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London's congestion charge is just City of London. That's an incredibly tiny portion of London. In terms of impact, this is closer to putting congestion pricin

by timr 3y ago

London's congestion charge is just City of London. That's an incredibly tiny portion of London. In terms of impact, this is closer to putting congestion pricing on everything inside of M25.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> London's congestion charge is just City of London This is only lower Manhattan.
- timr 3y ago
  No, it's everything south of 60th, and essentially every ingress/egress to the city, other than Randalls Island, the GW, and the Bronx.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > it's everything south of 60th You’re right. It’s lower and midtown Manhattan. That said, it doesn’t include most of Manhattan let alone New York City. The core question is what someone who won’t pay $15 and refuses to not drive into the city during its most congested hours is bringing to the table. That is harsh. But it is a trade-off a city must make with its limited resources.
    - timr 3y ago
      The "rich person driving into the city" is a scapegoat. Get rid of those people (whom I absolutely do not care about taxing; it's fine, whatever), and the streets will still be crammed with the traffic supporting all the people who live here. And under this plan, those trucks, buses, taxis, etc. will be taxed to the tune of billions of dollars a year. As someone who hasn't owned a car in well over a decade, but lives in NYC and pays for things here -- and yes, even takes the occasional taxi when the MTA sucks -- this is what I resent. Setting aside the corruption and incompetence of the MTA (which we should absolutely not set aside), this is little more than a regressive tax on the people who live here, dressed up like anti-car activism.
- jfengel 3y ago
  Apparently, everything below 61st St. I'm unclear on how that's supposed to work, though. There are a lot of avenues crossing 61st. Are they going to put tolls on all of them? I guess that could work, since it's all EZ-Pass anyway. But it does imply that there are going to be some people who take the Queensboro Bridge (paying the Central Business District Toll), but head to the Upper East Side. Then when they leave, they'll have to pay the toll to enter the CBD again to take the bridge home.
  - iav 3y ago
    They already put up the toll tag scanners, they are just turned off.
domh 3y ago
Not wanting to be too nitpicky, but the congestion charge includes the City of London and the West End. The City of London is 1 sq mi (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London) and the congestion charge zone is 8 sq mi total (https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/tips-advice/108908/london-congestion-charge-map-times-exemptions-and-full-details https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/tips-advice/108908/london-cong...). I'm not sure how this compares to Manhattan's zone in terms of area.
- timr 3y ago
  Very, very small. Roughly similar to taxing driving below Wall Street or something. There's no clean comparison of Manhattan to a portion of London, but just in terms of land area it's about 10% of NYC, and in terms of population it's around 20% (so maybe divide each by half to get the impact of this new rule). More importantly, almost every way to enter or exit the city by car is covered by this new toll. That's definitely not true in the case of the CoL congestion tax.
  - domh 3y ago
    Fair enough. I also think London doesn't really have a culture of driving into it. I could drive into London but with the sprawl; likely inability to find suitable parking; traffic and congestion charge, I never would. It's quicker for me to get the train (living about 50mi West of London). Though trains are becoming more expensive and less reliable by the day.
  - Symbiote 3y ago
    > The congestion zone covers about eight square miles of central London, close in size to the future congestion zone in Manhattan. https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2019/05/19/congestion-pricing--what-new-york-can-learn-from-london-s-grand-traffic-experiment- https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2019/05/19/congest... (Many websites have similar comparisons.)
    - timr 3y ago
      London is 600 square miles and has numerous routes into and out of the city. Manhattan is 23, and is an island with a handful of bridges and tunnels. As a percentage of the whole, the City of London is trivial, whereas this "congestion district" is about half of Manhattan (even more if you account for central park).
Supermancho 3y ago
You are correct. Most people haven't looked at a London map too closely, so there is a limited understanding of what the City of London is. > The City of London, London's ancient core and financial centre − an area of just 1.12 square miles (2.9 km2) and colloquially known as the Square Mile − retains boundaries that closely follow its medieval limits. Greater London, in total, is larger than Los Angeles. https://mapfight.xyz/map/los.angeles/#london https://mapfight.xyz/map/los.angeles/#london https://www.londoninfoguide.com/how-big-is-london-uk.html https://www.londoninfoguide.com/how-big-is-london-uk.html The congestion charge is not for Greater London and the Manhattan toll is not for all of Manhattan.
- KptMarchewa 3y ago
  Why not post greater Los Angeles then? Borders of Los Angeles are not less arbitrary than borders of City of London.
  - Supermancho 3y ago
    Again, the City of London (1 sq mile) is not London and the UK has a rather convoluted municipal system. The comparable region would be a borough, like Manhattan. I used the term Greater London to try to make the distinction. I failed you. Since the toll and comparative congestion pricing are municipal concepts, the arbitrary sizes matter for the purposes of figuring out consequence. The post was not very illustrative, since I compared LA to London, as opposed to NYC to London. The greater LA area just happens to share arbitrary terminology to my choice of description, rather than specific relevancy.
- mgce 3y ago
  I'm not sure what's being debated here, but I just want to point out Manhattan is less than 20% of NYC's land area. And as you point out this is only about half of Manhattan. So 10% of the total city?
  - Supermancho 3y ago
    The issue was comparing the City of London to half of Manhattan, for purposes of comparison. I felt like some clarity on the sizing would be helpful. I think you're correct in the 10%. Also, I should have compared Half of Manhattan to the City of London, but I couldn't find a good illustration of that. Hopefully, the links are found to be useful.

