When I lived in NYC many years ago I'd be walking, biking, driving, at a park, dining in an outdoor cafe, in my living room, etc and perpetually surrounded by the noise, smell, and inconvenience of gridlocked traffic and road construction. I eventually tuned it out, but every time I left and came back it drove home how ridiculous it was.
I eventually moved to New England because it became clear that despite the city having good bones, the leadership (and many voters) were more interested in coming up with ways to make it convenient for drivers to drive and/or park in every neighborhood in the city than making it a pleasant place to live. The ghost of Robert Moses influences everything there.
So I was floored when it seemed like such an incompetently managed city as NYC was actually going to implement the obviously correct solution of charging money to allocate a scarce resource. What was less surprising was the fact that it was derailed by a state politician but only at the last minute and after hundreds of millions had already been spent.
I moved to the financial district a couple of years ago and I was very happy to find how anti car parts of it can be. I pretty much never hear any street traffic where I live. The narrow streets mean lots of places it isn’t covered in parked cars, there’s low to seemingly no traffic on the weekends, the closed streets around the exchange area is basically a big dog park after working hours.
I’ve looked at a bunch of different apartments this summer with my lease coming up, but I don’t think I want to deal with the noisy other parts of lower manhattan
Fidi is the most underrated neighborhood to live in NYC. Most MTA lines converge there, very secure due to post 9/11 security, not much traffic and quiet at night, and slightly cheaper than many other Lower Manhattan neighborhoods.
I lived on 2nd Ave for years in UES and biked to FiDi for work - cannot relate to what you're claiming here. Yes there's noise, it's NYC, but "gridlocked traffic and construction" was not something I'd normally run into.
At least visiting other parts of Manhattan -- I'm thinking for example LES -- there is definitely constant traffic and exhaust. Doesn't really matter if it's gridlock or not, moving cars emit more sound and fumes than idling cars do.
A trip where a car drives some distance without idling in gridlock vs that same distance trip where the car spends significant time idling in gridlock in addition to time spent moving is the obvious answer.
My bike commute took me past a bridge entrance and a tunnel entrance in midtown which were both perpetually gridlocked, so I'll admit that probably colored my recollection a bit and it wasn't literally every street in NYC that was gridlocked.
Still, when living in NYC I felt constantly surrounded by car traffic, far more than other cities I've lived in.
I spend a week in Manhattan and traffic and construction was all I saw on the other hand. Might be an emperor has no clothes situation for locals. It took 2 hours to go through the holland tunnel and the gridlock didn't stop there because it dumps you out into one of the oldest street grids on the island. At the time of writing this comment that entire swirl of traffic that is the exit of that tunnel is gridlocking the bulk of soho and lower manhattan. I can hear it from a thousand miles a way.
And the construction, you can't deny the amount of construction going. A lot of it isn't even active work; contractors seemingly throw up scaffolding and let it sit forever because I guess the fines for letting scaffolding sit forever are cheaper than the costs of fixing crumbling masonry facades, so that is what is done. Don't get me started on the trash situation either, what an embarrassment that corrupt aspect of nyc life is.
LAX is especially bad because of all the avgas burned. I've seen studies done where being directly downwind of lax relative to the other parts of southla not as downwind have marked increases in health issues. Port of LA is also a bad area. So is san bernardino and riverside county as the prevailing coastal breeze tends to push quite a bit of pollution off the la basin and into the san gabriel valley. You get up high to the highest reaches of hilly neighborhoods like bel air, you might actually be high enough to be totally above the usual inversion layer and have a dramatically different air quality than those maybe 10 minutes downhill on your street.
It's interesting you say that, coming from Toronto, I was floored at how _well_ NYC traffic moves in comparison. Obviously no city is perfect, but suggesting that NYC is "incompetently managed" is a little funny to me. Of the other cities I've lived in, Seattle, Vancouver, SF, and Toronto, I've found the NYC city services to be by far the most effective.
> I was floored at how _well_ NYC traffic moves in comparison
My criticisms of NYC traffic aren't based on the throughput efficiency for drivers, but the impact on the people who live there.
At least when I was in NYC, every attempt to charge market rates for parking, improve daylighting at intersections, get people to stop parking on the sidewalks, build protected bike lanes, stop making mountains of garbage bags on the sidewalk, etc were all met with fierce resistance. (Though I gather from this thread that things have improved in the last ten years or so.)
While the pedestrian fatality counts in NYC are breaking records, just across the Hudson River you have Jersey City and Hoboken prioritizing safe, pleasant streets for residents and have achieved "Vision Zero" with no traffic deaths.
Hoboken's "Vision Zero" commitment is a total joke. It was basically a long-running PR campaign by the sketchy mayor ahead of his (failed) US congressional run. I lived in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Hoboken each for multiple years, and Hoboken is by far the most hazardous place to be a pedestrian I've ever lived. If you don't believe me, search on Hoboken's subreddit and you'll see tons of people saying the exact same thing.
Hoboken's traffic fatalities have always been low or zero, even long before all the daylighting, because Hoboken is only 1 square mile with only a handful of entry/exit points. Quite simply, it's difficult for a car to get to a sufficient speed to kill someone there. But they can certainly cause non-fatal injuries on a regular basis, and they do. I saw quite a few out my window at the intersection closest to my home, and it took over seven years for the town to even add an extra stop sign there.
Part of the problem is Hoboken's weird fear of traffic lights. The busiest commercial street has them on every block, but the rest of the city only has a handful. Everywhere else, it's stop signs, usually only in one direction, which changes unpredictably between blocks.
Compare this to NYC outer-borough neighborhoods of similar density and character, like Astoria or Park Slope, where they put traffic lights on nearly every intersection. Much safer to be a pedestrian in those places because you have a pedestrian traffic signal telling you when it's safe to cross. In Hoboken you just have crosswalks which may or may not have a stop sign, and drivers who may or may not stop for you, and complete lack of traffic enforcement by authorities who don't care when cars fail to yield to pedestrians.
Oh, and about that busiest commercial street in Hoboken that actually has traffic lights: it didn't even have pedestrian signals until 2017, many decades later than pretty much every other busy place in the entire NYC metro area.
To be fair only a handful of US metros are large enough to see a good amount of gridlock. A lot of american cities outside that top few are pretty much "mile a minute" metros where you can expect most trips you have the bulk of it done at 60mph from the ample highway access and lack of congestion on that network in general.
The problem is other stakeholders live in the provinces. NYC transit advocates don’t represent them. NYC is a regional megalopolis.
The commentary here is always focused on the strawman terrible people commuting to lower Manhattan, but there are a million reasons why convenient travel to or through Manhattan is needed.
It’s also unfair to characterize the governor of New York as “some politican”. The MTA and most river crossings are owned by public authorities controlled by the state, and the entirety of the system is dependent on New Jersey Transit and the multi-state Port Authority. Congestion pricing was a state initiative all along.
The drivers commuting into Manhattan aren't terrible, they're responding totally rationally to the relative monetary and time costs of driving into the city vs park & ride vs living closer. The terrible thing is that the incentives that have been established make driving the right choice for so many people.
> The problem is other stakeholders live in the provinces.
Exactly. People who live in New York City often end up being beholden to the preferences of people who live outside the city.
There are downsides to the culture of localism in New England, but one nice thing is that cities and towns are typically able to prioritize the lives of their own residents which makes them nice places to live.
Greater Boston is a suburban hellscape. If traffic is your Kryptonite, beantown is worse in some dimensions.
NYC prospers today because it’s a regional hub. All of the business that required physical presence (shipping, industry, etc) is long gone.
Also note “the provinces” include NYC itself. I grew up in Queens, and congestion pricing certainly didn’t align with the needs of my relatives who live in the old neighborhood.
> congestion pricing certainly didn’t align with the needs of my relatives who live in the old neighborhood
No doubt, but the question is to what degree the preferences of people who live in Queens should override the preferences of the people who live in Manhattan when it comes to deciding how to manage the streets of Manhattan.
> Greater Boston is a suburban hellscape. If traffic is your Kryptonite, beantown is worse in some dimensions.
For drivers, sure, it seems nearly as bad as NYC. I recall it being congested and confusing the few times I drove through Boston. Though it is nice that they buried some of the highways so you don't have to hear or see as much traffic downtown. But in general my concern is less about the impact on drivers than the impact on neighborhood residents, pedestrians, and cyclists. In some ways the Greater Boston area seems ahead of NYC in that regard.
