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Changes since congestion pricing started in New York
- rienbdj 1y agohttps://archive.ph/NRCcg https://archive.ph/NRCcg
- Hanschri 1y agoClimate Town has an entertaining and informative video on this topic from last month: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEFBn0r53uQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEFBn0r53uQ
- toomuchtodo 1y agoGreat comment from that video: "When cars were banned from Central Park drivers whined and now we can't imagine it any other way." Everything is impossible until it is done.
- nurettin 1y agoIt is fun to observe everything come to an equilibrium with positive outcomes until someone lights the atmosphere on fire.
- perching_aix 1y agoGetting a bit lost in the metaphor, could you clarify?
- epistasis 1y agoI see this with new apartment buildings in my small, NIMBY-dominated town. Building proposed: "It will be too expensive! We need housing for those making 10% of median income, not for those making the median income!" Building mid-construction: "This building is unbelievably ugly! How could we let this happen to our town?!" Building completed: "This building is completely vacant! Why did we allow this to be constructed? It's just proof we should never build anything again, it's not needed." 18 months later, building fully occupied, lots of happy residents with mixed incomes: Silence, because they are too busy complaining about all the other buildings.
- 0_____0 1y agoI heard a similar statement recently, which is that due to the nature of politics, there are decades where nothing is possible, followed by a couple of years where everything is possible, and you spend the former preparing and pushing for the work that will happen in the latter.
- mcmoor 1y agoThe opposite is also true. We can descend slowly into dystopia and we forget how good it can actually be.
- SchemaLoad 1y agoThat was the invention of the car. Public spaces used to be massively better and people went out and socialized more. And now people have forgotten that almost all the problems cars solve today are problems caused by cars in the first place.
- explodes 1y agoWouldn't it be nice if policy changes were accompanied by an A/B testing plan to evaluate their impact? I have always thought so. I have also seen a major pitfall of A/B testing that real humans can hand-pick and slice data to make it sound as positive or negative as wanted. Nonetheless, the more data the better.
- rsynnott 1y agoWhat a good idea. Simply build another Manhattan for the purpose.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jeffbee 1y agoUnfortunately, the possibility exists that the moment of introducing the A/B test requirement will be strategically chosen to freeze the status quo in the way the chooser prefers.
- Calwestjobs 1y agotest A - before test B - after what are you talking about ?
- shermantanktop 1y ago“A/B in time” suffers from inability to control for other factors that might vary over time. In this case, that could be the economy or other transit policies. But sometimes it’s the only possible approach.
- shadowgovt 1y agoGenerally, that's considered to introduce counfounding factors on the time axis ("did we see improvement because we changed something or because flu season hit and people stayed home") that you'd prefer to mitigate by running your A and B simultaneously. But in the absence of the ability to run them simultaneously, "A is before and B is after" can be a fine proxy. Of course, if B is worse, it'd be nice if you could only subject, say, 5% of your population to it before you just slam the slider to 100% and hit everyone with it.
- maerF0x0 1y agoNot to settle on "It's bad" but their so called "results" seems completely obvious. The congestion policy is disincentivizing/suppressing people's preferred method by making it unaffordable to some, and unappealing to some. We already know that we can use policy to push people away from their preferred to a less preferred method. The items listed in green are mostly obvious as people seek alternatives. It's like highlighting how many fewer chicken deaths would occur if we created an omnivore or meat tax. IMO what they should be keeping a careful eye on and tracking is how many fewer trips happen to businesses in those areas. How much fewer social interaction is happening across the distances that those car based trips used to occur. And how much harder is it to get goods into the areas. Is less economic activity happening. In the long run, yes, maybe things will be net better for all, when the $45M per year has had a chance to make alternative transportation methods to be not just policy enforced, but truly _preferred_ option.
- zzzeek 1y agothere should be a meat tax, btw. I eat a ton of steak but it's costing the ecosystem dearly
- shermantanktop 1y agoHow high would the tax have to be to get you to stop eating so much meat?
- w0m 1y agoThink about it more; if the vegan and steak options were ~equivalently priced - more would choose vegan than if it wasn't more expensive. The idea isn't to make it prohibitive; insofaras don't make the most environmentally-expensive choice also the cheapest. To compare it to traffic; everyone is miserable sitting in traffic; so giving people an excuse for a bit more WFH is a WinWin.
- vidarh 1y agoAs a committed meat-eater: I have no idea what vegan food costs, as the label almost immediate makes me skip over them. To make me look at them, you'd have to make the non-vegan options prohibitively expensive.
- jmclnx 1y agoSeems to be working fine, I know the large city about 60 miles from me looked at this, and I am all for it. But its mass transit is a awful mess, at times walking is faster that taking a subway. I wish they would start this, but its politics is such a mess nothing really gets done there. New Ideas there gets implemented far slower than then ideas in Roman Catholic Church.
