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I’m a fan of charging market efficient rates for shared goods. The congestion situation in the Holland Tunnel is awful and bleeds out into various streets of Ma

by Tinyyy 3y ago

I’m a fan of charging market efficient rates for shared goods. The congestion situation in the Holland Tunnel is awful and bleeds out into various streets of Manhattan as well. The cost of sitting in crawling traffic with aggressive drivers cutting around is probably much more than an extra $20.

DaveExeter 3y ago
I agree! Let's get the poors off the roads. The peasant class belongs on public transport, not on taxpayer-funded roads.
- ZoomerCretin 3y ago
  There's nothing wrong with public transport. The subway is frequently faster than driving anyway.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Discrimination is much easier once you take a racial aspect out and just use socioeconomic status instead.
  - pierat 3y ago
    Absolutely true. In fact this was the 1980s republican plan. Lee Atwater has a great hot mic moment about this. You start out in 1954 by saying, “Ni*er, ni*er, ni*er.” By 1968 you can’t say “ni*er”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Ni*er, ni*er.” https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/ https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwa... --------------- And you also have New York City and the racist/classist bridges. Bridges were built too low for public transit to get out to Long Island. It did a VERY effective job at keeping black people and poor people away from the middle class and higher areas. " In one of the book's most memorable passages, Caro reveals that Moses ordered his engineers to build the bridges low over the parkway to keep buses from the city away from Jones Beach—buses presumably filled with the poor blacks and Puerto Ricans Moses despised. The story was told to Caro by Sidney M. Shapiro, a close Moses associate and former chief engineer and general manager of the Long Island State Park Commission." Who would have thought that building a bridge could be racist and classist? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-09/robert-moses-and-his-racist-parkway-explained https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-09/robert-mo...
- raldi 3y ago
  Lower-income Americans already take the bus far more than wealthy ones, who are much more likely to be driving. A congestion charge will fall disproportionately on the wealthy, and allow the buses carrying lower-income folks to move throughout the city faster.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    This isn’t exactly true. Rich people have the resources to live closer to where they work, they are more likely to WFH, they can ride a bike to work often, or maybe even walk. Poor people often live farther away from their jobs, they have worse commutes, and the likelihood of accomplishing that long commute by mass transit in many American isn’t that great. Anecdotally, we are well to do, chose our house location to minimize our commute and make it easy by bus (and ensure we can go to the grocery store by foot). Then I got the opportunity to work from home, my wife has a straight shot from bus to her office downtown, the kid’s schools (even high school) are all within walking distance. There is no way we could have set all that up without money.
    - mc32 3y ago
      I was poor, I took the bus to college and work (there were times I'd have to add 30 minutes where I knew I'd have to leg it). It was an hour and a half with transfers. It's doable --you get used to it, just like tech workers get used to driving in from the East Bay into the Peninsula. It's no biggie. On the way home, sometimes you get off at a different stop to pick up groceries and then you're the one walking home with two plastic bags -at first your arms ache. Again, you get used to it.
      - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
        There are multiple levels of poor, like there are multiple levels of rich. Plenty of people are rich enough to drive, but not rich enough to live in convenient locations. It’s weird that, when I was going to university, many people would save money by living far off campus and driving to pay $5 for parking. The richer kids were living on or next to campus, and didn’t even need cars. Housing is expensive, and the American system has made driving unnaturally cheap.
- zeroonetwothree 3y ago
  Having more money lets you buy more of everything. Yet you are only concerned about roads (which aren’t even used by the poorest segment since they can’t afford a car)? Why not focus on making something more fundamental to existence free, like food or shelter? Oh right it’s because it creates poor incentives and overuse (tragedy of the commons) exactly like we see with roads (and parking). If car drivers had to pay the full cost of the resources they use it would reduce wasteful driving substantially. And we could use money collected in that way to pay for transit (or just give it as a tax rebate to low income people if you prefer).
  - Tinyyy 3y ago
    Yea you’re exactly right, there’s a tragedy of the commons situation right now. You could either decrease the demand or increase the supply to fix this problem, and it seems pretty impossible to increase the supply (build a bridge across the Hudson? That’s crazy). So here we are.
    - fellowmartian 3y ago
      Unironically I’d hate a new bridge across the Hudson around the Holland Tunnel, that area is the crown jewel of Manhattan and its seafront should be protected. It’s also one of the few safe bike paths in the city where casual bikers would feel comfortable biking. Additionally, we already have one Canal St in the area, we don’t need another. Sorry for this small NIMBY rant.