>> the leadership (and many voters) were more interested in coming up with ways to make it convenient for drivers to drive and/or park in every neighborhood in the city than making it a pleasant place to live. The ghost of Robert Moses influences everything there.
Sorry but this statement is not true. Compare NYC today vs 1980s or earlier. There are more bike lanes, parks, walking paths than ever before. Roads in Manhattan are narrowed frequently to allow more pedestrians.
The west side highway is amazing for biking, I love it. Just because it is not Copenhagen or Amsterdam doesn't mean progress isn't made.
source: Lived in Manhattan for 20+ years. Own a car, bike regularly and walk to work.
> Roads in Manhattan are narrowed frequently to allow more pedestrians.
That's wonderful to hear! I lived in NYC for the better part of a decade and was a big supporter of orgs like Transportation Alternatives and their work with the DOT to advocate for road diets.
At least when I lived there the painted bike lanes were a running joke and more dangerous than just taking a car lane because every block there was at least one taxi or truck blocking the bike lane. And in cases where there was physical separation you had to contend with moped drivers riding at unsafe speeds. The Queensboro Bridge bike path was dangerously overcrowded and every year they claimed they'd open another lane; it looks like that's still "just around the corner" https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2024/04/08/first-look-the-dot-fi... but I wouldn't hold my breath. The Queensbridge Greenway shared use path became a muddy parking lot soon after it opened and it seems like they're still struggling to keep cars off it. NYPD still seems more enthusiastic about ticketing cyclists than drivers who park illegally.
I didn't mean to imply that the NYC bike/ped folks haven't notched some wins. And I used to tell myself that as bad as it was, other US cities were worse for cyclists and pedestrians. But that wasn't true and every time I go back to visit friends and family I'm still grateful when we leave.
That's awesome! It was well after I left but I heard they finally closed off the loops to cars. It always boggled my mind that they even let drivers take over the nicest park in the city.
Now all they need to do is calm traffic on the transverses...
NYC is a fantastic city -- high paying jobs, ubiquitous transit, amazing food, support for the arts, beautiful parks, good people...
But compared to other world-class cities they have (had?) this weird car-shaped blind spot where every neighborhood and park was filled with cars and most people don't care.
Electrification really hasn't hit home in the US yet.
EVs due to the simplicity of the drivetrain (which is already engineered for various electric motor sizes since we've been using them for 100+ years in 1000s of applications) can be adapted quickly and cost effectively to many different vehicle sizes and platforms:
- electric hand scooter - maybe this has happened already, but the mini micro kids scooter design seems ideal to human application. more stable, turns well, better balanced. It folds up and is totally hand-portable when you get to your destination, so no locking up. Modern battery performance should be able to do dozens of miles at 10-15mph if necessary.
These can be almost effortlessly carried into a subway car.
- electric bike - as anyone who has been to the netherlands, this encompasses a wide range, from a simple bike to various cargo carrying versions and basic trailers. The downside of the electric bike is securing it at the destination, but theoretically secured parking should be a lot more compact for a bike.
- electric vespa/moped - the big difference here is speed and danger. In a city, I argue this is right at the line of being too big and dangerous. It can't be adjacent to pedestrians or bicycles, needs to be in dedicated car lanes, but its kind of too small. These can go faster, carry more, and are more secure since they are harder to make off with.
- electric motorcycles/trikes - like mopeds but bigger/faster still
- electric K-cars/golf carts - this is where there is a big empty spot in US vehicles. You can see them starting to develop with side-by-sides, but an urban electric golf cart or similarly sized vehicle is tremendously useful and much more compact and cheap to make in theory. I would argue that outside of specifically permitted deliveries, nobody should have a vehicle larger than this in Manhattan.
IMO these are the big three that cities need to start planning to adapt to, and big vehicles are strictly for special situations. A "golf cart on steroids" can really pull quite a lot given EV motors ability to produce torque.
I lived in downtown Minneapolis for quite a while, it was amazing how much a bicycle shrunk the city once the snow melted. Anything under 4 miles of distance wasn't worth taking a car, because the parking delay and walk-to-destination removed any time advantage.
e-bikes and e-hand scooters are like that, but expand the accessibility to a far bigger age range and fitness level.
An e-handscooter that is portable takes a subway system and expands the radius/distance accessible from the base stations by a factor of 3 to 10. With a e-scooter you carry off the subway, you can easily go 1-2 miles from the station, weather permitting.
Finally, e-scooters are QUIET and CLEAN. Which when people get used to them will really highlight how much ICEs stink and are loud, and will turn them into pariahs socially. When that happens tipping point wise who knows.
"Contractors who work with the MTA on these projects already charge a premium for having to manage the substantial risk that construction is delayed or canceled—introducing “the Governor might suddenly decide your job is over” as another risk to worry about will just increase those cost premiums, thin the pool of companies who are capable of working with the MTA, and reward the politically savvy. ... The fact that infrastructure plans can go through years of study, environmental review, public consultation, pilot projects, revisions, lawsuits, construction, delays, and more only to then be shelved days before final implementation is a large part of why public works are so expensive in the first place."
Savvy point that's often missed in these discussions. I'm on the boards of two buildings in Manhattan and see these invisible "taxes" all the time.
I'm reviewing the budget for our condo now and some of the renovation projects have a contingency budget of 25%. You would think that was overkill but the last project was an elevator upgrade where the city inspector sat on the permit for almost a year.
Anyone who thinks NYC simply needs to pass more laws & taxes should sit on a condo/coop board for a few years. Thankless job, and dealing with the city bureaucracy is awful.
Lot of mechanisms setup to punish & tax buildings but not to facilitate the timely curing of whatever they are fining you over.
One favorite was after an elevator incident a few years ago, the city passed some new law that required mostly software updates to elevators. It was essentially an update to prevent elevator repairmen from overriding the safety mechanism preventing motion when the door is open. So putting a safety on the safety.
However of course there are only like 2 companies in the city and they colluded on how much they'd charge. So in effect it was a $10k per elevator tax on every residential building in the city. Not huge in the grand scheme of things, but in my condo that was a random 4% of budget blown away at the stroke of a pen. And they do this all the time.
We had to do facade inspections and the city institutes all sorts of rules & fines around it, but then we ran into a stubborn neighbor with axe to grind with sponsor disallowing access on adjacent side for our scaffolding. City of course does nothing to force compliance by neighbor, it's your problem. Eventually had to be paid off in some manner.
There's a simple (but not easy) fix to this. After 30 days of no movement, permits are issued automatically and any fees paid are returned out of that department's budget, regardless of where the permit fees actually go.
The default response to government inaction is typically a) the citizen can't do whatever thing they're trying to do without violating the law, and b) nothing bad happens to the bureaucrats not doing their jobs. If those two things inverted you'd see government become more efficient overnight.
I won't comment on the specific numbers or enforcement mechanisms. But I strongly agree that we need reasonable SLAs for the government. My only worry would be how to deal with abuse.
I think this has been tried before and there are issues with Constitutionality, qualified immunity, etc. but I am not an attorney. Better to make sure the penalties stay at the official level, but also to make sure the people in these jobs are elected and not appointed so there is real accountability.
They are certainly more accountable than someone appointed by a politician. If you have a real issue with an elected official they're at least somewhat incentivized to listen to you. This is especially true at the level we're talking about - local government where they're dealing with constituents dozens of times a day every day. These elections are decided by a few hundred people at most - often by a few dozen. Yes it falls apart when you start talking about US Senators and the like but I'd argue that's a problem of scale and not a failing of the electoral model generally.
Elections suffer from the bobcat problem - if something like a permit is only pulled five times in your life, you'll rarely, if ever, be affected. But those who are may go through hell, and yet the approval rating remains high.
https://xkcd.com/325/ - "You can do this one in every 30 times and still have 97% positive feedback."
In fact that is what we did. Just 50-100 pissed off residents mail and phone bombed the city until we got a response. The inspector made the excuse that he issued the permit months ago. But the filing portal had it on the day after our campaign.
We ended up burning through the contingency because this project started right at the beginning of COVID. Parts and labor suddenly became scarce.
> The policy would have charged vehicles for entering the perpetually gridlocked streets of Lower Manhattan,
If driving is so bad, and public transit is so convenient, why are people still driving?
People like this author write from a position of "people are stupid; they don't know what's good for them, so let me enlighten them". It's this assumption that is stupid.
