
Things that are more inequitable than road pricing - oftenwrong
http://cityobservatory.org/ten-things-more-inequitable-that-road-pricing/
======
bradleyjg
I don't know about other cities, but to understand the strong political push
back against congestion pricing in NYC requires a bunch of local context.

Neither the rich+, nor the poor, nor the vast majority of the middle class
regularly commute into Manhattan by car. The poor and the lower/middle middle
class because parking is prohibitively expensive. The upper middle class and
the rich because they either live in Manhattan or they'd rather take commuter
rail than sit in traffic. To the extent the latter take ubers or similar such
services already pay congestion charges and there isn't too much fuss (except
from the drives who don't have much political muscle).

The bulk of car commuters into Manhattan are instead those with de jure or de
facto free parking. That's largely government workers (e.g. teachers, cops,
firefighters) and members of the trades (i.e. construction workers).

For those with de jure free parking congestion pricing isn't a big deal,
whatever authority is setting aside parking will either pay the congestion
charge or get it waived. It's the beneficiaries of police and traffic control
refusal to enforce the law with respect to certain favored populations that
are up in arms about congestion charges. Because a congestion charge is likely
to be enforced by an automated mechanism which, unlike parking control, will
not engage in public corruption on their behalf. And these groups, unlike the
uber drivers, do have a great deal of political muscle.

+At least the ordinary rich, hecto-millionaires and billionaires might be a
different story

~~~
nihonde
I live in lower Manhattan. My feeling is that every vehicle other than
delivery trucks should be banned from the city. There is no compelling reason
for anyone to drive in Manhattan. If people are commuting into Manhattan, they
should take public transit to and from parking lots in Brooklyn/Queens/New
Jersey. You will never convince me that there are low income workers who need
to drive in the city as an essential part of their livelihood. That’s just not
a real thing here.

~~~
electric_muse
My compelling reason is that I live in Manhattan and frequently make trips to
visit family that are not well served by public transportation. And when I'm
there, I prefer using a vehicle to get around.

I often return to New York with a carful of groceries, luggage, etc. I've
tried this via public transit -- it's a miserable affair. The utility of a
personal vehicle for me is very high -- perhaps substantially higher than it
would be for you.

There's no need to justify vehicles based on economic classes and livelihood.
Why does the car debate need to be made into some kind of class conflict? It's
just more convenient and pleasant, and that's how some choose to spend their
money.

I'm sorry it inconveniences you, but our society exists because we're willing
to be slightly inconvenienced by our neighbors (especially those with
different preferences than us) in exchange for certain benefits.

~~~
gpm
The argument against here that I find most compelling is that the
externalities of you driving your car are so insanely huge that it should be
priced into the range of ridiculousness.

Things that you have to consider (The numbers attached are _completely_ made
up and probably off by multiple orders of magnitude in most cases, but are to
make the point that you should be assigning costs to these things. Then you
should multiply by them by reasonable estimates of the quantities that make up
the denominator on the unit and see what you come up with. Also note that as
there are less cars on the road the externalities per car probably go up):

\- Air quality (say, 0.1c per person you drive past?)

\- Noise polution (say, 0.1c per person you drive past?)

\- Road size - realestate cost (say, 0.000001c/trip per per person who pays
taxes?)

\- Road size - increased walking (and other travel) time (say, 0.0000001c/trip
per person who crosses a road you drove on?)

\- Congestion (say, 1c for everyone on a bus behind you?)

\- Road maintenance (probably negligible compared to the other costs)

\- Pedestrian safety (...)

\- Climate change (...)

Our society exists not just because we're willing to be slightly
inconvenienced by our neighbors, but because we are willing to go to
reasonable lengths to avoid inconveniencing our neighbors. Perhaps, reasonable
lengths includes not driving into the city.

