31 ms·

The Death of NYC Congestion Pricing

171 points by gmays 2y ago

Lance_ET_Compte 2y ago
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- timbo1642 2y ago
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- deleted 2y ago
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KerrAvon 2y ago
Kathy Hochul really dug her political grave by killing this at the last minute. So at least there’s that.
- timbo1642 2y ago
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- returningfory2 2y ago
  Yeah I am curious how this will play out for her in the long run. One interesting dynamic here is the media's bias towards negative news. In the run up to congestion pricing the NY Times was putting out these very anti-congestion pricing articles (we need to be anxious that congestion pricing is happening!). But as soon as it was cancelled they flipped and now have put out a bunch of articles portraying the cancellation as a blunder (we need to be anxious that congestion pricing is _not_ happening!). I wonder in the long run what the steady state media framing of this whole episode will be.
  - devilbunny 2y ago
    The NYT is predictable: imagine an upper-middle-class woman and her concerns, and the NYT coverage will reflect that. My wife is a subscriber and has been for years, though we live far from NY and actually have only been there once together.
  - kccqzy 2y ago
    Not just the NYT, most media these days will try to stir up controversy and make you angry. First you are made angry about the implementation of the congestion pricing, then you are made angry about its cancellation.
- sandwitches 2y ago
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woodruffw 2y ago
This is a nice, data heavy summary of the situation! Something that stood out to me: there's been a marked decline in state and local funding for NYCT since before COVID. I wasn't fully aware of just how much the city and state had independently cut back: it looks like NYCT part of MTA alone is receiving $3B less per year than it was in 2019. Congestion pricing is sound policy regardless, but this hammers home the perception that NYS treats the MTA (and NYCT in particular) as a financial sponge that can be squeezed for spare change whenever a boondoggle needs funding somewhere else.
- timbo1642 2y ago
  Its nothing but a scam and anyone that supports it is completely heartless. It makes people poorer and nothing else. NYC has the national guard at its subways because its so dangerous. Its beyond dangerous still during many times. It is also always fucked up and is late or it breaks or other issues. Its not that reliable. Its just a scam to grab money from already broke people that are suffering and only awful people support this because they can't think for themselves and are followers.
  - katbyte 2y ago
    Did the subway get drastically worse in the last few years or something? Last time I was in NYC I stayed in Harlem and either biked or took the subway everywhere I needed to go. It was.. fine?
    - thebigman433 2y ago
      No, but the media coverage surrounding cities has decayed to an absolutely abysmal level, so every single issue on the subway gets 48 hours of coverage or more, and the current governor is awful, so she thinks things like sending in the national guard to stand around will help
    - immibis 2y ago
      It's just propaganda - downvote and ignore it, but don't ignore the worrying amount of propaganda spread implied by seeing this on HN.
goodSteveramos 2y ago
>Increasing the density of jobs, hospitals, restaurants, homes, schools, and more is key … as density grows mass transit becomes essential This guy has it all backwards. No developer in his right mind is going to plow billions of dollars into high density housing without existing rail access. The new subway and commuter lines have to be built first, then the high density development becomes viable around it.
- deleted 2y ago
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- TrainedMonkey 2y ago
  It's a chicken egg problem... as usual there is no right solution. China is the largest example of building transit infrastructure first, my understanding is that there are a lot of issues there, but most of them are due to how the effort was structured. On the other hand when housing is built first there is a lot of demand for transit infrastructure, but it becomes extremely hard and expensive as seen in every metro area in USA.
  - seoulmetro 2y ago
    In East Asia the problem is that the developments are so good, and nearly always get done with support for infrastructure that there are so many cronies in the government or with insider knowledge that can make bank off the outcome. Leads to some serious issues. I highly, highly doubt it would be harder for those problems to happen here. In fact I think if it ever happened, it would be a huge corrupt mess.
  - goodSteveramos 2y ago
    >when housing is built first there is a lot of demand for transit infrastructure Not if it’s low density housing, which it will be if there is no transit.
    - imtringued 2y ago
      Once the houses are built and people have moved in, they are going to resist new construction. It should be pretty obvious to anyone.
billfor 2y ago
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- timbo1642 2y ago
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- deleted 2y ago
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- woodruffw 2y ago
  Who is being downvoted? I see one person who seems to be flagged for only responding with flame comments. > There are more bike lines than real roads now. What's the point in exaggerating? This is nowhere near true. There are many more bike lanes than there were even a decade ago, but the city have several orders of magnitude more navigable roads than bike lanes. > It's a congestion mess now without pricing.... That's the point of congestion pricing: to reduce demand on the street grid to those who actually need it. Congestion pricing makes the streets less congested; it benefits those who need to drive.
- welshwelsh 2y ago
  There are still plenty of roads though, which shouldn't exist in a dense city like Manhattan. We have a long way to go still
  - timr 2y ago
    > There are still plenty of roads though, which shouldn't exist in a dense city like Manhattan. We have a long way to go still How, exactly, are stores supposed to get the things they sell, restaurants supposed to get the food they prepare, construction crews supposed to get the materials they use, garbage collectors supposed to pick up trash -- and a million other things that make a city possible -- without roads? New York City has had roads since before cars existed...since it was a tiny little colony with a literal wall where "wall street" is today. This kind of rhetoric is silly and counterproductive.
    - 2y ago
jimby 2y ago
Interesting that the major cities with sizable public transport user populations are all in the northeast hub. Boston, NYC, Philadelphia, DC. Growing up and living here, cars aren't really necessary day to day in any of these cities. I'm shocked when I travel to basically any other major-ish US city, especially "newer" big cities like Denver, Phoenix, Miami, Tampa. The best way I can describe it is older cities are built at human-scale, newer cities are built at car-scale.
- swatcoder 2y ago
  Those northeast cities form a connected industrial corridor that specifically bloomed during the train age. People and goods were actively shuffling around between them and within them as the very essence of why they existed. Meanwhile, many other US cities were developed around regional agriculture, ranching, frontier settlement, and/or sea and river ports. Some explored sophisticated public transit systems at one point or another, but by the time they got really urbanized, cars were widely available and it was easier to justify roads and highways for personally-owned vehies than far more expensive train/tram infrastructure. We now see how car-centrism introduces limits on growth, but there wasn't a consensus sense of what those limits were or whether growth would really encounter them.