People want the most convenience in their lives. If you want them to use public transit, make the public transit more convenient and cheaper than driving! I mean, take a look at a city like Tokyo. How many people drive there? Almost everyone takes public transit, putting NYC to shame. There is no need to drive in Tokyo! As a tourist, a 3-day all-you-can-travel subway pass costs less than $10, which is < $3.50/day and subway stations are every couple of blocks. How's that for convenience?
Instead of trying to tax the people into complying with your desires, make them want to do so of their own free will!
> If driving is so bad, and public transit is so convenient, why are people still driving? [this comes from an assumption that] people are stupid; they don't know what's good for them, so let me enlighten them". It's this assumption that is stupid...make the public transit more convenient and cheaper than driving...look at a city like Tokyo
But that's exactly what they did in Tokyo: owning a car (and finding a place to park it!) is so expensive that few resort to it. I've probably been in a private car in Tokyo only once. Whereas in NYC car costs are socialized (Manhattan street parking is quite cheap when you can get it; you don't need to prove you have parking in order to own one, etc) while public transit is not.
Yes there's a phase transition issue (driving in suburbs is easier than driving in the city, but there's little incentive to transition from one to the other. Congestion charges do exactly what you suggest: make public transit cheaper than driving, and provide the funds to improve public transit.
From what I understand Tokyo and Japan in general have a lot of car owners (something like "one per house") or so, but they're rarely used for commuting purposes.
Exactly! If you only look at the commute, you get ridiculous things like commuter trains, that only run in the morning in one direction and in the afternoon in the other.
In the Netherlands for example, lots of people go by car to Work, because that’s relatively far away; but then they’ll use their bike or transport for everything else. Stuff like groceries, dentist visits, meeting friends, going to the gym, etc. because all those things are within (their district of) the city.
It's the tragedy of the commons. Driving is very convenient, however it is also VERY space inefficient and congested streets with drivers slows down busses and makes public transit worse. Furthermore, the price of driving is not born fully by drivers. The noise and particulate pollution, increased danger to the public, and space taken by cars is not paid for by drivers in any meaningful way.
Driving is honestly pretty inconvenient. You have to find a huge space to put your car every night (difficult when trying to rent in an urban area) possibly with electrical service, you have to pay for the car which is likely tens of thousands of dollars, you have to maintain the car with regular oil changes, new tires, etc that's at least 4-8 hours a year.
I think we feel the pain of waiting for a subway, and think boy it would be so much easier to drive, but few people think while they're working an extra <period of time> a week to pay for their car+parking+insurance+maintenance+... boy would it be nice to not have to own a car.
Isnt this just reiterating the idea the all the car owners are too stupid to properly assess that tradeoff?
That is what the top level post was objecting too. If the theory relies on everyone being consistently wrong, then perhaps it isnt properly accounting to the benefits of cars and inconvenience of public transportation as it exists today.
I dont think anyone is challenging the idea that cars are expensive, or people would prefer something else, provided it is actually better.
My assertion isn't one of stupidity, it's a question of when people evaluate their decisions.
A smart person may get frustrated when the subway is 5-10 minutes late every day and take a car instead. They have 5-10 minutes that they're dwelling almost exclusively on the lateness of the subway.
That same person may get frustrated when they work n+1 hours per week because they own a car, but will not associate that frustration + time loss with their mode of transportation because they're focusing on work for that hour instead of sitting at a subway station waiting for the train.
It's not that they're too stupid to address the trade off, they just aren't addressing the trade off because they're spending the time that they had been wasting waiting for the subway at work / driving, and don't have the time to reflect on the inconvenience compared to when waiting for the subway you're forced to dwell on the idea that you're waiting.
I think you are forgetting the commute isn't the only trip you take. outside commute hours transit schedules and coverage leave a lot to be desired. People would rather pay extra to have a car and be able to range all over the place on their own schedule, than wait 30 minutes for a Sunday frequency bus to show up at a grocery store assuming you can even land a grocery store on a single convenient bus line to your home without having to transfer and potentially wait another long headway. You are doing all of this exposed to the elements and limited to what you can physically schlep about. Clearly people are paid enough to afford this convenience as costly as it is. If they weren't paid enough to afford a car transit (and bike) use in nyc would probably be as high as somewhere in southeast asia where cars are out of reach for most people's wages.
>It's not that they're too stupid to address the trade off, they just aren't addressing the trade off because they're spending the time that they had been wasting waiting for the subway at work / driving, and don't have the time to reflect on the inconvenience compared to when waiting for the subway you're forced to dwell on the idea that you're waiting.
Seems pretty thin to me. I dont think people are so cognitively busy that they never have time to ponder things like the tradeoff.
My experience is people think about the tradeoff very often. When they are in traffic, when they paying for their car, changing those tires, ect.
It does not help that on time performance, outages, and safety on subways have all gotten worse versus 5/10/15 years ago.
Got a lot better from 90s thru about 2010 or so and has been reverting since.
Remember the "Summer of Hell" in 2017 which just sort of slowly faded into the COVID transit issues and now we are here with budget shortfalls. Hard to see it getting materially better before it gets worse.
The fundamental piece you are missing with your logic is that the negative externalities of driving a car are massive and not borne by those making the choice to drive. This leads to people choosing to drive a car at a rate that is much higher than the optimal balance for society. The best way to control for these negative externalities (risks to pedestrians, noise, pollution, congestion) is with a tax. In the US, we subsidize car usage in an eye watering and incredibly unfair way, which results in overuse of cars. If public policy were to better reflect the actual costs of driving a car, few would be able to afford it or choose it over other options
How are these externalities not borne by drivers? People with cars in nyc presumably park them on their local street that is clogged up with other neighbors cars. They drive them on nearby roads like the various expressways that cut up their own boroughs. They are very much bearing these external costs and taking advantage of their affordances. Its not like bronx drivers are protesting the various expressways that cut up their bronx neighborhood, parking cars to block the ramps or cut off access, no, they use those expressways all the same as any other driver and do benefit from the convenience and job access they bring.
40 million passengers (counted twice if transferring between operators) use the rail system daily (14.6 billion annually) with the subway representing 22% of that figure with 8.66 million using it daily. [1]
Going off on a tangent here, but thanks for posting a reality check for the comment the gp made (that's no offense to gp; I get their thought process and why they would think Tokyo was more mass-transit friendly (it still could be more non-auto friendly on some other dimension (e.g., more pedestrians and therefore less auto-reliance but I'm not making that claim)).
Re the reality check, though, I wonder if this is going to be one of the no-questions-asked positives from AI. If, every time someone makes a claim that's not, but can be quantified, similar to what you just did with these ridership and population stats, an AI umpire would cite the stats behind the claim to better-educate the audience about the reality. Of course this assumes a non-biased "AI," but it seems like something that could become a reality sooner than later. I experience this multiple times per day, on HN a lot, where people make claims and I'm like "is that really true?" And I'm not being an ass; I'm always genuinely asking the question to make sure I'm getting properly educated.
P.s. I just typed "is Tokyo more transit friendly than New York City?" into 3.5 (yes, I'm still on 3.5. Some of us HN folks are actually tech laggards!). I won't paste the answer here since no one will read the comment given its absurd length, but your human answer is better, and more to the point, than 3.5 (+1 for humanity, I guess).
I genuinely enjoy fact checking. Not because I like calling people out – I'm not a jerk – but because I get satisfaction from doing the research to verify a claim. I end up learning a lot along the way too.
I fact check myself all the time too, often when I realize a "fact" in my brain isn't really a fact, it's just an intuition, or when I can't remember where I learned something and I question its validity. My wife and I both frequently pause conversations with "Hang on, let me fact check myself on that [because it might be BS and I don't want to spread misinformation]".
So I can't help but verify it when I read something that sounds true, intuitively, but I'm not certain.
Case in point:
I had to take my extended family visiting us to Manhattan for 2 days last week. Total 6 adults. The cost of taking the LIRR and Subway would have been upwards of $180 (LIRR $120 + Subway $60) per day! Driving was much more affordable (and convenient) even with the expensive parking charges of $50 for 12 hrs of parking in prime locations.
Public transportation needs to become more affordable first. I would have happily taken the train if it was comparable in cost.
Nope, I had the same experience. Family of 5 trip to Manhattan and we looked at possibly taking the train into the city but it made no sense financially, even after accounting for the outrageous parking costs in lower Manhattan. For one or two people mass transit is a no-brainer, three was roughly break even, but once you have a bigger group you're pretty much stuck driving.
