5 ms·

Instead of an outright ban, I'd love to see price-prohibitive congestion pricing and street-parking pricing (prohibitive in the sense that it wouldn't make fina

Instead of an outright ban, I'd love to see price-prohibitive congestion pricing and street-parking pricing (prohibitive in the sense that it wouldn't make financial sense to drive a car as the primary mode of transport, not that if someone needed to occasionally use a car they couldn't) within Manhattan, with the aforementioned provisions carved out for those who demonstrate a need for a car. That way, for any of those stubborn and wealthy enough who refuse to use public transit, we can direct all funds generated to improving public transit -- not just reliability and frequency, but also line expansions and remodeling the deteriorating stations and upgrading train/bus interiors to create a first-class transit experience for the rest of us and to finally prioritize public transit correctly in the US. Singapore already operates a similar (but stricter and broader) scheme: https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/31/asia/singapore-cars/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/31/asia/singapore-cars/index.htm....

clairity 7y ago
i'm a big fan of mixed-use streets. for example, on a 6-lane street, you'd have sidewalks for foot traffic, 1 grade-separated lane each way for bikes/scooters, 1 protected lane each way for buses, and 1 lane each way for cars, with the car lane being progressively congestion-priced (by income/wealth so that you don't completely shut out the poor from driving into the city when necessary). for efficiency and traffic calming, narrow the car lane to 9-10 ft wide (rather than the typical 11-12 ft in the US), but leave 11-12 ft wide lanes for buses (and emergency vehicles). 6-8 ft bike lanes allows 2-abreast biking/scootering. widen sidewalks and plant trees along all of them. there should be no free street parking, except for the disabled (and maybe temporary commercial use), limited to side streets rather than major thoroughfares. i'm cheering for LA to do this, with it's awesome weather, endlessly-wide streets, and bad and worsening traffic.
ascagnel_ 7y ago
I love this idea — it really just needs to be expensive enough to make commuting by public transit a better option than by car. There are too many one-off cases where you’d need a car (for one anecdotal example, having to drive a family member home after surgery was an uncommon case where I drove into Manhattan, instead of taking public transit) to make a total ban workable without seriously disrupting people’s lives in other ways.
neilv 7y ago
> price-prohibitive congestion pricing and street-parking pricing [...] That way, for any of those stubborn and wealthy enough who refuse to use public transit, we can direct all funds generated to improving public transit* That seems to hand the shared public resource to the wealthy. (Regardless of whether you envision the revenue being used to someday provide a comparably attractive option for the non-wealthy.)
- linkregister 7y ago
  Regardless of whether wealthy folks' cars are allowed on the road, streets need to exist in order to deliver goods, run buses, and carry disabled passengers to their destinations. Congestion exemptions for disabled transporters and other social goods can be enacted to eliminate the regressive risk of congestion pricing.
- pkulak 7y ago
  Is it really "handing" if it's market priced?
  - abdullahkhalids 7y ago
    1. The ability to transit from one place to another is a right of the people of a city, that should not be modulated by one's socioeconomic class (or medical condition or sex etc). 2. If rich people can zoom around the city much faster than poor people, then rich people have more of this right than poor people. Not good. 3. Crucial to this argument is that the price is prohibitive in nature, and that transit by car is a rivalrous good. So other rights, such as easy access to food, don't fall so easily to this argument because poor people can still buy nutritious food from their wages, even if rich people can buy more expensive and better food.
  - lucian1900 7y ago
    Yes. Markets heavily bias in favour of the richest consumer.
- thebradbain 7y ago
  My response to that would be in a lot of ways car ownership is already cost-prohibitive after insurance, gas, maintenance and parking to a not-insignificant part of the population, and indeed these people do already primarily use public transit — not so much out of convenience but necessity. Should our regulations accept this as a necessary evil that those who today can’t already afford a car must rely on subpar second-class transit? If the vast majority of people used public transit as their primarily form of transit, and we dedicated as much resources to it as we do to our roads, it would only get better for everyone. If we could entice people to get out of their cars and politicians to drastically increase public investment in transit, then yes, congestion pricing wouldn’t be necessary at all — but in general that hasn’t been the case, and nothing in recent history points to this paradigm shift happening on its own. I believe this issue is in many ways one of prioritization and balance, and right now the status quo is already cutting off some of the most vulnerable demographics from this “shared public resource.”