- mplanchard 1y agoTransit always seems to be kind of a chicken and egg problem. You can’t have good transit unless you have good ridership, and you can’t have good ridership if you don’t have good transit. Everywhere I know of in the US with decent transit already had it before the culture of car dominance really took hold, so it was already good enough to maintain sufficient ridership to stay good. Does anyone know of anywhere that managed to bootstrap good public transit after the fact? Anyway I wonder if congestion pricing could potentially be such a bootstrapping force, pushing enough people to use transit to start the virtuous cycle of increasing ridership and increasing quality.
- scottbez1 1y agoThe other good reason to choose congestion pricing as the start to breaking the chicken/egg problem is that, outside of NYC and maybe Chicago, public transit in the US is primarily buses on streets shared with car traffic. It's hard to attract ridership and improve buses when they're always stuck in car traffic, so starting by reducing traffic via congestion pricing is particularly pragmatic.
- SchemaLoad 1y agoThat's not true. You just have to have competent leadership. You can build the infrastructure first knowing people will use it when it's done.
- lmm 1y ago> Does anyone know of anywhere that managed to bootstrap good public transit after the fact? Shanghai. Amsterdam up to a point - they never completely lost their transit, but it was in pretty bad shape. > Anyway I wonder if congestion pricing could potentially be such a bootstrapping force, pushing enough people to use transit to start the virtuous cycle of increasing ridership and increasing quality. It can help. You need improving transit and densification to happen together so they can reinforce each other, so you need coordination between transport policy and housing policy, I think that's the key.
- philipallstar 1y agoThe increased speeds are excellent for those who can afford the toll. This is a universal benefit of toll roads for those people.
- bryanlarsen 1y agoAnd the investments in public transit and bike paths are excellent for those who can't. Such unalloyed win-wins are hard to find.
- lokar 1y agoI lived in Manhattan, and was very well paid. I did not own a car, and loved it. This would have been great for me as well.
- timewizard 1y agoDid you have children or did you live alone?
- epistasis 1y agoAs someone with children, I can not imagine the bliss of living in Manhattan and being able to do things without needing a car. Car-centric urban planning is hell with kids. You have to load them up into the car for any small trip. You can't walk or bike anywhere because cars make it so dangerous. My only regret about living in the US is this car hellscape that is so hard to avoid. It's mandated by law, not chosen by the market.
- grugagag 1y agoHaving a dinky appartment that is still expensive is not worth it unless you’re young and don’t have kids and want to be around everything you care about. Or you’re rich and don’t mind paying a fortune to live in a nicer appartment in Manhattan. If I had the money I would still prefer something outside Manhattan just to be able to avoid the noise pollution, the crowds and all that Manhattan commotion.
- neves 1y agoImpressive how cars are harmful to society. This is just a small example. We should be more radical in preventing the use of individual automobiles. If it works in a country where the auto is so ingrained in the culture and lifestyle, it can work anywhere.
- HonestOp001 1y agoThe converse is how helpful cars are. It allows people to have the ability commute from areas they live at to where they work. It brings down the cost of living by expanding the commute availability circle, instead of driving up land values for the desirable areas.
- antisthenes 1y ago> It brings down the cost of living by expanding the commute availability circle It does this by sweeping a lot of negative externalities under the carpet of society. There's no magic here.
- neves 1y agoThe dispute isn't between walking and cars, or between stone age and modernity. Just that individual cars have a terrible externalities. Impressive how public transport does not enter the mind of Americans.
- marinmania 1y agoI feel like its often people talking past each other. I currently live in NYC and am very congestion pricing. Cars are a major negative to most people in the city. But I have also lived in rural parts of America. Yes, it is annoying you can't walk to a corner store, but cars are not that big of a deal. You can bike or run in the streets without concern that cars will come by. And housing is so cheap it makes it so worth it.
- oceanplexian 1y agoIf public transit even remotely resembled anything in China or Japan, Americans would ditch their cars in a heartbeat. But every train ride I've been on to Manhattan is like commuting through an open sewer while being harassed by strangers doing an obnoxious dance with a bluetooth speaker in my face, dodging puddles of urine, and wondering if today's the day I'll be thrown off the platform. Of course people would rather commute in a gas guzzling SUV. I don't even know how it's controversial. It must be a form of Stockholm syndrome to think that this would be attractive to any normally adjusted human being.
- jmyeet 1y agoI was living in London when congestion pricing was introduced and went into the West End the day before and the first day of and the difference was night and day. The difference along Oxford Street, Regent's Street, Green Street, etc was astounding. And in the 20+ years the evidence seems to back up how much of a net positive it has been. NYC congestion pricing took way too long because the New York Democratic Party sucks and, as usual, legal efforts were made to block it, much as how well-intentioned laws like CEQA (designed to protect the environment) are actually just weaponized to block development of any kind. What's so bizarre to me is how many people have strong opinions on NYC congestion pricing who have never been and will never go to NYC. Americans love the slippery slope argument. It's like "well, if they make driving cars slightly more expensive in Lower Manhattan then next the government is going to take away my gas-guzzling truck in Idaho". What's also surprising is how many people who live in outer Queens and Brooklyn chose to drive into Manhattan and were complaining how this changed their behavior. Um, that was the point. I honestly didn't know how many people like that there were. What really needs to happen but probably never will is to get rid of free street parking below about 96th street or 110th. Also, either ban or simply charge more for combustion vehicles. Go and look at how quiet Chinese cities are where the vehicles are predominantly electric now.