  - tsimionescu 2y ago
    You also shouldn't forget that car companies actively bought and dismantled mass transportation in several of those cities, at a loss to them, for the express purpose of driving demand for cars.
- cortesoft 2y ago
  Yeah, cities that got big before cars aren’t designed around cars… seems like a logical result.
- treflop 2y ago
  It’s not about how the city is built… cities are largely built the same… completely haphazardly. What older cities have, due to their age, is a metric ton more people in a smaller area because they ran out of space to expand and have to redevelop existing land. Phoenix has 5% of the density of Paris and is not even 150 years old. Paris is over 2,000 years old. If Phoenix keeps growing for the next 2,000 years, will it have great public transit? Probably.
slt2021 2y ago
Does anyone have answer as to why MTA is a financial mess and a single elevator project costs $81 mln[1] ? Congestion pricing seems like a pathetic attempt to squeeze money to fund bloated MTA salaries and bogus overtime[2]. that just eats MTA's budget. Widely cited $15 bln budget hole is roughly comparable to the decade of bogus $1.4 bln overtime that MTA workers accrue Transit agency must go through a deep and thorough cleanup and restructuring of its finances, before it demands more funding from taxpayers Same like city of San Fransicko spent $24 Bln with a B with nothing to show for it, arguably situation got only worse[3], while nonprofit and homeless industrial complex only got record funding and record fraud charges 1. https://slate.com/business/2019/09/mta-elevators-are-the-perfect-example-of-new-yorks-cost-problems.html 2. https://www.masstransitmag.com/management/blog/55017643/op-ed-excessive-mta-employee-overtime-continues-year-after-year 3. https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/california-homelessness-spending-audit-24b-five-years-didnt-consistently-track-outcomes/
- returningfory2 2y ago
  On the one hand, this is a reasonable point to make and I think it's partially why the political support for congestion pricing wasn't there. On the other hand, in reality, making new transit funding conditional on the MTA cleaning up all its inefficiencies and corruptions will simply translate into transit being underfunded.
  - slt2021 2y ago
    It is unsustainable to keep squandering taxpayer money and demanding more and more resources with worse and worse results. Private sector would never have allowed it
    - woodruffw 2y ago
      If you think the private sector would have prevented this, you should probably read a bit about the pre-NYCT history of the IRT and BMT :-) Nobody has every really successfully monetized this kind of mass transit in the US; it's a service that taxpayers fund in exchange for its enormous economic benefits. TFA explains this upfront: NYC would be nowhere near as big and prosperous as it is today were it not possible for millions of people to take trains into the city.
salvagedcircuit 2y ago
How do you have an article about commuting into NYC without even mentioning Long Island or the Long Island Rail Road? 0_____0
cortesoft 2y ago
Wonder if they decided to return the revenue from the congestion pricing to the cities residents if they would get more support… just take the total revenue, divide it by the number of citizens, and cut everyone a check for their share. It would still reduce congestion, and would transfer money from people who drive to people who use public transit. People might support it if it meant money in their pockets.
gennarro 2y ago
The article vastly underplays how mismanaged the MTA is and how poorly the subway is run on a massive budget. It is one of the last organizations that should be receiving this level of additional revenue, regardless of any sunk costs that have been put towards congestion pricing. This whole thing has been a mess for years so why double down on it when it would punish a set of residents and commuters and have very little chance of improving things for riders?
- leetcrew 2y ago
  idk, I honestly think congestion pricing would still be a good idea even if they just lit all the toll proceeds on fire. I almost wonder if it was a political blunder to couple "reduce cars in lower manhatten" with "more funding for MTA" in the first place.
  - walterbell 2y ago
    Congestion pricing has little impact on the unlimited number of cars (unlike regulated taxis) that can enter Manhattan and drive around for hours for Uber/Lyft.
    - leetcrew 2y ago
      I haven't yet chosen a side in the great uber vs taxi debate. but in general, driving lots of different people around all day sounds like a pretty good use of a car. it would be great to have a more comprehensive approach for pricing the least productive vehicle uses out of the most congested areas, but setting up tolls in a few choke points is a good start.
      - walterbell 2y ago
        > driving lots of different people around all day Perhaps academics or NYC can analyze and publish data from Uber/Lyft on average rideshare occupancy by time of day and GPS location, e.g. what percentage of time is spent driving around empty (consuming energy, polluting), carrying a paid passenger, or parked in an area close to expected customers.
dang 2y ago
Related. Others? I'm sure there were others: With congestion pricing stop, New York City enters new era of economic gridlock - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40625307 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40625307 - June 2024 (150 comments) NYC Congestion Pricing Delayed Indefinitely by Governor Kathy Hochul - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40587485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40587485 - June 2024 (16 comments) MTA board votes to approve new $15 toll to drive into Manhattan - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39841703 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39841703 - March 2024 (831 comments) NYC's plan to ease gridlock? A $15 toll for Manhattan drivers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39549726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39549726 - Feb 2024 (24 comments) New York approves the first congestion toll in the US: $15 to enter Manhattan - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38583532 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38583532 - Dec 2023 (155 comments) NYC Congestion Toll Could Cost Drivers $23 per Trip Starting Next Spring - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36512248 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36512248 - June 2023 (41 comments) New York City will charge drivers going downtown - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36270597 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36270597 - June 2023 (671 comments)
occz 2y ago
History will not look kindly upon the treachery of Kathy Hochul. It'll be interesting to see how long it takes for her little stunt to be rightfully shot down - she doesn't have the authority to stop this policy. Justice would be immediate termination from her position along with a prison sentence.
pif 2y ago
> as density grows mass transit becomes essential since it can far surpass the maximum throughput capacity of even the largest roadways. Once again this idiocy! Planners love so much to talk about throughput, and then they are surprised when people "do not understand". People do understand: people know that the only important metric is door-to-door time! Nobody could care less about how many people can get to the station! Everybody just wants to minimize the time wasted within transportation, because the 24 hours in a day are not expandable. I've never been to New York, please don't take this as a critic specific to this city. It's just that I'm tired of planners trying to "evangelize" the people while ignoring their actual concern.