~~~
pseudonom-
There are serious attempts to estimate the externalities that arise from
automobile use in general:
[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.661...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.661.7936&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

Adjusting those estimates (only) for inflation, they work out to about $2.14
per gallon in driving externalities.

~~~
gambiting
So.....even if you add it to the price of US fuel, it's still cheaper than
fuel in the UK? And British cities have just as much trouble with congestion
as American cities do. I guess what I mean is that if this extra money is
meant to be a deterrent to driving it's just not enough. I'm not sure what the
price would need to be to be honest. I've been to Portugal recently and the
price of petrol is just insane - in the order of $8-9/US gallon. And yet
people sitll drive, larger cities still have loads of congestion. And Portugal
is very poor by European standards.

------
jonstewart
In Northern Virginia outside DC, I-66 had been subject to directional rush
hour restrictions on single occupancy vehicles. It was illegal to drive a car
with just yourself for a few hours every weekday and you risked a ticket if
you were caught. People put blow up dolls in their passenger seats.

Last year they rolled out automatic congestion pricing for SOVs. All the news
stories were about how the toll could hit a ridiculous-seeming price of $40+,
but that was usually only for a few minutes in the morning rush. Buried in the
articles several paragraphs in would be a note that, oh yeah, it had been
illegal to drive alone. Now a year later, peoples’ habits have changed and the
toll has done its job. Commuters have effectively time-shifted, alleviating
and smoothing congestion. It has been so effective that the length of I-66
subject to this treatment will be extended.

I’m a smalltime neighborhood elected official in DC and I really hope I can
convince DDOT to roll out bus lanes faster.

~~~
hedora
> Commuters have effectively time-shifted, alleviating and smoothing
> congestion. It has been so effective that the length of I-66 subject to this
> treatment will be extended.

Also, has anyone computed the cost of the economic externalities here? Time
shifting ones commute either has severe financial repercussions for the
employer (lost productivity) or the employees (a decrease in effective wages).

I suspect those numbers will dwarf the cost of investing in a light rail
system or widening the road after a few years.

Similarly, if traffic is below about 45mph, then further slowing traffic
increases CO2 emissions by lowering fuel efficiency, and the congestion on the
road distorts property values, lowering prices in more places than it helps
them, which hurts school funding (especially in minority areas), etc, etc.

As I said in the other comment, consider raising peak commute throughput
instead of devising ways to suppress peak demand.

~~~
nicoburns
> Also, has anyone computed the cost of the economic externalities here? Time
> shifting ones commute either has severe financial repercussions for the
> employer (lost productivity) or the employees (a decrease in effective
> wages).

That, or companies implement flexible working hours, which allow time shifting
without penalty.

~~~
hedora
That doesn’t work if you have kids. You miss seeing them in either the morning
or evening, and the schools don’t time shift to match your schedule.

~~~
gnopgnip
If you have kids and work either the kids can get to school without you
needing to drive them and pick them up, or you need to have some sort of
childcare.

~~~
mcv
I bring my kids to school, my wife picks them up from child care. She barely
sees them in the morning (they get out of bed shortly before she leaves the
house), I still see them in the evening. It's a nice balance.

------
tgb
I think most of the comments here are misunderstanding the article. It seems
to be saying "Don't say congestion pricing is inequitable without also saying
that these are things that we already have are inequitable." It's meant as a
counter-argument to people saying "but congestion pricing is regressive
against poor people therefore we shouldn't have it." So if you think that gas
pricing should not have to be based on one's income, you aren't refuting the
article since you presumably also don't think equitability concerns apply to
congestion pricing either.

~~~
nawitus
The main flaw with this article is that it's reasonable to think that since
car transportation is already expensive for the poor that there shouldn't be
even more costs for the poor. In "realpolitik" one can't really vote for
"congestion charges but only if we remove tax A from the poor".

So yes, people can acknowledge that many things about transportation are
inequitable while still believing that congestion charges are inequitable.

~~~
ep103
The main flaw of this article is if we add congestion pricing to manhattan to
help pay for upgrading the MTA, Cuomo will just take that money when he next
raids the MTA funds for some new upstate pork-barrel measure.

~~~
Ericson2314
Hopefully the law would prevent such a thing :/. People in power have proposed
such restrictions, but yes we'll see what we get.

------
buzzdenver
The way I conceptually see it is that people with lower income pay less once a
year, during tax time, and save a lot of money then. All other times it's just
much simpler if prices/fees/whatnot are based on actual usage. Can you imagine
owning a gas station or running a parking lot and having to deal with income
verification from all your clients, and then dealing with the government to
get reimbursed because Joe Schmo is low income and got a 25% discount? That
would be a recipe for wasteful bureaucracy, black market activities like low
income people using their gas cards to fill up others' cars, and generally
just tons of inefficiencies.

~~~
zdragnar
I was approached twice on the same day at a cub foods once by people offering
to buy my groceries with their food stamps in exchange for a lesser amount of
cash.