- listenallyall 1y agoWhy does the slippery slope concept surprise you? It actually happens often - banning smoking indoors, for example - started in just one city, once they tweaked the model and overcame the legal challenges, it spread rather quickly. Legalized casinos, same thing. Uber, drinking age, pot legalization, more. Why would toll roads or congestion pricing be different? (Idaho's Sun Valley probably already implements something similar). And ICE vehicles are definitely in many politicians' crosshairs, if you don't already see that coming in the next decade, you aren't really looking.
- woodruffw 1y agoThese would be examples of normalization, not a slippery slope. The OP's example makes this clear (from "congestion pricing in NYC" to "they're going to take my car," not "congestion pricing in NYC" to "congestion pricing elsewhere"). (Regardless, I think the answer is simple: congestion pricing is only economically viable when an area is simultaneously congested and has alternative transportation methods that would prevent the local economy from collapsing. NYC is one of a very small handful of cities in the US where this is true, although that's largely a function of 80 years of car-centric design. Maybe it will change.)
- VOIPThrowaway 1y agoNot sure I'm happy with turning NYC into a playground for us rich folk.
- RhysU 1y agoCongestion isn't limited to cars. My pregnant wife was hit yesterday in SoHo in broad daylight by a delivery driver on an e-bike. He ran a redlight. He hit her in a crosswalk. She was wearing a bright orange dress. She was not on a phone or listening to music. She went flying ass over teakettle. We spent 6 hours in the ER yesterday evening to make sure our unborn baby was okay. Fortunately, everyone is OK despite her being banged up. The goddamn lawlessness of electric bikes is a consequence of NYC implicitly encouraging their illegal use. Meanwhile, I get to pay $9 MORE to drive my licensed, registered, insured vehicle on increasingly narrow roads filled with increasingly negligent 2-wheeled asshats because it's the preferred business model.
- bryanlarsen 1y agoIn other forums there are lots of complaints about the NYC crackdown on e-bikes. NYC has taken steps to discourage their use. Maybe not enough, but definitely more than in most other parts of the country.
- RhysU 1y agoStand on a corner in NYC and count the moving violations the e-bikes commit. Running lights and stops. Going the wrong way. Etc. These aren't subtle infractions of the law. Tell me why automated traffic enforcement cameras don't target them. As a motorcyclist, e-bikes piss me off to no end.
- dylan604 1y agoIt would be interesting to force eBikes to be registered which the owner then receives a number plate that must be placed on the bike. The owner would be subject to fines any rider of the bike incurs unless the bike is reported stolen so that the video is proven to be after the bike was stolen. Gotta give those automated systems something to use
- potato3732842 1y ago>These aren't subtle infractions of the law. Tell me why automated traffic enforcement cameras don't target them. Lawyers have a saying about blood and stones. Government doesn't like to talk in those terms because they know it's bad optics but...
- fundaThree 1y agoI thought Hochul ratfucked this initiative for no apparent reason. What was the reason she gave for not ratfucking it a second time?
- burkaman 1y agoShe delayed it by 6 months because she thought it would hurt some candidates in House elections, and then she reduced the fee by a significant amount when it did go into effect in January, but it's still working incredibly well.
- fundaThree 1y ago> She delayed it by 6 months because she thought it would hurt some candidates in House elections Did she think that New Jersey residents vote for New York candidates? Do you have a link to the narrative?
- philipov 1y agoWestchester County and Long Island residents vote for New York candidates.
- fundaThree 1y agoFair, I guess I have no clue who on earth would willingly opt into driving into New York in the first place.
- prasadjoglekar 1y agoAnd even further north Putnam and Dutchess Counties pay the MTCD tax. Those are solid red/purple.
- burkaman 1y agoI don't think it made sense either, especially because cutting the congestion pricing revenue last-second meant she had to start talking about raising taxes on the entire state instead, but that is the consensus on what she was thinking. Here's an article about it, she hasn't admitted the election considerations so we can't know for sure: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/09/nyregion/hochul-congestion-pricing.html?unlocked_article_code=1.HE8.bbUv.ht11355jmrUR&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/09/nyregion/hochul-congestio...
- miki123211 1y agoMy problem with congestion pricing is that it still doesn't provide great incentives for cities to improve walkability and public transit. "What do you mean our transit is bad, look, our ridership numbers are 3x higher than all our neighbors combined!" *Does not mention the fact that congestion pricing in neighboring cities is 3x lower.* In the worst cases, it could even become a regressive tax of sorts. If your city has safe districts with good transit where rich people live, and unsafe districts with terrible transit where poor people live, congestion pricing will allow rich people to choose between the convenience of taking a car with no traffic jams versus the cheapness of transit, while forcing poor people to choose between a car they can't afford versus walking down a street where they may be assaulted. It's even worse if you have rich people living in the city center where they work, and poor people who also work there living in towns much further away. Then, only the rich are able to vote on congestion pricing. This probably doesn't apply to New York specifically (not an American, have never been), but it's definitely something to have in mind in general.
