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I'm incredibly hopeful that NYC congestion pricing pays off in a big way - and that we start to see it in other cities across America. I really, really want con

I'm incredibly hopeful that NYC congestion pricing pays off in a big way - and that we start to see it in other cities across America. I really, really want congestion pricing in downtown SF. During rush hour, cars block the box and slow down busses, with cascading effects.

gkoberger 2y ago
While I agree with disliking the things you mentioned, could it be argued that adding barriers to entry for getting into the city will just increase WFH and hurt SF more? I can see a lot of people choosing to just stay home rather than take a bus – not everyone is close to MUNI or BART.
- jazzyjackson 2y ago
  Fewer single-person-vehicles = more desirable ontime Bus/Tram throughput = more people who are close to MUNIBART taking MUNIBART. Then use tolls to improve and expand the mass transit services instead of only ever catering to the single-person-car-commuters. (ofc it takes more than ontime performance to sell people on mass transit, needs to be a safe environment at all hours of the day -- even if I can take BART into the city in the afternoon, if I don't feel safe taking it back at 10PM then I'm just going to drive both ways, to say nothing of the choice to stop running trains at midnight)
  - ghaff 2y ago
    Safety and schedule. I've never had a safety issue with taking commuter rail into Boston but taking it home from an evening event is basically a non-starter given how seldom it runs and how much longer it will take relative to driving even if I catch my train.
    - adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
      I'm very hopeful that Boston commuter rail gets electrified with the associated speed and frequency improvements soonish. the inner half of the commuter rail network is absolutely dense enough to be worth running service every 15 minutes on peak and every 30 off peak
      - potato3732842 2y ago
        Top speed (mostly) comes from the tracks, not the method of motive power. As it stands they're already maxing out and exceeding (when they're late) the max speed for the class of rail they have. Some of the inner stops might get a few seconds faster with better acceleration but that's about it. The grade crossings are also kinda f'd. At full speed you can be in the middle of the train and see the arms still be in the process of lowering at certain crossings. That ain't safe. Faster won't make that better.
        scottbez1 2y ago
        Top speed, sure, but for typical commuter heavy-rail, a non-express train isn't running at top speed for all that long. Diesel-electric trains take a LOT longer to accelerate compared to a modern EMU, so much so that Caltrain's electrification project shaved 23 minutes off the SF to San Jose local trip, from 100 to 77 minutes. Videos [0] [1] make the acceleration improvement pretty clear. [0] https://x.com/Caltrain/status/1804278237486588179 https://x.com/Caltrain/status/1804278237486588179 [1] https://x.com/eiioth/status/1822814729079009516 https://x.com/eiioth/status/1822814729079009516
        potato3732842 2y ago
        The MBTA already runs top speed on most of its lines once you get outside of roughly I95 depending on the line. Getting there faster would help but I don't think it would shave as much time off the end to end trip as you think. And for the urban stops they already accelerate and brake at the limit of what is reasonable for standing passengers. They can't push it too much or an old lady is gonna bounce off a wall and get a nose bleed and that's a bad look. It's not like Acela where a ticket guarantees a seat. There will definitely be some improvement from electrification but I don't think it will affect median travel times much and the affect on average will mostly be from reliability.
        ghaff 2y ago
        The Fitchburg line did do upgrades a few years ago. I think they double-tracked sections that weren't. It still take a while--hour+--from the outer reaches.
  - milch 2y ago
    Most transit agencies have this problem of the "vicious transit cycle" - people don't take the bus because it's too infrequent/unreliable => more cars make the buses more unreliable => less money because so few people take it => back to start. It's amazing when you're sitting in a bus behind 20 cars backed up over 4 blocks, and you look back and there's 50 people on the bus. Really makes you think why the 50-person bus doesn't get priority over all of the single occupancy vehicles
    - cyberax 2y ago
      Nah. Most agencies have a problem of people realizing that wasting life in buses is not worth it. Transit can never compete with cars on speed in well-designed cities.
      - jazzyjackson 2y ago
        I guess by 'well designed cities' you mean 'cities with copious amounts of parking' For certain high frequency routes in Chicago, I never minded sitting on the bus to get across town. At least once I got off I didn't have to find a parking spot. Now wasting life waiting for a bus is another story.
        cyberax 2y ago
        > I guess by 'well designed cities' you mean 'cities with copious amounts of parking' Yup. Wide roads, plenty of parking, distributed industry and office space, low density.
        saagarjha 2y ago
        "Low density" just means that the entire area is covered in asphalt. That's not what well designed looks like.
        cyberax 2y ago
        Yes, and? > That's not what well designed looks like. It is more flexible, people-friendly, enables better living. So yeah, "well designed".
  - deleted 2y ago
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- maxwellg 2y ago
  For a concrete example of carrot and stick - check out ridership numbers for the 49 after the Van Ness BRT project finished. 49 ridership is more than completely recovered at 140% of pre-pandemic numbers. In comparison, the 38 and 38R didn't get their dedicated bus lane out in the Richmond and ridership numbers are still nowhere near pre-pandemic. Make the bus fast and frequent and people will take it. https://www.sfmta.com/reports/average-daily-muni-boardings-route-and-month-pre-pandemic-present https://www.sfmta.com/reports/average-daily-muni-boardings-r...
  - tlogan 2y ago
    By the way, the head of SFMTA resigned this week, and there are rumors of a full audit on the horizon.
- mperham 2y ago
  Or it could be argued that more people want to take the bus but it’s too slow to be practical due to car gridlock.
- paxys 2y ago
  Reducing the number of daily commuters isn't going to "hurt" the city. Quite the opposite in fact. Actual residents make the city what it is, and reducing traffic/congestion/honking/pollution is going to make it a much more attractive place to live.
  - gotoeleven 2y ago
    [flagged]
ars 2y ago
What I'm curious about is if business in the Manhattan will be lessened as a result of less people there. I know the goal is less cars, rather than less people, but I want to see if that's actually what will happen. As someone who doesn't live in Manhattan I wish there was a better way to go basically anywhere in New York without entering Manhattan. Every single road, bus, and subway goes through this super dense area. Like why do I need to go through Manhattan to get from Newark Airport to Flatbush? (Unless I have a car, then I can go over the Verazzano, but in a bus/subway/train? It's all via Manhattan.