I still think the program is valuable, but damn it hurts to see it be abused
(especially since one of the guys had his little kid with him). A discount
card or whatever that works on the spot is practically guaranteed to be abused
as an easy money maker for people, and the net effect ends up being counter to
the purpose od the program and many others.

~~~
benologist
If the majority of people are acting responsibly within the program does abuse
warrant changing policies for everyone else, ie optimizing around the frauds,
or should abuse be handled separately?

When GOG.com optimized around the frauds they came up with a refund policy for
their ethicals that's driven by preventing the frauds, now their real
customers wanting refunds must work within a hostile framework designed to
deny their refund because it assumes they're an adversary.

~~~
zdragnar
This is all rather off-topic from what I was originally replying to (a purely
hypothetical means of subsidizing a hypothetical tax), but what do you imagine
could be done to change the food stamp policies?

The scam was simple enough- he'd buy $100 of groceries for me, and I'd hand
him $80 in cash. The one guy was practically taking food out of his kid's
mouth (almost literally, in fact) to try to get that cash. Maybe it was a
legit need, maybe it was for crack (fairly popular in that area of town).

Either way, if he found someone to do it, he and his family would continue
living off of the cheapest foods and charity, while he'd have some unreported
money.

Food stamps themselves are already a compromise; the reason we have them
rather than handing out cold hard cash (like he wanted) was because we wanted
some assurance that it would go towards a legitimate need, rather than fueling
an addiction or luxury goods.

Short of getting family members to turn fraudsters in or having grocery store
employees act as police informants, I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to
improve the system at all, without even considering the burden of new policies
on good actors.

~~~
benologist
I think the solution is to treat their pursuit of cash, as it pertains to the
food stamp program, as just a red herring, a distraction. Some food stamp
funding probably ends up in exploitative mobile game IAPs, unhealthy food etc,
can't police it without massively impeding everyone's privacy and independence
but 0.9% fraud means the program's overwhelmingly working as intended so why
bother?

If something is to be done to help the addicts, the ill, the obese etc so they
spend food stamp funding more effectively it should address their addictions
and illnesses and problems. Those are health and education and social services
issues.

Address that and you could actually start asking why there needs to be
restrictions at all on what people can buy with food stamps... they're
supposed to be help people below poverty live at normal standards, which
includes spending money irresponsibly or at their own discretion!

People on that program can't buy necessities like toilet paper, laundry
detergent, soap, diapers, tampons, deodorant, lip balm, I think that is a
bigger problem than 0.9% fund misuse especially when such conditions might
contribute to the 'misuse'.

[https://www.huffingtonpost.com/sue-kerr/10-things-you-
cant-b...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/sue-kerr/10-things-you-cant-buy-
with-food-stamps_b_5079780.html)

------
rocgf
> parking meters don’t charge different rates to users based on their income;
> you have to pay the same amount to park your used Jetta as you do your new
> Mercedes [...] That’s inequitable.

I guess it depends on which end of the political spectrum you are, but this
sounds absolutely obscene to me.

~~~
devereaux
It sounds obscene to me too.

A car uses a parking spot. The spot is no longer available for someone else-
regardless of your income. Incomes is orthogonal to the problem.

Flat taxes are the fairest taxes.

Take trash taxes for example: you produce 100 lbs of trash, you pay for 100
lbs of trash because disposing of 100 lbs of trash in a landfill or a
recycling facility won't be affected by the income of the person having
produced said trash.

Want to pay less taxes? Produce less trash.

~~~
voisin
The argument isn’t about whether the quantum of taxes is appropriate. It is
how a fixed quantum turns a disincentive for some into an irrelevancy to
others. If the purpose of the cost is to discourage use (peak period
congestion charges), then it should vary with income so as to be a equally
discouraging to all to whom it applies. For your example of trash collection,
by having a fixed fee the state creates a greater incentive among the poor to
reduce their trash production, whereas the rich aren’t affected and can
produce far more before they feel the incentive to reduce waste.

I think the parking spot item is more like a meal at a fine restaurant - there
is no incentive or disincentive from a social standpoint that should justify
variable pricing on income. But to the extend there is, say via congestion,
pollution, etc, it is reasonable to vary pricing in order to equally apply the
disincentive.

~~~
devereaux
> it is reasonable to vary pricing in order to equally apply the disincentive.