by timr 3y ago

London's congestion charge is just City of London. That's an incredibly tiny portion of London. In terms of impact, this is closer to putting congestion pricing on everything inside of M25.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> London's congestion charge is just City of London This is only lower Manhattan.

timr 3y ago
No, it's everything south of 60th, and essentially every ingress/egress to the city, other than Randalls Island, the GW, and the Bronx.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > it's everything south of 60th You’re right. It’s lower and midtown Manhattan. That said, it doesn’t include most of Manhattan let alone New York City. The core question is what someone who won’t pay $15 and refuses to not drive into the city during its most congested hours is bringing to the table. That is harsh. But it is a trade-off a city must make with its limited resources.
  - timr 3y ago
    The "rich person driving into the city" is a scapegoat. Get rid of those people (whom I absolutely do not care about taxing; it's fine, whatever), and the streets will still be crammed with the traffic supporting all the people who live here. And under this plan, those trucks, buses, taxis, etc. will be taxed to the tune of billions of dollars a year. As someone who hasn't owned a car in well over a decade, but lives in NYC and pays for things here -- and yes, even takes the occasional taxi when the MTA sucks -- this is what I resent. Setting aside the corruption and incompetence of the MTA (which we should absolutely not set aside), this is little more than a regressive tax on the people who live here, dressed up like anti-car activism.
jfengel 3y ago
Apparently, everything below 61st St. I'm unclear on how that's supposed to work, though. There are a lot of avenues crossing 61st. Are they going to put tolls on all of them? I guess that could work, since it's all EZ-Pass anyway. But it does imply that there are going to be some people who take the Queensboro Bridge (paying the Central Business District Toll), but head to the Upper East Side. Then when they leave, they'll have to pay the toll to enter the CBD again to take the bridge home.
- iav 3y ago
  They already put up the toll tag scanners, they are just turned off.

domh 3y ago

Not wanting to be too nitpicky, but the congestion charge includes the City of London and the West End. The City of London is 1 sq mi (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London) and the congestion charge zone is 8 sq mi total (https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/tips-advice/108908/london-congestion-charge-map-times-exemptions-and-full-details https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/tips-advice/108908/london-cong...). I'm not sure how this compares to Manhattan's zone in terms of area.

timr 3y ago
Very, very small. Roughly similar to taxing driving below Wall Street or something. There's no clean comparison of Manhattan to a portion of London, but just in terms of land area it's about 10% of NYC, and in terms of population it's around 20% (so maybe divide each by half to get the impact of this new rule). More importantly, almost every way to enter or exit the city by car is covered by this new toll. That's definitely not true in the case of the CoL congestion tax.
- domh 3y ago
  Fair enough. I also think London doesn't really have a culture of driving into it. I could drive into London but with the sprawl; likely inability to find suitable parking; traffic and congestion charge, I never would. It's quicker for me to get the train (living about 50mi West of London). Though trains are becoming more expensive and less reliable by the day.
- Symbiote 3y ago
  > The congestion zone covers about eight square miles of central London, close in size to the future congestion zone in Manhattan. https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2019/05/19/congestion-pricing--what-new-york-can-learn-from-london-s-grand-traffic-experiment- https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2019/05/19/congest... (Many websites have similar comparisons.)
  - timr 3y ago
    London is 600 square miles and has numerous routes into and out of the city. Manhattan is 23, and is an island with a handful of bridges and tunnels. As a percentage of the whole, the City of London is trivial, whereas this "congestion district" is about half of Manhattan (even more if you account for central park).

Supermancho 3y ago

You are correct. Most people haven't looked at a London map too closely, so there is a limited understanding of what the City of London is. > The City of London, London's ancient core and financial centre − an area of just 1.12 square miles (2.9 km2) and colloquially known as the Square Mile − retains boundaries that closely follow its medieval limits. Greater London, in total, is larger than Los Angeles. https://mapfight.xyz/map/los.angeles/#london https://mapfight.xyz/map/los.angeles/#london https://www.londoninfoguide.com/how-big-is-london-uk.html https://www.londoninfoguide.com/how-big-is-london-uk.html The congestion charge is not for Greater London and the Manhattan toll is not for all of Manhattan.

KptMarchewa 3y ago
Why not post greater Los Angeles then? Borders of Los Angeles are not less arbitrary than borders of City of London.
- Supermancho 3y ago
  Again, the City of London (1 sq mile) is not London and the UK has a rather convoluted municipal system. The comparable region would be a borough, like Manhattan. I used the term Greater London to try to make the distinction. I failed you. Since the toll and comparative congestion pricing are municipal concepts, the arbitrary sizes matter for the purposes of figuring out consequence. The post was not very illustrative, since I compared LA to London, as opposed to NYC to London. The greater LA area just happens to share arbitrary terminology to my choice of description, rather than specific relevancy.
mgce 3y ago
I'm not sure what's being debated here, but I just want to point out Manhattan is less than 20% of NYC's land area. And as you point out this is only about half of Manhattan. So 10% of the total city?
- Supermancho 3y ago
  The issue was comparing the City of London to half of Manhattan, for purposes of comparison. I felt like some clarity on the sizing would be helpful. I think you're correct in the 10%. Also, I should have compared Half of Manhattan to the City of London, but I couldn't find a good illustration of that. Hopefully, the links are found to be useful.