- Analemma_ 1y agoDid any of these things happen in the other cities which have had congestion pricing for years? Speculation based on incentives is all fine and good, but empirical results beat it every time.
- viccis 1y ago>In the worst cases, it could even become a regressive tax of sorts. When I lived in Atlanta, there were people, mostly YIMBYs and other urbanists, who wanted to charge a significant congestion fee to anyone living in surrounding towns like Alpharetta, Roswell, Duluth, etc., who commuted into the city to work. It would effectively be a car vice tax paid by the working class, as most of the people I knew out there lived there because Atlanta rents and home prices are insane. Congestion pricing is ok when there are alternate methods of transportation that are usable enough that you could expect a person to just switch to them rather than pay the fee. But when there's not such an alternative, the people will simply pay the fee because they have no other option, and now you've just further immiserated peoples' lives. The closest thing to a response I've heard is that they think such a situation would encourage people to vote and push for better transit options. I just don't see it though. Ignoring that in my case, Atlanta, the city was a de facto one party city in which primaries were mostly determined by media endorsements and more emotional issues than transit and urbanism development, I just don't see that this kind of policy making that shapes the incentives (both carrot and stick) for the masses works in practice. Peoples' decisions are so much more complicated and subject to tons of other factors that this approach can't control.
- codedokode 1y agoIn my opinion, a democratic way to make such changes would be: 1) make a dedicated lane for public transport on every street so that traffic jams do not affect it 2) let car owners vote if they want to pay for entering the city or would rather spend some more time in traffic jams but save the money
- trial3 1y agosurely you see the problem with only letting the car owners vote, right? right??
- sleepydog 1y agoThe traffic has a negative effect on more than just car owners--smog, noise, accidents, slower taxis, to name a few. Why should only car owners, who are a minority in Manhattan, vote on a problem that affects everyone?
- tootie 1y agoThe democratic way is we let our elected officials pass laws and that's what happened. You're ignoring the massive externalities that car owners impose on non-drivers. You're also (very Americanly) assuming car owners have special rights of any kind. We could vote to ban driving and parking and just turn all the paved roads into greenspaces. There's no Constitutional right to drive wherever you want.
- gotoeleven 1y agoIt's nice that all those numbers are up, but it would be great also to see some metrics that attempted to measure the overall utility of the change. Something like avg time spent commuting, or really commute_time * dollars_spent_commuting^B where B is some parameter for the relative utility of time and money. Of course B is different for everyone but something like this could be attempted. Stated another way, if they made congestion pricing $1000 instead of $15 or whatever it is, all those numbers mentioned in the article would go way way up and it would look like a smashing success. The article doesn't make any attempt to measure anything that could potentially be a downside.
- cpersona 1y agoI would add another metric: how are businesses doing since the change? I was walking around the city on a Wednesday evening and it was utterly eerie how empty it felt. This past weekend seemed to be the exact opposite thanks to the nice weather, but I haven't seen that level of emptiness. I notice empty storefronts and anecdotally, I feel like there is an increasing number. I have a friend who opened a store downtown just before this happened. I don't dare ask yet, but I can't see it being a benefit for small businesses.
- skort 1y agoBelieve it or not, cars stuck in traffic is not a good indicator of how well businesses are doing. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/traffic-down-business-governor-hochul-highlights-progress-made-under-new-yorks-congestion https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/traffic-down-business-gover...
- gaadd33 1y agoEmpty storefronts in lower Manhattan have become more prevalent especially as Walgreens has been downsizing their Duane Reade locations and banks have reduced branch numbers. Historically I've heard that landlords try to hold out for high rent paying large corporations but in the past few years there are less and less of those tenants. Also I'm sure it's tied to the 10 year lease renewal/rent increase cycle. Anecdotally, I notice a lot more foot traffic in Fidi than last year and far less traffic when I do need to take a taxi or uber. It seems like greater foot traffic would be a benefit for your friend's store unless it's a destination store that sells large products (furniture/appliances/etc).
- duxup 1y agoThis is one of those things that I struggle to have a strong opinion on from a personal experience standpoint as I can't imagine wanting to drive in Manhattan... I find transit and traffic to be a complex topic and sometime I see changes to a road locally and "yeah that makes sense to do taht there" but the next street over "no way". The New York City dynamic, I've zero clue how that plays out...
- mcswell 1y agoThere was a time when there were no automobiles in New York City, but there was lots of public transportation. (Ok, there were horses and the consequent manure, and the population was way smaller then. But still...)