- leetcrew 2y ago
  I've thought about the same thing and concluded this basically reduces to "why do economies organize around dense urban cores"? pretty much any business that can afford to will want to rent space in the barycenter of a metro area. that's what manhattan is to the NYC metro. when the vast majority of daily trips are into and out of that dense core, that defines the most economic routes for building transit. beltways/bypasses exist to relieve the already saturated surface roads of the core. you don't see the same thing with trains because it's not necessary. it sucks for the passenger to transfer between three or four different trains to get from EWR to flatbush, but the rail infrastructure has plenty of capacity to accommodate a few extra pax on that route. I think it would be a lot nicer to have urban life/transit built around many smaller cores with everyone living much closer to work. but in aggregate, businesses want the largest hiring base, and people want the best jobs they can get in the area.
  - ars 2y ago
    The downside is it creates a conflict between the city and the rest. The city is like "we want transit, everyone else go away". The rest are like "we want to give you business but your policies drive us away", and "we want transit, but we are forced to get a car because transit is only in the center". It's an unnecessary conflict - just add some transit that doesn't revolve around the city center. This reduces the number of people just passing through the center and creating unnecessary stress, and it make transit possible for more people. Manhattan is like a black hole - it sucks in every single transit from as far away as Massachusetts. Try to travel by public transportation from virtually anywhere nearby without going through Manhattan. You can't and it's unnecessary traffic.
taatof 2y ago
How do we get around? To get downtown I have to take two busses and then bart (or two busses but it takes longer because there are a lot more stops). The kicker: I'm not even in a suburb, I live in SF! All we do in SF is make car driving worse, we almost never make public transit better. At least NYC has a plenty good enough train system. I end up WFH anyway, largely because it's annoying to get to an office downtown every day.
- ajsnigrutin 2y ago
  > All we do in SF is make car driving worse, we almost never make public transit better. Same happening here in my smallish (~300k peeople) capital of a small eu country... Too many cars? More expensive parking! Less parking! More expensive parking! Less parking! More pedestrian-only streets, and even more cars around that... And the buses? They suck. The city is roughly star-shaped.. want to go from one leg to another? Well, you have to cross the city center. Sunday? Half of the buses don't drive then. Something happening in the city center? Good luck with getting on the last bus after the event is over, and no extra buses added. Dog? Not during "rush hours" (6.30-9:30 and 13-17h). AC? Barely any. Two buses needed? No time sinchronization at all. Train-bus time sychronization? haha good luck. Need to go just a stop or two? It's expensive. Need to go across the whole town? It's slow, even with empty streets. But hey, parking will be made even more expensive! edit: also, a student? You get cheaper transport! Here's a line for you to wait to get the transport card: https://www.zurnal24.si/slovenija/pred-okenci-prevoznikov-pricakujte-gneco-237166 https://www.zurnal24.si/slovenija/pred-okenci-prevoznikov-pr...
  - taatof 2y ago
    Sounds right. Here in SF, instead of police pulling over people who speed and run stop signs, we're getting rid of parking spots within 20ft of intersections so people speeding and running stop signs can see if they're about to kill a pedestrian. Could raise a fortune for public transit if we enforced traffic laws and used that money.
    - milch 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
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paxys 2y ago
SF is already half way there with its bridge tolls (which, funny enough, are higher than NYC's congestion charge, yet there is zero fuss about them). The rest of the city is too spread out and has no natural choke points, so I don't see how this kind of congestion charging will be possible.
- vinay427 2y ago
  > which, funny enough, are higher than NYC's congestion charge, yet there is zero fuss about them That may be because NY/NJ have bridge tolls into the city that are often much higher than those in SF. https://www.panynj.gov/bridges-tunnels/en/tolls.html https://www.panynj.gov/bridges-tunnels/en/tolls.html
kmlx 2y ago
> During rush hour, cars block the box i got a fine in London for doing this by mistake. i didn’t even block traffic, i just went into the intersection without the cars in front moving. bam, fine. lesson learned.
- hammock 2y ago
  What you did is the definition of blocking the box - stopping in the intersection (even if your light is green). Blocking traffic would be if your light was red. It's better this way that the law penalizes what you can control (your own vehicle movement) as opposed to what you can't (the cars in front of you)
  - kmlx 2y ago
    yup, agree. the fine was just. the point is there are solutions to blocking intersections. namely cameras and fines.
xyst 2y ago
As with “plastic bag bans”, and any other progressive program like “congestion pricing” aimed at reducing our collective dependency on O&G, plastic junk, and general waste. The incoming administration, auto industry, and O&G industry are very likely to send their army of lawyers and paid off politicians to fight this from going nationwide. Got to make sure the multibillion dollar oil companies, executives, and shareholders get their fucking nut.
bubblethink 2y ago
>I really, really want congestion pricing in downtown SF. But SF doesn't have public transport. This just makes driving expensive, without any real benefit. We already do this on 101.
- bufferoverflow 2y ago
  SF has public transport. Here's the map: https://www.iliveinthebayarea.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/SF_main_lines.gif https://www.iliveinthebayarea.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12...
  - bubblethink 2y ago
    Yes, obviously every city has public transport. It is not a usable system like NYC. The recent central subway debacle stands as a testament to that.
    - saagarjha 2y ago
      SF public transportation is plenty usable. I hardly ever take my car to the city anymore; it's just not worth it. Sure, it's no NYC, but it's definitely the best public transit in California and probably top-quartile in the US.
cyberax 2y ago
> During rush hour, cars block the box and slow down busses, with cascading effects. Then stop digging deeper and improve the car infrastructure instead of sabotaging it.
- saagarjha 2y ago
  So they can block more busses?
- blitzar 2y ago
  Gotta double all the road widths then. Doesn't leave room for any buildings in Manhattan, but will ease the congestion.
Ferret7446 2y ago
I think it's highly unlikely to result in positive effects. I would be hoping that it only harms NYC economic condition "a little", as the best case outcome. This falls solidly in the "it sounds good but causes significant negative unintended consequences" bucket of regulation, like the rest of NYC's many regulations that led up to this point.
