible mechanisms to explain our findings as well as their implications for the platform-based sharing economy. [0] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2838043 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2838043
C1sc0cat 8y ago
So why are you penalising those with off street parking ?
- scrose 8y ago
  Parking, whether on street or off-street doesn't relate to congestion pricing. Congestion pricing charges for the luxury of driving into one of the most densely populated and well-served areas of transit in the country. Charging people to offset a negative externality they are entirely responsible for should not be conflated with penalization.
  - andromeduck 8y ago
    On street parking is taking up space that could have been use for transport or housing.
mruts 8y ago
The carve-outs are precisely the problem with the congestion pricing. If everyone in mid-town just had to pay a flat fee, fine, that seems somewhat fair. But now every interest group is rent-seeking and going to lobby to be exempt. That's the unfair and corrupt part, not the fee. NYC having congestion pricing isn't the most unreasonable thing in the world. Some might say it's long overdue. But the legislature doesn't have the political will or want to actually implement a fair, flat fee. Instead, the people who don't fit into a easily defined interest group will have to pay, and everyone else will get to drive for free. If I have to pay to drive, then everyone else should to, regardless if they are poor, disabled, rich, taxis, ubers, or whatever.
- azernik 8y ago
  "Rent-seeking" is not a very descriptive label. This (like most other flat consumption taxes) is a regressive tax. It is a stated policy goal of the ruling party to reduce income inequality, not increase it. The disabled are a group with very inflexible transportation demand, in that they are very unlikely to change their behavior in response to higher prices (because they can't); we already make a whole ton of legal accommodations for them like handicapped parking, and this fits into that overall policy.
  - mruts 8y ago
    It's not like having carve outs makes it any less regressive. It just allows the government to paper over a very complex problem with a naive and simple "solution". Unfortunately, this sort of thinking has been the dominant mode in politics and legislation since, I dunno, the Roman empire? Riddle your laws and regulations and tax-codes with exemptions and deductions and carve-outs so you can please the people who put you in power and who will keep your in power. And since almost everyone is part of some random interest group (and many, part of a lot interests groups like married home-owning couples with kids), it usually works.
    - azernik 8y ago
      If "poor people" is your interest group, then by definition it makes the tax less regressive!
Spooky23 8y ago
You'll have less congested streets when the utility of being in Manhattan is less valuable than dealing with Manhattan.
closeparen 8y ago
Progresssive taxation means low income people already pay less for roads.
- chrisdhoover 8y ago
  Except the funding that comes from gas taxes.
mancerayder 8y ago
Disabilities should get a waiver. There is already a special license plate and a placard. But now, low-income? There are problems: . You can be low-income and still own a car, and still be near public transport. Why would you be incentivized to own a car, first off, and drive it into a congested area? . It's not the "low-income" exception that's the last exception. There are tens of thousands of City-provided placards for teachers, firefighters and civil servants with an unspoken rule by the police to never ticket them, even if parked illegally. This, plus the idea of exceptions just smell like another foray into a De Blasio handing something out for please one union or group or another. These are parking placards, and I used that example to demonstrate what happens when we pick and choose winners and losers - what criteria do we go by, in a city of 8.5M? Which group suffers the most? . There are low-income allowanced for things such as HPD buildings and other subsidies. I know people who make (as a couple) half a million dollars a year who still own real estate with income restrictions, because the income was only verified Year 1 and it became de facto voluntary in the years after that. . A huge percentage of people are low-income in this City. And hold on just a second - you're low income but you're spending how many hundreds of dollars a month on a lease, gas, maintenance, and so forth for a far, and insurance in one of the most expensive insurance markets? Have people lost their senses to not question that?
Scoundreller 8y ago
> In New York, low-income New Yorkers who own a car (or live in the zone) will be eligible for a waiver [1] I’m going to be that guy. Why not write them a cheque whether they drive or not?

the_gastropod 8y ago

Bear in mind only ~45% of NYC residents own cars. Yet, we all pay taxes to pay for maintaining their infrastructure. Everyone paying taxes to support some is fine when that thing is beneficial to society at large (e.g., public education, fire departments, welfare, etc.) I don't think driving counts as an activity that should be subsidized by the taxpayer.

dcosson 8y ago
If you ever order something online or get food delivery or take a taxi or uber you do use the roads, and the number of people who do those things somewhat regularly is a lot closer to 100%. But you might still be using the roads a lot less than someone who drives to and from work every day. So some combination of tax money and tolls/congestion pricing seems to make the most sense from this usage based angle.
- the_gastropod 8y ago
  Absolutely! And as long as those delivery trucks, taxis, etc. pay the congestion pricing, it'll get priced into their services too.
  - leetcrew 8y ago
    while we're at it, let's make the congestion pricing proportional to some power of vehicle weight so that it also reflects the cost of road maintenance.
    - v_lisivka 8y ago
      Drivers pay fuel taxes already. Fuel taxes are proportional to vehicle weight and power. IMHO, it better to tax normalized_areanormalized_weightnormalized_congestion . For example, if vehicle is 30% spacer than average, has 50% more weight per space than average, and uses road at peak hour when road usage is 50% more than average, then it should pay 1.3 x 1.5 x 1.5 = ~3x tax. If owner want to reduce tax, then it should use smaller, lighter car, and use it at off-peak hours, e.g. 0.9 x 0.9 x 0.5 = 0.4.