- imtringued 2y ago
  Driving a car in NYC isn't going to be much faster than taking the bus.
  - pif 2y ago
    It depends on where you live and work with respect to the nearest stations, and on how many legs your trip consist of.
    - Jcowell 2y ago
      If this is New york, and we’re talking alot using manhattan to get somewhere, your car isn’t beating the train unless someone throws themselves in the track
      - pif 2y ago
        > your car isn’t beating the train Doesn't it depend on where you live with respect to the nearest station? Doesn't it depend on whether you have a direct train or you need to change a couple of times?
        Tokkemon 2y ago
        No, it does not. The subway is practically always faster.
pif 2y ago
> Stockholm’s congestion tax was approved by voters after a 7-month trial period. How dishonest must you be to lie in such a blatant way? From the Wikipedia page referenced from the article: "Local consultative referendums regarding whether to permanently implement the congestion tax were held in Stockholm Municipality and several other municipalities in Stockholm County on September 17, 2006. It was only the referendum in Stockholm Municipality that the at the time reigning government would use as a basis for the decision. The municipalities surrounding Stockholm in Stockholm County, especially those that are part of the city of Stockholm, showed discontent with the fact that the people of those municipalities get no say whether the congestion taxes will be implemented permanently." And the data shows unambiguously that it was only the resident of the centre tha voted yes.
frankharv 2y ago
""so congestion pricing serves redistributive purposes as well."" In many places this would be called this socialism.
- imtringued 2y ago
  "In many places" = Only in the US
asah 2y ago
LOL people on the thread whining about MTA efficiency. Individual personal care are insanely inefficient, double when you consider all the roads and parking required. I gave up my car when moving to Manhattan and now subway, walk and bike everywhere. It's a dream and saves $5000+ per year including capital cost, maintenance, gas, tolls, parking, insurance, repairs, cleaning, traffic tickets. As a society there's another $N000/year saved on the marginal cost of another car: road maintenance, traffic cops, people sitting in traffic instead of living their lives, etc. Robotaxis change a bunch of this math: utilization shoots up and drives down cost per user, and people can live/work (on their cellphones) while being passengers.
- slt2021 2y ago
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  - asah 2y ago
    Gentle reminder to please attack the argument not the speaker. Also, please read the (numerous) studies that refute these arguments: https://www.google.com/search?q=congestion+pricing+study+effects+on+economy https://www.google.com/search?q=congestion+pricing+study+eff... In NYC, people with $10M+ ride mass transit and want to see it funded but unfortunately, the cost is too high to simply increase taxes on the wealthy. To address your concern, Uber drivers and construction workers will pass their increased costs onto their lower Manhattan customers, just like they do for their time sitting in traffic, tolls, parking, traffic and parking tickets, meals, insurance, etc. Simple repairs in lower Manhattan can be hundreds of dollars. Already, for cost, time and traffic reasons, commuters of all types batch their Manhattan trips. Congestion pricing is once per day and therefore a nominal percentage in top of everything else.
  - JoshGG 2y ago
    Hard for you to understand who currently lives in Brooklyn? Has plenty of high income households and expensive real estate.
asah 2y ago
"The immediate vicinity of the North Berkeley BART stop in California is surrounded on all sides by parking lots, and thus the station currently sees only about 1,700 riders per weekday." ?!!? No: 1. North Berkeley is extremely low density housing. 2. There's a casual carpool pickup right in front of the station, which siphons 100s of riders away from BART. It's very fast, there's little wait time and it's free. If North Berkeley had skyscrapers and riders didn't have a better option then you'd see NYC level ridership.
asah 2y ago
"Contractors who work with the MTA on these projects already charge a premium for having to manage the substantial risk that construction is delayed or canceled—introducing “the Governor might suddenly decide your job is over” as another risk to worry about will just increase those cost premiums, thin the pool of companies who are capable of working with the MTA, and reward the politically savvy. ... The fact that infrastructure plans can go through years of study, environmental review, public consultation, pilot projects, revisions, lawsuits, construction, delays, and more only to then be shelved days before final implementation is a large part of why public works are so expensive in the first place." Savvy point that's often missed in these discussions. I'm on the boards of two buildings in Manhattan and see these invisible "taxes" all the time.
- yardie 2y ago
  I'm reviewing the budget for our condo now and some of the renovation projects have a contingency budget of 25%. You would think that was overkill but the last project was an elevator upgrade where the city inspector sat on the permit for almost a year.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    Make sure you ask all residents to contact their city representative on this. If politicians don't feel pressure they won't do anything.
    - yardie 2y ago
      In fact that is what we did. Just 50-100 pissed off residents mail and phone bombed the city until we got a response. The inspector made the excuse that he issued the permit months ago. But the filing portal had it on the day after our campaign. We ended up burning through the contingency because this project started right at the beginning of COVID. Parts and labor suddenly became scarce.
  - pc86 2y ago
    There's a simple (but not easy) fix to this. After 30 days of no movement, permits are issued automatically and any fees paid are returned out of that department's budget, regardless of where the permit fees actually go. The default response to government inaction is typically a) the citizen can't do whatever thing they're trying to do without violating the law, and b) nothing bad happens to the bureaucrats not doing their jobs. If those two things inverted you'd see government become more efficient overnight.
asoneth 2y ago
When I lived in NYC many years ago I'd be walking, biking, driving, at a park, dining in an outdoor cafe, in my living room, etc and perpetually surrounded by the noise, smell, and inconvenience of gridlocked traffic and road construction. I eventually tuned it out, but every time I left and came back it drove home how ridiculous it was. I eventually moved to New England because it became clear that despite the city having good bones, the leadership (and many voters) were more interested in coming up with ways to make it convenient for drivers to drive and/or park in every neighborhood in the city than making it a pleasant place to live. The ghost of Robert Moses influences everything there. So I was floored when it seemed like such an incompetently managed city as NYC was actually going to implement the obviously correct solution of charging money to allocate a scarce resource. What was less surprising was the fact that it was derailed by a state politician but only at the last minute and after hundreds of millions had already been spent.
- throwaway7ahgb 2y ago