- Lammy 1y ago> there was lots of public transportation There could have been a lot more. The 1929 IND Second System expansion plan is depressing, especially the parts where provisions are already built: - https://www.vanshnookenraggen.com/_index/2021/01/ind-second-system-track-map/ https://www.vanshnookenraggen.com/_index/2021/01/ind-second-... - https://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/IND_Second_System_-_1929_Plan https://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/IND_Second_System_-_1929_Plan - https://www.awakennyc.com/second-system-gems https://www.awakennyc.com/second-system-gems
- pirate787 1y agoThe city's price control on the cost of a subway ride was a spectacular policy failure that crushed the system into decline and operators into bankruptcy.
- tzs 1y agoHorses caused worse problems than manure. The NYC pedestrian death rate from horse accidents in 1900 was higher than the pedestrian death rate from car accidents in 2003. See this comment [1] for references. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42329211 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42329211
- atoav 1y agoYeah but back then streets were for people and horses. There were no clear markings separating the sections, there were no laws making it illegal for you to walk on the streets. If there were traffic laws, nobody knew them and people wouldn't know which way to go to avoid a head on collision. If you'd just replace cars with horses today it would go a lot different.
- aynyc 1y agoAs a long time NYC resident who moved out during Covid but commute to work in the city. I definitely noticed less traffic on the streets and less noise. I see a lot of talk of other cities that don't have good public transportation. For example, between Flushing in Queens to 8th Ave in Brooklyn, there are privately run buses at affordable rate and get you there at half the time of trains. There are buses from a lot of residential areas in NJ that are closer to NYC that go to port authority (west side, 42nd st) very quickly. In fact, those buses are getting there faster and more comfortable than ever due to congestion pricing. I'm curious, do other larger cities where commercial is concentrated into one area not have a private mini-bus(es)? I know public transportation would be great, but having a competitive environment for privately own bus services might be the answer to a lot of cities.
- IG_Semmelweiss 1y ago>>> I'm curious, do other larger cities where commercial is concentrated into one area not have a private mini-bus(es)? It turns out, there are some private buses. Take for example, Santiago, Chile. It succeeded in terms of profits and customer satisfaction. The problem is they do not survive. There comes a time when they don't pay sufficient "political capital" and get taken over (nationalized) by local politicians. The result of the private bus system nationalization by socialists is macabre, at least this the Santiago case. First, the newly minted public bus service went from $60M USD profits, to massive $600M in losses [1] overnight. That is a negative 10x return. And service declined as well. [1] But that in itself is not a new story. Now, fast forward ~12 years. The system bleeds so much money that the govt is forced to increase bus fares. The increase in fares activates the biggest riots the country has seen in decades [2] Out of the riots, one young protester rises to the top. He comes with ideas of a new constitution. He is a young socialist leader. A certain Gabriel Boric [3], who had ran and won for president of University of Chile Student Federation against the leader of the Communist Party of Chile [4] So now we come full-circle: A working private bus service was replaced by socialist politicians into a public bus system that hemorrhaged 10x more money than it earned previously in actual profits. The public bus funding crisis and subsequent fare hikes led to massive riots, which were a direct on-ramp for a socialist to ascend to power as president of Chile. In short, successful private local bus enterprise was replaced with a socialist bus system, which then proceeded to implode. This implosion of a socialist idea led to the spread of even more socialism, but now at a national level. This chain of events from beginning to end, only took 20 years. [1] https://www.econtalk.org/munger-on-the-political-economy-of-public-transportation/ https://www.econtalk.org/munger-on-the-political-economy-of-... [2] https://www.scmp.com/news/world/americas/article/3033688/chaos-santiago-chileans-riot-over-hikes-public-transport-fares https://www.scmp.com/news/world/americas/article/3033688/cha... [3] https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-03-12/gabriel-boric-president-of-chile-the-left-in-latin-america-has-had-a-tendency-not-to-take-responsibility-for-its-own-mistakes.html https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-03-12/gabriel-... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_boric#Role_in_the_Estallido_social https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_boric#Role_in_the_Esta...
- dripdry45 1y agoI wonder if adding congestion pricing in small cities to certain intersections or stretches of road would work the same way. if people really want to go through the busiest intersections or areas, then they’re going to have to pay a little bit. Then people question whether they are going to go through, or pay a little bit to keep up the infrastructure if they do.
- anigbrowl 1y agoIt's one thing to have it for a whole downtown area, applying it to individual intersections or roads is going to be a nightmare for drivers and just generate more and more surveillance infrastructure.
- lrem 1y agoIsn’t the surveillance battle already lost? For at least a couple years now? At least in Europe it feels like you’re passing a camera every couple minutes.
- jcattle 1y agoI think that would have the opposite effect. Instead of most cars going through the busy intersection (which is probably busy because it's the main way to get from A to B) more cars would go through side roads to avoid the toll. And then you have more cars going through mainly residential streets.
- healsdata 1y agoGoogle Maps and Waze are already causing this without the toll. In my town, you'll always be routed down two residential, 25 mph roads to avoid the congested part of Main St.