CalRobert 8y ago

OK, how about "it's a way to make sure people who need the road most are the ones who get to use it" Kind of how parking meters are FANTASTIC because they mean I can finally get a damn space for the rare occasion when I rent a van or car and need to park in front of my flat. I just wish they'd raise prices on my street because it's still tough sometimes.

WillPostForFood 8y ago
"it's a way to make sure people who need the road most are the ones who get to use it" It is too regressive to achieve that end. If you have a lot of money, it is a trivial cost for convenience. If you are poor, but would really benefit from road access, you still may not be able to afford it. You could easily frame this as "keep the poor off the road so the rich don't have to deal with traffic".
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- CalRobert 8y ago
  But we already do that with homes, so why not be consistent and do it with cars? Anyway, making walking and cycling as crappy as possible by giving people congested, polluted, dangerous streets is pretty inconsiderate to poor people as is. And the article specifically mentions waivers for low income people.
  - closeparen 8y ago
    Congestion makes cycling a little nicer, since the cars are slower and more predictable, and you’re the one zipping past them.
    - CalRobert 8y ago
      I've cycled in lots of congested cities. This isn't completely wrong, but it's like going from one to two when we should aim for ten. But true, the _worst_ for cycling is very busy but still fast roads. Wilshire blvd on a Saturday comes to mind

zacharyautin11 8y ago

You missed the point. The article shows the reality that direct costs to consumer would have resulted in fewer auto sales. Instead we have sprawl and more cars than children.

josephorjoe 8y ago

It will be interesting to see what impact this all has other than raising money, which I hope will actually go to improve public transit. Driving in manhattan is already such a miserable experience, I'm not sure that $10 adds enough extra misery to significantly reduce weekday traffic, but I could certainly be wrong about that (and hope I am). I haven't seen any real breakdowns on "who is driving around manhattan on a Thursday" but it seems to me that it is mostly taxis, car services, buses, and commercial vans/trucks -- almost all of whom can absorb or pass on the costs.

bparsons 8y ago

Some people use the roads a lot more than others. Those people should pay their fair share. Someone who commutes in an SUV from Fairfield to Manhattan every day should have to pay much, much higher fees than someone who rides their bike from Greenpoint to Brooklyn heights. Once (particularly wealthy) people are made to incur the true cost of their lifestyle choices, the hope is that better choices are made.

pokeymcsnatch 8y ago
That's the cost of having a functioning society. I don't have kids, yet I still pay school taxes because even though I'm not participating in that particular aspect of society, I still benefit from it. Public biking infrastructure wouldn't be possible without the roads and right-aways we already have for cars and pedestrians; someone only using a mile of roadway on their daily commute is benefiting from the entirety of the transportation infrastructure that everyone has been paying into equally despite their level of use. The guy biking or even walking to work every day I'm sure orders food occasionally, buy groceries, pays for utilities, or otherwise participates in commerce, all of which require roads and vehicles. He's getting a massive benefit from something he doesn't directly use.
- komali2 8y ago
  I don't think your op was arguing against roads, I think they were more arguing that the cost algorithm is wonky for those roads - for some reason, people that chose the significantly more road- and space- and environmentally- damaging option of the SUV while on that road are paying the same to use it as the bicyclist.
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    The cost structure of most roads is that the cost is in having them exist independent of how much they're used. Most of what causes road maintenance to be required is weather rather than traffic. Moreover, if you have an empty road that nobody is using, you can't save up the unused capacity and use it later. And as for the environmental damage, that is clearly the bailiwick of fuel taxes rather than congestion pricing. So the only thing congestion pricing could be good for is to reduce congestion, i.e. suppress demand. But you don't want to suppress demand -- you don't want people to stay home instead of patronizing local businesses etc. The problem isn't too much demand. Demand is good. The problem is insufficient supply. In some cases, particularly in suburban areas, when there isn't enough supply you can solve it by expanding the roads. In urban areas you typically end up with alternatives like increasing housing density near mass transit hubs, to shift the demand away from the roads because there isn't space to expand them. But in any case what you want isn't to eliminate the demand, it's to satisfy it somehow. Because once you have enough supply to satisfy the demand, you no longer have congestion.