If every car in a major city was filled to capacity, I don't think we'd be having this conversation. A major part of traffic congestion is that a significant portion of people are driving their vehicles with a single passenger, sometimes two.
This is why we have HOV lanes that lower or make tolls free.
Things change when you live in the boroughs. For one thing, no need for LIRR; which isn’t what most people refer to when they talk about “public transit in NYC.”
But also, if you take the subway regularly, there are multi-use and unlimited passes, students get free metrocards for weekdays, and so on.
> If you want them to use public transit, make the public transit more convenient and cheaper than driving!
So charge drivers for the actual value/cost of the land they park on, the lanes they drive on, the maintenance and infrastructure for the roads, the safety risk posed to those outside of cars, and the gaseous and noise pollution caused to others?
Sounds good to me. We can call it a "congestion charge" or something.
It's very easy to get informed on these topics, yet people keep posting these high level extremely simplistic takes.
You can't summarize the world with "People want the most convenience in their lives" and use that to explain or justify the state of things.
A couple examples: Cars compete with public transit and are highly subsidized. "Roads" are a public transportation method that doesn't have to be profitable in people's minds. But "Public transit" does. There's so much more and the information is readily available.
It is an apples to oranges comparison. You could just as easily say that if planes are so bad why do people use the subway. Different modes of transport are optimal for different things. The miracle of modern transport is that it allows you to drastically change the trade-off between different things in your life. You can live in a different neighborhood, take another job, visit family etc. But as usage grows the negative effects on individuals and community starts to grow and eventually effects the trade-off. The only solution is to invoke more magic transport. Build even more lanes, bike paths, rail roads etc. And hope that one day they will build the Colorado -> Tokyo starship link so you can finally commute between the ranch and the office. Great!
Unless you live in New Jersey, a short hop across the river from Manhattan but might as well be on the moon as far as the subway is concerned. The NYC Subway is great where it has service, but has for years neglected to expand into areas where the people live. Queens is also terribly underserved. There are bus options, but they get stuck in the same traffic that makes driving so miserable.
This is a big issue for public transit - either it stays ahead of growth, or you end up with pockets that are underserved (and of course cheaper).
This starts compounding, because those pockets still need to get to work, etc, making it harder to get new transit in later.
Paradoxically you almost need to tax the locations that don't have access to public transit to pay for public transit, so the pricing inequality goes away.
Part of the issue is there's no good model to build transit fast short of privatization, and that even in nyc was dependent on temporary economic conditions that turned sour and bankrupted every operator. There's the japan model of financing this transit through ongoing real estate ownership vs just selling lots like old private american transit, but even then a lot of their build out was decades ago when labor and materials and land value was much cheaper, especially compared to present day american cities. Its something the federal government really ought to just spearhead like the interstate highway project, but with the current environment politically even if that did somehow have bipartisan support, there would be a ton of waste from corruption as the vultures smell out all the available flesh and probably help lawmakers write the proposals for these projects in such a way to favor themselves.
No, their position is that the commuters are exploiting a subsidized public good and pushing serious externalities onto the population that doesn’t commute every day.
Your position is that NYC should, at the cost of the average resident, make it easier for outsiders to drive into the core of Manhattan at a time when physical proximity for business is becoming less and less important.
You have it backwards. The reason people still drive is inertia. The reason Tokyo has more people using public transport is that it’s expensive to own a car there and they encourage and advertise public transport heavily.
Wouldn't be a bad idea. E.g., here in SF, the fares bring in $200M/year, and Muni's budget is $1.2B/year (approx numbers), which means, for every $2 charged by fare, the City has to put in another $10. Making it free would just cost an extra $200M/year, which is within the realm of possibility for a City with a budget of $14B/year.
Born and raised NYC so Ive been around since the Regan era. Growing up my parents drove everywhere - even to Manhattan.
> If you want them to use public transit, make the public transit more convenient and cheaper than driving!
Yup. I live in south Queens which is mostly suburban and a lot of people drive around. I'm two blocks from the A train so driving to Manhattan is pointless when I have a 30 min express subway ride. But if I wanted to go to the nearest Microcenter in Kew Gardens it's 20 minutes by car and an hour by bus, each way, with a transfer - guess what mode of transport I'm taking...
This is a nice, data heavy summary of the situation!
Something that stood out to me: there's been a marked decline in state and local funding for NYCT since before COVID. I wasn't fully aware of just how much the city and state had independently cut back: it looks like NYCT part of MTA alone is receiving $3B less per year than it was in 2019.
Congestion pricing is sound policy regardless, but this hammers home the perception that NYS treats the MTA (and NYCT in particular) as a financial sponge that can be squeezed for spare change whenever a boondoggle needs funding somewhere else.
MTA definitely doesn’t have 600B to lose, so I’m assuming you mean million. And it’s not the city; the MTA is run by the state. So the city can’t use it to pay for other things, but the state can both divert and reappropriate its budget.
Take a look at the third image in the post: both state and local funding from the MTA have been reduced in recent years, dating back to the FY before COVID.
Similarly, here’s an example of the state using MTA as a piggy bank for upstate ski resorts[1].
If you dig in a bit, it's a fairly minor scandal. There are much, much better summaries elsewhere.
I've gotta point out though, the writing in that article is truly abhorrent. This is the weird Frankenstein of The Onion and Gawker that was picked up by private equity, right? The web is a better place without this style of publication, I think.
I'd encourage you to get your news somewhere else my friend :) This reporting makes Buzzfeed look Pulitzer worthy.
Its nothing but a scam and anyone that supports it is completely heartless. It makes people poorer and nothing else. NYC has the national guard at its subways because its so dangerous. Its beyond dangerous still during many times. It is also always fucked up and is late or it breaks or other issues. Its not that reliable.
Its just a scam to grab money from already broke people that are suffering and only awful people support this because they can't think for themselves and are followers.
Did the subway get drastically worse in the last few years or something? Last time I was in NYC I stayed in Harlem and either biked or took the subway everywhere I needed to go. It was.. fine?
The subway was in a "crisis" operating mode from 2017 to 2021[1]. I've lived in the city for my entire life, and subjectively the "crisis" label was accurate for that period (in terms of timeliness, breakdowns, station decay, overcrowding pre-COVID, etc.).
That ended, in part, because the MTA received a huge operating boost from federal COVID funds, which are now (4 years later) running dry. So we haven't seen the return to the 2017 subway yet, but we almost certainly will if essential maintenance and system improvements are once again deferred to keep the lights on. As with everything about public infrastructure: the best and cheapest time to fund infrastructure is before it breaks. If the subway is allowed to continue to fall into disrepair, it'll only cost us more down the road.
No, but the media coverage surrounding cities has decayed to an absolutely abysmal level, so every single issue on the subway gets 48 hours of coverage or more, and the current governor is awful, so she thinks things like sending in the national guard to stand around will help
The NYC metro is a far, far safer way to travel than driving. 121 people die in traffic yearly in New York City. In the highest-crime year in recent memory (2022) there were 10 deaths in the metro. Generally it's 2 or 3 yearly.
Congestion pricing is cutting off the nose to spite the face.
It's dumb, but it does "stop the problem", the same way charging 5x more for petrol would, or closing all the highways into the city.... whilst also hurting a bunch of people.
This hasn't played out in other cities, so I don't know why you think this.
Notably, NYC congestion pricing does not affect the highways into the city: if you take a highway into the city and stay on the highway, you won't be charged. The charge is only for entering the city grid, where the (reasonable) argument is that the transportation system is more than sufficient and the traffic, noise, and tailpipe emissions of your car do more harm to local residents than they fairly benefit you.
> if you take a highway into the city and stay on the highway, you won't be charged. The charge is only for entering the city grid
That's technically true, but it ignores the fact that both the Lincoln Tunnel (495) and Holland Tunnel (78) require you to enter the city grid. With the way the congestion pricing was designed, if you take either of those tunnels, there's no way to avoid the congestion pricing fee -- this was confirmed multiple times in FAQs and Q+A's.
I'm mostly in favor of congestion pricing, but I really think they need to figure out a better solution for that tunnel issue.
I think you should take either the Verrazano bridge exit off 95 or continue north to 87. The idea is to avoid driving through Manhattan planning one's trip accordingly should work. The only reason to take either tunnel is to reach Manhattan.