- jabroni_salad 1y agoMy town combatted this by allowing free parking on the bypass on both sides. Now it is practically a single lane road and you will hate every second you spend on it if you don't live there.
- 7e 1y agoAwesome. But congestion pricing still doesn't charge rideshare vehicles for loitering on the streets; it only charges per ride. Now ban AirBnb, Lyft and Uber. Basically anything funded by YC.
- immibis 1y ago> Ban anything funded by YC. Is well outside the Overton window of YC's private discussion forum.
- mmooss 1y agoThe downsides are all dismissed one way or the other ... Restaurants, Broadway Holding up Pollution Too soon to say Lower-income commuters Too soon to say Public opinion Not great, but improving I think highly of the NYT, but this is a fan's article. At the top they say, The reporters sought information from everyone they could think of, including the M.T.A., the Fire Department, restaurant-booking platforms, researchers and one yellow school bus company. How about from low-income commuters?
- amydeng123 1y ago[dead]
- arh5451 1y agoAgreed, this article is a love letter to congestion charges. My guess is that nearly nothing has changed and will change. The fact is that the public transit systems are simply unable to modernise and Union Labor makes it next to impossible to make changes. When I bought a NJTransit when I started working a monthly ride card for a 1hr commute cost $500/month approximately. The same commute with a car was 45 minutes and fuel/maintenance was $250/month + I needed the car anyway. A 1hr commute in Switzerland costs me like $1.5k per year. The congestion charge changes the math, but I’m not sure it changes the service.
- mmooss 1y ago> public transit systems are simply unable to modernise and Union Labor makes it next to impossible to make changes. Public transit improves regularly and continuously in my experience, usually incrementally.
- choeger 1y agoI wonder if this will eventually lead to increased density and if that then leads to congested bike lanes. Will the cities of tomorrow regulate traffic between individual buildings? Make no mistake, bikes are much, much, better for urban centers than cars. But the overall problem isn't cars, it's individual traffic in densely populated areas. Certain policy here in Europe simply assumes that people stay in their surroundings ("15 minute city") and rarely, if ever, visit parts that are farther away individually. Public transportation, however, is naturally biased. It can be much quicker to get 10km north-south than 5km east-west, or the other way around, depending on the city. And, of course, public transportation is often lacking quality compared to individual traffic. (Taking a bike across a bicycle road vs. getting into a crammed subway train in July, for instance.)
- egypturnash 1y agoLess cars + overflowing bike lanes = hey what if we mark more of the street as being for bikes. (Possibly with an interim step of "the cyclists have already claimed pretty much the entire street for bikes".)
- returningfory2 1y agoThey've already started doing this in NYC - the new 10th ave bike lane is double the width of normal bike lanes.
- egypturnash 1y agoOh FUCK YEAH! I am envious. Not enough to leave New Orleans for NYC but still envious.
- vladvasiliu 1y ago> And, of course, public transportation is often lacking quality compared to individual traffic. (Taking a bike across a bicycle road vs. getting into a crammed subway train in July, for instance.) Well, it doesn't have to be like that. Riding a bike in July is atrocious where I live, even with an electrical one. I'll end up drenched after my 20-minute commute, even though it's mostly flat. Cars didn't use to have AC, either, now they do. Newer metro lines where I live also started having AC a few years ago. This can be improved. They also automated some lines, and we now have trains every other minute during rush hour. They're still full to the brim. What's missing, however, is some kind of reasonable policy. But not only of the government kind. Why do we all have to commute at the same exact time? Yeah, some people have kids and need to get them to school on time. Others need to absolutely be physically at their work place at a given time. But huge swathes of the population are not in this situation. Why do they insist on taking the metro at the same exact time as the others? When Covid was still a thing, the government tried asking the people who could, to move their work schedules a little before or a little after rush hour, so as to lower density. Nobody cared. I had already doing this before covid: the commute was much shorter; I had ample seating available. Yet I didn't see any change after this recommendation.
- gigatexal 1y agoHere’s hoping Trump doesn’t do away with this. It’s enactment has moved NYC up the list on my list of possible places to move to.
- stuaxo 1y agoHi from London: The centre is much more pleasant to walk in, as are most places in the zone. Pollution is much, much better: if you came to London and travelled on the underground you would have black snot when you blew your nose, this hasn't been the case for a few years now. I hope NY gets the sake improvements.
- walthamstow 1y agoLondon has changed for the better for sure but black snot on the tube hasn't changed at all. I get it from 20 minutes on any deep line like the Victoria. It's from train brake dust, nothing to do with vehicle emissions.
- lazide 1y agoThe Tube has a real ventilation issue - not just the brake dust, but also temps and staleness. Some of those lines, it’s like a 24/7 sauna!
- walthamstow 1y agoI think I read that the warmth from people and braking has baked some of the clay earth around the tunnels, making them even more insulative!
- azath92 1y agoBecause of how old they are there is some really interesting long term data as the earth itself around the tunnels reaches a new thermal equilibrium. In looking for a source, i found a good wikipedia article on tube temp in general. These comments and the article made me see how much of it is/was due to braking. TIL. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_cooling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_cooling
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- NanoYohaneTSU 1y agoCompletely biased article that omits so many negative pieces of information. What a joke for this to even be on HN.