No, it's not reasonable. The goal is not to discourage use, but to price in
the negative externality.

> For your example of trash collection, by having a fixed fee the state
> creates a greater incentive among the poor to reduce their trash production,

And that's good, even if we suppose your argument is right. Bear with me:
what's the percentage of the population in your country that you would call
"rich"? Let's say 20%.

Do you think that 20% of the population can create more bags of trash than 80%
of the population? I don't think so.

In the parking example, do you think 20% of the population can park more cars
than 80% of the population? I don't think so either.

Someone rich may have more than one car, but I strongly doubt they are able to
drive 2 cars at once.

~~~
adrianN
I'm pretty sure 5% of the population can create more of whatever negative
externality you'd like to tax than the lower 95%. Someone rich might not drive
a car at all and instead take a private jet. An average person from the US
produces fifty times as much CO2 as an average person from Kenya.

~~~
devereaux
If we were talking about CO2, I'd agree with you.

But we are talking about parking spaces, and production of trash within a
country.

------
oneplane
This seems rather US-centric, but perhaps there are some universal things in
there? In The Netherlands, we usually split off some of the issues; for
example there is the tax that covers road usage paid per active registered
vehicle. This depends on the vehicle, so depending on how
expensive/big/powerful etc your new car would be, you'd pay more or less tax.
For public transportation, more and more networks are getting dedicated lanes
or even dedicated roads, so buses for example are not affected by what the
cars happen to be doing at that time.

~~~
avar
Yeah much of it doesn't transfer, but on the subject of the taxes in The
Netherlands a lot of it is nonsensical:

1\. You pay tax per weight of the vehicle, and that's a (mostly?) linear
relationship. Whereas a 10 ton vehicle causes _much_ more than 10x the wear &
tear to roadways than a 1 ton vehicle.

2\. Even if it were adjusted for the wear it shouldn't be a fixed fee, but
based on actual usage. Paying it for a combination of the weight and
mileage/yr would still not reflect reality, but would be closer.

3\. There's no tax for vehicle size, just weight (the two don't always closely
follow each other), which produces an externality on small Dutch roadways.

~~~
oneplane
That tax is not the only one paying for the roads; the normal tax on fuel and
the fuel-specific tax on top of that (which also differs per type of fuel)
offsets the heavier engines or heavier users.

At the same time, a project people abandoned a few times (mostly because or
scare tactics) is in the works to see if we can lower or abandon some of the
taxes in favour of usage-based taxes measured by vehicle kilometers on-road.
So if you drive more, you pay more.

At the same time, I don't think it makes sense to make all tax super dependant
on what you drive, where you drive it, and what money you make. We already
have some specific systems in place to deal with the discrepancy between high
income and low income (and the gradient in the middle), so instead of making
the tax system more complex by adding yet more variables to existing rules, a
rule with a highly specific target is simpler and reaches more of the people
it applies to.

Basically, if you are poor, or simply don't make enough money to save or
invest, a lot of the taxes no longer apply. At the same time, if your income
is so low you are getting towards the edge of not surviving (depending on
where you are I guess) you get money for rent and healthcare. And on top of
that: if you don't have a lot of money, it makes no sense to own a car anyway.

I don't think a true per-use system that only relies on what the current usage
of _anything_ is will work, simply because we cannot predict what we will need
or use in the future and it disables all paths to investments or building
infrastructure because it is a lifeline to certain areas. After all, it's not
a for-profit corporate system we're talking about, it's a country or a
government. While sensible decisions are of course needed, and adjustments to
how some things are paid for can be very sensible, making a very tight
integration between what is available and what it currently used is a very bad
idea for humans.

~~~
avar
Fuel taxes are just another version of taxing the wrong thing. People using
gasoline for e.g. yard equipment aren't using the roads, but they're
effectively paying road tax to trim their hedge. Someone who owns a Tesla also
isn't paying their road tax.

Taxes and tolls should be based on what/where/when you drive. Someone driving
in circles in downtown Amsterdam in the middle of the day is causing a lot
more externalities than someone doing the same thing in the middle of the
night in the middle of nowhere.

Nothing about saying fees shouldn't be externalized is an argument that there
shouldn't be investment in infrastructure. Although I think you'll find that
once car infrastructure would have to pay real property tax and pay for its
externalities (including pollution etc.) we'd need less road infrastructure.
You'd get more density, more things shipped by train instead of trucks etc.

