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Congestion pricing is great. I routinely end up in Manhattan on Friday and Canal Street at 5pm is running smoothly (not packed end to end with idling cars as be

Congestion pricing is great. I routinely end up in Manhattan on Friday and Canal Street at 5pm is running smoothly (not packed end to end with idling cars as before), the city looks like a regular city instead of the packed cars honking and spewing tire dust and exhaust. Long gone are the people that would drive into LES on Friday night with their expensive cars and blare loud music and rev their engines. It’s a different environment and everyone is loving it that I’ve talked to.

ericmay 1y ago
> Long gone are the people that would drive into LES on Friday night with their expensive cars and blare loud music and rev their engines. I I don't live in New York, but have been following along loosely on the congestion pricing policy as someone who has some official business but also just generally curious to see how it would work out, and this is a benefit that I had not considered. Thank you for mentioning this.
- righthand 1y ago
  Yes I imagine a handful of crime was caused by the sheer number of people on the street. Fewer people idling about looking to cause a ruckus has made a huge difference. Passive benefits are what will keep cp in place.
- fitsumbelay 1y ago
  Same I would've had a hard time wrapping my head around being OK with ~$10/trip before this post Goes to show time is the most valuable commodity anyone'll ever own
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
xvedejas 1y ago
Surely the reduction in vehicle count is more than enough to cancel this out, but a moving vehicle does emit more exhaust and tire dust per unit of time than does a vehicle idling. For the environmental improvements it's more about the reduction in the number of cars than about the better traffic flow.
- mumbisChungo 1y ago
  The better traffic flow reduces the amount of time they’re operating for as well (assuming start/end of planned route is independent of travel speed)
  - astine 1y ago
    Right. Presumably a car idling for ten minutes produces less pollution than a car being driven for ten minutes, but a car that is driven for ten minutes and idled for an additional ten produces more pollution than either of them. Any pollution produced by cars idling in bad traffic is superadded to the pollution produced in transit so improving the flow of traffic should reduce pollution even if the total number of cars remains steady.
    - marcosdumay 1y ago
      It's worse than that. If the trip costed 10 minutes moving, yes the comparison would be between a car moving for 10 minutes and one that idles for some time and then moves for 10 minutes. But congestion makes the cars move slower, and at congestion speeds the amount of pollution increases very quickly with reduced speeds.
- mystified5016 1y ago
  The stop and start conditions of highly congested traffic produce more brake and tire dust
  - SoftTalker 1y ago
    And more emissions. Idling is pretty efficent, as is driving at a constant speed. Repeatedly stopping or slowing, then accelerating is not. This is also an unintended consequence of "traffic calming" devices e.g. speed bumps or chicanes. People slow down, then hit the gas again which is awful for emissions.
    - Smoosh 1y ago
jgalt212 1y ago
It remains amazing to me, time and time again, how relatively small fees can encourage large changes in behavior. At the aggregate level, people overvalue their time and undervalue their money.
- somsak2 1y ago
  i think it's the opposite right? people that didn't mind spending an hour in traffic are now unwilling to pay $9.
  - righthand 1y ago
    I think you’re agreeing with each other. GP was talking about at the aggregate level where your observation is about the individual specifically. At the aggregate level with traffic reduction you’d think individuals would weigh their money as a shortcut to regain time but they don’t. My personal guess is because Manhattan is not the actual destination, work and home are the destinations, Manhattan is just the environment. Before it was the cost of car maintenance to drive into Manhattan (in the individuals eyes “free”), now it’s car maintenance + $9/day.
- yupitsme123 1y ago
  If you make it so only rich people can do a certain thing, you'll have way fewer people doing that thing. I'm curious what kind of inconveniences this has caused for people who can't afford to pay the fee though.
  - rcpt 1y ago
    Are you actually curious or were you just trying to make a gotcha against congestion pricing? I ask because the "only rich people" criticism of NYCs project has been beaten into the dirt and discussed at nearly every level of politics for more than a year now. If there's anything you want to know the information is readily available.
    - yupitsme123 1y ago
dcchuck 1y ago
Really? I must admit I have not noticed it. I've had nightmare trips trying to get into the city still during traditional heavy traffic times. Frankly I've thought more "the pandemic is finally over" than I did "congestion pricing is working" over the past few months. I'll be curious what happens come winter time. Midtown becomes gridlock in the evenings. I do not expect that to change. All that being said - probably my own biases skewing things. I will keep my eyes peeled!
lr1970 1y ago
