7 ms·

They do, by buying things in Manhattan and paying an 8.8% sales tax. Now many of them won't.

affinepplan 3y ago
oh the tragedy I would be willing to wager that the increased sales / foot traffic from one fewer car trying to make its loud and carcinogenic way through manhattan is well worth the decreased foot traffic from that car's passenger(s)
snakeyjake 3y ago
Congestion charges have been implemented in many global cities, including London, Milan, Singapore, and Stockholm. Many more cities have started severely restricting access to vehicles, turning many downtown areas that had previously been roads into pedestrian malls. Indeed, NYC has done this to many roads (parts of Fulton Street, Delancey Street, and both Broadway and Times Square). Do you have any evidence that those schemes have resulted in lower sale tax revenue for those locations?
- rsynnott 3y ago
  I'm honestly kind of shocked to discover that Manhattan's only getting one now. Like, taken on its own it is one of the densest large urban areas on earth. I'd assume driving in it is a fairly miserable experience, anyway; where on earth do people park?
  - IncreasePosts 3y ago
    Yes, I was living in Manhattan in 2004 working on GPS navigation software, and had to perform some updates relating to the London congestion charge. I thought to myself "This is such a great idea, Manhattan will surely implement a similar system within a couple years". Here we are, 20 years later... Parking is only really a problem below 59th st or so. You can usually get street parking by driving in circles for 20 minutes, or go to a parking garage and pay ~$8/hr to park.
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    In specially-architected car elevators for a large amount relative to what you pay for parking in other urban areas. Daily parking varies from $20 to $125. (I mean, there are also more traditional parking garages, both above- and below-ground, but the premium on real estate is high enough to justify more expensive solutions to maximize land value also).
  - CPLX 3y ago
    Driving in Manhattan is pretty straightforward. There are parking garages everywhere you'd want to go (though most non-NYC people would probably consider them shockingly expensive) and at night and on weekends street parking is not too hard to find in most areas. But outside of rush hours and especially a few places like the tunnel approaches it's not a big deal. People do it constantly, it's totally normal for people from NJ or Westchester or LI to drive in for dinner and park, that kind of thing.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      I wonder if the parking should be taxed instead of tolling the bridge.
      - CPLX 3y ago
        It is heavily taxed.
    - macNchz 3y ago
      I’ve owned a car in Brooklyn for more than 10 years and find it basically nonfunctional to drive in a lot of Manhattan and surroundings. The idea of driving in for dinner from NJ makes my skin crawl. I have family in NJ and Manhattan, and go through the Holland Tunnel frequently. Sometimes it’s fine. Sometimes it’s hell. The random chance of winding up in standstill gridlock is just way too high. I can’t even count all of the times it has taken me over an hour to go like five blocks. Every time I’ve had the bad idea drive to the office to get a head start on an after-work trip, my mind is blown that some people actually do it every day, by choice.
      - pxmpxm 3y ago
        Second that - for us it's a complete waste of time trying to go into manhattan from dumbo anytime during the work week, it's essentially a giant parkinglot from the bridges onwards. I imagine all the congestion toll will do is swap the cost of congestion from time to something more palatable like money. And a windfall for people that own real estate just outside of the tolled boundary (yay brooklyn)
  - CSMastermind 3y ago