~~~
Johnny555
_People using gasoline for e.g. yard equipment aren 't using the roads, but
they're effectively paying road tax to trim their hedge_

It's legal to use untaxed (undyed) fuel for off-road uses, but the quantities
are so low that it's not worth the distribution system for it. So usually it's
only used by large consumers (i.e. farmers and other consumers with large off-
road fuel usage)

 _Someone who owns a Tesla also isn 't paying their road tax._

That will change next year when California will start charging a $100 EV fee
for car registrations. It's still less than the $176 a 10,000 mile/year 30mpg
driver will pay in gas tax, but it's not "nothing". Though since EV's are
typically more expensive than the equivalent conventional car, they'll pay a
higher VLF fee. So for example, $10,000 in extra value means $65/year more VLF
tax so that EV will be paying around $165/year.

I'd rather see a milage + weight based tax.

------
mberning
I really take exception with their point on insurance. They try to insidiously
suggest that the poor and urban population pays more for insurance than other
populations due to... Well they don’t say, but I do take their inference. The
fact of the matter is that the auto insurance industry is highly regulated and
cannot discriminate on many factors. Their rate books are reviewed by
regulators. The fact that poor and urban residents pay more has to do with the
risk to the vehicle. The chance of damage, theft, the type of car, the
experience and record of the driver, etc. all factor in. It may be
unfortunate, but it is it not some grand conspiracy or inherent bias to hold
these people down. I wish other types of insurance (like health) were as easy
to shop for as auto insurance. You can easily shop multiple insurers and
compare prices from the comfort of your home and pick what works best for you.
It’s really incredible when you think about it.

~~~
matt4077
> Well they don’t say, but I do take their inference.

So you’re criticizing them for something they, as you admit, do not actually
say. How is it their fault if the undisputed facts they state make you think
of something that you consider wrong?

~~~
mberning
I am not criticizing or disputing their point that, for example, a person
living in a low income area will pay a higher rate than a similar person
living in a high income area. I do dispute that it is an inequity that needs
to be “fixed”, which is the main thesis of the article. While I do consider it
unfortunate, it’s not discriminatory or inequitable and should not be on the
list.

~~~
matt4077
I believe they may really be trying to show that the complaint about
congestion pricing being unfair is silly by giving some other, equally silly,
examples.

------
maxsilver
Author uses a really backwards definition of equitable. Equability is not
about making every price defined as percentage of income. Equability is about
making things so cheap that everyone can easily afford them, regardless of
income. In perfect equitably, everything would be free.

Public Schools are equitable, because every child can attend public school,
there are no barriers to attendance. Public Water utility systems are
equitable, because every resident gets an identical cheapest possible rate for
drinking water, so that the barrier to access to water is as low as possible.
Public Libraries are equitable, because every resident gets identical access
to the contents of the library, as cheap (or usually free) a price as
possible.

\---

Urbanists attack the roads from the opposite angle. They are trying to invent
as many barriers as possible to their use. (i.e., additional taxes, additional
congestion charges, etc). Congestion prices can never be equitable, because
the idea itself is intentionally inequal -- it's an attempt to punish people
for using a public good (and more accurately, an attempt to maximally-punish
each person as equally as possible).

This is the exact opposite of true equability, which is all about delivering
as much public good as possible, as cheaply as possible.

~~~
paganel
I think one of the main sub-texts of this type of articles is that roads are
not “public goods”, or at least that they shouldn’t be reguarded as “public
goods” anymore, but that instead road-users should be made aware that using
those roads is a “privilege” (for lack of a better word) which they should pay
dearly for.

------
adolph
The three major themes of the article seem to be: micro transactions, variable
pricing, and unbundling. I think that one of the unintended consequences of
the first two is that doing them well requires a lot of information about the
consumer at the transaction point. I can see some risks in that and I’m sure
more devious minds than my own can think of more.

~~~
pas
Alas license plate tracking is already pretty widespread, adding a toll gate
with contactless payment doesn't make much of a difference now.

In car transponders of course would make the privacy problem worse.

------
lsc
it seems to me that the right way to solve the regressive nature of pigovian
taxes like congestion fees or gas taxes is to implement them with subsidies so
that they are largely revenue neutral.

The idea being to give everyone a tax credit equivalent to what they are
probably going to spend on usage fees. The incentive structure remains, as
they get to keep the money if you aren't contributing to the negative
externality, and on average nobody is any worse off than before.