Congestion pricing is only a half of the solution. The second half should be the MTA reform. MTA has been a dysfunctional mess and a bottomless money pit for as long as I remember. MTA of today will squander any amount of money you throw on it wasting all the potential gains from congestion pricing.
- sethhochberg 1y ago
  Regrettably the only source I can find hosting this video is a reddit post, but you might find the remarks by the MTA chair interesting: https://www.reddit.com/r/nycrail/comments/1iyve4d/mta_building_up_inhouse_teams_to_diminish_the_use/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nycrail/comments/1iyve4d/mta_buildi... In short: for decades they’ve been allergic to doing any design or project management in house, which meant brand new teams of consultants and contractors spun up for every single project. Lucrative for the consultants, not an efficient way to use funds for a big organization that is constantly doing design and construction. Seems like the MTA is finally starting to invest in building internal expertise again so they can stop farming everything out
  - const_cast 1y ago
    This is the story of the American public sector. Voters push them to outsource X Y Z to the private sector because clearly public organization X sucks. The private sector is greedy and a black box, so they're basically going to bleed the tax payers dry because they have no accountability to anyone. And the added complexity of hops between communication just burns money. And now the military is paying 150 dollars for a shovel. The American public is allergic to just considering public actors as job programs. If the MTA would just keep everything in-house that can be a real boon to the local economy. But no, we have to give those jobs to some fuck ass companies made up primarily of salespeople who are going to make big claims and then proceed to run every project overtime and over budget.
    - dhosek 1y ago
      The other thing is that privatization is old-school patronage on steroids: if you structure it right, you get to channel government money to the recipients in a way that continues even after you lose power.
Reason077 1y ago
> ”Long gone are the people that would drive into LES on Friday night with their expensive cars and blare loud music and rev their engines.” Interestingly, in London’s case we do not get this particular benefit from the congestion charge zone, because congestion charging ends at 6pm! So all the boys eager to show off their hot, loud cars still show up on a Friday or Saturday night.
- tim333 1y ago
  Also a lot of the flash car revving is around Harrods which is outside the zone.
- graemep 1y ago
  London is a pretty good city for walking around and public transport. When I lived in London (pre congestion charge) I used to walk for pleasure a lot simply because I enjoyed it. I think road design and good public transport have improved it (although reliability could be better sometimes) since then. I do not agree with all the changes over the years, but net its great. Lots of expensive cars but never really noticed the loud revving.
  - decremental 1y ago
    [dead]
tixocloud 1y ago
Great to hear the positives about congestion pricing. It would be great to see how it can ease the congestion in Toronto. Unfortunately, I suggested congestion pricing as a possible solution as part of an academic project and was laughed off.
- righthand 1y ago
  Car culture is strong, I’d seek local transport advocacy group interest[0] before academic interest. Your academic colleagues all probably drive to work. [0] in the case of NYC, for example, Transportation Alternatives https://transalt.org/ https://transalt.org/
AnthonyMouse 1y ago
> Long gone are the people that would drive into LES on Friday night with their expensive cars and blare loud music and rev their engines. The people who blare loud music and rev their engines are the people with expensive cars? The people who can afford expensive cars are the ones being deterred by congestion pricing?
- 7jjjjjjj 1y ago
  >The people who blare loud music and rev their engines are the people with expensive cars? Yes, this has been my experience as well. >The people who can afford expensive cars are the ones being deterred by congestion pricing? Who says they could afford it? Getting an insane car loan for a vehicle you can't afford is an American tradition.
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    > Yes, this has been my experience as well. Are you adequately distinguishing between expensive cars and formerly expensive cars? A brand new Rolls-Royce or Mercedes comes with an engine purposely designed to be audibly subdued and doesn't come with a sound system suitable for projecting a racket onto the opposite side of the city. A 10 year old Acura or BMW with a modified exhaust and a trunk full of aftermarket subwoofers, on the other hand... but that's available at a different price point. > Who says they could afford it? Getting an insane car loan for a vehicle you can't afford is an American tradition. The implication of the question was to point out that the purported advantage of congestion pricing is really in pricing out the riffraff, because "we've succeeded at keeping the poor people out of the borough" isn't a very sympathetic goal and is what "expensive cars" was presumably intended to deflect consideration away from. What other relevance does it have if the cars are expensive? If you're admitting that the people being priced out are in fact poor regardless of the price of their cars, I guess that's kind of my point.