wutbrodo 8y ago

You must not have had many conversations about transit policy. Anecdotally, it's by far the majority view to treat the costs of car infrastructure as handed down from God for free, often in the same conversation as complaints about a given transit system making less revenue than its costs and thus failing to justify its existence. Just because the dynamic implied by the article is irrational doesn't mean it isn't ubiquitous. Most people are horribly stricken with status quo bias, and the costs of car infrastructure and usage is one of the worst examples I've seen of special-casing costs and taking them for granted.

seanmcdirmid 8y ago

You can’t just pay for roads as a one time thing. You have to continuously pay for them. Also, congestion pricing is less about revenue and more about discouraging demand (meter parking on the street is often the same).

andys627 8y ago

If you order a Big Mac at McDonalds and hand them $0.25, you haven't paid for for your Big Mac.

madrox 8y ago

This is true, yet it seems there is an economic recking. It just isn't this straightforward. Tax money does pay for it, but taxes are created by people who get in that position by being popular with the people they're taxing. It's in their best interest to keep taxes as low as possible. This can create races to the bottom where we are, as you say, running at a deficit just to keep the lights on. The people running the budget have been kicking this can down the road (no pun intended) for a while. Simply put, our taxes are paying for it, but they're underfunded for the level of planning and improvement needed. Congestion is a failure to scale. Something to think about as Tax Day approaches...especially if you think your taxes are too high.

seattle_spring 8y ago

> We paid for it with our tax money. I hate this argument so much. It comes up all of the time when chronically underfunded national and state parks say they need to raise prices. "buT muH taX doLLarS alReaDy PaY for MAH PARKS!!" Doubly true for places that add quotas and lotteries to curb overcrowding delicate areas. This is the exact same situation: Your tax dollars paid for part of it, sure, but not close to enough to support what is needed. Therefore you either need to pay more to either increase capacity or reduce impact.

e1ven 8y ago
Sure, personally I think it's worth increasing taxes nearly any amount to keep public roads freely available to everyone. Rather than charging everyone and giving some people waivers, increase the taxes with a progressive tax rate, where low-wage people pay less. If you want to take them out and force everyone to use public transportation that's one thing - But if they exist they ought to be subsidized to ensure everyone can use them. We need more economic equality, not less, particularly when to comes to such important things as basic infrastructure.
- paulgb 8y ago
  We could have all the money in the world for infrastructure and not fix the congestion problem. There's a hard limit to how many cars can physically fit on the roads at a time, and the number of people who want to use the road at rush hour exceeds that limit. Given the cost of driving in NYC, using congestion pricing to pay for transit would almost certainly be a move that increases, not reduces, equality.
  - e1ven 8y ago
    I'm all for reducing the traffic, but I think having the streets be only for the wealthy is among the worst ways to solve that problem. In a way it's analogous to any other resource allocation problem. There are lots of approaches other than "richest wins"
    - 8y ago

CydeWeys 8y ago

As a Manhattan resident, I'm paying a LOT of my tax money for the streets. And I barely get to use them, because like the majority of my fellow Manhattanites, I don't own a car. If the public space were reconfigured to accurately reflect the taxpayer makeup, then you would see a lot less space dedicated to cars and a lot more dedicated to pedestrians, mass transit, and non-automobile transportation options like bicycles and e-scooters.

DamnYuppie 8y ago
You do realize that most of the streets in Manhattan were laid down well in advance of the rise of automobiles. In fact they were laid out when carriage and pedestrian traffic were the only options! I believe this map is from 1821! https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3804n.ct001389/ https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3804n.ct001389/
- atoav 8y ago
  Yet in terms of space usage the streets take HP far more space for far less people. There is necessary traffic within highly populated areas (deliveries, public transport, locals, ...) and there is totally unnecessary traffic e.g. a single person in a SUV taking up the space of half a bus or 20 pedestrians.
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akira2501 8y ago

> where the people are FINALLY going to have to pay for those roads the government’s been giving away for free for so long. The article also makes the annoying case that there are those who live in apartments and dwellings that have to pay for parking by code, but don't use that parking because they don't drive; however, this entirely fails to take into account the effect on the city as a whole. Parking and road access isn't about individuals, it's about making an entire metropolitan area functional. While these people may not drive and thus are seemingly cheated out of tax money, I have to ask, where do they get their groceries and other goods? How do they expect medical services to reach them in an emergency? How do they expect commerce to occur within an arms reach but at reasonable prices? We all pay for the roads because we all use them, whether we as individuals own a vehicle or not.