      - bobthepanda 3y ago
        NIMBYism is not inherently a bad thing; it was originally coined by the waste management industry to describe opposition to local landfills and toxic waste dumps, which any sane person doesn't actually want to live next to. (Yes, I know Europe and Japan build fancy incinerators with parks and whatnot that are very pleasant, but the odds of that being built in the US by penny-pinching private industry is nil.)
    - nimbleplum40 3y ago
- mc32 3y ago
  Yes, they do! Everyone should be taking public transit, the poor as well --and if they prefer private transport, then it's time to pay up!
- Tinyyy 3y ago
  I grew up in a city with insanely high taxes on cars and roads (Singapore). But you could get anywhere easily with the bus or MRT. In a rush? Your Grab taxi can get you there quickly and efficiently. I’m not sure why it’d be better to make everyone’s day worse instead. Does that really make the world a fairer place?
- anotherhue 3y ago
  > out of a region of 28 million people, just an estimated 16,100 low-income people commute to work via car in Lower Manhattan, according to the MTA
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    Exactly. If those 16K really concern somebody, they should just issue them a pass based on income. And if capitalism means anything, the employers of those 16K will have to raise pay to attract people.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- renewiltord 3y ago
  Yep, given sufficient externalities, this is true. As an example, watch this fictional response to the fact that better cars cost more: Let's get the poors out of safe cars. The peasant class belongs in beaters, while the rich ride safe. Consider the choices necessary to make that statement untrue.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    You mean how the richer you are, the bigger (and safer) the vehicle you can afford? I drive by many parents taking their kids wherever in old corollas or kias or other small car, and I see many parents at my kids’ daycare dropping their kids off in large suburbans/F150/Sequoia/etc.
    - beerandt 3y ago
      If you want safer vehicles across the board, get rid of cafe and other efficiency regulations. At this point in the current regulatory framework, safety and efficiency are in direct competition.
    - renewiltord 3y ago
      Certainly. That's one way, but also poorer people own older cars. An argument that rests on equality should support the idea that all people deserve the same car irrespective of how much money they have.
      - estebank 3y ago
        Equality would be to be able to go where you need to go, in reasonable time, cost and accomodation, regardless of class, race, gender or disability. Focusing on cars is over-indexing on one potential solution. People want to move around. Cars are only one way of doing so.
- bradleyjg 3y ago
  The “poors,” as you so delightfully put it have nowhere to park in those parts of Manhattan. So they won’t be going there (leaving aside deliveries and taxis, but then the fee is a cost of doing business.) The group this will hit the hardest are those with de facto immunity from parking tickets. Cops, teachers, members of certain trade unions, and so on. However, lest you worry too much about these folk in light of automated speed and red light cameras they’ve taken to obscuring their license plates or buying fraudulent paper plates on the internet. Of course nothing is done about these effectively untraceable vehicles.
cyberax 3y ago
> I’m a fan of charging market efficient rates for shared goods. Are you a fan of charging market rates for transit as well?
- creato 3y ago
  Sure, as long as you consider externalities like congestion. That would suggest charging for passage through congested areas (the subject of this thread), and subsidizing mass transit in congested areas.
  - cyberax 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - paulgb 3y ago
      I’m suspicious of that. LA is famous for low use of transit (relative to population) and is also famous for having bad congestion.
      - cyberax 3y ago
        You can screw up everything if you try hard enough. LA is an example of that. On the other hand, the Greater Houston Area has a similar population to NYC, yet it has 26-minute commutes versus 36 minutes for NYC.
        nimbleplum40 3y ago
        Huh? The Houston metro area has 7.5 million people. The New York City metro area has 20 million. If you want to look at the city proper (not a great comparison since city boundaries are somewhat arbitrary) then it’s 2 million for Houston versus 8 million for NYC. It’s not even close.
    - Eisenstein 3y ago
      You logic is completely backwards. Dense housing doesn't result in traffic congestion. If more people live closer together there is more population density, but as long as they can access commercial areas easily then they can do their shopping and work and recreational tasks without cars. When you remove cars then you suddenly have much more living space because a car takes up a large amount of room to store and there must be extra space for commuters and visitors. Are you seriously arguing that adding more space for cars makes cities less congested? For every one parking space you add you remove a large amount of useful space for other things.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

by Tinyyy 3y ago

DaveExeter 3y ago

I agree! Let's get the poors off the roads. The peasant class belongs on public transport, not on taxpayer-funded roads.