~~~
adolph
_”A Pigovian (Pigouvian) tax is a liquid waste, or effluent, fee which is
assessed against private individuals or businesses for engaging in activities
that create adverse side effects. Adverse side effects are those costs which
are not included as a part of the product 's market price.”_

Source:
[https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/pigoviantax.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/pigoviantax.asp)

~~~
lsc
my understanding is that it's any tax used to price in an externality. An
effluent fee would be just one example.

wikipedia supports my usage:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax)

"A Pigovian tax (also spelled Pigouvian tax) is a tax on any market activity
that generates negative externalities (costs not included in the market
price). The tax is intended to correct an undesirable or inefficient market
outcome, and does so by being set equal to the social cost of the negative
externalities. In the presence of negative externalities, the social cost of a
market activity is not covered by the private cost of the activity. In such a
case, the market outcome is not efficient and may lead to over-consumption of
the product.[1] Often-cited examples of such externalities are environmental
pollution, and increased public healthcare costs associated with tobacco and
sugary drink consumption."

------
robertAngst
For the people who believe this is fair and just-

Should engineers and programmers pay more money for the same laptop as an art
student?

I'm unsure if this pricing should only exist in the public sector or should
extend to private services. Looking to hear your rationale.

I'm one of those, treat everyone equal, types. Would like to hear your reason.

~~~
oftenwrong
In the US, the idea of fairness is basically divided on political lines. On
the "right", people think fairness is equality. On the "left", people think
fairness is equity.

Helpful graphic: [http://i2.wp.com/interactioninstitute.org/wp-
content/uploads...](http://i2.wp.com/interactioninstitute.org/wp-
content/uploads/2016/01/IISC_EqualityEquity.png)

~~~
cuillevel3
I always liked this one about the school system:
[https://imgur.com/a/aikYqxg](https://imgur.com/a/aikYqxg)

------
jedberg
> Gasoline and gas taxes

This seems like a legacy problem that will soon go away. Gas taxes were done
because they were a good proxy for both miles driven, when most cars got
roughly the same milage. But now you have cars that get a few miles to the
gallon while another car that might be heavier is getting 35mpg. And of course
electric cars.

I suspect gas taxes will switch to milage taxes in the next few years as more
and more electric cars are adopted. In California they've already started
charging electric cars an extra fee on the annual registration to make up for
the lack of gas taxes.

~~~
cptskippy
In Georgia there's an Alternative Fuel Vehicle fee charged on any vehicle that
doesn't pay a fuel tax, or any AFV that does but chooses the AFV vanity plate.

The AFV vanity plate entitles you to drive for free in all Toll lanes.

All zero emissions vehicles are also allowed in HOV lanes regardless of
occupancy since the HOV lanes were introduced to curb emissions in Metro
Atlanta.

~~~
frankydp
Not directly related but Georgia also has a pay to carpool/alternative commute
program. [http://gacommuteoptions.com/](http://gacommuteoptions.com/)

------
Tade0
_let’s ask what it takes to create an overall system that is fair to all,
considering all aspects of how the system is paid for, who benefits, and who
bears the external costs_

Here's a crazy idea: instead of _pricing_ congestion, let's introduce a point
system with quotas tied to license plates and surge point deduction.

Puts a hard limit on the number of cars that enter the zone and applies both
to the rich and poor equally.

Unless of course some of the rich decide to buy additional cars just so they
can drive more - although I don't think many would be willing to go to such
lenghts.

~~~
ddebernardy
> let's introduce a point system with quotas tied to license plates and surge
> point deduction. [...] Unless of course some of the rich decide to buy
> additional cars just so they can drive more - although I don't think many
> would be willing to go to such lengths.

During pollution spikes in Paris, the city occasionally alternates each day
between forbidding odd or even ending car plates from circulating downtown.
The rich do precisely what you say: buy an extra car and make sure the license
plates are so they can drive any day regardless of restrictions.

~~~
Tade0
Does it make financial sense comparing to taxis, or do they just buy some kind
of barely-allowed shitbox as a substitute?

~~~
paganel
I’d guess that from a certain point on you don’t look at the financial
incentives only, but that you want to maintain your “status” (for different
definitions of that word depending on different social environments).