- scarab92 2y ago
  Why do you think that? Congestion pricing is a way to price an externality, which is usually a good thing compared to externalities being free.
  - Ferret7446 2y ago
    The externality is already "priced in" to the traffic. People who can wait in traffic or can't afford not to wait in traffic do so, and people who want to skip out can as well. Congestion pricing, like many fees and regulations, is a regressive tax, because the overhead seeps into all goods and services and it impacts the poor most of all and the rich not at all.
    - tptacek 2y ago
      In the absence of pricing, people who do not want to wait cannot opt out of traffic, so the rebuttal here seems imperfect.
    - vinay427 2y ago
      The median income of a household with a car in the city is more than double that of households without cars [1]. In a city where public transport is a viable and relatively cheap alternative, it doesn’t seem obvious that it disproportionately impacts the poor, unlike for instance a flat sales tax on essential goods. [1] https://blog.tstc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/how-car-free-is-nyc.pdf https://blog.tstc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/how-car-fre...
      - bushbaba 2y ago
viccis 2y ago
It works well in NYC because it's hard to justify driving anyway. The transit system is just so extensive. But somewhere like Atlanta, Dallas, etc.? Absolutely not. It's just a vice tax levied on poor people who are already not happy about having to commute long drives into the city center to find work. They have no alternative. They can't spend 3 hours each way on buses. They can't afford to live in the the handful of walkable blocks in the city with $3k+ rent that effectively serve as a little Disneyland for affluent residents who want to larp like they live in Brooklyn. Build the public transit BEFORE you hit the poors with a giant stick. Because I guarantee you that hitting them with that stick is not going to effect change in any way, as these people have next to no influence on policymakers already.
bushbaba 2y ago
Why can’t we have dedicated bus lanes. Seems like a more amicable solution. Personally I find it weird that SF’s public transit is so under water it needs bail outs from car drivers. Yet it also doesn’t serve the car drivers with any compelling equivalent.
- aprilthird2021 2y ago
  SF does have dedicated bus lanes
pixelatedindex 2y ago
Look at the carpool lanes in the Bay Area. It’s as much as $9 for a couple of miles around the Palo Alto / Atherton area and there’s no lack of cars. Then there’s like another $5 or something between that area and Santa Clara. Maybe it will work in NYC, but in the Bay Area I can’t help but feel like it’s a regressive tax because people who already have the money will continue their ways and pay but people who are on a budget now have to wait longer to get anywhere in the peninsula. SF has a ton of folk coming from quite a ways away and it can easily take 2x the time if using public transit. Outside of rush hour Caltrain can take 1.5-2h, and Bart from Berryessa isn’t quick (plus contending with BART delays).
- donmcronald 2y ago
  > I can’t help but feel like it’s a regressive tax That’s exactly what it is. The richer you are, the better it is. Now people on a budget will pay taxes to subsidize infrastructure that’s only accessible to the wealthy. It’s a massive scam perpetrated by the rich for the rich. Why stop with roads? Why not have congestion pricing for schools or hospitals or access to water? That way we only have to build enough infrastructure to serve the wealthiest half of society.
  - afavour 2y ago
    In NYC it’s nothing new. A parking spot is already completely unaffordable for the average worker so they don’t drive in anyway. The vast majority of folks affected by the congestion charge are wealthy, or businesses the serve the wealthy (who will pass on the cost).
  - Analemma_ 2y ago
    > Now people on a budget will pay taxes to subsidize infrastructure that’s only accessible to the wealthy. It’s a massive scam perpetrated by the rich for the rich. Huh? The revenue from congestion pricing is used to pay for public transit. The rich people pay extra to subsidize transit for everyone else, which is exactly how things should work.
    - 2y ago
up2isomorphism 2y ago
Paying additional tax to save an incompetent public funded infrastructure (MTA in this case) never works well. At minimum, all MTA executives should be payed off before any such measures can be considered.
oliwarner 2y ago
Every penny has to go back into affordable, subsidised alternatives or you're just fencing off Manhattan for the super rich.
- walterbell 2y ago
  There should be a daily quota on rideshare cars operating in Manhattan. They are a significant percentage of traffic, often with zero passengers.
  - oliwarner 2y ago
    Taxies in general. I know medallions already limit their numbers but if you've ever been locked in traffic surrounded by yellow cabs, count the passengers. Each one —mostly empty IME— is 120sqft of road. Cars trolling around for patrons is a bad system. The Subway, buses, trams, etc, etc are all way better for passenger density.
    - walterbell 2y ago
      Like airports already do, the city could provide rideshare "waiting area" parking lots in different zones. That would retain rapid response to on-demand pickup, without random trolling on city streets as defacto parking lots. Rideshare averages only 50% utilization of taxis, despite having the advantage of automated scheduling. Instead the city added a per-ride fee, which will be covered by Uber/Lyft, making it useless as an incentive for ride reduction, https://archive.is/MtRgo https://archive.is/MtRgo > Riding in a taxi, green cab or black car will now cost passengers an extra 75 cents in the congestion zone... The surcharge for an Uber or Lyft will be $1.50 per trip... cars for services like Uber and Lyft make fewer trips and are more likely to idle in the zone. In 2023, taxis made an average of 12 daily trips, while ride-hail vehicles made an average of six.
  - deleted 2y ago
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- stewx 2y ago
  Only the super rich can afford to pay $9? I.e., roughly the price of a sandwich in 2025?
jjav 2y ago
> congestion pricing pays off in a big way Define "pays off". Who benefits, who suffers?
- paulgb 2y ago
  As a New Yorker, a few things made me a proponent of congestion pricing: - watching people have to squeeze between stopped (mostly single-occupant) cars blocking sidewalks on Broome or Canal on their own pedestrian light at rush hour, and realizing that it would be impossible for someone with a stroller or mobility aid. - seeing packed busses miss light cycles because the intersection is blocked - seeing ambulances or fire trucks with sirens blaring stuck in gridlock “Pays off” to me means that transit users and pedestrians are no longer regularly inconvenienced by the fact that more people choose to drive than there is frankly room for.
  - tomp 2y ago
    All these issues have better solutions than congestion pricing. Cars blocking intersections and/or sidewalks can easily be solved with automated traffic fines - that's how Zurich and London does it (the former without any congestion pricing!) Many cities also have special lanes only useable by some classes of vehicles - e.g. busses (or sometimes taxis as well) - I guess ambulances could also use those. In fact, congestion pricing doesn't solve any of those problems, it's just an irrelevant (as in, it doesn't solve any specific problem directly) regressive tax to "drive less".
