
Congestion Pricing: N.Y. Embraced It. Will Other Clogged Cities Follow? - wpasc
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/nyregion/new-york-congestion-pricing.html
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merricksb
Extensive discussion last week (81 points, 110 comments):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19487815](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19487815)

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jakelarkin
The financial & car industries have been immensely successful at making cars
accessible to all consumers. Anyone with an income, a bit of credit history
and a pulse can roll out of dealership with a car. Roads on the other hand are
publicly funded and physical constrained. It's inevitable that car owning will
have to become much more expensive via taxes in the decades ahead.

The mayors listed are not however making their cities particularly more
accessible to pedestrians and bicyclists. They generally sandbag those
improvements on the slightest complaints about loss of parking or access.
DiBlasio drives to a gym in Brooklyn everyday and has the NYPD run a war on
ebikes/bikes, Durkan just canceled a long-planned bike lane on an important
arterial, Portland's doing a massive freeway expansion. Most of these cities
are failing on Vision Zero efforts.

The reason congestion pricing is catching on is that the wealthy & politically
connected older generations finally settled on it as the way to reclaim their
privilege to drive straight into the downtown from their suburbs. Congestion
pricing is now just another way to maintain a vehicular status quo.

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rayiner
Is optimizing for bikes worth the disruption to traffic? It seems like a
handful of bicyclists hold up a lot of people in cars.

(Also, the anti-suburb sentiment is quite ... problematic. Hint: There is a
reason most of the good ethnic food in New York is in actually in Westchester
and Long Island.)

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francisofascii
You have to realize the number of bicyclists is significantly constrained
because of the danger caused by the cars.

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int_19h
So, not mixing cars and bikes together would be a win-win.

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cletus
Well, nothing being implemented. The details haven't been worked out. The only
thing that's changed is the Governor has signed on (previous attempts were
derailed as requiring state government approval). That's good but we're not
there yet.

This is what I want to see:

\- Similar to London, charge people for owning a car in areas served by public
transport. This would include anywhere in Manhattan below 125th street (maybe
higher).

\- Stop giving free long term parking on the street. Have a parking limit. If
necessary give resident parking permits. These should be expensive.
Comparative to parking in a garage. You get the idea?

I'm not a big fan of what NYC has done to ride-sharing services. Ride-sharing
(IMHO) should be encouraged. These cars are in constant use, not collecting
dust in free street parking. What used to be a $9-10 Uber ride is now $19-20.
What I can walk in 10 minutes now costs $11. That's... ridiculous.

My guess is congestion pricing will further drive up ride-sharing and taxi
services for no good reason. It already costs $70 to go to the airport (JFK).

Let's target private vehicle owners in Manhattan. Those people basically have
no excuse for this level of subsidy.

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maxtaco
Great point. The fact that street parking is roughly free in NYC both
encourages drivers to drive and causes unnecessary bottlenecks on congested
major thoroughfares. Take, for instance, 86th Street. One lane taken up by
parked cars, plus just one double-parked truck means most crosstown traffic
along that latitude and in that direction (including packed busses) must
single-flight. That the city chooses to keep commuters stuck in traffic to
accommodate disused cars is a pessimal allocation of precious street area.

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ipnon
I'm surprised people are afraid this will decrease quality of life. In New
York, cars are the greatest public nuisance. They create exhaust, they shore
up traffic, you have to watch out for them when you cross the street. Semis
drive through the middle of the city, engine braking and honking.

Manhattan can be unbearable at vehicle choke points like Canal Street. Any
effort to lessen the amount of cars is going to dramatically improve the
quality of life in the city.

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joecool1029
Not to be a pedant, but can the headline be changed to what it actually is? I
clicked it hoping to see how they were carrying it out.

Implements as a verb means they actually carried it out: threw in tollbooths,
bill-by-plate, or EZ-Pass. Not done yet.