ericmay 1y ago

> Long gone are the people that would drive into LES on Friday night with their expensive cars and blare loud music and rev their engines. I I don't live in New York, but have been following along loosely on the congestion pricing policy as someone who has some official business but also just generally curious to see how it would work out, and this is a benefit that I had not considered. Thank you for mentioning this.

righthand 1y ago
Yes I imagine a handful of crime was caused by the sheer number of people on the street. Fewer people idling about looking to cause a ruckus has made a huge difference. Passive benefits are what will keep cp in place.
fitsumbelay 1y ago
Same I would've had a hard time wrapping my head around being OK with ~$10/trip before this post Goes to show time is the most valuable commodity anyone'll ever own
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

xvedejas 1y ago

Surely the reduction in vehicle count is more than enough to cancel this out, but a moving vehicle does emit more exhaust and tire dust per unit of time than does a vehicle idling. For the environmental improvements it's more about the reduction in the number of cars than about the better traffic flow.

mumbisChungo 1y ago
The better traffic flow reduces the amount of time they’re operating for as well (assuming start/end of planned route is independent of travel speed)
- astine 1y ago
  Right. Presumably a car idling for ten minutes produces less pollution than a car being driven for ten minutes, but a car that is driven for ten minutes and idled for an additional ten produces more pollution than either of them. Any pollution produced by cars idling in bad traffic is superadded to the pollution produced in transit so improving the flow of traffic should reduce pollution even if the total number of cars remains steady.
  - marcosdumay 1y ago
    It's worse than that. If the trip costed 10 minutes moving, yes the comparison would be between a car moving for 10 minutes and one that idles for some time and then moves for 10 minutes. But congestion makes the cars move slower, and at congestion speeds the amount of pollution increases very quickly with reduced speeds.
mystified5016 1y ago
The stop and start conditions of highly congested traffic produce more brake and tire dust
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  And more emissions. Idling is pretty efficent, as is driving at a constant speed. Repeatedly stopping or slowing, then accelerating is not. This is also an unintended consequence of "traffic calming" devices e.g. speed bumps or chicanes. People slow down, then hit the gas again which is awful for emissions.
  - Smoosh 1y ago

jgalt212 1y ago

It remains amazing to me, time and time again, how relatively small fees can encourage large changes in behavior. At the aggregate level, people overvalue their time and undervalue their money.

somsak2 1y ago
i think it's the opposite right? people that didn't mind spending an hour in traffic are now unwilling to pay $9.
- righthand 1y ago
  I think you’re agreeing with each other. GP was talking about at the aggregate level where your observation is about the individual specifically. At the aggregate level with traffic reduction you’d think individuals would weigh their money as a shortcut to regain time but they don’t. My personal guess is because Manhattan is not the actual destination, work and home are the destinations, Manhattan is just the environment. Before it was the cost of car maintenance to drive into Manhattan (in the individuals eyes “free”), now it’s car maintenance + $9/day.
yupitsme123 1y ago
If you make it so only rich people can do a certain thing, you'll have way fewer people doing that thing. I'm curious what kind of inconveniences this has caused for people who can't afford to pay the fee though.
- rcpt 1y ago
  Are you actually curious or were you just trying to make a gotcha against congestion pricing? I ask because the "only rich people" criticism of NYCs project has been beaten into the dirt and discussed at nearly every level of politics for more than a year now. If there's anything you want to know the information is readily available.
  - yupitsme123 1y ago

dcchuck 1y ago

Really? I must admit I have not noticed it. I've had nightmare trips trying to get into the city still during traditional heavy traffic times. Frankly I've thought more "the pandemic is finally over" than I did "congestion pricing is working" over the past few months. I'll be curious what happens come winter time. Midtown becomes gridlock in the evenings. I do not expect that to change. All that being said - probably my own biases skewing things. I will keep my eyes peeled!