    - paulgb 2y ago
      > Cars blocking intersections and/or sidewalks can easily be solved with automated traffic fines Rush hour traffic is so gridlocked that cars often can’t know if they will clear a light cycle, so fining would effectively just reduce to a stochastic congestion tax. NYC does have some dedicated bus lanes, but adding more means reallocating more space from cars which is a political no-go without reducing the number of cars first. That’s what congestion pricing aims to do.
psychlops 2y ago
$9 per day isn't going to make anybody change their route. A round trip on the subway costs $5.80. IMHO, they would need to push higher than $50 to get drivers to blink.
- cosmic_quanta 2y ago
  The thing about congestion is that reducing the number of drivers slightly (e.g. 10-20%) could eliminate congestion by 100%! This is the same way it works for electrical congestion. So you need pricing which will make a few people reconsider driving, who were on the edge of using public transit anyway.
  - psychlops 2y ago
    Interesting point, I'd believe it. I suspect the demographic that is driving instead of using public transit is quite small. Driving for a commute isn't really possible in Manhattan unless the company provides parking. And those parking spots are reserved for executives. This group of people are price insensitive. Passing through Manhattan can frequently save an hour of time in traffic elsewhere, those commuters will just see the fee as a higher toll. All three major airports never tied directly to a subway, opting instead for airtran systems which create complexity and cost time. I suspect this causes a base level of traffic.
  - zzzeek 2y ago
    ha, I drive / train into Manhattan from outside a lot so I'm by nature on the "edge", and this change if it reduces traffic makes me more likely to drive :)
joejohnson 2y ago
NY is probably the only city where this could work because it’s the only proper American city that has a real metro system. Every other city will require major upgrades to have modern public transportation, and the density isn’t there in most American cities that were designed around the car.
- nullstyle 2y ago
  Please explain proper for us used to bart/muni/caltrain.
  - dibujaron 2y ago
    NYC Subway, Metro North, and LIRR have much broader and more frequent coverage to a lot more places outside the urban core than the bay area's network does. Iirc muni metro has passable coverage inside San Francisco, and Bart and Caltrain service a few linear corridors outside San Francisco pretty well, but a whole lot of the bay area is very far from transit. This means that bay area commuters could not as easily switch away from cars. Though SF is still probably the second best candidate for congestion pricing after NYC.
- tacticalturtle 2y ago
  Chicago and DC? Their ridership numbers aren’t trivial https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_rapid_transit_systems https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_rapid_... I live in Boston and I could see it working here, now that the T is on a path to reliability. While it would be great if money wasn’t a concern, you don’t need to plaster the city in a grid of metro lines. Careful usage of bus only lanes has really made a difference in some areas of Boston that I frequent. Edit: The link above is only for heavy rail - Boston’s numbers are better if you also include light rail, which is a significant part of the system: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_light_rail_systems https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_light_...
Hilift 2y ago
Arlington, VA has had this for years. The I-66 10-mile segment to DC is dynamic pricing with no limit. I've seen it over $40. And they can pick and choose who it applies to. That was in part due to a lawsuit. The federal and state governments made hollow promises to Arlington to get I-66 built, then did little about the resulting traffic mess and noise for decades. "The issue arises from a 1977 agreement between then-U.S. Secretary of Transportation William T. Coleman Jr. and the state of Virginia. In the so-called Coleman Decision, Arlington agreed to drop its opposition to the construction of I-66 in exchange for certain promises, including a four-lane limit, sound barriers, and truck and car-pool restrictions." https://www.arlingtontransportationpartners.com/services/i-66-outreach/ https://www.arlingtontransportationpartners.com/services/i-6... https://www.arlingtonmagazine.com/i-66-construction-protests-arlington-va/ https://www.arlingtonmagazine.com/i-66-construction-protests... A Long Road Bitter Fight Against I-66 Now History https://archive.is/oo06a https://archive.is/oo06a Arlington Board United In Opposing Wider I-66 https://archive.is/NMhbH https://archive.is/NMhbH
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saltminer 2y ago
> During rush hour, cars block the box There's an easy solution to this: have ticket writers waiting at intersections to paper all the cars who do it. It's not like they can drive away. NYC used to be really good about enforcement, and it worked extremely well. It doesn't solve traffic, but it does help stave off gridlock and keep intersections free for bus lanes to operate normally.
- asdff 2y ago
  Thats the thing with socal traffic especially. Absolutely zero enforcement by the police. What do they do with their resources instead? There was a man with a knife caught in a burglary last week and the police sent like 40 suvs some unmarked with the blue and red lights through the windscreen, a swat team, and a helicopter. Probably in the millions spent for that operation alone for this guy with a kitchen knife. I wonder how little you could get a man with a knife disarmed for in some midwestern suburb in comparison. Oh and keep in mind they didn’t actually go in after the guy they just did a standoff till 2am when he surrendered on his own. Meanwhile everyone blocks the box and there are cars without even plates on them.
  - saltminer 2y ago
    That's hardly a SoCal phenomenon, sadly. In all the places I've lived, "protect and serve" seems to be abbreviated - "protect and serve our desk jobs and pensions" would be more accurate. If the TSA is security theater, the police are a circus, and the occasional show of force is them coming to town. It's like those pictures of Luigi Mangione being perp walked in Manhattan with 20 cops and FBI agents behind him. Imagine if those officers were on the beat or enforcing traffic laws instead. That would make more of a difference in our communities than a photo op ever will.
    - asdff 2y ago
      No in the midwest they actually police for traffic. The cops will have the highway DOT actually pave little asphault pads when they resurface where they like to sit and take radar. They will get you for out of date registration. They will get you for traffic violations and they do actually send out police to monitor intersections for bad behavior when its bad. They just don't do anything like that in socal. I've not once seen a cop take radar in socal. Not once. I can't even remember the last time I've seen someone pulled over in socal but it happens probably three times in my view whenever I go elsewhere to visit.