I really wish there was a tunnel between jersey and Brooklyn. Every option sucks for that. You either end up stuck in traffic in Staten Island, manhattan, or queens.
That's absolutely incorrect. Over a million NJ residents live closer to the tunnels, myself included. Every route I plan on google maps to various destinations in parts of Brooklyn and Queens puts the tunnels as being faster.
Right, that's part of the problem. During the work hours the temporary population of Manhattan grows about threefold. They contribute to immense gridlock and then disappear to their suburbs in another state. Why must the residents bear the brunt of the externalized traffic impact? It is only fair to treat available street space as a limited resource.
That's tangential to the issue being discussed in this subthread, which is that there's physically no way to stay on highways when coming from the tunnels, even when attempting to reach non-Manhattan destinations in outer boroughs.
So the only relevant congestion for this specific issue is between the tunnels and the highways. Manhattan residents living near the tunnels know what they're signing up for. The tunnels opened in 1927 and 1937. The traffic isn't exactly a new problem.
Also, the parts of NJ in question (where the tunnels are closer than bridges) are largely urban in character. You make it sound like people are coming from some far-away leafy suburb, that's not the case for the majority of this population.
People in NJ know what they are signing up for. The outer boroughs have existed in the same locations for decades. Traveling by automobile through Manhattan isn't exactly a new problem.
Being charged $15 to travel literally two blocks between the tunnel and the West Side Highway is a new problem. That's the point. There's no way to avoid the city grid, due to bad highway design that doesn't directly connect either 495 or 78 with 9A.
Any congestion pricing plan which ignores that problem is going to be met with mass outrage, to an extent that will swing elections against incumbents. Especially when said incumbents promote this "no charge if you stay on highways" BS without explaining the fine print.
Again, I'm saying this as someone who only ever takes public transit and is generally in favor of congestion pricing as a concept.
I was assuming traffic from Florida to Boston or Albany. Local traffic is local traffic and I thought about the Holland tunnel->Kenmare->Williamsburg Bridge route. Which I found too exceptional to mention and likely only used by people that live in the region and should be using public transit for such trips.
Due to the layout of the northern Brooklyn subway lines (no direct connection to PABT or Penn Station), some trips can easily take 2x-3x as long using public transit on a good day, let alone when there's some incident affecting the subways.
Personally I always take public transit into NYC, but I can completely understand why it isn't a reasonable option for many people. Especially when both NJT rail and Amtrak have daily meltdowns whenever the temperature is above average.
Edit to add: I'm completely puzzled by your comment about "traffic from Florida to Boston or Albany". Boston is on the I-95 corridor, which means going over the GWB -- there's already no reason for any sane driver to enter the congestion zone for that route. And routes to Albany don't need to cross the Hudson at all. I don't see how congestion pricing or these two tunnels have any connection to those routes.
Anyway, my overall point here is that the upthread comment of "if you take a highway into the city and stay on the highway, you won't be charged" is true but worthless, because for one million people here there's no way to actually do that without driving massively out of your way to a bridge crossing.
I agree with points more or less and have plenty experience moving around the region to understand what you are saying.
The through traffic comment was a response to my original comment that a person wanted to use the Hudson River tunnels to pass through NYC onto their destination. I picked the Varanzono bridge route as the southern route around the city and 87 for the northern route. I usually go further north than the GWB to crossover.
The massively out of your way I might prefer to NYC city traffic.
> The through traffic comment was a response to my original comment that a person wanted to use the Hudson River tunnels to pass through NYC onto their destination.
Which parent comment are you referring to? I don't see any talking about non-NYC destinations besides yours.
In any case, the only highways that are exempt are the West Side Highway and the FDR. These are the only highways in the zone. And generally you don't take either of those highways for anything other than "local traffic" as you said. So I'm just not understanding your point about routes outside of NYC, that doesn't make any sense in the context of congestion pricing and the exempted highways in the first place.
Maybe I only perceived it. Funnily enough it was your comment from someone discussing maintaining traveling while on 495 or 78.
My comment was that travelers not going to Manhattan should choose a route that avoids the tunnels.
I'm only now beginning to understand the point you are trying to make is that political outrage makes good policies tougher. I thought this sub-thread was regarding driving into Manhattan to get somewhere else is inconvenient and adding extra costs makes sense.
A lot of really terrible congestion comes from people who are only passing through Manhattan on their way to/from other places, because the toll structure incentivizes that vs going around. I worked in the general vicinity of the Holland Tunnel entrance for years and it was miserable for basically all users of the streets every afternoon.
> the toll structure incentivizes that vs going around
How so? The toll rate is identical between the Lincoln Tunnel, the Holland tunnel, the George Washington Bridge, the Bayonne Bridge, the Goethals Bridge, and the Outerbridge Crossing: https://www.panynj.gov/bridges-tunnels/en/tolls.html
Well three of those involve a toll on the Verrazzano unless you're starting or ending your trip on Staten Island itself, whereas the East River bridges into Manhattan are free.
The GWB can be done without a toll, but if you're shopping for a cheaper route to avoid the Verrazzano toll it's likely way out of your way.
Ideally the toll structure should incentivize through traffic to stay on highways and out of the most gridlocked streets in the country, and I'm saying this as a longtime car owner in Brooklyn who has driven through the Holland Tunnel hundreds of times. Manhattan streets are a tragedy of the commons in action.
But even with congestion pricing, assuming a same-day round-trip with a non-NY EZ-Pass, the combined cost of (Holland or Lincoln Tunnel toll + congestion pricing toll) is still a bit less than the cost of (Goethals or Bayonne Bridge toll + Verrazzano Bridge toll)... because the Verrazzano charges in both directions. So even congestion pricing doesn't fix those incentives :/
Toll optimization aside, there’s often a huge backup of the BQE or in Staten Island that makes the tunnel the next best option. I’ve faced that scenario probably 1/3 of the time trying to visit family in PA/NJ from Brooklyn.
It has played out in other cities, there is only one way for it to play out.
It's okay if you disagree with the facts, but it's fairly easy to understand how pricing people out is a poor attempt at a solution, but solves the problem by brute force anyway.
>where the (reasonable) argument is that the transportation system is more than sufficient and the traffic, noise, and tailpipe emissions of your car do more harm to local residents than they fairly benefit you.
Yes. I never said that less cars is not beneficial. I understand this, that's why I said what I said.
There's no such thing as "fairly benefiting from other residents"...
You're still not solving the problem by slapping a $ figure to the entrance of cars. It's just a lazy and bad solution.
"Poor people" or rather "people who actually need to drive in this particular moment"?
It's really nice to be able to pay for better facilities _when you need them_. The person who is late for a flight or a job interview, or who just found out their kid got hurt at school and is heading to the hospital, benefits massively from congestion pricing. They have the ability to access faster transportation when they need it, and to choose the slower alternative when they don't.
It's nice to be able to pay for better facilities. It's even nicer if they are just better, without paying. Payment can create perverse incentives as well.
It’s impossible for free city streets to both be fast and scale to the density of NYC. Congestion pricing allows them to be fast by removing traffic. Thus allowing busses or people with significant need to travel quickly.
Where it fails is an Uber/taxi drivers add a lot more congestion than an average person and the fees don’t get adjusted for this issue.
The thing about congestion is that you can't “make it better” (in a densely populated place like Manhattan's CBD) without removing cars somehow. The only other real approach to this is rationing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_space_rationing), which leads to economic inefficiencies and doesn't raise money that will be used to make transit better for everyone who choses not to drive.
Clear accurate pricing is how people decide what to do with their resources.
Pricing things correctly is basically the reason we have a modern economy.
Externalities are one of the thornier issues and making those prices clear to people is how we get people to decide whether they actually want to pay the full price of a good or service.
pricing people out is a poor attempt at a solution
No, it's a good solution to negative externalities. In the status quo, drivers do not bear the full cost of driving (noise, pollution, opportunity cost of time lost in traffic). Congestion pricing address that by imposting a fee equal to the societal cost of those externalities.
I'm not here to give alternative solutions, I'm here to tell you the current solution is slightly worse than nothing.
You would have to make the solution fairly complex for it to be beneficial. But I'd start with quantifying why people are in the city, rather than treating them all the same.
If it were my job, I'd have a better solution than congestion charges, that's for damn sure.