ZoomerCretin 3y ago
There's nothing wrong with public transport. The subway is frequently faster than driving anyway.
bombcar 3y ago
Discrimination is much easier once you take a racial aspect out and just use socioeconomic status instead.
- pierat 3y ago
  Absolutely true. In fact this was the 1980s republican plan. Lee Atwater has a great hot mic moment about this. You start out in 1954 by saying, “Ni*er, ni*er, ni*er.” By 1968 you can’t say “ni*er”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Ni*er, ni*er.” https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/ https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwa... --------------- And you also have New York City and the racist/classist bridges. Bridges were built too low for public transit to get out to Long Island. It did a VERY effective job at keeping black people and poor people away from the middle class and higher areas. " In one of the book's most memorable passages, Caro reveals that Moses ordered his engineers to build the bridges low over the parkway to keep buses from the city away from Jones Beach—buses presumably filled with the poor blacks and Puerto Ricans Moses despised. The story was told to Caro by Sidney M. Shapiro, a close Moses associate and former chief engineer and general manager of the Long Island State Park Commission." Who would have thought that building a bridge could be racist and classist? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-09/robert-moses-and-his-racist-parkway-explained https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-09/robert-mo...
raldi 3y ago
Lower-income Americans already take the bus far more than wealthy ones, who are much more likely to be driving. A congestion charge will fall disproportionately on the wealthy, and allow the buses carrying lower-income folks to move throughout the city faster.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  This isn’t exactly true. Rich people have the resources to live closer to where they work, they are more likely to WFH, they can ride a bike to work often, or maybe even walk. Poor people often live farther away from their jobs, they have worse commutes, and the likelihood of accomplishing that long commute by mass transit in many American isn’t that great. Anecdotally, we are well to do, chose our house location to minimize our commute and make it easy by bus (and ensure we can go to the grocery store by foot). Then I got the opportunity to work from home, my wife has a straight shot from bus to her office downtown, the kid’s schools (even high school) are all within walking distance. There is no way we could have set all that up without money.
  - mc32 3y ago
    I was poor, I took the bus to college and work (there were times I'd have to add 30 minutes where I knew I'd have to leg it). It was an hour and a half with transfers. It's doable --you get used to it, just like tech workers get used to driving in from the East Bay into the Peninsula. It's no biggie. On the way home, sometimes you get off at a different stop to pick up groceries and then you're the one walking home with two plastic bags -at first your arms ache. Again, you get used to it.
    - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      There are multiple levels of poor, like there are multiple levels of rich. Plenty of people are rich enough to drive, but not rich enough to live in convenient locations. It’s weird that, when I was going to university, many people would save money by living far off campus and driving to pay $5 for parking. The richer kids were living on or next to campus, and didn’t even need cars. Housing is expensive, and the American system has made driving unnaturally cheap.
zeroonetwothree 3y ago
Having more money lets you buy more of everything. Yet you are only concerned about roads (which aren’t even used by the poorest segment since they can’t afford a car)? Why not focus on making something more fundamental to existence free, like food or shelter? Oh right it’s because it creates poor incentives and overuse (tragedy of the commons) exactly like we see with roads (and parking). If car drivers had to pay the full cost of the resources they use it would reduce wasteful driving substantially. And we could use money collected in that way to pay for transit (or just give it as a tax rebate to low income people if you prefer).
- Tinyyy 3y ago
  Yea you’re exactly right, there’s a tragedy of the commons situation right now. You could either decrease the demand or increase the supply to fix this problem, and it seems pretty impossible to increase the supply (build a bridge across the Hudson? That’s crazy). So here we are.
  - fellowmartian 3y ago
    Unironically I’d hate a new bridge across the Hudson around the Holland Tunnel, that area is the crown jewel of Manhattan and its seafront should be protected. It’s also one of the few safe bike paths in the city where casual bikers would feel comfortable biking. Additionally, we already have one Canal St in the area, we don’t need another. Sorry for this small NIMBY rant.
    - bobthepanda 3y ago
      NIMBYism is not inherently a bad thing; it was originally coined by the waste management industry to describe opposition to local landfills and toxic waste dumps, which any sane person doesn't actually want to live next to. (Yes, I know Europe and Japan build fancy incinerators with parks and whatnot that are very pleasant, but the odds of that being built in the US by penny-pinching private industry is nil.)
  - nimbleplum40 3y ago
mc32 3y ago
Yes, they do! Everyone should be taking public transit, the poor as well --and if they prefer private transport, then it's time to pay up!
Tinyyy 3y ago
I grew up in a city with insanely high taxes on cars and roads (Singapore). But you could get anywhere easily with the bus or MRT. In a rush? Your Grab taxi can get you there quickly and efficiently. I’m not sure why it’d be better to make everyone’s day worse instead. Does that really make the world a fairer place?
anotherhue 3y ago
> out of a region of 28 million people, just an estimated 16,100 low-income people commute to work via car in Lower Manhattan, according to the MTA
- pessimizer 3y ago
  Exactly. If those 16K really concern somebody, they should just issue them a pass based on income. And if capitalism means anything, the employers of those 16K will have to raise pay to attract people.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
renewiltord 3y ago
Yep, given sufficient externalities, this is true. As an example, watch this fictional response to the fact that better cars cost more: Let's get the poors out of safe cars. The peasant class belongs in beaters, while the rich ride safe. Consider the choices necessary to make that statement untrue.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  You mean how the richer you are, the bigger (and safer) the vehicle you can afford? I drive by many parents taking their kids wherever in old corollas or kias or other small car, and I see many parents at my kids’ daycare dropping their kids off in large suburbans/F150/Sequoia/etc.
  - beerandt 3y ago
    If you want safer vehicles across the board, get rid of cafe and other efficiency regulations. At this point in the current regulatory framework, safety and efficiency are in direct competition.
  - renewiltord 3y ago
    Certainly. That's one way, but also poorer people own older cars. An argument that rests on equality should support the idea that all people deserve the same car irrespective of how much money they have.
    - estebank 3y ago
      Equality would be to be able to go where you need to go, in reasonable time, cost and accomodation, regardless of class, race, gender or disability. Focusing on cars is over-indexing on one potential solution. People want to move around. Cars are only one way of doing so.
bradleyjg 3y ago
The “poors,” as you so delightfully put it have nowhere to park in those parts of Manhattan. So they won’t be going there (leaving aside deliveries and taxis, but then the fee is a cost of doing business.) The group this will hit the hardest are those with de facto immunity from parking tickets. Cops, teachers, members of certain trade unions, and so on. However, lest you worry too much about these folk in light of automated speed and red light cameras they’ve taken to obscuring their license plates or buying fraudulent paper plates on the internet. Of course nothing is done about these effectively untraceable vehicles.