kadendogthing 8y ago
>Parking and road access isn't about individuals, it's about making an entire metropolitan area functional. You don't need cars for a metro to be functional. This is purely a 1st world construct that we've burdened ourselves with. It can and should be undone. >where do they get their groceries and other goods? From stores in the neighborhood. There is typically truck access and back alley ways for things to get unloaded. If there is not, most roads have some wiggle room to them where the truck can pull over. >how do they expect medical services to reach them in an emergency? Via the road. But you don't need parking for emergency vehicles. Not sure what world you're in, but emergency services don't just throw their hands up in the air if all the parking spaces are taken. Not sure why you think they'd act any different with less parking. It's a really funny example, to be honest. >How do they expect commerce to occur within an arms reach but at reasonable prices? Not having a car free's up a lot of money. Assuming you think the cost of goods would rise to some absurd amount, it'd still be way, way cheaper to pay for those goods in comparison to getting cheap goods because you own a car, and forcing the entire community to pay for miles and miles and miles of road. >We all pay for the roads because we all use them Roads aren't going away. We just probably need less of them, and we need to not construct our cities and metro's with a "car's first" attitude. Because it just shifts the costs elsewhere, for absolutely no gain and quite a few negatives. You know what's great? Not having to drive 30 minutes somewhere. That's 30 minutes I can spend walking out in the sunshine. Not dealing with traffic while risking life and limb, and not paying a boat load of money to go buy $20 worth of goods.

intopieces 8y ago

The article does not claim that the government was giving away roads for free. It says that the true economic cost has been hidden such that decisions around it and other infrastructure have not had to account for that cost.

reaperducer 8y ago

I don’t think people expect streets to be free in the same way you don’t expect the police department to be free, the fire department to be free, public schools, etc. One of the (many) reasons the Civil War was fought was because the north believed in taxpayer-paid free-to-use roads in order to boost commerce and general welfare. The south wanted almost all roads to be privately-owned toll roads. Although I understand the need for congestion mitigation, in a lot of ways the nation's road system is regressing.

stdcli 8y ago

I don't think you understand. Congestion pricing explicitly exposes the costs of the streets. Price spikes due to congestion create market signals for competition to come in and make it cheaper. Right now, you have no clue where your taxes go, nor do you get a cent by cent breakdown of how much went to each cost. There is an enormous amount of economic waste in state and federal budgets before considering 10yr government contracts where incumbents almost always win because of the exorbitant amount of one off acomodations made during the previous decade, but most u.s. government contract bids by law require to entertain 3 bidders before most of the time choosing the same one. Also, by the way, uber works this way. The price will go up for 5 drivers when 100 people need the same 5 drivers as opposed to if 3 or 5 people need them. Alot of economic incentives are made here: 1. More drivers will come to the space because the pay is good. 2. People who can't afford it arent going to pay this congestion price making it possible for drivers to even attempt to prioritise etc. It also helps drivers prioritise. Do they really need to drive. It also helps competition come in and make up this economic gap if there is one. Also, NY energy pricing market, as well as California, Texas and MISO region all operate on real time energy markets using "congestion costs" as one of the frameworks to expose pricing based on demand. The only difference is: 1. You actually get to see an objective algorithmic breakdown of WHY the cost is what is. Try asking the government for that now for street costs....ha 2. The transparent pricing exposes market signals for competition to come compete, for a lower price, making a more economic system both which over time 1. lower prices for consumers (in this case people who use the streets) 2. Create a more efficient system (if a road system is inefficient, and that is the root cause) as a result of 1. In the long run, this is a positive move in the right direction towards governments being more transparent about where costs are allocated. It's a far cry from being able to vote by knowing where your tax money actually goes, but it's a step in the right direction and it doesnt completely divorce government from competition to keep exorbitant costs in check on the government side.

jtd514 8y ago

That is not completely accurate. Streets are primarily funded by excise taxes on gasoline. So yeah, the roads were never free, there is a usage tax on it. Electric vehicles change this dynamic to the point where we need to just charge for use directly.

behindmyscreen 8y ago

More like people are finally going to feel the fiscal responsibility for their road use in a much more direct way.

akgerber 8y ago

The majority of New Yorkers don't own cars, yet the vast majority of NYC road space (and maintenance expense) is dedicated to the small number of people who drive in Manhattan, making the city more dangerous, noisier, and more polluted for the non-driving majority. Without congestion pricing, the non-driving majority is subsidizing those who choose to make Manhattan a worse place to be by driving in it!

megy 8y ago

We paid for it, but only drivers get to use it. And when they aren't using it, they are off limits. And on top of that, they are incredibly dangerous, with a million direct deaths a year. And in a lot of cities, roads take up more space than private residences. Such a huge waste.

trophycase 8y ago
Oh and cause sprawl and are harmful to development of cities.

throwaway284721 8y ago

How much you pay in taxes does not depend on how much you use roads. So it doesn't incentivise people to use roads less. That's the point of road congestion pricing.

dragonwriter 8y ago
> How much you pay in taxes does not depend on how much you use roads It's certainly not unrelated to what you pay in gas taxes.