    > I'd assume driving in it is a fairly miserable experience Driving in Manhattan is actually pretty pleasant, all things considered. Wouldn't even make a top 10 list for me of worst places to drive in the US. I think in part because there's a weird selection bias where people think it will be bad, so bad drivers don't even attempt, and you're left with a cohort that, on average, has above-average driving skills. Seattle on the other hand? Worst driver's in the US by a country mile.
- Vaslo 3y ago
  We aren’t Europe though. Many Americans have no interest in paying even more taxes. Glad I avoided working and living in NY.
  - snakeyjake 3y ago
    Do you have any evidence that those schemes have resulted in lower sale tax revenue for those locations?
  - srndsnd 3y ago
    If you are living in a place that forces you into car ownership as a means of transportation, then you are receiving a subsidy in the form of the infrastructure that enables car dependent city planning. You're also compelled to own a car, which is enormously expensive, getting even more expensive, and is probably the thing you do on a regular basis which is most likely to kill you. Sprawl is expensive, and so is car ownership.
    - smileysteve 3y ago
      Upvote; People complain about a congestion tax -- or traffic -- or bad roads. But they don't think about policy when when a car costs ~30% of a median salary, when insurance is "required", expensive (and part is because some choose not to afford insurance while driving a car). Beyond that car / driving enforcement is a drain on police preventing more dangerous crime, a top entry point of harassment and escalation by police, a drain on District Attorneys and the courts from enforcing other crime.
    - Spivak 3y ago
      What are you talking about? The roads in my city are paid for my taxes remitted to the city. I guess you could call that a subsidy but that's also just known as being paid for by taxes. And if you're in an area where everyone needs a car to get around then there's no argument that drivers are mooching off the tax revenue of non-drivers. I swear people are so salty about roads when they don't drive but nobody complains about public schools when they went to private. Owning a car isn't enormously expensive except in online discussions where people quote the MSRP of $year+1 models and act like folks making minimum wage are actually paying that. My primary car is a 2012 Honda Fit that was $6000 when I bought it at 30k miles and is now pushing 120k. I bought it in cash, but the monthly payment with insurance would have been 15% of my rent.
kube-system 3y ago
> Now many of them won't. That's the point of congestion pricing.
mlavrent 3y ago
The issues with this argument is that pedestrians, transit-users, and cyclists also pay the same sales tax. So if the goal is to have drivers take ownership over the costs they produce, we could also consider only levying the sales tax on people who arrived by car - but that's silly since there's no good way to implement that (how do you know if someone arrived in the city by private vehicle?). The straightforward answer is to add tolls. Another solution I could see working is adding special sales taxes on parking garages in the congestion pricing zone, but then this wouldn't capture tolls on trucks, and make it harder to implement exceptions for low-income drivers or drivers with disabilities.
- timr 3y ago
  It's not a straightforward answer to the issues you're presenting -- they're exempting the West Side Highway and JFK, and of course, the line at 60th is basically arbitrary. I predict that parking garages on the upper east and upper west are about to get a lot more expensive. This is social engineering in tax form, intended to redirect traffic (or really...just to raise money for the MTA), without a great deal of thought about how it will impact the people actually living here (beyond "cars are bad", or, "New Jersey sucks", in any case). It is not "having drivers take ownership of the costs the produce" -- that would be, I dunno...raising the gas tax or tag fees or something. And don't forget that drivers already pay a toll to use the bridges or tunnels into Manhattan. I'm generally in favor of making externalities real and specific, but this plan sucks. One nice thing about congestion is that it is inherently self-limiting, so the stated problem was already captured in existing economic incentives.