"Congestion Pricing: N.Y. Embraced It. Will Other Clogged Cities Follow?" <
real headline

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the_fonz
Let's see: America generally has terrible public transportation and purposely
laid-out most modern cities to require private car use, yet the "solution" is
to ban cars. In reality, the unintended consequences are the creation of an
economic apartheid because the rich won't be as affected as a proportion of
income and further, it will disproportionately tax on already struggling poor
people.

Layout cities and do public transportation better, policy-makers shouldn't
just tax what's vital to live and work just because they think it will go
away... it's BandAid, panacea mentality.

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megaremote
This is for New York, which has awesome public transport.

And how do you get better public transport in cities? By getting cars out of
them.

And we should actually start getting drivers to pay for what they use, instead
of subsidising them billions.

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ars
I think you should do the opposite: Make public transport free.

Transportation is a basic service cities should provide for free, that
includes both roads and public transport.

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sethhochberg
"Free" isn't free - road use in private cars vs shared transportation in buses
or rail have dramatically different costs and returns per person in terms of
pollution, percentages of public space used for vehicle storage, peak
throughput for a given corridor over time, fuel cost, etc. Congestion pricing
is about adjusting the incentives between road use and transit use to
encourage more efficiency with the lowest overall cost to society.

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closeparen
Bus trips in SF are easily 3X longer than car trips on the same routes.
Traffic affects cars just as much - it can’t be the reason buses are so slow.
Talking about the time people are wasting sitting in traffic is silly - now
they will be wasting even more time standing on buses.

How about some parking protected bike lanes and encouragement for e-bikes,
which can actually deliver reasonable door to door times?

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claytoneast
Slow traffic is created non-linearly, i.e. if a road has a capacity of 100, it
will be totally fine 0-90, but traffic will rise sharply after that point. If
you could reduce the amount of cars by 10%, you could massively reduce the
traffic that everyone is experiencing. So in that example, 90% of commuters
will still be driving and paying tolls, but with far less traffic, and the
other 10% may be on public transit/bike/walk/wfh and also experiencing far
less traffic.

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YeahSureWhyNot
I really hope this decreases number of ridesharing vehicles on the road.
ridesharing is a cheaper and more convenient alternative to taxis but they
didn't improve traffic. they made it worse because its almost always a car
with TLC plates that has doubleparked, full stop in the lane to pickup/dropoff
or engaging in some other kind of outrageous behavior in traffic. I don't
blame them either, those drivers put up with so much shit that after a while
they become immune to honking or people calling them assholes. they just do
anything to make more money because uber pays for most of their tickets

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ptd
Uber pays for its drivers’ tickets? Including things like speeding? Or just
parking tickets? I wonder how much that costs them...

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YeahSureWhyNot
parking and other tlc related violations, not red light or speeding tickets. I
actually never see uber drivers speeding, on the contrary, you will see them
going 50mph in middle lane while everyone is passing them going 75 on 50
because thats what new york drivers do when they see room on the highway

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ptruesdell
I wonder if the pricing structure will be the same for taxis and ride sharing
cars. I'd hope so, but something tells me the taxi lobbyists probably worked
out a better deal.

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kevin_thibedeau
The current deal from Feb 2 is $2.50 for taxis, $2.75 + $0.75 per passenger
for rideshares. I'd expect it to remain given the lack of popular revolt.

The real question is how will bridge and tunnel tolls be credited given the
multiple independent tolltakers that won't welcome any encroachment on their
fiefdoms that threatens revenue.

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jessriedel
The congestion price depends on the number of passengers? Ugh. That makes no
sense.

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vidro3
no, that is a different fee unrelated to the congestion charge which wont
begin until 2021.

previous proposals have had taxis and delivery vehicles only paying once per
day

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kevin_thibedeau
This _is_ a preliminary congestion charge that was instituted now because NYC
already had the hooks to extract these fees.