gkoberger 2y ago

While I agree with disliking the things you mentioned, could it be argued that adding barriers to entry for getting into the city will just increase WFH and hurt SF more? I can see a lot of people choosing to just stay home rather than take a bus – not everyone is close to MUNI or BART.

jazzyjackson 2y ago
Fewer single-person-vehicles = more desirable ontime Bus/Tram throughput = more people who are close to MUNIBART taking MUNIBART. Then use tolls to improve and expand the mass transit services instead of only ever catering to the single-person-car-commuters. (ofc it takes more than ontime performance to sell people on mass transit, needs to be a safe environment at all hours of the day -- even if I can take BART into the city in the afternoon, if I don't feel safe taking it back at 10PM then I'm just going to drive both ways, to say nothing of the choice to stop running trains at midnight)
- ghaff 2y ago
  Safety and schedule. I've never had a safety issue with taking commuter rail into Boston but taking it home from an evening event is basically a non-starter given how seldom it runs and how much longer it will take relative to driving even if I catch my train.
  - adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
    I'm very hopeful that Boston commuter rail gets electrified with the associated speed and frequency improvements soonish. the inner half of the commuter rail network is absolutely dense enough to be worth running service every 15 minutes on peak and every 30 off peak
    - potato3732842 2y ago
      Top speed (mostly) comes from the tracks, not the method of motive power. As it stands they're already maxing out and exceeding (when they're late) the max speed for the class of rail they have. Some of the inner stops might get a few seconds faster with better acceleration but that's about it. The grade crossings are also kinda f'd. At full speed you can be in the middle of the train and see the arms still be in the process of lowering at certain crossings. That ain't safe. Faster won't make that better.
      - scottbez1 2y ago
        Top speed, sure, but for typical commuter heavy-rail, a non-express train isn't running at top speed for all that long. Diesel-electric trains take a LOT longer to accelerate compared to a modern EMU, so much so that Caltrain's electrification project shaved 23 minutes off the SF to San Jose local trip, from 100 to 77 minutes. Videos [0] [1] make the acceleration improvement pretty clear. [0] https://x.com/Caltrain/status/1804278237486588179 https://x.com/Caltrain/status/1804278237486588179 [1] https://x.com/eiioth/status/1822814729079009516 https://x.com/eiioth/status/1822814729079009516
        potato3732842 2y ago
        The MBTA already runs top speed on most of its lines once you get outside of roughly I95 depending on the line. Getting there faster would help but I don't think it would shave as much time off the end to end trip as you think. And for the urban stops they already accelerate and brake at the limit of what is reasonable for standing passengers. They can't push it too much or an old lady is gonna bounce off a wall and get a nose bleed and that's a bad look. It's not like Acela where a ticket guarantees a seat. There will definitely be some improvement from electrification but I don't think it will affect median travel times much and the affect on average will mostly be from reliability.
        ghaff 2y ago
        The Fitchburg line did do upgrades a few years ago. I think they double-tracked sections that weren't. It still take a while--hour+--from the outer reaches.
- milch 2y ago
  Most transit agencies have this problem of the "vicious transit cycle" - people don't take the bus because it's too infrequent/unreliable => more cars make the buses more unreliable => less money because so few people take it => back to start. It's amazing when you're sitting in a bus behind 20 cars backed up over 4 blocks, and you look back and there's 50 people on the bus. Really makes you think why the 50-person bus doesn't get priority over all of the single occupancy vehicles
  - cyberax 2y ago
    Nah. Most agencies have a problem of people realizing that wasting life in buses is not worth it. Transit can never compete with cars on speed in well-designed cities.
    - jazzyjackson 2y ago
      I guess by 'well designed cities' you mean 'cities with copious amounts of parking' For certain high frequency routes in Chicago, I never minded sitting on the bus to get across town. At least once I got off I didn't have to find a parking spot. Now wasting life waiting for a bus is another story.
      - cyberax 2y ago
        > I guess by 'well designed cities' you mean 'cities with copious amounts of parking' Yup. Wide roads, plenty of parking, distributed industry and office space, low density.
        saagarjha 2y ago
        "Low density" just means that the entire area is covered in asphalt. That's not what well designed looks like.
        cyberax 2y ago
        Yes, and? > That's not what well designed looks like. It is more flexible, people-friendly, enables better living. So yeah, "well designed".
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
maxwellg 2y ago
For a concrete example of carrot and stick - check out ridership numbers for the 49 after the Van Ness BRT project finished. 49 ridership is more than completely recovered at 140% of pre-pandemic numbers. In comparison, the 38 and 38R didn't get their dedicated bus lane out in the Richmond and ridership numbers are still nowhere near pre-pandemic. Make the bus fast and frequent and people will take it. https://www.sfmta.com/reports/average-daily-muni-boardings-route-and-month-pre-pandemic-present https://www.sfmta.com/reports/average-daily-muni-boardings-r...
- tlogan 2y ago
  By the way, the head of SFMTA resigned this week, and there are rumors of a full audit on the horizon.
mperham 2y ago
Or it could be argued that more people want to take the bus but it’s too slow to be practical due to car gridlock.
paxys 2y ago
Reducing the number of daily commuters isn't going to "hurt" the city. Quite the opposite in fact. Actual residents make the city what it is, and reducing traffic/congestion/honking/pollution is going to make it a much more attractive place to live.
- gotoeleven 2y ago
  [flagged]

ars 2y ago

What I'm curious about is if business in the Manhattan will be lessened as a result of less people there. I know the goal is less cars, rather than less people, but I want to see if that's actually what will happen. As someone who doesn't live in Manhattan I wish there was a better way to go basically anywhere in New York without entering Manhattan. Every single road, bus, and subway goes through this super dense area. Like why do I need to go through Manhattan to get from Newark Airport to Flatbush? (Unless I have a car, then I can go over the Verazzano, but in a bus/subway/train? It's all via Manhattan.