  - stetrain 3y ago
    > It is not "having drivers take ownership of the costs the produce" -- that would be, I dunno...raising the gas tax or tag fees or something. Gas taxes or registration fees don't reimburse Manhattan for the space and infrastructure costs of cars driving into and parking in Manhattan for cars that are registered and buy fuel outside of Manhattan. You can toll drivers for driving on those specific roads, or add a significant parking tax. Or reduce parking in general and let prices naturally rise, but then you'll also probably have more people driving in and then violating parking rules and need more parking enforcement. Parking fees/taxes also wouldn't capture the costs of traffic that doesn't necessarily park in Manhattan, such as ride share drivers.
baq 3y ago
Unfair. Those who don't come by car also pay the sales tax. Drivers are using a limited resource, why not pay for it. Be happy it's a fixed fee and not a proper market.
ecshafer 3y ago
Who would drive into Manhattan to buy anything? Seriously, if you are already in the Suburbs, why not just go to a store there. If you are in any other burrough, you will find easier parking there. If you are anywhere else, it'll also probably be cheaper. No one drives into Manhattan to buy anything. If you don't live in Manhattan, you go into Manhattan for work, an event, etc.
- wolverine876 3y ago
  > Who would drive into Manhattan to buy anything? Because the selection and quality are unlike almost any place in the world.
lxgr 3y ago
I've got the strong suspicion that this was never a thing: Why on Earth would people living in New Jersey drive into (paying bridge/tunnel toll) and park in Manhattan to do their shopping when there are so many malls with free parking available in NJ?
- InitialLastName 3y ago
  Free parking and no sales tax on clothing. There's a reason the big NYC area malls are in Paramus and Elizabeth.
  - BobaFloutist 3y ago
    So they're not paying sales tax?
    - InitialLastName 3y ago
      Sorry if that wasn't clear: NJ doesn't have a sales tax on clothing. NY does. Paramus and Elizabeth are where the 4-ish (the ones in Paramus blend together) giant malls outside of NYC are.
      - evanelias 3y ago
        NY/NYC only charges sales tax on clothing over $110 per item. In addition to the giant malls you mentioned, there's American Dream in East Rutherford. Parking isn't free there though. And all its clothing stores are closed on Sundays. (Ditto for the Paramus malls re: Sunday.)
      - mike50 3y ago
        High land costs pushed these kinds of land uses further and further from Manhattan. There are the same huge malls in Westchester and Nassau county.
  - lowkey_ 3y ago
    > There's a reason the big NYC area malls are in Paramus and Elizabeth. I think the reason is that malls are just out-of-fashion. If we consider the SoHo area to be the equivalent of a mall, or the North Williamsburg/Greenpoint area to be a mall, I'd bet they dwarf the Paramus & Elizabeth malls in GMV sold and foot traffic.
tomjakubowski 3y ago
$15 covers about one minute of parking in Manhattan
stetrain 3y ago
If car infrastructure was replaced by more transit, pedestrian, and cycling infrastructure, then more people would be able to go into Manhattan and shop and dine. One or two people per car each taking up 320 sqft of road space and parking space imposes a lower human density limit than most other ways of getting around. And the infrastructure to support it is more expensive on a per-human basis.
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> Now many of them won't It’s $15 creditable against other tolls. If whatever you’re doing in downtown Manhattan during peak hours isn’t worth $15, its replacement by other activity happening faster is likely a net positive.