For example I know of people close to my age (late 30s) and from my social
circles (middle-class people) who pride themselves for almost never using the
metro, even though in the city where I’m living (Eastern Europe) the metro
does a pretty good job at transporting most of the city’s population. As such,
if a system that would forbid car circulation based on their license plates
were to be introduced I’m pretty much sure that those same people would buy a
second car especially in order to circumvent the new rules, and I’m also
pretty much sure that that second car would be almost as “good” as their first
car. Doing otherwise would be seen as a diminishing of those people’s social
standing.

~~~
Tade0
_Doing otherwise would be seen as a diminishing of those people’s social
standing._

That's what I'm getting at. Say they already drive the best car they can(or
even cannot at times) afford. Do they switch to two 3 years older
cars(assuming that's how long it takes for a car to lose half of its value)?

~~~
ddebernardy
That would presumably depend on the financial situation. Anecdotally I've run
into 2nd or 3rd car plans moving forward (e.g. a kid mobile to cart the family
around, or a small car for use by the older children) and outright buying a
2nd Mercedes as a matter of making a point. I can't recollect anyone in my
circle of acquaintances that did this for who money would have been much of a
consideration.

Intuitively I do not think anyone is buying an old clunker as a supplemental
vehicle to dodge such policies. The regulations during pollution spike control
efforts could ban their use anyway, so it would need to be a recent car. And
if cheap is a decision factor, you're probably using a combination of public
transportation and the occasional cab anyway. (Public transportation is good
enough in most major European cities that you can live without a car.)

------
hopler
Decrying everything that doesn't have a low-income subsidy as "inequity" is
disingenuous and undermines your better justified claims. It's OK if poor
people pay the same price as rich people _for the same service_ and it's OK to
have broad income subsidies or progressive income/wealth tax to help poor
people. It's not reasonable to claim that every fee for service is
"inequitable".

------
lazyjones
Why does this political subject get posted every week on HN, why does it
always result in ideological discussions sprinkled with personal anecdotes and
why is everyone asking for the defeatist solution of taxation (to reduce the
appeal of individual transport) instead of at least treating the underlying
technical problems (logistics, pollution) as an engineering challenge? It‘s
disheartening...

------
sampo
> 5\. Gasoline and gas taxes.

Are they suggesting progressive gas tax? The price of gas you pay at the pump
would depend on your salary?

~~~
lkbm
I think they're suggesting that if you oppose decry congestion pricing because
it's a not progressive, you should also oppose gasoline cost and gas taxes
because they're not progressive.

Their thesis is that congestion pricing _shouldn 't_ be dismissed on grounds
X, not that all these other things _should_ be dismissed on grounds X. It's
pointing out the inconsistency of supporting a bunch of inequitable policies
while rejecting another simply because "it's inequitable".

------
tomasien
The electric vehicles item here is disingenuous without including how
massively subsidized their oil-based competitors are. I understand why urban
transit people target electric cars to counter the "electric cars will save
the world!" narrative but it falls flat to me in an otherwise compelling list.

------
OtterCoder
Can I just mention how mind-bogglingly stupid a milage tax on car registration
would be? No matter how efficient your new car is, it's less polluting to
repair the old one and keep it on the road, than to manufacture a new car.

~~~
cptskippy
I think you're missing the point. The tax goes towards infrastructure
maintenance. All vehicles damage infrastructure and the amount of damage a
single car imposes is a function of their weight and miles driven.

From an environmental view, the tax would be for cleaning storm water run off
which contains contamination from the vehicle itself (e.g. oil, brake dust).
From that perspective an older car is more likely to polute storm water than a
new car.

------
zaroth
I agree with TFA’s premise, but some of the specific arguments present are
faulty.

 _Flat vehicle registration fees_

Excise tax is not flat, and sometimes a luxury tax on top even makes it
progressive. These are registration fees paid to the town instead of the
state.

 _The storm sewer subsidy_

The complaint here is that pollution is contributed by commuters / travelers
but cleanup is paid by locals. The travelers polluting city storm water sewers
are paying taxes in the city when they do business in the city, which is why
they are using the roads. If there was no reason to come to the city, there
would be a lot less stormwater pollution but also a lot less commerce and the
city would be worse off.