  >> the leadership (and many voters) were more interested in coming up with ways to make it convenient for drivers to drive and/or park in every neighborhood in the city than making it a pleasant place to live. The ghost of Robert Moses influences everything there. Sorry but this statement is not true. Compare NYC today vs 1980s or earlier. There are more bike lanes, parks, walking paths than ever before. Roads in Manhattan are narrowed frequently to allow more pedestrians. The west side highway is amazing for biking, I love it. Just because it is not Copenhagen or Amsterdam doesn't mean progress isn't made. source: Lived in Manhattan for 20+ years. Own a car, bike regularly and walk to work.
  - giraffe_lady 2y ago
    It can improve a lot and still be godawful.
  - CalRobert 2y ago
    It’s so far behind Amsterdam, Paris, etc it doesn’t deserve to consider itself in the same class.
PaulHoule 2y ago
What I haven't seen mentioned is the political context at exactly this point in time. People are freaked out about inflation and the prices of everything rising and I think they're very sensitive to anything that is going to add more expenses. Even in Ithaca, NY apartment dwellers have developed a consciousness that rising property taxes are going to get tacked on to their rent. In terms of national politics, Democrats feel vulnerable, and I think Democrats everywhere feel pressure to drop unpopular policies that could affect them nationally. For that matter the rest of New York is rich in competitive House seats that could go either way.
- rob74 2y ago
  So the Republicans are already winning (influencing politics in their direction) although they haven't actually won yet, great...
  - PaulHoule 2y ago
    It's what happens when you have an election. It's why Biden did https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/04/biden-border-close-executive-action-migrants-00161483 https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/04/biden-border-close-... If you steal enough of the other guy's issues you win.
    - asveikau 2y ago
      Actually Democrats have a long history of doing things like that and then losing. Look how they abandoned single payer and a public option during the Obamacare period. Then they lost the Congress immediately after. Democrats do centrist or rightward pivots seemingly blind to the fact that Republicans will not vote for them anyway and that these actions will alienate the base. If they drew stronger contrasts and gave people a reason to vote for them, I think they would do better electorally. Sometimes it feels like they live in a fantasy world where it's still the pre Gingrich era and bipartisanship is much more of a thing.
- kgermino 2y ago
  The problem is that congestion pricing has always gotten _much_ more popular after implementation. Riding the wave of decisions made in the past would let current politicians decide whether they wanted to blame others or take credit closer to the election. Now we just see a probably illegal power grab by an executive which kills a bunch of popular and needed projects while very publicly demonstrating that Democrats can’t fucking deliver.
BasilPH 2y ago
The Volts podcast dove into this recently (with transcript): https://www.volts.wtf/p/new-yorks-congestion-pricing-fiasco https://www.volts.wtf/p/new-yorks-congestion-pricing-fiasco
kgermino 2y ago
Given the opportunity to demonstrate that they can solve problems: improving the transit system for millions of New Yorkers - especially poorer and disabled riders, take steps to improve the environment, AND make it easier for who want or need to drive to drive in lower Manhattan; Democrats chose to make a power-grab and throw it all away. It's absolutely disgusting. Yes the MTA is a mess, yes this money could have been spent more efficiently by a better run organization, and I'm sure the plan wasn't perfect; but to see Dems very publicly go out of their way to show they can't solve problems if doing so upsets a handful of rich people is somewhere between disheartening and enraging.
tzs 2y ago
Does this apply to the vehicles of people or businesses that reside in the city when they come back in when returning from a round trip to someplace out of the city? Or is it just for vehicles that are based outside the city?
deleted 2y ago
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1024core 2y ago
> The policy would have charged vehicles for entering the perpetually gridlocked streets of Lower Manhattan, If driving is so bad, and public transit is so convenient, why are people still driving? People like this author write from a position of "people are stupid; they don't know what's good for them, so let me enlighten them". It's this assumption that is stupid. People want the most convenience in their lives. If you want them to use public transit, make the public transit more convenient and cheaper than driving! I mean, take a look at a city like Tokyo. How many people drive there? Almost everyone takes public transit, putting NYC to shame. There is no need to drive in Tokyo! As a tourist, a 3-day all-you-can-travel subway pass costs less than $10, which is < $3.50/day and subway stations are every couple of blocks. How's that for convenience? Instead of trying to tax the people into complying with your desires, make them want to do so of their own free will!
- zip1234 2y ago
  It's the tragedy of the commons. Driving is very convenient, however it is also VERY space inefficient and congested streets with drivers slows down busses and makes public transit worse. Furthermore, the price of driving is not born fully by drivers. The noise and particulate pollution, increased danger to the public, and space taken by cars is not paid for by drivers in any meaningful way.
  - timeinput 2y ago
    Driving is honestly pretty inconvenient. You have to find a huge space to put your car every night (difficult when trying to rent in an urban area) possibly with electrical service, you have to pay for the car which is likely tens of thousands of dollars, you have to maintain the car with regular oil changes, new tires, etc that's at least 4-8 hours a year. I think we feel the pain of waiting for a subway, and think boy it would be so much easier to drive, but few people think while they're working an extra <period of time> a week to pay for their car+parking+insurance+maintenance+... boy would it be nice to not have to own a car.
    - steveBK123 2y ago
jovial_cavalier 2y ago
I wish urbanists (I more or less consider myself one) would stop bringing up climate change. There is a chance that these issues could have strong bipartisan support if you would stop tying them to highly partisan issues. Put a pin in it - there are lots of other reasons to support these measures.
redandblack 2y ago
I hope congestion pricing withers away and dies. It really promotes public infrastructure for the wealthy and disadvantages the people who cannot afford. MDs at my firm can easily afford any such surcharges, and for many it will be business write offs, and not even their own. Fund public infrastructure - put more buses on roads, maybe even limit some avenues and roads for buses only. Reduce the costs - yes, I know NYC tickets are really low, but make them simpler and easier for people to get a monthly pass and hop on buses, Really, buses everywhere even if they operate at net losses - get the business to subsidize bringing their workers in.
- stetrain 2y ago
  I agree that there is a limit to the "just charge people what each option costs and let market forces sort it out" capitalist utopian idea. Some are willing to pay large amounts for convenience that causes harm to many others. At some point we just have to make decisions about land use and infrastructure. Do we want this space dedicate to driving and parking for cars with one person who can afford to pay congestion charges, or instead used for busses, dedicated bike roads, etc. that can move more people in less space with less pollution and less risk of serious injury.
tamaharbor 2y ago
I wonder how cars traveling east/west between Queens-Brooklyn-Long Island to New Jersey affect traffic? I wonder how congestion pricing will affect already problematic George Washington Bridge and Staten Island routes.

