The congestion tolls are both going to send tourists and business fleeing. Manhattan will be a beautiful playground for the people who live there until things start failing.
>will be a beautiful playground for the people who live there
Which is the attitude that a lot of people who live in larger cities have. "I don't want people driving or otherwise coming into my city." But most cities aren't sustainable on that basis.
Nonsense. People don’t want people driving into their cities and making noise/ taking up a bunch of space with their cars. We have zero problems with people taking transit in. Suburban residents want to treat the city as both a low density car friendly space and a place filled with culture/concerts/plays/restaurants, not realizing that the two are opposites.
Except that taking transit in, especially for an evening event, is often not a reasonable option. I'll happily take commuter rail in if I have to go into our urban office for the day but it's utterly unworkable for an evening event given how few trains there are and how long they take.
And this is a city (Boston/Cambridge) with relatively good transit options. If driving in for the evening became any more difficult than it is today (which is not trivial) I simply wouldn't come in. So your comment boils down to not wanting people to come into the city for a night activity because they don't have a reasonable alternative to driving in most cases.
> taking transit in, especially for an evening event, is often not a reasonable option
If it’s that much of a hassle, for most entertainment one commutes into Manhattan for, you are fine paying the toll on an Uber. People driving themselves in and sensitive to the toll are, by definition, not adding much to the local economy.
I'm basically $200-300 round-trip to get a car to take me into the city. At that point, I'm probably going to make a weekend out of it whether I take commuter rail in or not--and I'm not going to do it very often. We're talking probably a thousand dollars at that point between hotel and transportation and whatever the actual activity is.
(And I'm not sure from a driving in perspective what's actually been gained relative to me taking my own car in and parking in a garage which is what I usually do.)
> basically $200-300 round-trip to get a car to take me into the city
The congestion charge will be between $9 and $23. For certain parts of Manhattan. During certain hours. It sounds like your problem is where you live, fundamentally, not the charge.
> a thousand dollars at that point between hotel and transportation
You do see how, from a resident's perspective, you spending more money less frequently is not a downside?
> what's actually been gained relative to me taking my own car in and parking in a garage
A reduction in space wasted to parking. Also, congestion: your car adds a car to the road. (You're also a non-professional driver in a dense urban environment.)
The things that people want to deal with the PITA of living in Manhattan over depend on volume of people. COVID and WTF killed commercial office traffic - now that it's getting dark early take a walk up 3rd Avenue in the late afternoon - the offices are empty.
So the residents don't want to deal with commuters, don't want to deal with drivers, etc. Cool. I don't want to hear about bailing people out of their $2M mortgages on 800 ft^2 apartments when the cultural, dining and entertainment that brought them to Manhattan migrates to Brooklyn and Jersey.
I don't get this. Garage parking + bridge tolls + gas can't cost more than $100 to drive into NYC. Boston even less due to no bridge tolls and shorter distances.
The context was the claim I shouldn't drive into Boston. That's the cost for getting a taxi or other car service. Which, as I said in another comment, isn't clear to me how it makes a difference but it apparently does because I'm not a "professional driver."
The money saved from reduced vehicles in the city can and should go into expanded commuter service, I absolutely agree. There is a cultural element to this as well - many suburbanites feel that transit is beneath them.
The lack of regional electrified rail even on the Providence line is a blight on the Boston area. It is perfectly feasible to run regional trains every 15 minutes which would solve your problem.
Of course we won't get that until the 2050s at best...
The NY Metro North railroad is so much better than the MBTA Commuter Rail that it's not even in the same category. You absolutely can take it into the city for the evening.
There's a whole cultural aspect to it as well as the actual physical infrastructure. But it's probably unique in the US in that regard.
The MBTA commuter rail is commuter rail. And, outside the occasional other event, no one looks at it differently and it is empty (and probably loses a bunch of money) whenever it runs outside of rush hour.
I don't think the 1% that pay their share are very relevant. The only example I know of a suburb that pays its fair share is the beach front suburb near Charleston, SC and that's very wealthy area that we couldn't expect to replicate on a widescale.
Otherwise, why are city mayors desperately opposing WFH, with the goal of putting suburban commuters back into their hellish commutes into the city to patronize urban businesses?
You could argue the suburbanites need their urban jobs - but WFH has proven at least many of these jobs do not necessarily require workers to have their butts planted in urban offices to be productive.