 _Insurance rates_

The fact that everyone pays for their own insurance means that is it _not_ a
tax. If we subsidized insurance based on income, then insurance _would_
effectively be an income tax. Which, by the way, is true for health insurance.

 _Gasoline and gas taxes_

Are meant to cover (part of) the externalities of driving. The same as the
congestion tax the article is supporting. By covering the externality we
discourage the polluting activity, which is equitable to be done for everyone
who is polluting, regardless of income.

 _EV tax credits_

If we want these (cheaper, more economical, cleaner, safer) cars to become
available in the mass market, there is a multi-billion dollar R&D hill to
climb. Economies of scale for li-ion and electric drivetrains do not
materialize overnight. Getting rich people to spend $60-$100k on a new toy to
fund this endeavor, by providing a $7500 carrot, benefits the poor and middle
class in the long run. Hell, it benefits the whole _planet_ in the long run.
The rich people are putting up a lot more capital than the Federal government
in this equation to make mass scale EV a reality. This is a huge win and to
say it is inequitable totally misses the point of the subsidy.

~~~
anonuser123456
I disagree with this point:

>The travelers polluting city storm water sewers are paying taxes in the city
when they do business in the city, which is why they are using the roads. If
there was no reason to come to the city, there would be a lot less stormwater
pollution but also a lot less commerce and the city would be worse off.

This is in effect a cross subsidy, making it hard to rationally price
pollution. Usage based pricing / taxes are more efficient here. It would be
better to lower city taxes and raise road taxes to reflect the cost of
pollution. Then, people would either a) drive less or b) drive less polluting
vehicles or c) pay the full price of cleanup.

The argument that there is 'more commerce' doesn't hold. If city business (and
residents) are subsidizing consumers (e.g. paying for their pollution), the
cost of doing business goes up in the city and thus producers have to charge
higher prices, reducing consumption. There is no free lunch here unless you
steal it from a 3rd party, and in the case of city budgets there is little in
the way to prevent that.

~~~
zaroth
People come to your city to do business there. If a lot of people do business
in your city, a lot of people will be coming in and out of town every day.

Complaining that the people who come to your city to do business (spend their
money) are poluting a bit with their cars while they are there, and the cost
of that pollution is unfairly borne by city dwellers I think is bizarre,
because the benefits of those people coming into the city and spending all
that money (which generates jobs and tax revenue, etc.) accrues to the city.

The city is already being paid a very hefty return on the cost of cleaning up
the pollution of people traveling into the city every day. The city would not
want to discourage people from making the trip!

Maybe more succinctly, the polluter is already paying the city more than
enough to cover the cost of cleaning up the car pollution, by nature of the
money they are spending while they are in the city.

~~~
pas
it's not about rentability, it's about fairness. this is a subsidy in favor of
those, who pollute by car, while usually those are the people who could pay
for it easily.

of course, it's possible that if a city is at the same time both relies
heavily on car based tourism/shoppers and its demography is dominantly carless
poor people, then in this case probably they would get more poorer by
introducing a car usage fee.

------
leemailll
And then how about those can’t even afford a car?

~~~
oneplane
They shouldn't live in the US I guess, because that place is designed for cars
and nothing else.

~~~
sampo
There are places with lower car ownership in the US. Most notably New York
City, where 45% of households own a car.

~~~
oneplane
I suppose that makes sense, there would be areas where the amount of cars,
buildings and people per square meter is so high its usability implodes on
itself. I imagine there must be areas with higher usage of public
transportation, higher usage of bicycles or simply having everything for day-
to-day life in walking distance.

------
raverbashing
I "love" those kind of articles, though this one is a bit different.

But it boils down to "let's make car owners pay a lot of money - (and this
article) except if they're poor, then they can't afford being fleeced for
wanting to drive" (really Capt. Obvious? so maybe fleecing drivers is not the
way to go)

There's a balance between preferring other types of transportation and hating
cars. Not to mention this article is US centric and seems to ignore how it's
done elsewhere.

"Not pricing roads, which results in slower bus speeds. " there's an answer
for that: bus lanes. Exists in several countries.

"Poor people pay more for parking than the rich" Really? (Oh by the way, they
don't because of convenience and you might prefer the parking that's further
and doesn't have a cover for your old car while the rich might favour the
valet parking one next to their office)

I don't think there's much secret to it. Gas taxes are, in the end, a carbon
tax. Use more gas pay more for it.