Given your username one might hope "implement a world class public transport system" or better yet "convert an urban highway into a beautiful linear park and waterway" (like Seoul) would come to mind.
If it were your job you would think differently because you knew all the facts, constraints and trade offs.
Contrary to popular belief most people make reasonable decisions and want to do a good job
you're right but judgmental statists get high off the feeling of control and "fairness" - effectiveness be damned. I thought we absolutely needed the government and taxes for the roads because paying for use would be so "unfair" and "hard" - oh wait, now they want to control what you do because they like bikes so its totally reasonable. Hard to find more statists than in New York
I keep saying it and getting savaged, but as someone who lives here and doesn't own a car, it's been obvious to me that "congestion pricing" was a lot more about collecting an additional tax from residents, and a lot less about "congestion", than anyone in power was letting on. The entire thing was heavy handed and dumb, but branded just well enough to capture the passions of NYC city people who really really really hate cars (and New Jersey) and don't think too deeply about it beyond that.
The plan was structured in a way that it would affect every resident of the city via higher prices on goods and services, surcharges on delivery, taxis, construction, etc. Setting aside the issue of local residents with cars (which I could care less about), the planners refused to make sensible carve-outs for things like cargo trucks, construction vehicles, and so on. They could have done it, they just didn't. It was about maximizing revenue for the MTA, not about making sensible policy.
Maybe the fees would be small when amortized over a truck full of groceries or a tanker full of oil, but that didn't change the fact that it was a regressive tax on everyone who lives here, and taxes here are already amongst the highest in the country. This stuff adds up.
> it would affect every resident of the city via higher prices on goods and services
I find the math on that claim highly dubious. The toll for a truck is set to be $36 at peak times. $9 non peak. And they get up to $20 credit towards that when travelling through one of the tunnels, as many do. When I think about the amount of goods that can be carried in a truck and divide the $36 minus $20 or $9 across all those items… how much are we really talking about here?
I ask the question earnestly because I don’t know, but at a cursory glance it just doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. Some drivers might even be quite happy to pay if it means they don’t spend hours stuck in traffic!
What part is "dubious", exactly? There's a tax. It applies to all vehicles. You think that doesn't get passed on to consumers? I have a bridge to sell you (don't worry, it's a toll bridge).
You're just repeating the last part of what I wrote -- that the taxes would be low when amortized over a large number of items -- but ignoring the rest. The point is, New York does this all the time: yesterday a surcharge on food delivery, today a "congestion tax", tomorrow a "global warming fee" on electricity consumption, a "save the whales" fee on straws, or whatever else. The number of sneaky fees and surcharges and social-engineering taxes in NYC is enough to make even the most ardent liberal begin to resist. Eventually, you're paying $25 for a hamburger and wondering why you can't find staff for your store.
Look, I have no problem with taxes. Just be honest. Don't sneak them in and lie about them and pretend that they're punishment for New Jersey car commuters when most of the revenue will come from the people who live here, directly or indirectly. If the people want to vote in another billion-dollar sales tax for the MTA, great. Go for it.
It is a consumption tax (on space taken up on roads, noise, and emissions basically combined), in effect it incentivizes consolidation of traffic, goods and people both, and steers some of it to other modalities.
Of course there's a long way to go before visible changes happen. the US is extremely car-dependent after all, and public transportation does not organically expand with more demand for it. and without alternatives people will just pay it.
but this doesn't necessarily make it a bad tax. other changes can build on it.
It's a regressive nearly flax tax amounting to a taking from the residents of lower Manhattan. If they wanted to reduce congestion all they would have to do is make the free street parking NYC residents only. Many cities do that. An issue with this was it was clearly not about congestion except in name it was MTA can't build anything without spending multiples of the next most expensive transit system. The singular goal was to hit an arbitrary number. And if traffic dropped leaving revenue below rhe goal the costs would have been hiked. This was a hammer when they needed a scapel.
The part I’m dubious about is there being any notable effect on prices.
I don’t personally see the congestion charge as dishonest. You can see it as a quasi-tax, certainly, but provisions like off peaking pricing and credit for using the tunnels means that it has positive side effects a straightforward tax wouldn’t.
I don't care if it moves prices one millionth of a penny, or ten dollars. That billion dollars of extra MTA revenue was coming from somewhere, and it was mostly going to come from locals, even if it meant that we're all paying a fraction of a cent more per sheet for toilet paper. The worst taxes are the ones that are regressive and secret.
> The worst taxes are the ones that are regressive and secret.
In my book, negative externalities are worse than taxes. If we agree that a car driving in Lower Manhattan inflicts a non-trivial cost on everyone else, then not taxing it leads to socially inefficient outcomes.
Effectively, locals are paying a price either way - either by having their bus moving slower, inhaling fumes, etc, or by buying goods and services that reflect congestion pricing. The difference is that congestion pricing aligns incentives - for instance, delivery drivers may choose to travel to Manhattan during the off-peak hours whereas in the status quo they do not care at all about inconveniencing others.
OP wasn't arguing about "cars", it was specifically about service vehicles that are required for Manhattan operations.
Thought experiment: If we could somehow ban private residential use of all cars and only allow "work" vehicles, there would be no congestion and no tax.
There are some good arguments against that. It creates a deadweight loss by banning high utility private uses of the car (driving kid to hospital) and instead there would be an increase in low utility "work" uses of the car (delivering a single banana to a bodega). There is a parent out there who would be willing to pay $X to drive their kid to hospital, and a work vehicle user who would forgo paying $X by staying off the road, but under a blanket ban that won't happen.
It would also increase the incentive for people to play games like claiming their personal car as a "work vehicle", throwing a little advertising decal on the side, things like that.
if prices don't move then you are basically stealing money from those who pay (delivery drivers, blue collar workers, contractors), who are not rich enough to live on Manhattan - to subsidize transit for affluent Manhattan residents
I’m sorry… you’re suggesting congestion charging would take money from poor car drivers and give it to affluent transit riders?
By any data available that’s entirely backwards. Cars in the CBD are disproportionately driven by the affluent, transit is disproportionately taken by the poor.
Let's see that data then. Plenty of working class individuals are trying to commute through the CBD for their livelihoods. They aren't taking the bus or rail to fix someone's water heater.
Really what's the point of asking this question? Did you do a search and not find anything and you're convinced this is false? Or are you just here to fight? [1] shows a pretty clear negative correlation between car ownership and poverty. Do you have a source that shows contradictory information?
(I love social medi... sorry HN oops how can I get this wrong, the quality of discussion is so high! :)
Manhattan residents are richer than outer boroughs.
It is true, that some rich motorists will pay up congestion pricing, but they wont even notice these charges cause they are rich (so NO EFFECT whatsoever on actual congestion). In fact, that's exactly what MTA wants - they want congestion pricing Revenue, not reduction in congestion loss in revenue.
But the most impacted would be workers who rely on car to make a living: uber, lyft, doordash, blue collar contractors, food delivery trucks, etc. Everyone who has to drive to make a living will be taxed, while rich Manhattan residents will enjoy subsidies from the working class. and they cannot take public transit, so no reduction in actual congestion either.
it's all farce and show to steal money from honest working people and have over it to corrupted union bosses at MTA
The ease of the truck moving through the city with less traffic and easier parking would have more than made up for the toll cost. Same for taxis where the cost compared to the increased demand (since the taxi might actually be faster than it would be now in midtown during the day) also probably would have benefited taxis and their customers.
Not true, you cannot simultaneously have lower congestion and higher demand for taxi. This is contradictory statement.
In the end not much will change, people who would have takes transit will end up takin transit, people who have to drive will drive, they just will pay additional tax.
You could implement congestion pricing and throw the money the garbage and it would still be a net win for the city by reducing cars and traffic violence.
The bigger issue for pedestrian injuries on Manhattan's streets is box-blocking and hazardous turns, not really speed. Congestion pricing will probably cause a slight increase in average speeds, but we're talking about going from 5 MPH to maybe 10[1]. It's not ever going to be fast for cars, just faster.
> The plan was structured in a way that it would affect every resident of the city via higher prices on goods and services, surcharges on delivery, taxis, construction, etc.
We already pay a congestion tax on all of these things, it just takes the form of paying for the labor of someone sitting in traffic. It's not obvious at all to me that the cost of the tax will be less than the gain on the labor cost.