clairity 7y ago

i'm a big fan of mixed-use streets. for example, on a 6-lane street, you'd have sidewalks for foot traffic, 1 grade-separated lane each way for bikes/scooters, 1 protected lane each way for buses, and 1 lane each way for cars, with the car lane being progressively congestion-priced (by income/wealth so that you don't completely shut out the poor from driving into the city when necessary). for efficiency and traffic calming, narrow the car lane to 9-10 ft wide (rather than the typical 11-12 ft in the US), but leave 11-12 ft wide lanes for buses (and emergency vehicles). 6-8 ft bike lanes allows 2-abreast biking/scootering. widen sidewalks and plant trees along all of them. there should be no free street parking, except for the disabled (and maybe temporary commercial use), limited to side streets rather than major thoroughfares. i'm cheering for LA to do this, with it's awesome weather, endlessly-wide streets, and bad and worsening traffic.

ascagnel_ 7y ago

I love this idea — it really just needs to be expensive enough to make commuting by public transit a better option than by car. There are too many one-off cases where you’d need a car (for one anecdotal example, having to drive a family member home after surgery was an uncommon case where I drove into Manhattan, instead of taking public transit) to make a total ban workable without seriously disrupting people’s lives in other ways.

neilv 7y ago

> price-prohibitive congestion pricing and street-parking pricing [...] That way, for any of those stubborn and wealthy enough who refuse to use public transit, we can direct all funds generated to improving public transit* That seems to hand the shared public resource to the wealthy. (Regardless of whether you envision the revenue being used to someday provide a comparably attractive option for the non-wealthy.)

linkregister 7y ago
Regardless of whether wealthy folks' cars are allowed on the road, streets need to exist in order to deliver goods, run buses, and carry disabled passengers to their destinations. Congestion exemptions for disabled transporters and other social goods can be enacted to eliminate the regressive risk of congestion pricing.
pkulak 7y ago
Is it really "handing" if it's market priced?
- abdullahkhalids 7y ago
  1. The ability to transit from one place to another is a right of the people of a city, that should not be modulated by one's socioeconomic class (or medical condition or sex etc). 2. If rich people can zoom around the city much faster than poor people, then rich people have more of this right than poor people. Not good. 3. Crucial to this argument is that the price is prohibitive in nature, and that transit by car is a rivalrous good. So other rights, such as easy access to food, don't fall so easily to this argument because poor people can still buy nutritious food from their wages, even if rich people can buy more expensive and better food.
- lucian1900 7y ago
  Yes. Markets heavily bias in favour of the richest consumer.
thebradbain 7y ago
My response to that would be in a lot of ways car ownership is already cost-prohibitive after insurance, gas, maintenance and parking to a not-insignificant part of the population, and indeed these people do already primarily use public transit — not so much out of convenience but necessity. Should our regulations accept this as a necessary evil that those who today can’t already afford a car must rely on subpar second-class transit? If the vast majority of people used public transit as their primarily form of transit, and we dedicated as much resources to it as we do to our roads, it would only get better for everyone. If we could entice people to get out of their cars and politicians to drastically increase public investment in transit, then yes, congestion pricing wouldn’t be necessary at all — but in general that hasn’t been the case, and nothing in recent history points to this paradigm shift happening on its own. I believe this issue is in many ways one of prioritization and balance, and right now the status quo is already cutting off some of the most vulnerable demographics from this “shared public resource.”