leetcrew 2y ago
I've thought about the same thing and concluded this basically reduces to "why do economies organize around dense urban cores"? pretty much any business that can afford to will want to rent space in the barycenter of a metro area. that's what manhattan is to the NYC metro. when the vast majority of daily trips are into and out of that dense core, that defines the most economic routes for building transit. beltways/bypasses exist to relieve the already saturated surface roads of the core. you don't see the same thing with trains because it's not necessary. it sucks for the passenger to transfer between three or four different trains to get from EWR to flatbush, but the rail infrastructure has plenty of capacity to accommodate a few extra pax on that route. I think it would be a lot nicer to have urban life/transit built around many smaller cores with everyone living much closer to work. but in aggregate, businesses want the largest hiring base, and people want the best jobs they can get in the area.
- ars 2y ago
  The downside is it creates a conflict between the city and the rest. The city is like "we want transit, everyone else go away". The rest are like "we want to give you business but your policies drive us away", and "we want transit, but we are forced to get a car because transit is only in the center". It's an unnecessary conflict - just add some transit that doesn't revolve around the city center. This reduces the number of people just passing through the center and creating unnecessary stress, and it make transit possible for more people. Manhattan is like a black hole - it sucks in every single transit from as far away as Massachusetts. Try to travel by public transportation from virtually anywhere nearby without going through Manhattan. You can't and it's unnecessary traffic.

taatof 2y ago

How do we get around? To get downtown I have to take two busses and then bart (or two busses but it takes longer because there are a lot more stops). The kicker: I'm not even in a suburb, I live in SF! All we do in SF is make car driving worse, we almost never make public transit better. At least NYC has a plenty good enough train system. I end up WFH anyway, largely because it's annoying to get to an office downtown every day.

ajsnigrutin 2y ago
> All we do in SF is make car driving worse, we almost never make public transit better. Same happening here in my smallish (~300k peeople) capital of a small eu country... Too many cars? More expensive parking! Less parking! More expensive parking! Less parking! More pedestrian-only streets, and even more cars around that... And the buses? They suck. The city is roughly star-shaped.. want to go from one leg to another? Well, you have to cross the city center. Sunday? Half of the buses don't drive then. Something happening in the city center? Good luck with getting on the last bus after the event is over, and no extra buses added. Dog? Not during "rush hours" (6.30-9:30 and 13-17h). AC? Barely any. Two buses needed? No time sinchronization at all. Train-bus time sychronization? haha good luck. Need to go just a stop or two? It's expensive. Need to go across the whole town? It's slow, even with empty streets. But hey, parking will be made even more expensive! edit: also, a student? You get cheaper transport! Here's a line for you to wait to get the transport card: https://www.zurnal24.si/slovenija/pred-okenci-prevoznikov-pricakujte-gneco-237166 https://www.zurnal24.si/slovenija/pred-okenci-prevoznikov-pr...
- taatof 2y ago
  Sounds right. Here in SF, instead of police pulling over people who speed and run stop signs, we're getting rid of parking spots within 20ft of intersections so people speeding and running stop signs can see if they're about to kill a pedestrian. Could raise a fortune for public transit if we enforced traffic laws and used that money.
  - milch 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

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paxys 2y ago

SF is already half way there with its bridge tolls (which, funny enough, are higher than NYC's congestion charge, yet there is zero fuss about them). The rest of the city is too spread out and has no natural choke points, so I don't see how this kind of congestion charging will be possible.

vinay427 2y ago
> which, funny enough, are higher than NYC's congestion charge, yet there is zero fuss about them That may be because NY/NJ have bridge tolls into the city that are often much higher than those in SF. https://www.panynj.gov/bridges-tunnels/en/tolls.html https://www.panynj.gov/bridges-tunnels/en/tolls.html

kmlx 2y ago

> During rush hour, cars block the box i got a fine in London for doing this by mistake. i didn’t even block traffic, i just went into the intersection without the cars in front moving. bam, fine. lesson learned.

hammock 2y ago
What you did is the definition of blocking the box - stopping in the intersection (even if your light is green). Blocking traffic would be if your light was red. It's better this way that the law penalizes what you can control (your own vehicle movement) as opposed to what you can't (the cars in front of you)
- kmlx 2y ago
  yup, agree. the fine was just. the point is there are solutions to blocking intersections. namely cameras and fines.

xyst 2y ago

As with “plastic bag bans”, and any other progressive program like “congestion pricing” aimed at reducing our collective dependency on O&G, plastic junk, and general waste. The incoming administration, auto industry, and O&G industry are very likely to send their army of lawyers and paid off politicians to fight this from going nationwide. Got to make sure the multibillion dollar oil companies, executives, and shareholders get their fucking nut.

bubblethink 2y ago

>I really, really want congestion pricing in downtown SF. But SF doesn't have public transport. This just makes driving expensive, without any real benefit. We already do this on 101.

bufferoverflow 2y ago
SF has public transport. Here's the map: https://www.iliveinthebayarea.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/SF_main_lines.gif https://www.iliveinthebayarea.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12...
- bubblethink 2y ago
  Yes, obviously every city has public transport. It is not a usable system like NYC. The recent central subway debacle stands as a testament to that.
  - saagarjha 2y ago
    SF public transportation is plenty usable. I hardly ever take my car to the city anymore; it's just not worth it. Sure, it's no NYC, but it's definitely the best public transit in California and probably top-quartile in the US.

cyberax 2y ago

> During rush hour, cars block the box and slow down busses, with cascading effects. Then stop digging deeper and improve the car infrastructure instead of sabotaging it.

saagarjha 2y ago
So they can block more busses?
blitzar 2y ago
Gotta double all the road widths then. Doesn't leave room for any buildings in Manhattan, but will ease the congestion.