Because people like the propaganda of the suburbs more than they like looking at hard numbers. The entire American dream is based on the notion of suburban car-centric infrastructure: each family a single unit home with a lawn and a car. We've been peddled this lie for 70 years now. It's hard to break free from something like that, especially when the consequences of suburban maintenance are so delayed. This lie has socioeconomic value because it maintains the narrative that rich people contribute the most to the economy and they're carrying the weight of the "inner-city" poor
City mayors still think that the suburbs are profitable because they're just as vulnerable to this propaganda as you and I are. The Feds help maintain this lie too.
Many/most of the people in suburbs/exurbs around me go into (or don't go into) suburban/exurban offices and local businesses. They rarely go into the major city 40 miles away. When I do, it's mostly to go to the airport or a play every 2-3 months.
From a tech perspective, until the West Coast companies started opening satellite offices in the city, it basically didn't have any tech companies any longer and was losing population.
I’m sorry, which tourists are going to be turned off by congestion tolls? Tourists are, by and large, not driving in and out of lower Manhattan. Same with businesses, only a very small number have a significant number of customers drive to visit them.
Tourists don't drive in Manhattan and businesses there don't rely on vehicle traffic. And delivery vehicles are not charged as far as I am aware in the current proposal. The people who will suffer the most are people who drive in for work and suburban families that drive in for weekend day trips. The latter can afford to pay for the privilege. The former tends to be people under-served by transit, which is unfortunate and they should probably be given a discounted weekly pass or something.
There's absolutely no reason to expect any kind of collapse in anything other than asthma rates and traffic congestion.
Funny how people who tend to proclaim that they are pro-business also tend to oppose textbook classical liberal free market solutions to textbook externality problems.
The city already is and has been a playground for the rich for 10+ years. That's largely due to real estate. Small businesses in the city are also struggling due to real estate, as well as the chaotic and difficult regulatory environment.
> The people who will suffer the most are people who drive in for work and suburban families that drive in for weekend day trips. The latter can afford to pay for the privilege. The former tends to be people under-served by transit
It's even less of a problem than you think.
The people who drive in for work are rich executives and lawyers etc. who can afford to park in Manhattan. Not maids or baristas.
They're not under-served by transit at all. If they wanted, they could commute like most people by driving to the nearest train station and taking the train into the city.
Do you think the hybrid office environment might change the equation a bit? The commute or not questions has a spectrum of answers now. If commuting norms drop from three days a week to two days a week, that's half the amount of congestion (from a certain source anyway), but it's also a drop in certain kinds of economic activities.
as if cars are the primary form of transit in NYC. The congestion tolls will make us more reliant on public transit, but that’s exactly the point. We don’t want to build car-centric infrastructure.
It's a city of almost 10 million people with a metro area of 20 million people, and a broader region of 60+ million people depending on how you look at it.
The value of NYC in 2023 isn't NYC, there's no industry per se. It's a financial, cultural and administrative center -- a hub. The marginal changes have huge impacts on the region, nation and maybe the world. If 1% of NY metro people need something, that's 200,000 impacted people; more than the entire upstate NY region where I live.
The activists living in Manhattan who are wound up about Manhattan being congested, etc are living in a bubble. Their world depends on the outsiders.
The actual dollar value of toll isn't relevant. The perception is. If there's a thing in Manhattan that isn't a commute to a job, you need to do the calculus if the pain in the ass of getting to Manhattan is worth it. If you're not young or particularly mobile, it's a hard no.
Why does it matter? Huge industries in NYC depend on NYC being NYC. If you're fighting cancer, are you going to go to MSK, NYU or Cornell in Manhattan? There's no hotels of note north of 66th St, so on top of everything else, you're facing more hassle and expense. How does that impact the tens of thousands of people working at these places long term?
I don’t see anything in your comment that makes me think congestion toll is a bad idea. NYC infrastructure can’t maintain increased traffic and we shouldn’t build out to accommodate it. If you need to get into manhattan, just use public transportation.
The perception, as far as I can tell, comes from a bunch of car brains who think they should be able to drive wherever they want and be 100% accommodated without taking one second to think about the consequences of car-centric infrastructure. Spending our time and energy accommodating them is a net negative to our community.
Edit: it seems like you’re doing your calculations based on the idea that increased access via car leads to increased sales. The data actually shows the opposite: The more walkable the area is, the more sales at storefronts. Locations that shutdown lanes of traffic to increase walkability or increase bike traffic see a massive jump in revenue.
The congestion tolls are both going to send tourists and business fleeing. Manhattan will be a beautiful playground for the people who live there until things start failing.