171 points by gmays 2y ago

Lance_ET_Compte 2y ago

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timbo1642 2y ago
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deleted 2y ago
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KerrAvon 2y ago

Kathy Hochul really dug her political grave by killing this at the last minute. So at least there’s that.

timbo1642 2y ago
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returningfory2 2y ago
Yeah I am curious how this will play out for her in the long run. One interesting dynamic here is the media's bias towards negative news. In the run up to congestion pricing the NY Times was putting out these very anti-congestion pricing articles (we need to be anxious that congestion pricing is happening!). But as soon as it was cancelled they flipped and now have put out a bunch of articles portraying the cancellation as a blunder (we need to be anxious that congestion pricing is _not_ happening!). I wonder in the long run what the steady state media framing of this whole episode will be.
- devilbunny 2y ago
  The NYT is predictable: imagine an upper-middle-class woman and her concerns, and the NYT coverage will reflect that. My wife is a subscriber and has been for years, though we live far from NY and actually have only been there once together.
- kccqzy 2y ago
  Not just the NYT, most media these days will try to stir up controversy and make you angry. First you are made angry about the implementation of the congestion pricing, then you are made angry about its cancellation.
sandwitches 2y ago
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woodruffw 2y ago

This is a nice, data heavy summary of the situation! Something that stood out to me: there's been a marked decline in state and local funding for NYCT since before COVID. I wasn't fully aware of just how much the city and state had independently cut back: it looks like NYCT part of MTA alone is receiving $3B less per year than it was in 2019. Congestion pricing is sound policy regardless, but this hammers home the perception that NYS treats the MTA (and NYCT in particular) as a financial sponge that can be squeezed for spare change whenever a boondoggle needs funding somewhere else.

timbo1642 2y ago
Its nothing but a scam and anyone that supports it is completely heartless. It makes people poorer and nothing else. NYC has the national guard at its subways because its so dangerous. Its beyond dangerous still during many times. It is also always fucked up and is late or it breaks or other issues. Its not that reliable. Its just a scam to grab money from already broke people that are suffering and only awful people support this because they can't think for themselves and are followers.
- katbyte 2y ago
  Did the subway get drastically worse in the last few years or something? Last time I was in NYC I stayed in Harlem and either biked or took the subway everywhere I needed to go. It was.. fine?
  - thebigman433 2y ago
    No, but the media coverage surrounding cities has decayed to an absolutely abysmal level, so every single issue on the subway gets 48 hours of coverage or more, and the current governor is awful, so she thinks things like sending in the national guard to stand around will help
  - immibis 2y ago
    It's just propaganda - downvote and ignore it, but don't ignore the worrying amount of propaganda spread implied by seeing this on HN.

goodSteveramos 2y ago

>Increasing the density of jobs, hospitals, restaurants, homes, schools, and more is key … as density grows mass transit becomes essential This guy has it all backwards. No developer in his right mind is going to plow billions of dollars into high density housing without existing rail access. The new subway and commuter lines have to be built first, then the high density development becomes viable around it.

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TrainedMonkey 2y ago
It's a chicken egg problem... as usual there is no right solution. China is the largest example of building transit infrastructure first, my understanding is that there are a lot of issues there, but most of them are due to how the effort was structured. On the other hand when housing is built first there is a lot of demand for transit infrastructure, but it becomes extremely hard and expensive as seen in every metro area in USA.
- seoulmetro 2y ago
  In East Asia the problem is that the developments are so good, and nearly always get done with support for infrastructure that there are so many cronies in the government or with insider knowledge that can make bank off the outcome. Leads to some serious issues. I highly, highly doubt it would be harder for those problems to happen here. In fact I think if it ever happened, it would be a huge corrupt mess.
- goodSteveramos 2y ago
  >when housing is built first there is a lot of demand for transit infrastructure Not if it’s low density housing, which it will be if there is no transit.
  - imtringued 2y ago
    Once the houses are built and people have moved in, they are going to resist new construction. It should be pretty obvious to anyone.

billfor 2y ago

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timbo1642 2y ago
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woodruffw 2y ago
Who is being downvoted? I see one person who seems to be flagged for only responding with flame comments. > There are more bike lines than real roads now. What's the point in exaggerating? This is nowhere near true. There are many more bike lanes than there were even a decade ago, but the city have several orders of magnitude more navigable roads than bike lanes. > It's a congestion mess now without pricing.... That's the point of congestion pricing: to reduce demand on the street grid to those who actually need it. Congestion pricing makes the streets less congested; it benefits those who need to drive.
welshwelsh 2y ago
There are still plenty of roads though, which shouldn't exist in a dense city like Manhattan. We have a long way to go still
- timr 2y ago
  > There are still plenty of roads though, which shouldn't exist in a dense city like Manhattan. We have a long way to go still How, exactly, are stores supposed to get the things they sell, restaurants supposed to get the food they prepare, construction crews supposed to get the materials they use, garbage collectors supposed to pick up trash -- and a million other things that make a city possible -- without roads? New York City has had roads since before cars existed...since it was a tiny little colony with a literal wall where "wall street" is today. This kind of rhetoric is silly and counterproductive.
  - 2y ago

jimby 2y ago

Interesting that the major cities with sizable public transport user populations are all in the northeast hub. Boston, NYC, Philadelphia, DC. Growing up and living here, cars aren't really necessary day to day in any of these cities. I'm shocked when I travel to basically any other major-ish US city, especially "newer" big cities like Denver, Phoenix, Miami, Tampa. The best way I can describe it is older cities are built at human-scale, newer cities are built at car-scale.