Ferret7446 2y ago

I think it's highly unlikely to result in positive effects. I would be hoping that it only harms NYC economic condition "a little", as the best case outcome. This falls solidly in the "it sounds good but causes significant negative unintended consequences" bucket of regulation, like the rest of NYC's many regulations that led up to this point.

scarab92 2y ago
Why do you think that? Congestion pricing is a way to price an externality, which is usually a good thing compared to externalities being free.
- Ferret7446 2y ago
  The externality is already "priced in" to the traffic. People who can wait in traffic or can't afford not to wait in traffic do so, and people who want to skip out can as well. Congestion pricing, like many fees and regulations, is a regressive tax, because the overhead seeps into all goods and services and it impacts the poor most of all and the rich not at all.
  - tptacek 2y ago
    In the absence of pricing, people who do not want to wait cannot opt out of traffic, so the rebuttal here seems imperfect.
  - vinay427 2y ago
    The median income of a household with a car in the city is more than double that of households without cars [1]. In a city where public transport is a viable and relatively cheap alternative, it doesn’t seem obvious that it disproportionately impacts the poor, unlike for instance a flat sales tax on essential goods. [1] https://blog.tstc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/how-car-free-is-nyc.pdf https://blog.tstc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/how-car-fre...
    - bushbaba 2y ago

viccis 2y ago

It works well in NYC because it's hard to justify driving anyway. The transit system is just so extensive. But somewhere like Atlanta, Dallas, etc.? Absolutely not. It's just a vice tax levied on poor people who are already not happy about having to commute long drives into the city center to find work. They have no alternative. They can't spend 3 hours each way on buses. They can't afford to live in the the handful of walkable blocks in the city with $3k+ rent that effectively serve as a little Disneyland for affluent residents who want to larp like they live in Brooklyn. Build the public transit BEFORE you hit the poors with a giant stick. Because I guarantee you that hitting them with that stick is not going to effect change in any way, as these people have next to no influence on policymakers already.

bushbaba 2y ago

Why can’t we have dedicated bus lanes. Seems like a more amicable solution. Personally I find it weird that SF’s public transit is so under water it needs bail outs from car drivers. Yet it also doesn’t serve the car drivers with any compelling equivalent.

aprilthird2021 2y ago
SF does have dedicated bus lanes

pixelatedindex 2y ago

Look at the carpool lanes in the Bay Area. It’s as much as $9 for a couple of miles around the Palo Alto / Atherton area and there’s no lack of cars. Then there’s like another $5 or something between that area and Santa Clara. Maybe it will work in NYC, but in the Bay Area I can’t help but feel like it’s a regressive tax because people who already have the money will continue their ways and pay but people who are on a budget now have to wait longer to get anywhere in the peninsula. SF has a ton of folk coming from quite a ways away and it can easily take 2x the time if using public transit. Outside of rush hour Caltrain can take 1.5-2h, and Bart from Berryessa isn’t quick (plus contending with BART delays).

donmcronald 2y ago
> I can’t help but feel like it’s a regressive tax That’s exactly what it is. The richer you are, the better it is. Now people on a budget will pay taxes to subsidize infrastructure that’s only accessible to the wealthy. It’s a massive scam perpetrated by the rich for the rich. Why stop with roads? Why not have congestion pricing for schools or hospitals or access to water? That way we only have to build enough infrastructure to serve the wealthiest half of society.
- afavour 2y ago
  In NYC it’s nothing new. A parking spot is already completely unaffordable for the average worker so they don’t drive in anyway. The vast majority of folks affected by the congestion charge are wealthy, or businesses the serve the wealthy (who will pass on the cost).
- Analemma_ 2y ago
  > Now people on a budget will pay taxes to subsidize infrastructure that’s only accessible to the wealthy. It’s a massive scam perpetrated by the rich for the rich. Huh? The revenue from congestion pricing is used to pay for public transit. The rich people pay extra to subsidize transit for everyone else, which is exactly how things should work.
  - 2y ago

up2isomorphism 2y ago

Paying additional tax to save an incompetent public funded infrastructure (MTA in this case) never works well. At minimum, all MTA executives should be payed off before any such measures can be considered.

oliwarner 2y ago

Every penny has to go back into affordable, subsidised alternatives or you're just fencing off Manhattan for the super rich.

walterbell 2y ago
There should be a daily quota on rideshare cars operating in Manhattan. They are a significant percentage of traffic, often with zero passengers.
- oliwarner 2y ago
  Taxies in general. I know medallions already limit their numbers but if you've ever been locked in traffic surrounded by yellow cabs, count the passengers. Each one —mostly empty IME— is 120sqft of road. Cars trolling around for patrons is a bad system. The Subway, buses, trams, etc, etc are all way better for passenger density.
  - walterbell 2y ago
    Like airports already do, the city could provide rideshare "waiting area" parking lots in different zones. That would retain rapid response to on-demand pickup, without random trolling on city streets as defacto parking lots. Rideshare averages only 50% utilization of taxis, despite having the advantage of automated scheduling. Instead the city added a per-ride fee, which will be covered by Uber/Lyft, making it useless as an incentive for ride reduction, https://archive.is/MtRgo https://archive.is/MtRgo > Riding in a taxi, green cab or black car will now cost passengers an extra 75 cents in the congestion zone... The surcharge for an Uber or Lyft will be $1.50 per trip... cars for services like Uber and Lyft make fewer trips and are more likely to idle in the zone. In 2023, taxis made an average of 12 daily trips, while ride-hail vehicles made an average of six.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
stewx 2y ago
Only the super rich can afford to pay $9? I.e., roughly the price of a sandwich in 2025?

jjav 2y ago

> congestion pricing pays off in a big way Define "pays off". Who benefits, who suffers?

paulgb 2y ago
As a New Yorker, a few things made me a proponent of congestion pricing: - watching people have to squeeze between stopped (mostly single-occupant) cars blocking sidewalks on Broome or Canal on their own pedestrian light at rush hour, and realizing that it would be impossible for someone with a stroller or mobility aid. - seeing packed busses miss light cycles because the intersection is blocked - seeing ambulances or fire trucks with sirens blaring stuck in gridlock “Pays off” to me means that transit users and pedestrians are no longer regularly inconvenienced by the fact that more people choose to drive than there is frankly room for.
- tomp 2y ago
  All these issues have better solutions than congestion pricing. Cars blocking intersections and/or sidewalks can easily be solved with automated traffic fines - that's how Zurich and London does it (the former without any congestion pricing!) Many cities also have special lanes only useable by some classes of vehicles - e.g. busses (or sometimes taxis as well) - I guess ambulances could also use those. In fact, congestion pricing doesn't solve any of those problems, it's just an irrelevant (as in, it doesn't solve any specific problem directly) regressive tax to "drive less".
  - paulgb 2y ago
    > Cars blocking intersections and/or sidewalks can easily be solved with automated traffic fines Rush hour traffic is so gridlocked that cars often can’t know if they will clear a light cycle, so fining would effectively just reduce to a stochastic congestion tax. NYC does have some dedicated bus lanes, but adding more means reallocating more space from cars which is a political no-go without reducing the number of cars first. That’s what congestion pricing aims to do.