lr1970 1y ago

Congestion pricing is only a half of the solution. The second half should be the MTA reform. MTA has been a dysfunctional mess and a bottomless money pit for as long as I remember. MTA of today will squander any amount of money you throw on it wasting all the potential gains from congestion pricing.

sethhochberg 1y ago
Regrettably the only source I can find hosting this video is a reddit post, but you might find the remarks by the MTA chair interesting: https://www.reddit.com/r/nycrail/comments/1iyve4d/mta_building_up_inhouse_teams_to_diminish_the_use/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nycrail/comments/1iyve4d/mta_buildi... In short: for decades they’ve been allergic to doing any design or project management in house, which meant brand new teams of consultants and contractors spun up for every single project. Lucrative for the consultants, not an efficient way to use funds for a big organization that is constantly doing design and construction. Seems like the MTA is finally starting to invest in building internal expertise again so they can stop farming everything out
- const_cast 1y ago
  This is the story of the American public sector. Voters push them to outsource X Y Z to the private sector because clearly public organization X sucks. The private sector is greedy and a black box, so they're basically going to bleed the tax payers dry because they have no accountability to anyone. And the added complexity of hops between communication just burns money. And now the military is paying 150 dollars for a shovel. The American public is allergic to just considering public actors as job programs. If the MTA would just keep everything in-house that can be a real boon to the local economy. But no, we have to give those jobs to some fuck ass companies made up primarily of salespeople who are going to make big claims and then proceed to run every project overtime and over budget.
  - dhosek 1y ago
    The other thing is that privatization is old-school patronage on steroids: if you structure it right, you get to channel government money to the recipients in a way that continues even after you lose power.

Reason077 1y ago

> ”Long gone are the people that would drive into LES on Friday night with their expensive cars and blare loud music and rev their engines.” Interestingly, in London’s case we do not get this particular benefit from the congestion charge zone, because congestion charging ends at 6pm! So all the boys eager to show off their hot, loud cars still show up on a Friday or Saturday night.

tim333 1y ago
Also a lot of the flash car revving is around Harrods which is outside the zone.
graemep 1y ago
London is a pretty good city for walking around and public transport. When I lived in London (pre congestion charge) I used to walk for pleasure a lot simply because I enjoyed it. I think road design and good public transport have improved it (although reliability could be better sometimes) since then. I do not agree with all the changes over the years, but net its great. Lots of expensive cars but never really noticed the loud revving.
- decremental 1y ago
  [dead]

tixocloud 1y ago

Great to hear the positives about congestion pricing. It would be great to see how it can ease the congestion in Toronto. Unfortunately, I suggested congestion pricing as a possible solution as part of an academic project and was laughed off.

righthand 1y ago
Car culture is strong, I’d seek local transport advocacy group interest[0] before academic interest. Your academic colleagues all probably drive to work. [0] in the case of NYC, for example, Transportation Alternatives https://transalt.org/ https://transalt.org/

AnthonyMouse 1y ago

> Long gone are the people that would drive into LES on Friday night with their expensive cars and blare loud music and rev their engines. The people who blare loud music and rev their engines are the people with expensive cars? The people who can afford expensive cars are the ones being deterred by congestion pricing?

7jjjjjjj 1y ago
>The people who blare loud music and rev their engines are the people with expensive cars? Yes, this has been my experience as well. >The people who can afford expensive cars are the ones being deterred by congestion pricing? Who says they could afford it? Getting an insane car loan for a vehicle you can't afford is an American tradition.
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  > Yes, this has been my experience as well. Are you adequately distinguishing between expensive cars and formerly expensive cars? A brand new Rolls-Royce or Mercedes comes with an engine purposely designed to be audibly subdued and doesn't come with a sound system suitable for projecting a racket onto the opposite side of the city. A 10 year old Acura or BMW with a modified exhaust and a trunk full of aftermarket subwoofers, on the other hand... but that's available at a different price point. > Who says they could afford it? Getting an insane car loan for a vehicle you can't afford is an American tradition. The implication of the question was to point out that the purported advantage of congestion pricing is really in pricing out the riffraff, because "we've succeeded at keeping the poor people out of the borough" isn't a very sympathetic goal and is what "expensive cars" was presumably intended to deflect consideration away from. What other relevance does it have if the cars are expensive? If you're admitting that the people being priced out are in fact poor regardless of the price of their cars, I guess that's kind of my point.