oh the tragedy I would be willing to wager that the increased sales / foot traffic from one fewer car trying to make its loud and carcinogenic way through manhattan is well worth the decreased foot traffic from that car's passenger(s)

snakeyjake 3y ago

Congestion charges have been implemented in many global cities, including London, Milan, Singapore, and Stockholm. Many more cities have started severely restricting access to vehicles, turning many downtown areas that had previously been roads into pedestrian malls. Indeed, NYC has done this to many roads (parts of Fulton Street, Delancey Street, and both Broadway and Times Square). Do you have any evidence that those schemes have resulted in lower sale tax revenue for those locations?

rsynnott 3y ago
I'm honestly kind of shocked to discover that Manhattan's only getting one now. Like, taken on its own it is one of the densest large urban areas on earth. I'd assume driving in it is a fairly miserable experience, anyway; where on earth do people park?
- IncreasePosts 3y ago
  Yes, I was living in Manhattan in 2004 working on GPS navigation software, and had to perform some updates relating to the London congestion charge. I thought to myself "This is such a great idea, Manhattan will surely implement a similar system within a couple years". Here we are, 20 years later... Parking is only really a problem below 59th st or so. You can usually get street parking by driving in circles for 20 minutes, or go to a parking garage and pay ~$8/hr to park.
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  In specially-architected car elevators for a large amount relative to what you pay for parking in other urban areas. Daily parking varies from $20 to $125. (I mean, there are also more traditional parking garages, both above- and below-ground, but the premium on real estate is high enough to justify more expensive solutions to maximize land value also).
- CPLX 3y ago
  Driving in Manhattan is pretty straightforward. There are parking garages everywhere you'd want to go (though most non-NYC people would probably consider them shockingly expensive) and at night and on weekends street parking is not too hard to find in most areas. But outside of rush hours and especially a few places like the tunnel approaches it's not a big deal. People do it constantly, it's totally normal for people from NJ or Westchester or LI to drive in for dinner and park, that kind of thing.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    I wonder if the parking should be taxed instead of tolling the bridge.
    - CPLX 3y ago
      It is heavily taxed.
  - macNchz 3y ago
    I’ve owned a car in Brooklyn for more than 10 years and find it basically nonfunctional to drive in a lot of Manhattan and surroundings. The idea of driving in for dinner from NJ makes my skin crawl. I have family in NJ and Manhattan, and go through the Holland Tunnel frequently. Sometimes it’s fine. Sometimes it’s hell. The random chance of winding up in standstill gridlock is just way too high. I can’t even count all of the times it has taken me over an hour to go like five blocks. Every time I’ve had the bad idea drive to the office to get a head start on an after-work trip, my mind is blown that some people actually do it every day, by choice.
    - pxmpxm 3y ago
      Second that - for us it's a complete waste of time trying to go into manhattan from dumbo anytime during the work week, it's essentially a giant parkinglot from the bridges onwards. I imagine all the congestion toll will do is swap the cost of congestion from time to something more palatable like money. And a windfall for people that own real estate just outside of the tolled boundary (yay brooklyn)
- CSMastermind 3y ago
  > I'd assume driving in it is a fairly miserable experience Driving in Manhattan is actually pretty pleasant, all things considered. Wouldn't even make a top 10 list for me of worst places to drive in the US. I think in part because there's a weird selection bias where people think it will be bad, so bad drivers don't even attempt, and you're left with a cohort that, on average, has above-average driving skills. Seattle on the other hand? Worst driver's in the US by a country mile.
Vaslo 3y ago
We aren’t Europe though. Many Americans have no interest in paying even more taxes. Glad I avoided working and living in NY.
- snakeyjake 3y ago
  Do you have any evidence that those schemes have resulted in lower sale tax revenue for those locations?
- srndsnd 3y ago
  If you are living in a place that forces you into car ownership as a means of transportation, then you are receiving a subsidy in the form of the infrastructure that enables car dependent city planning. You're also compelled to own a car, which is enormously expensive, getting even more expensive, and is probably the thing you do on a regular basis which is most likely to kill you. Sprawl is expensive, and so is car ownership.
  - smileysteve 3y ago
    Upvote; People complain about a congestion tax -- or traffic -- or bad roads. But they don't think about policy when when a car costs ~30% of a median salary, when insurance is "required", expensive (and part is because some choose not to afford insurance while driving a car). Beyond that car / driving enforcement is a drain on police preventing more dangerous crime, a top entry point of harassment and escalation by police, a drain on District Attorneys and the courts from enforcing other crime.
  - Spivak 3y ago
    What are you talking about? The roads in my city are paid for my taxes remitted to the city. I guess you could call that a subsidy but that's also just known as being paid for by taxes. And if you're in an area where everyone needs a car to get around then there's no argument that drivers are mooching off the tax revenue of non-drivers. I swear people are so salty about roads when they don't drive but nobody complains about public schools when they went to private. Owning a car isn't enormously expensive except in online discussions where people quote the MSRP of $year+1 models and act like folks making minimum wage are actually paying that. My primary car is a 2012 Honda Fit that was $6000 when I bought it at 30k miles and is now pushing 120k. I bought it in cash, but the monthly payment with insurance would have been 15% of my rent.

kube-system 3y ago

> Now many of them won't. That's the point of congestion pricing.

mlavrent 3y ago

The issues with this argument is that pedestrians, transit-users, and cyclists also pay the same sales tax. So if the goal is to have drivers take ownership over the costs they produce, we could also consider only levying the sales tax on people who arrived by car - but that's silly since there's no good way to implement that (how do you know if someone arrived in the city by private vehicle?). The straightforward answer is to add tolls. Another solution I could see working is adding special sales taxes on parking garages in the congestion pricing zone, but then this wouldn't capture tolls on trucks, and make it harder to implement exceptions for low-income drivers or drivers with disabilities.