I mean...that's a precise argument. To have this argument effectively, you need to have more than a hand-wavy idea of how much congestion would be impacted by the fee, which we don't. The impact studies were ludicrously ambiguous, and as far as I can tell, the numbers were pulled from thin air.
What I know, without doubt, is that the plan didn't make any reasonable exclusions for residents, so it was de facto an additional tax. Would such a tax reduce marginal wait time cost by more than the price of the tax? Golly, that would be convenient for proponents, wouldn't it?
Regardless, even if you believe this, you still have to deal with the counterfactual of a world where we do the whole congestion fee thing, but exclude obvious categories of essential vehicles, like delivery trucks, construction, etc. That would be better, smarter, and more aligned with the stated goals of the system.
You claimed that congestion tax will increase the cost of consumer goods and services. That was a precise argument backed up by hand-wavy evidence. All I said was that we don't know that for sure, and that it's possible it could go the other way.
Congestion pricing is about taxing blue collar workers (plumbers electricians and such), who cannot afford to live in Manhattan and have to use vehicle for work.
I don't buy that argument. If the plumber/electrician is working for a company and driving a company car, then the company will pay the extra $15 for that corporate vehicle to be in Manhattan.
If the person has their own business then they can easily afford the daily $15. Skilled trades and the owners of those companies make very good wages in NYC.
I see plenty of blue collar workers on the MTA. Its one of the fastest ways to get around Manhattan and much cheaper than paying for parking.
I have a problem with this “can easily afford” logic. This is not true, and this is not how taxation should work. You are just justifying stealing money from blue collar by bogus “they can afford it” logic.
A lot of NYC residents can easily afford extra $15 (their incomes are like 6 figures) why not just spread the tax to everyone to make it more equitable? And more revenue for MTA
all costs are passes through, but elasticity of demand and supply will lead to consumer/supplier splitting the tax in the ratio of their respectable elasticities.
fundamentally though it is NOT about reducing congestion, it is about stealing money from poor blue collar workers from outer boroughs, and handing them out to finance MTA's bogus overtime and 400k salaries for doing nothing useful.
while also enabling rich urban liberals from manhattan to signal their "ecology conciousness"
> it is about stealing money from poor blue collar workers from outer boroughs
It isn’t though, is it? What percentage of poor blue collar workers in the outer boroughs drive into the CBD of Manhattan for work on a regular basis? Very few. The cost of parking already makes it prohibitive for most. If they work as e.g. an electrician they’re already passing the parking fee onto their customer. Congestion charge will be the same.
But yeah, sure, there will be a small number of people affected that way. But orders of magnitude more poor blue collar workers would benefit from better public transit. You can’t run a city by vetoing anything that has a negative effect to someone. Nothing will ever get done.
I mean, even if its well designed, we should expect some increase in costs due to a congestion charge.
Right now, you have Group A: people who are ok with some members of their city getting to deal with congestion, so that they can have cheaper goods.
Group B: The people who deal with the effects of congestion, who have to find a ways to have their needs met.
as mentioned:
>Setting aside the issue of local residents with cars (which I could care less about),
>someone who lives here and doesn't own a car
The status quo should suit you.
That said, the inefficiency caused due to congestion, ends up affecting both group A and group B. This will add to costs, in either wait times / Delays, wastage, wear and tear, pollution etc.
Those costs are borne by you, but not associated with congestion.
You're getting attacked because a lot of people are brainwashed into a solution that is forced down peoples throats.
It's much easier to solve the problem like a brute and attack people and say they're wrong when they point out the nature of the solve.
It's not even about money, if it were about the usage of power, food, travel, etc. it'd also be terrible. If you were to convince people they can't eat meat because it's wrong and then offer a solution as bad as "just become vegetarian", it'd also be laughable... but of course people would attack anyone pointing it out.
Congestion pricing is good IFF the money is used to fund transit in some way that eases said congestion. (Personally I believe this should mean mass transit and pedestrian/bicycle infrastructure, but that's not the main "theoretical issue" I'm trying to address here.) Otherwise you're just replacing a more egalitarian form of backpressure (the traffic itself) with a less egalitarian one (prices).
>Congestion pricing is cutting off the nose to spite the face. It's dumb, but it does "stop the problem"...
I live in London they brought it in and it's been ok overall. It doesn't stop congestion but reduces it a bit. For commuters it's probably a bit better as they mostly use the train/bus etc and benefit from less traffic. For workmen needing to deliver and fix things it's a bit of a pain. For me living in the center I'd probably take the plus of less traffic over the minus of getting a plumber to visit being expensive.
Re the tax grab - yeah but they have to get tax money from somewhere to pay for services and the like.
I'm curious, in London did they cut the fares for subways when they implemented the tolls?
The one thing that has been bothering me about NYC congestion toll is I figured there was be a cut in the fares for subways and rail to entice more riders. But I don't see that mentioned; just for capital projects it seems.
It's a long time ago, but I think the main benefit from the congestion charge money in London was improving the service. More buses, especially at night, which helped the poorest people (cleaners, security, etc).
My understanding is that OMNY's weekly fare cap[1] was created for exactly this reason (along with incentivizing people to switch from MetroCard to OMNY).
That being said, NYCT's fare ($2.90 without zones or times) is markedly cheaper than even the cheaper London Underground off-peak same-zone fare. I don't particularly want to pay more for the subway, but the fare also really hasn't kept up with inflation.
The article vastly underplays how mismanaged the MTA is and how poorly the subway is run on a massive budget. It is one of the last organizations that should be receiving this level of additional revenue, regardless of any sunk costs that have been put towards congestion pricing. This whole thing has been a mess for years so why double down on it when it would punish a set of residents and commuters and have very little chance of improving things for riders?
The MTA might be badly run by subway standards but it still gives you a lot more bang for your buck than roads in NY, once you include the market-rate cost of the space that those roads take up.
Agree - only today I complained about the nyc subway on hn.
But a car? Parking it? Tolls? Insurance? To drive around in traffic going no where fast?
You're daydreaming.
Taxi/Uber when needed and subway the other 90%. I'm two blocks from the subway with coffee and a diner on the way there. Man, it's awesome. I'm annoyed def some days more than others at the mta, but this is a no-brainer.
Gd it America! Not everything can be low cost now/today and have long term soundness ... there are too many cars polluting too much in too small of an area going nowhere fast. As a would be business operator of the city, I damn near have a moral imperative to make some cash on that imbalance.
I've spent many a $25 going 2 miles or less (say when raining) in a yellow cab. I always feel half stupid for paying it given how slow it is to move two lousy miles.
> once you include the market-rate cost of the space that those roads take up
That's like saying that since land closer to Central Park is worth more than land further away, that we should demolish Central Park and replace it with more apartments. Property in NYC would be worthless if there weren't roads you could use to reach it.
> Property in NYC would be worthless if there weren't roads you could use to reach it.
Most of the people who go to Manhattan get there by subway, bus, bike or walking (especially the people who have to work for a living), at a fraction of the space cost of those using cars. Access to property is certainly an important part of making that property valuable (hence why property around stations is worth more), but Manhattan spends far too much (in space) on roads for the amount of access throughput it gets in return.
idk, I honestly think congestion pricing would still be a good idea even if they just lit all the toll proceeds on fire. I almost wonder if it was a political blunder to couple "reduce cars in lower manhatten" with "more funding for MTA" in the first place.
Congestion pricing has little impact on the unlimited number of cars (unlike regulated taxis) that can enter Manhattan and drive around for hours for Uber/Lyft.
I haven't yet chosen a side in the great uber vs taxi debate. but in general, driving lots of different people around all day sounds like a pretty good use of a car. it would be great to have a more comprehensive approach for pricing the least productive vehicle uses out of the most congested areas, but setting up tolls in a few choke points is a good start.
Perhaps academics or NYC can analyze and publish data from Uber/Lyft on average rideshare occupancy by time of day and GPS location, e.g. what percentage of time is spent driving around empty (consuming energy, polluting), carrying a paid passenger, or parked in an area close to expected customers.
Unlike in other cities, Uber/Lyft in NYC are regulated like taxis and limos. NYC has been paying a congestion surcharge on each ride since 2019, which was set to go up as part of the new congestion pricing program.
There's always the opportunity for street/sector level surveillance via automated license plate readers. Your favorite neighborhood or street has too many cars? Impose quotas, vary the quota by time/season that only a computer can decipher, then sell "Fast Pass" exceptions to generate more revenue. Win for neo-feudal middleman, without brand licensing fees for the "environment" that justified a new digital on-demand toll economy.