[https://abc7ny.com/traffic/nyc-congestion-pricing-brings-
hig...](https://abc7ny.com/traffic/nyc-congestion-pricing-brings-higher-fares-
for-taxis-ubers-/5117860/)

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magoon
Could this just replace poorer drivers on the streets with richer drivers?

It could also increase costs for all goods and services, as the cost to get
them into the shops and restaurants will increase.

Edit: Drivers in NYC can be from any surrounding area, as can rich drivers
coming in. e.g., Some people in NJ who aren’t regular commuters don’t have
useful train/bus access.

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deagle50
Higher fuel taxes would aid congestion without additional toll infrastructure
and reduce the money sent to dictatorships at the same time. That revenue
could be used to fix/expand public transport. Right now urban residents
subsidize suburban commuters. Until the true cost of driving is reflected at
the pump we'll keep going in circles.

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almost_usual
Wow, this could have a big impact on ride sharing companies.

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omarchowdhury
$2.75 + $0.75 per passenger for rideshares.

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goerz
How is this supposed to work? How would they charge people driving into
certain parts of the city? Something like EZ-Pass at every traffic light?

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ars
Very long article that basically says nothing.

"In New York, many details of a congestion pricing plan — including how much
drivers will be charged — are still being worked out."

So saying "implements" seems rather premature.

My personal prediction is that this will lead people to move out of cities. I
guess we'll see.

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switzer
London did this a while ago and traveling around the city is much more
pleasant. There is a case to be made that a congestion charge makes a city
more habitable.

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Yetanfou
The way London does it does create some asymmetries which would be good to
avoid. You pay when crossing the border between the outside and the congestion
charge zone while driving inside the zone is not charged. This means that
those who live inside the zone and drive inside the zone don't pay while those
who come from the outside do. London real estate being priced as it is, those
who live inside the zone could easily afford to pay for the privilege of
driving private vehicles in that area - but they don't. Those who can not
afford to live inside the zone but need to drive there for their work do end
up paying. It would make more sense to tax the actual use of the roads inside
the area instead of the mere fact that a vehicle crossed some imaginary border
between the untaxed and taxed zones.

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ummonk
I hope other cities don’t actually follow suit. I don’t know about Seattle but
SF’s public transport is rather poor. If it were as good as that in Manhattan,
congestion pricing would be perfectly fine, but they shouldn’t be heavily
taxing vehicles when the only reasonable mode of transport is vehicles.

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shereadsthenews
SFMTA service is terrible because you’re on a bus stuck behind ubers in the
bus lane and an intersection blocked by people trying to get on the Bay Bridge
because they live in Manteca. Driving in SF is characterized by total
lawlessness. The number one most effective thing you can do for transportation
in SF would be to drag box-blockers from their vehicles and beat them to death
on the spot. The next best thing is to toll the roads.

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anonlapwarmer
The problem isn't solely other cars, Ubers or any other scapegoats; it's the
layout of American cities making MOST of them purposefully unwalkable and the
destruction/atrophy of public transportation, leading to long commutes and
gridlock. Recall that the auto makers bought/legislated their way to destroy
an once vibrant local tram infrastructure in America. One "quick-fix panacea
solution" isn't going to do much; it's going to take a concerted effort of
many, integrated, holistic solutions to make things better.

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shereadsthenews
There is no land-use issue that can be fixed by transportation but neither NYC
nor SF has this problem. Their problems are entirely solvable by
transportation policy alone.

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awad
NYC did solve this problem and then let its amazing system atrophy over the
years (though I still give it credit for being 24/7). Its original sin is that
the subway was built to get people in and out of Manhattan so parts of
Brooklyn and Queens are in dead zones only serviceable by bus or car (to say
nothing of Staten Island) and it's nearly impossible to create new track these
days. NYC as a whole would benefit from more point to point connection in the
outer boroughs instead of hub-and-spoke through Manhattan.

SF and the broader Bay Area transit policy make zero sense to me.