- amelius 1y ago> Fewer cars. Faster travel. Less honking. More expensive cars, also, probably.
- vagab0nd 1y agoWhen can we have real-time price auctions for public roads?
- skort 1y agoWe already do. It’s called the value of your time. If there’s too much traffic, chose another route. We don’t need more tech shit trying to improve mobility when the solution is clear- fewer cars, more mass transit (and not hyperloop crap)
- mattlondon 1y agoGood luck New York. In London it is now just a toll. It started off at just the busiest times but now you need to pay it 24/5, and even on Saturday and Sunday afternoons when there is no rush hour. Not only have the hours expanded, but so has the size of the zone. So now even right out in the suburbs you need to pay if you drive a diesel but I fully expect them to include petrol cars, then eventually all EVs too. The prices are quite cheap too - the price is like 2 adults return tickets on the tube so you may as well just drive it since the price is the same but public transport is so utterly utterly awful and unreliable and slow and dirty and just terrible in London. If they were serious about changing people's behaviour and serious about trying to prevent congestion and/or pollution they'd price it so that it is a real deterrent to usage (so instead of £15, it would be like £250/day or something). But if they did that then no one would pay so they'd not get the revenue. So they price it just right so that people pay. They say all the proceeds are ring-fenced for reinvestment etc etc. This is disingenuous - it's not like transport suddenly gets 125% extra funding, they just set the budgets so the "extra" they get from congestion charging and cameras etc tops-off the budgets so things balance out at ~100% of what they'd get anyway and the difference just used for other vanity projects by TfL.
- h2zizzle 1y agoI've never understood what people mean when they say public transportation is "dirty". I've never had to sit or stand in or near muck or sick or anything like that. If there's a bit of grime in the corner or animals or something... Okay? I don't have to touch any of that. I care about as much as getting onto a slightly groady amusement park ride, or seeing bugs or squirrels in the park; it's not going to so traumatize me that I won't ride. Is it the people? I've had to sit next to one or two people who smelled in my hundreds of train and bus trips. Or is it an ethnic/class dogwhistle sort of thing?
- evgen 1y ago> I've never understood what people mean when they say public transportation is "dirty". They are forced to share air with obviously poor and non-white people and that is simply intolerable... One of the biggest adjustments I went through in moving from SF to London was accepting that busses were a viable mode of transit for any time of day. In SF I would crawl over broken glass to avoid having to take a Muni bus while in London my wife and I have taken a bus in dinner jacket and couture dress to an event at a club. There will doubtless be people to chime in with examples of bus systems that are better, but TfL busses are not 'awful and unreliable and slow and dirty and just terrible' by any possible metric.
- isaacremuant 1y agoEverything tends to optimize to benefit the rich. Just like tax incentives on expensive electric vehicles. Of course every other metric section is beaming but the one about affecting lower income is "it's too early to tell". It's not fair economics or policy making if it always skews one way. It's like "carbon tax to force people not to fly or move, while elite private planes are essential".
- Ajedi32 1y ago> It's not fair economics I think you have a distorted sense of what fairness is. Charging the same price to the rich that you charge to the poor for the same service is fair. Charging different prices would be unfair. Charity/philanthropy is a good thing, because human life is inherently valuable, but it's not a matter of fairness. People don't have an inherent right to benefit from the labor or ingenuity of others.
- isaacremuant 1y ago> think you have a distorted sense of what fairness is. Charging the same price to the rich that you charge to the poor for the same service is fair. Charging different prices would be unfair. Nice strawman. No. Charging for something that changes behavior in the poor but not in the rich because it's an exclusinary device is definitely not fair. I also didn't suggest different prices but simply not doing exclusion via money or taxation, which doesn't affect the rich. > Charity/philanthropy is a good thing, because human life is inherently valuable, but it's not a matter of fairness. People don't have an inherent right to benefit from the labor or ingenuity of others. What are you on about? I'm sorry to tell you but the likes of corporate magnates and rich politicians don't create more value just bend the rules to stay on top. It's easy to throw money at things to create more money when you have it. When you can put your capital in a tax haven and the rubble pays it in full. Next time you come with inspired strawmen takes, prep a bit.
- ausbah 1y agoi think this is an issue with how flat fees are inherently a regressive tax. if you scale fees & tolls to be more income based the problem goes away but also the current setup has income based exemptions / lowered rates
- booleandilemma 1y agoI was in traffic the past two days. Has something changed?
- ajkjk 1y agoEr...
- shipscode 1y agoThe cool thing about congestion pricing is that you can still keep a car in Manhattan for free as long as you don’t leave the congestion zone. Keeping a car in Manhattan is the closest thing to having superpowers most will ever experience - and I’m sure with congestion pricing the equation is even better.