cyberax 3y ago

> I’m a fan of charging market efficient rates for shared goods. Are you a fan of charging market rates for transit as well?

creato 3y ago
Sure, as long as you consider externalities like congestion. That would suggest charging for passage through congested areas (the subject of this thread), and subsidizing mass transit in congested areas.
- cyberax 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - paulgb 3y ago
    I’m suspicious of that. LA is famous for low use of transit (relative to population) and is also famous for having bad congestion.
    - cyberax 3y ago
      You can screw up everything if you try hard enough. LA is an example of that. On the other hand, the Greater Houston Area has a similar population to NYC, yet it has 26-minute commutes versus 36 minutes for NYC.
      - nimbleplum40 3y ago
        Huh? The Houston metro area has 7.5 million people. The New York City metro area has 20 million. If you want to look at the city proper (not a great comparison since city boundaries are somewhat arbitrary) then it’s 2 million for Houston versus 8 million for NYC. It’s not even close.
  - Eisenstein 3y ago
    You logic is completely backwards. Dense housing doesn't result in traffic congestion. If more people live closer together there is more population density, but as long as they can access commercial areas easily then they can do their shopping and work and recreational tasks without cars. When you remove cars then you suddenly have much more living space because a car takes up a large amount of room to store and there must be extra space for commuters and visitors. Are you seriously arguing that adding more space for cars makes cities less congested? For every one parking space you add you remove a large amount of useful space for other things.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]