psychlops 2y ago

$9 per day isn't going to make anybody change their route. A round trip on the subway costs $5.80. IMHO, they would need to push higher than $50 to get drivers to blink.

cosmic_quanta 2y ago
The thing about congestion is that reducing the number of drivers slightly (e.g. 10-20%) could eliminate congestion by 100%! This is the same way it works for electrical congestion. So you need pricing which will make a few people reconsider driving, who were on the edge of using public transit anyway.
- psychlops 2y ago
  Interesting point, I'd believe it. I suspect the demographic that is driving instead of using public transit is quite small. Driving for a commute isn't really possible in Manhattan unless the company provides parking. And those parking spots are reserved for executives. This group of people are price insensitive. Passing through Manhattan can frequently save an hour of time in traffic elsewhere, those commuters will just see the fee as a higher toll. All three major airports never tied directly to a subway, opting instead for airtran systems which create complexity and cost time. I suspect this causes a base level of traffic.
- zzzeek 2y ago
  ha, I drive / train into Manhattan from outside a lot so I'm by nature on the "edge", and this change if it reduces traffic makes me more likely to drive :)

joejohnson 2y ago

NY is probably the only city where this could work because it’s the only proper American city that has a real metro system. Every other city will require major upgrades to have modern public transportation, and the density isn’t there in most American cities that were designed around the car.

nullstyle 2y ago
Please explain proper for us used to bart/muni/caltrain.
- dibujaron 2y ago
  NYC Subway, Metro North, and LIRR have much broader and more frequent coverage to a lot more places outside the urban core than the bay area's network does. Iirc muni metro has passable coverage inside San Francisco, and Bart and Caltrain service a few linear corridors outside San Francisco pretty well, but a whole lot of the bay area is very far from transit. This means that bay area commuters could not as easily switch away from cars. Though SF is still probably the second best candidate for congestion pricing after NYC.
tacticalturtle 2y ago
Chicago and DC? Their ridership numbers aren’t trivial https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_rapid_transit_systems https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_rapid_... I live in Boston and I could see it working here, now that the T is on a path to reliability. While it would be great if money wasn’t a concern, you don’t need to plaster the city in a grid of metro lines. Careful usage of bus only lanes has really made a difference in some areas of Boston that I frequent. Edit: The link above is only for heavy rail - Boston’s numbers are better if you also include light rail, which is a significant part of the system: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_light_rail_systems https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_light_...

Hilift 2y ago

Arlington, VA has had this for years. The I-66 10-mile segment to DC is dynamic pricing with no limit. I've seen it over $40. And they can pick and choose who it applies to. That was in part due to a lawsuit. The federal and state governments made hollow promises to Arlington to get I-66 built, then did little about the resulting traffic mess and noise for decades. "The issue arises from a 1977 agreement between then-U.S. Secretary of Transportation William T. Coleman Jr. and the state of Virginia. In the so-called Coleman Decision, Arlington agreed to drop its opposition to the construction of I-66 in exchange for certain promises, including a four-lane limit, sound barriers, and truck and car-pool restrictions." https://www.arlingtontransportationpartners.com/services/i-66-outreach/ https://www.arlingtontransportationpartners.com/services/i-6... https://www.arlingtonmagazine.com/i-66-construction-protests-arlington-va/ https://www.arlingtonmagazine.com/i-66-construction-protests... A Long Road Bitter Fight Against I-66 Now History https://archive.is/oo06a https://archive.is/oo06a Arlington Board United In Opposing Wider I-66 https://archive.is/NMhbH https://archive.is/NMhbH

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saltminer 2y ago

> During rush hour, cars block the box There's an easy solution to this: have ticket writers waiting at intersections to paper all the cars who do it. It's not like they can drive away. NYC used to be really good about enforcement, and it worked extremely well. It doesn't solve traffic, but it does help stave off gridlock and keep intersections free for bus lanes to operate normally.

asdff 2y ago
Thats the thing with socal traffic especially. Absolutely zero enforcement by the police. What do they do with their resources instead? There was a man with a knife caught in a burglary last week and the police sent like 40 suvs some unmarked with the blue and red lights through the windscreen, a swat team, and a helicopter. Probably in the millions spent for that operation alone for this guy with a kitchen knife. I wonder how little you could get a man with a knife disarmed for in some midwestern suburb in comparison. Oh and keep in mind they didn’t actually go in after the guy they just did a standoff till 2am when he surrendered on his own. Meanwhile everyone blocks the box and there are cars without even plates on them.
- saltminer 2y ago
  That's hardly a SoCal phenomenon, sadly. In all the places I've lived, "protect and serve" seems to be abbreviated - "protect and serve our desk jobs and pensions" would be more accurate. If the TSA is security theater, the police are a circus, and the occasional show of force is them coming to town. It's like those pictures of Luigi Mangione being perp walked in Manhattan with 20 cops and FBI agents behind him. Imagine if those officers were on the beat or enforcing traffic laws instead. That would make more of a difference in our communities than a photo op ever will.
  - asdff 2y ago
    No in the midwest they actually police for traffic. The cops will have the highway DOT actually pave little asphault pads when they resurface where they like to sit and take radar. They will get you for out of date registration. They will get you for traffic violations and they do actually send out police to monitor intersections for bad behavior when its bad. They just don't do anything like that in socal. I've not once seen a cop take radar in socal. Not once. I can't even remember the last time I've seen someone pulled over in socal but it happens probably three times in my view whenever I go elsewhere to visit.