swatcoder 2y ago
Those northeast cities form a connected industrial corridor that specifically bloomed during the train age. People and goods were actively shuffling around between them and within them as the very essence of why they existed. Meanwhile, many other US cities were developed around regional agriculture, ranching, frontier settlement, and/or sea and river ports. Some explored sophisticated public transit systems at one point or another, but by the time they got really urbanized, cars were widely available and it was easier to justify roads and highways for personally-owned vehies than far more expensive train/tram infrastructure. We now see how car-centrism introduces limits on growth, but there wasn't a consensus sense of what those limits were or whether growth would really encounter them.
- tsimionescu 2y ago
  You also shouldn't forget that car companies actively bought and dismantled mass transportation in several of those cities, at a loss to them, for the express purpose of driving demand for cars.
cortesoft 2y ago
Yeah, cities that got big before cars aren’t designed around cars… seems like a logical result.
treflop 2y ago
It’s not about how the city is built… cities are largely built the same… completely haphazardly. What older cities have, due to their age, is a metric ton more people in a smaller area because they ran out of space to expand and have to redevelop existing land. Phoenix has 5% of the density of Paris and is not even 150 years old. Paris is over 2,000 years old. If Phoenix keeps growing for the next 2,000 years, will it have great public transit? Probably.

slt2021 2y ago

Does anyone have answer as to why MTA is a financial mess and a single elevator project costs $81 mln[1] ? Congestion pricing seems like a pathetic attempt to squeeze money to fund bloated MTA salaries and bogus overtime[2]. that just eats MTA's budget. Widely cited $15 bln budget hole is roughly comparable to the decade of bogus $1.4 bln overtime that MTA workers accrue Transit agency must go through a deep and thorough cleanup and restructuring of its finances, before it demands more funding from taxpayers Same like city of San Fransicko spent $24 Bln with a B with nothing to show for it, arguably situation got only worse[3], while nonprofit and homeless industrial complex only got record funding and record fraud charges 1. https://slate.com/business/2019/09/mta-elevators-are-the-perfect-example-of-new-yorks-cost-problems.html 2. https://www.masstransitmag.com/management/blog/55017643/op-ed-excessive-mta-employee-overtime-continues-year-after-year 3. https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/california-homelessness-spending-audit-24b-five-years-didnt-consistently-track-outcomes/

returningfory2 2y ago
On the one hand, this is a reasonable point to make and I think it's partially why the political support for congestion pricing wasn't there. On the other hand, in reality, making new transit funding conditional on the MTA cleaning up all its inefficiencies and corruptions will simply translate into transit being underfunded.
- slt2021 2y ago
  It is unsustainable to keep squandering taxpayer money and demanding more and more resources with worse and worse results. Private sector would never have allowed it
  - woodruffw 2y ago
    If you think the private sector would have prevented this, you should probably read a bit about the pre-NYCT history of the IRT and BMT :-) Nobody has every really successfully monetized this kind of mass transit in the US; it's a service that taxpayers fund in exchange for its enormous economic benefits. TFA explains this upfront: NYC would be nowhere near as big and prosperous as it is today were it not possible for millions of people to take trains into the city.

salvagedcircuit 2y ago

How do you have an article about commuting into NYC without even mentioning Long Island or the Long Island Rail Road? 0_____0

cortesoft 2y ago

Wonder if they decided to return the revenue from the congestion pricing to the cities residents if they would get more support… just take the total revenue, divide it by the number of citizens, and cut everyone a check for their share. It would still reduce congestion, and would transfer money from people who drive to people who use public transit. People might support it if it meant money in their pockets.

gennarro 2y ago

The article vastly underplays how mismanaged the MTA is and how poorly the subway is run on a massive budget. It is one of the last organizations that should be receiving this level of additional revenue, regardless of any sunk costs that have been put towards congestion pricing. This whole thing has been a mess for years so why double down on it when it would punish a set of residents and commuters and have very little chance of improving things for riders?

leetcrew 2y ago
idk, I honestly think congestion pricing would still be a good idea even if they just lit all the toll proceeds on fire. I almost wonder if it was a political blunder to couple "reduce cars in lower manhatten" with "more funding for MTA" in the first place.
- walterbell 2y ago
  Congestion pricing has little impact on the unlimited number of cars (unlike regulated taxis) that can enter Manhattan and drive around for hours for Uber/Lyft.
  - leetcrew 2y ago
    I haven't yet chosen a side in the great uber vs taxi debate. but in general, driving lots of different people around all day sounds like a pretty good use of a car. it would be great to have a more comprehensive approach for pricing the least productive vehicle uses out of the most congested areas, but setting up tolls in a few choke points is a good start.
    - walterbell 2y ago
      > driving lots of different people around all day Perhaps academics or NYC can analyze and publish data from Uber/Lyft on average rideshare occupancy by time of day and GPS location, e.g. what percentage of time is spent driving around empty (consuming energy, polluting), carrying a paid passenger, or parked in an area close to expected customers.

dang 2y ago

Related. Others? I'm sure there were others: With congestion pricing stop, New York City enters new era of economic gridlock - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40625307 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40625307 - June 2024 (150 comments) NYC Congestion Pricing Delayed Indefinitely by Governor Kathy Hochul - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40587485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40587485 - June 2024 (16 comments) MTA board votes to approve new $15 toll to drive into Manhattan - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39841703 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39841703 - March 2024 (831 comments) NYC's plan to ease gridlock? A $15 toll for Manhattan drivers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39549726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39549726 - Feb 2024 (24 comments) New York approves the first congestion toll in the US: $15 to enter Manhattan - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38583532 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38583532 - Dec 2023 (155 comments) NYC Congestion Toll Could Cost Drivers $23 per Trip Starting Next Spring - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36512248 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36512248 - June 2023 (41 comments) New York City will charge drivers going downtown - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36270597 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36270597 - June 2023 (671 comments)

occz 2y ago

History will not look kindly upon the treachery of Kathy Hochul. It'll be interesting to see how long it takes for her little stunt to be rightfully shot down - she doesn't have the authority to stop this policy. Justice would be immediate termination from her position along with a prison sentence.

pif 2y ago

> as density grows mass transit becomes essential since it can far surpass the maximum throughput capacity of even the largest roadways. Once again this idiocy! Planners love so much to talk about throughput, and then they are surprised when people "do not understand". People do understand: people know that the only important metric is door-to-door time! Nobody could care less about how many people can get to the station! Everybody just wants to minimize the time wasted within transportation, because the 24 hours in a day are not expandable. I've never been to New York, please don't take this as a critic specific to this city. It's just that I'm tired of planners trying to "evangelize" the people while ignoring their actual concern.