timr 3y ago
It's not a straightforward answer to the issues you're presenting -- they're exempting the West Side Highway and JFK, and of course, the line at 60th is basically arbitrary. I predict that parking garages on the upper east and upper west are about to get a lot more expensive. This is social engineering in tax form, intended to redirect traffic (or really...just to raise money for the MTA), without a great deal of thought about how it will impact the people actually living here (beyond "cars are bad", or, "New Jersey sucks", in any case). It is not "having drivers take ownership of the costs the produce" -- that would be, I dunno...raising the gas tax or tag fees or something. And don't forget that drivers already pay a toll to use the bridges or tunnels into Manhattan. I'm generally in favor of making externalities real and specific, but this plan sucks. One nice thing about congestion is that it is inherently self-limiting, so the stated problem was already captured in existing economic incentives.
- stetrain 3y ago
  > It is not "having drivers take ownership of the costs the produce" -- that would be, I dunno...raising the gas tax or tag fees or something. Gas taxes or registration fees don't reimburse Manhattan for the space and infrastructure costs of cars driving into and parking in Manhattan for cars that are registered and buy fuel outside of Manhattan. You can toll drivers for driving on those specific roads, or add a significant parking tax. Or reduce parking in general and let prices naturally rise, but then you'll also probably have more people driving in and then violating parking rules and need more parking enforcement. Parking fees/taxes also wouldn't capture the costs of traffic that doesn't necessarily park in Manhattan, such as ride share drivers.

baq 3y ago

Unfair. Those who don't come by car also pay the sales tax. Drivers are using a limited resource, why not pay for it. Be happy it's a fixed fee and not a proper market.

ecshafer 3y ago

Who would drive into Manhattan to buy anything? Seriously, if you are already in the Suburbs, why not just go to a store there. If you are in any other burrough, you will find easier parking there. If you are anywhere else, it'll also probably be cheaper. No one drives into Manhattan to buy anything. If you don't live in Manhattan, you go into Manhattan for work, an event, etc.

wolverine876 3y ago
> Who would drive into Manhattan to buy anything? Because the selection and quality are unlike almost any place in the world.

lxgr 3y ago

I've got the strong suspicion that this was never a thing: Why on Earth would people living in New Jersey drive into (paying bridge/tunnel toll) and park in Manhattan to do their shopping when there are so many malls with free parking available in NJ?

InitialLastName 3y ago
Free parking and no sales tax on clothing. There's a reason the big NYC area malls are in Paramus and Elizabeth.
- BobaFloutist 3y ago
  So they're not paying sales tax?
  - InitialLastName 3y ago
    Sorry if that wasn't clear: NJ doesn't have a sales tax on clothing. NY does. Paramus and Elizabeth are where the 4-ish (the ones in Paramus blend together) giant malls outside of NYC are.
    - evanelias 3y ago
      NY/NYC only charges sales tax on clothing over $110 per item. In addition to the giant malls you mentioned, there's American Dream in East Rutherford. Parking isn't free there though. And all its clothing stores are closed on Sundays. (Ditto for the Paramus malls re: Sunday.)
    - mike50 3y ago
      High land costs pushed these kinds of land uses further and further from Manhattan. There are the same huge malls in Westchester and Nassau county.
- lowkey_ 3y ago
  > There's a reason the big NYC area malls are in Paramus and Elizabeth. I think the reason is that malls are just out-of-fashion. If we consider the SoHo area to be the equivalent of a mall, or the North Williamsburg/Greenpoint area to be a mall, I'd bet they dwarf the Paramus & Elizabeth malls in GMV sold and foot traffic.

tomjakubowski 3y ago

$15 covers about one minute of parking in Manhattan

stetrain 3y ago

If car infrastructure was replaced by more transit, pedestrian, and cycling infrastructure, then more people would be able to go into Manhattan and shop and dine. One or two people per car each taking up 320 sqft of road space and parking space imposes a lower human density limit than most other ways of getting around. And the infrastructure to support it is more expensive on a per-human basis.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> Now many of them won't It’s $15 creditable against other tolls. If whatever you’re doing in downtown Manhattan during peak hours isn’t worth $15, its replacement by other activity happening faster is likely a net positive.