- AyJayColumns 1y agoThe superpower of dealing with parking in Manhattan (whether paying or circling for a long time) is not the superpower I want to have
- skort 1y agoWhat exactly is the superpower here? Having a large chunk of steel you need to micro manage the location of, or pay up the nose to have a dedicated space for? Have you ever ridden a bike? Taken the subway? Heck, you can just use a taxi to get around. Why would you want to deal with having a car in somewhere like Manhattan? Do you hate your fellow citizens so much you need to be constantly insulated from society?
- supportengineer 1y agoThis article reminds me of the 1990s because it was a time when you believed that America was getting better all the time and that we had reason to feel hopeful.
- munificent 1y agoI know it's possible for us to have that again, but it's really hard to figure out how.
- Dowwie 1y agoLess GWB traffic going down the Turnpike as well, even on weekends. It was horrendous before the congestion pricing and now it's just ridiculous.
- ben7799 1y agoCar speed in the zone.. that graph is really telling, showing that in NYC cars never really travel faster than even the slowest bicyclist, and slower than a modest runner. That alone tells you this is the right path. All that infrastructure and work for cars to not actually allow anyone to travel fast. 9mph is very very slow even for the weakest/most timid cyclist.
- yodsanklai 1y agoCars are slow but you're less likely to get mugged (unlike pedestrians) or hit by cars (unlike cyclists). Also, bikes get stolen. These things happen rarely, but in the long run, the risk isn't negligible. I avoid cars as much as I can and commute by bike in my European city. I used to live in NYC: I've been mugged there, and I've seen cyclists injured by cars. I don't want to cycle there and I do take cabs in the evenings or nights. TLDR; speed isn't the only factor
- tiltowait 1y agoCars also let you carry stuff over distances that would be awkward/uncomfortable/impossible walking or cycling. They’re also more comfortable, particularly in inclement weather. I’d absolutely love if I could get away with having no car. I can’t. My life would be markedly, instantly, and demonstrably worse. I feel like a lot of people in the “no cars” camp neglect these issues.
- abdullahkhalids 1y agoIndeed safety is a very important consideration. But safety in different types of vehicles is determined by which type of infrastructure is emphasized. If you design your city to be more pedestrian and biking friendly, there are more people walking and biking compared to cars, which naturally reduces the amount of mugging and car-bike accidents. For example, as number of cars on the road go down, police can invest resources into stopping muggings, instead of investing resources into catching car traffic violations.
- sjducb 1y agoIt’s amazing how slow cars are in cities. I was recently beaten by a pedestrian over a 20 minute drive.
- blindriver 1y agoWhat about crime on the subway, did congestion pricing affect that since more people will take the subway?
- skort 1y agoWhat about crime from people running lights and hitting bikes and pedestrians with their cars?
- tootie 1y agoCrime is down, but it's been trending down since the pandemic ended. In fact, the crime rate on the subway was never very high. The few high profile cases made national news, but given the millions of daily ride, the actual odds of being victimized have always been low. Very few people who live here were ever very concerned. It's routine for kids to ride the subway alone to attend middle or high school in NYC.
- chrsw 1y agoHow are people on lower incomes who need their cars for a living dealing with this?
- vicnov 1y agoThe only issue with this tax is that I doubt MTA is capable of putting new revenue to good use. Effectively we added a barrier to travel (this IS a tax), with some positive externalities for some people (including me), but whether that tax revenue will be deployed well is doubtful given MTA track record. (Yes, it was/is underfunded; but also somehow everything is 10x of what it “supposed” to cost)
- kazinator 1y ago> Evidence has mounted that the program so far is achieving its two main goals — reducing congestion It's reducing congestion by removing the people who don't want to pay $9 to drive to town. Paying to be there: what a lovely concept! It works wonders for reducing density, too. Fewer people live in a desirable area, and they are richer and more pleasant, what are the downsides? Maybe it should not be linked to affordability; it should be a lottery, for fairness. For instance, if your license plate ends with certain numbers or letters (changing daily, and known months in advance for any given day), you don't get to drive into town. Knowing well in advance the days when your car is admissible into the city allows you to plan. E.g. reschedule certain appointments so they occur on an allowed day, or else make alternative transportation plans. Imperfections in lottery systems: - Not fair toward people who often have to drive to town for whatever reason: they drive everyday or many days out of the week or month. Still translates to an extra cost, like driving to some parking lot outside of the city core, paying for parking there, and then paying for transit into the city. This could be people who are not well off: they work some job in the city that is not well paid, and have to live far away. In America "have car" != "affluent". - Unfair advantage enjoyed by people who own multiple vehicles; we have not entirely eliminated pay-to-drive-here.
- windowshopping 1y agoObviously we would like to have high quality public transportation that makes the city easily accessible to people of all economic classes. See European cities for examples. Our infrastructure isn't there yet. We are doing poorly. This is a first step. Yes, it will favor the wealthy for now. But its longterm effects will be to favor everyone. Stop being shortsighted. I don't believe that the ends always justify the means, but this is not a particularly horrible short-term sacrifice to make.
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