imtringued 2y ago
Driving a car in NYC isn't going to be much faster than taking the bus.
- pif 2y ago
  It depends on where you live and work with respect to the nearest stations, and on how many legs your trip consist of.
  - Jcowell 2y ago
    If this is New york, and we’re talking alot using manhattan to get somewhere, your car isn’t beating the train unless someone throws themselves in the track
    - pif 2y ago
      > your car isn’t beating the train Doesn't it depend on where you live with respect to the nearest station? Doesn't it depend on whether you have a direct train or you need to change a couple of times?
      - Tokkemon 2y ago
        No, it does not. The subway is practically always faster.

pif 2y ago

> Stockholm’s congestion tax was approved by voters after a 7-month trial period. How dishonest must you be to lie in such a blatant way? From the Wikipedia page referenced from the article: "Local consultative referendums regarding whether to permanently implement the congestion tax were held in Stockholm Municipality and several other municipalities in Stockholm County on September 17, 2006. It was only the referendum in Stockholm Municipality that the at the time reigning government would use as a basis for the decision. The municipalities surrounding Stockholm in Stockholm County, especially those that are part of the city of Stockholm, showed discontent with the fact that the people of those municipalities get no say whether the congestion taxes will be implemented permanently." And the data shows unambiguously that it was only the resident of the centre tha voted yes.

frankharv 2y ago

""so congestion pricing serves redistributive purposes as well."" In many places this would be called this socialism.

imtringued 2y ago
"In many places" = Only in the US

asah 2y ago

LOL people on the thread whining about MTA efficiency. Individual personal care are insanely inefficient, double when you consider all the roads and parking required. I gave up my car when moving to Manhattan and now subway, walk and bike everywhere. It's a dream and saves $5000+ per year including capital cost, maintenance, gas, tolls, parking, insurance, repairs, cleaning, traffic tickets. As a society there's another $N000/year saved on the marginal cost of another car: road maintenance, traffic cops, people sitting in traffic instead of living their lives, etc. Robotaxis change a bunch of this math: utilization shoots up and drives down cost per user, and people can live/work (on their cellphones) while being passengers.

slt2021 2y ago
[flagged]
- asah 2y ago
  Gentle reminder to please attack the argument not the speaker. Also, please read the (numerous) studies that refute these arguments: https://www.google.com/search?q=congestion+pricing+study+effects+on+economy https://www.google.com/search?q=congestion+pricing+study+eff... In NYC, people with $10M+ ride mass transit and want to see it funded but unfortunately, the cost is too high to simply increase taxes on the wealthy. To address your concern, Uber drivers and construction workers will pass their increased costs onto their lower Manhattan customers, just like they do for their time sitting in traffic, tolls, parking, traffic and parking tickets, meals, insurance, etc. Simple repairs in lower Manhattan can be hundreds of dollars. Already, for cost, time and traffic reasons, commuters of all types batch their Manhattan trips. Congestion pricing is once per day and therefore a nominal percentage in top of everything else.
- JoshGG 2y ago
  Hard for you to understand who currently lives in Brooklyn? Has plenty of high income households and expensive real estate.

asah 2y ago

"The immediate vicinity of the North Berkeley BART stop in California is surrounded on all sides by parking lots, and thus the station currently sees only about 1,700 riders per weekday." ?!!? No: 1. North Berkeley is extremely low density housing. 2. There's a casual carpool pickup right in front of the station, which siphons 100s of riders away from BART. It's very fast, there's little wait time and it's free. If North Berkeley had skyscrapers and riders didn't have a better option then you'd see NYC level ridership.

asah 2y ago

"Contractors who work with the MTA on these projects already charge a premium for having to manage the substantial risk that construction is delayed or canceled—introducing “the Governor might suddenly decide your job is over” as another risk to worry about will just increase those cost premiums, thin the pool of companies who are capable of working with the MTA, and reward the politically savvy. ... The fact that infrastructure plans can go through years of study, environmental review, public consultation, pilot projects, revisions, lawsuits, construction, delays, and more only to then be shelved days before final implementation is a large part of why public works are so expensive in the first place." Savvy point that's often missed in these discussions. I'm on the boards of two buildings in Manhattan and see these invisible "taxes" all the time.

yardie 2y ago
I'm reviewing the budget for our condo now and some of the renovation projects have a contingency budget of 25%. You would think that was overkill but the last project was an elevator upgrade where the city inspector sat on the permit for almost a year.
- bluGill 2y ago
  Make sure you ask all residents to contact their city representative on this. If politicians don't feel pressure they won't do anything.
  - yardie 2y ago
    In fact that is what we did. Just 50-100 pissed off residents mail and phone bombed the city until we got a response. The inspector made the excuse that he issued the permit months ago. But the filing portal had it on the day after our campaign. We ended up burning through the contingency because this project started right at the beginning of COVID. Parts and labor suddenly became scarce.
- pc86 2y ago
  There's a simple (but not easy) fix to this. After 30 days of no movement, permits are issued automatically and any fees paid are returned out of that department's budget, regardless of where the permit fees actually go. The default response to government inaction is typically a) the citizen can't do whatever thing they're trying to do without violating the law, and b) nothing bad happens to the bureaucrats not doing their jobs. If those two things inverted you'd see government become more efficient overnight.

asoneth 2y ago

When I lived in NYC many years ago I'd be walking, biking, driving, at a park, dining in an outdoor cafe, in my living room, etc and perpetually surrounded by the noise, smell, and inconvenience of gridlocked traffic and road construction. I eventually tuned it out, but every time I left and came back it drove home how ridiculous it was. I eventually moved to New England because it became clear that despite the city having good bones, the leadership (and many voters) were more interested in coming up with ways to make it convenient for drivers to drive and/or park in every neighborhood in the city than making it a pleasant place to live. The ghost of Robert Moses influences everything there. So I was floored when it seemed like such an incompetently managed city as NYC was actually going to implement the obviously correct solution of charging money to allocate a scarce resource. What was less surprising was the fact that it was derailed by a state politician but only at the last minute and after hundreds of millions had already been spent.

throwaway7ahgb 2y ago
>> the leadership (and many voters) were more interested in coming up with ways to make it convenient for drivers to drive and/or park in every neighborhood in the city than making it a pleasant place to live. The ghost of Robert Moses influences everything there. Sorry but this statement is not true. Compare NYC today vs 1980s or earlier. There are more bike lanes, parks, walking paths than ever before. Roads in Manhattan are narrowed frequently to allow more pedestrians. The west side highway is amazing for biking, I love it. Just because it is not Copenhagen or Amsterdam doesn't mean progress isn't made. source: Lived in Manhattan for 20+ years. Own a car, bike regularly and walk to work.
- giraffe_lady 2y ago
  It can improve a lot and still be godawful.
- CalRobert 2y ago
  It’s so far behind Amsterdam, Paris, etc it doesn’t deserve to consider itself in the same class.

PaulHoule 2y ago

What I haven't seen mentioned is the political context at exactly this point in time. People are freaked out about inflation and the prices of everything rising and I think they're very sensitive to anything that is going to add more expenses. Even in Ithaca, NY apartment dwellers have developed a consciousness that rising property taxes are going to get tacked on to their rent. In terms of national politics, Democrats feel vulnerable, and I think Democrats everywhere feel pressure to drop unpopular policies that could affect them nationally. For that matter the rest of New York is rich in competitive House seats that could go either way.

rob74 2y ago
So the Republicans are already winning (influencing politics in their direction) although they haven't actually won yet, great...
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  It's what happens when you have an election. It's why Biden did https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/04/biden-border-close-executive-action-migrants-00161483 https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/04/biden-border-close-... If you steal enough of the other guy's issues you win.
  - asveikau 2y ago
    Actually Democrats have a long history of doing things like that and then losing. Look how they abandoned single payer and a public option during the Obamacare period. Then they lost the Congress immediately after. Democrats do centrist or rightward pivots seemingly blind to the fact that Republicans will not vote for them anyway and that these actions will alienate the base. If they drew stronger contrasts and gave people a reason to vote for them, I think they would do better electorally. Sometimes it feels like they live in a fantasy world where it's still the pre Gingrich era and bipartisanship is much more of a thing.
kgermino 2y ago
The problem is that congestion pricing has always gotten _much_ more popular after implementation. Riding the wave of decisions made in the past would let current politicians decide whether they wanted to blame others or take credit closer to the election. Now we just see a probably illegal power grab by an executive which kills a bunch of popular and needed projects while very publicly demonstrating that Democrats can’t fucking deliver.

BasilPH 2y ago

The Volts podcast dove into this recently (with transcript): https://www.volts.wtf/p/new-yorks-congestion-pricing-fiasco https://www.volts.wtf/p/new-yorks-congestion-pricing-fiasco

kgermino 2y ago

Given the opportunity to demonstrate that they can solve problems: improving the transit system for millions of New Yorkers - especially poorer and disabled riders, take steps to improve the environment, AND make it easier for who want or need to drive to drive in lower Manhattan; Democrats chose to make a power-grab and throw it all away. It's absolutely disgusting. Yes the MTA is a mess, yes this money could have been spent more efficiently by a better run organization, and I'm sure the plan wasn't perfect; but to see Dems very publicly go out of their way to show they can't solve problems if doing so upsets a handful of rich people is somewhere between disheartening and enraging.

tzs 2y ago

Does this apply to the vehicles of people or businesses that reside in the city when they come back in when returning from a round trip to someplace out of the city? Or is it just for vehicles that are based outside the city?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

1024core 2y ago

> The policy would have charged vehicles for entering the perpetually gridlocked streets of Lower Manhattan, If driving is so bad, and public transit is so convenient, why are people still driving? People like this author write from a position of "people are stupid; they don't know what's good for them, so let me enlighten them". It's this assumption that is stupid. People want the most convenience in their lives. If you want them to use public transit, make the public transit more convenient and cheaper than driving! I mean, take a look at a city like Tokyo. How many people drive there? Almost everyone takes public transit, putting NYC to shame. There is no need to drive in Tokyo! As a tourist, a 3-day all-you-can-travel subway pass costs less than $10, which is < $3.50/day and subway stations are every couple of blocks. How's that for convenience? Instead of trying to tax the people into complying with your desires, make them want to do so of their own free will!

zip1234 2y ago
It's the tragedy of the commons. Driving is very convenient, however it is also VERY space inefficient and congested streets with drivers slows down busses and makes public transit worse. Furthermore, the price of driving is not born fully by drivers. The noise and particulate pollution, increased danger to the public, and space taken by cars is not paid for by drivers in any meaningful way.
- timeinput 2y ago
  Driving is honestly pretty inconvenient. You have to find a huge space to put your car every night (difficult when trying to rent in an urban area) possibly with electrical service, you have to pay for the car which is likely tens of thousands of dollars, you have to maintain the car with regular oil changes, new tires, etc that's at least 4-8 hours a year. I think we feel the pain of waiting for a subway, and think boy it would be so much easier to drive, but few people think while they're working an extra <period of time> a week to pay for their car+parking+insurance+maintenance+... boy would it be nice to not have to own a car.
  - steveBK123 2y ago

jovial_cavalier 2y ago

I wish urbanists (I more or less consider myself one) would stop bringing up climate change. There is a chance that these issues could have strong bipartisan support if you would stop tying them to highly partisan issues. Put a pin in it - there are lots of other reasons to support these measures.

redandblack 2y ago

I hope congestion pricing withers away and dies. It really promotes public infrastructure for the wealthy and disadvantages the people who cannot afford. MDs at my firm can easily afford any such surcharges, and for many it will be business write offs, and not even their own. Fund public infrastructure - put more buses on roads, maybe even limit some avenues and roads for buses only. Reduce the costs - yes, I know NYC tickets are really low, but make them simpler and easier for people to get a monthly pass and hop on buses, Really, buses everywhere even if they operate at net losses - get the business to subsidize bringing their workers in.

stetrain 2y ago
I agree that there is a limit to the "just charge people what each option costs and let market forces sort it out" capitalist utopian idea. Some are willing to pay large amounts for convenience that causes harm to many others. At some point we just have to make decisions about land use and infrastructure. Do we want this space dedicate to driving and parking for cars with one person who can afford to pay congestion charges, or instead used for busses, dedicated bike roads, etc. that can move more people in less space with less pollution and less risk of serious injury.

tamaharbor 2y ago

I wonder how cars traveling east/west between Queens-Brooklyn-Long Island to New Jersey affect traffic? I wonder how congestion pricing will affect already problematic George Washington Bridge and Staten Island routes.