I don’t understand what this has to do with congestion pricing, which AFAICT had a very simple (arguably too simple, per complaints about charging blue collar workers) fare schedule.
(I also don’t think anybody would describe Manhattan’s CBD as their favorite neighborhood.)
Try a web search for geo-fencing, which is closely coupled to modern technology for enforcement of geo boundaries that are not gated by a physical barrier.
Manhattan Central Business District (CBD) is defined as "Manhattan south of and inclusive of 60th St" excluding some through-traffic highways.
> don't think anybody would described Manhattan’s CBD as their favorite neighborhood
Uber/Lyft drivers in NYC need special plates (that start with a "T"). The commission that regulates them can simply restrict how many plates it issues/renews.
Agree, MTA must go bankrupt and restructure its liabilities, contracts, and overall cost structure to start from clean slate.
Only after thorough and deep cleanup it would gain taxpayer trust and be on a get-well plan to be more sustainable financially.
It would still operate in maintenance mode in the interim, while going through restructuring, NYC has no lack of financial restructuring professionals in downtown
You misunderstand the power of organized labor, the oligopoly of skilled labor able to maintain and adapt the legacy infrastructure and the shocking cost of bespoke manufacturing. I'm on the boards of two Manhattan buildings and see the numbers and can't even imagine what MTA goes through.
If anybody is reading this, the mafia hasn't been a material force in NYC for decades, rendering this argument full-on racist ranting. sit2021 hasn't a clue.
You actually can: not the infra of course, but the operating organization.
In Melbourne, Australia, the state-run Public Transport Corporation was an MTA-style mess and the trains in particular were notorious for delays. In 2009, the operating contract was handed over to the company behind the Hong Kong Metro, and punctuality has ratcheted up from the low 80s to the mid-90s; not quite HK-style 99%, but still a marked improvement, all on the same crusty old infra.
What I haven't seen mentioned is the political context at exactly this point in time.
People are freaked out about inflation and the prices of everything rising and I think they're very sensitive to anything that is going to add more expenses. Even in Ithaca, NY apartment dwellers have developed a consciousness that rising property taxes are going to get tacked on to their rent.
In terms of national politics, Democrats feel vulnerable, and I think Democrats everywhere feel pressure to drop unpopular policies that could affect them nationally. For that matter the rest of New York is rich in competitive House seats that could go either way.
The problem is that congestion pricing has always gotten _much_ more popular after implementation. Riding the wave of decisions made in the past would let current politicians decide whether they wanted to blame others or take credit closer to the election.
Now we just see a probably illegal power grab by an executive which kills a bunch of popular and needed projects while very publicly demonstrating that Democrats can’t fucking deliver.
they found 23% of people opposed the decision to suspend, and about 45% of voters supported it and that support was not very different for D's, R's and I's.
Notably all of those polls are before it's implemented (by definition, since has not and likely will not be implemented).
But it's not a new concept, and it turns out that people like being able to drive easily, having quieter streets, and tax money for other services. Once you go from fear of the unknown to seeing the results a lot of policies get more popular and in every other example we have that absolutely applies to congestion pricing.
Which seems to indicate that Democrats will face the heat for congestion pricing as long as it remains unpopular, right?
And again, my point is that it will remain unpopular until it’s implemented, but it will almost certainly become popular once it’s put in place.
All you’re saying is that they turned what would probably be a non-issue by the election into something that people will remember and be upset about. That seems like a horrible political strategy.
I know I for one am much more likely to vote for a democracy supporting Republican (if they exist at this point) because of shit like this, and you’re articles says they won’t even get benefit from cancelling it
This is what frustrates me so much about American politics. Fear is the primary driver and prevents so much from happening. If it causes problems we can, gasp, undo the changes. If the tolls actually cause more harm there is a dead simple solution of: stop charging them. Instead NYC wasted hundreds of millions of dollars for literally nothing because of fear.
Not just the US. Look at how Germany took a generation to fulfill its promise to end nuclear power, waffled so many times, and came across as not taking its climate change and security commitments seriously in the end.
It is not so much that I think they should have banned or not banned nuclear energy but that the process they went through to do it was damaging to legitimacy.
I don’t put much value in polling claims that don’t disclose how their question was phrased. The difference between slight differences in wording can be transformational. What this also doesn’t capture is how strongly people feel about these policies. It’s very easy for people to casually support the status quo.
The Governor is pretty clearly doing this with the intent of saving vulnerable House seats. HOWEVER, it is misguided IMO because the political capital to get congestion pricing to the finish line has ~already~ been expended. The Governor, most local Democratic politicians, have already come out in favor of the project and advanced it against heavy opposition. The common refrain, that is a very reasonable interpretation, is that this will be re-implemented after the next election. But if all the voters know that, if we elect the Democratic candidate, this possibly unpopular plan will be passed, delaying it until after the election doesn't help; in fact, it makes it less likely for Democrats to get elected, or for the plan to pass.
In summary, Governor Hochul has now pissed off both opponents to congestion pricing, and also supporters of it. It was a terrible move, politically.
I think the big screw up was not means testing it. If the sell was, middle class people don't get congestion priced, and the rich folk in their black car limos get charged out the nose for that convenience, it would have been a very popular bill among the electorate. Maybe not the donor class but the electorate at least. Of course maybe the donor class is seen as more important to maintain favor with than the electorate in the eyes of the policy wanks.
Actually Democrats have a long history of doing things like that and then losing.
Look how they abandoned single payer and a public option during the Obamacare period. Then they lost the Congress immediately after.
Democrats do centrist or rightward pivots seemingly blind to the fact that Republicans will not vote for them anyway and that these actions will alienate the base. If they drew stronger contrasts and gave people a reason to vote for them, I think they would do better electorally. Sometimes it feels like they live in a fantasy world where it's still the pre Gingrich era and bipartisanship is much more of a thing.
>Increasing the density of jobs, hospitals, restaurants, homes, schools, and more is key … as density grows mass transit becomes essential
This guy has it all backwards. No developer in his right mind is going to plow billions of dollars into high density housing without existing rail access. The new subway and commuter lines have to be built first, then the high density development becomes viable around it.
Both what you say and what the article says is right.
To the article's point, in urban areas, increased density often happens even when mass transit isn't expanded (which then often leads to ever worsening traffic). So, for urban areas that are organically becoming denser, mass transit becomes ever more important, which was partially the article's point in the section you quoted.
Also, to generously read the article, it seems to be making two related points, but not actually imposing a "one should follow the other" ordering that you read into it. The full paragraph:
> Globally, that is nothing notable—in most urban cores a majority of workers take public transportation for work and daily activities. Increasing the density of jobs, hospitals, restaurants, homes, schools, and more is key to the agglomeration effects that make cities such economic powerhouses, and as density grows mass transit becomes essential since it can far surpass the maximum throughput capacity of even the largest roadways.
It is saying two things: 1) high density is critical to be an economic powerhouse and 2) mass transit becomes even more essential as density increases. That paragraph isn't inherently saying mass transit should follow densification (vs preceding densification). Ideally you build out mass transit in anticipation of densification vs playing catch up.
Anyway, to your point, it's absolutely true that building out mass transit is critical in attracting more high-density development (especially very high-density development), and critical in enabling high density development in places that otherwise might not attract that sort of investment.
Not living in the USA, but I have never heard of the idea of a city drawing transportation lines to an empty area in anticipation of new buildings. Transportation is always reactive in my experience, especially if we're talking about costly things like metro lines or trams. You can't predict what will attract people to some area, so building a line to nowhere and expecting developers to move there because an unused line now exists is a waste of public money.
The reason places like Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore have such great public transport is precisely because the rail planners work hand in hand with urban planners. Railway construction is largely financed by property sales (both residential and commercial) and when done well is hugely profitable, as the former richest man in the world, Yoshiaki Tsutsumi of the Seibu Corporation, can attest.
Retroactively building a subway line in an already densely populated area is a hugely expensive exercise, as most recently demonstrated in NYC itself with the 2nd Ave extension.
I think this is pretty commonly known, but the railroads built the US American West. It was a hugely speculative endeavor where railroad companies would buy up worthless land for cheap, hire unfavored immigrants and work them harder than anyone else would work, and then recoup costs by selling the land of the railroad towns.
The ongoing transit expansions in Stockholm were green-lit on condition that the municipalities getting increased transit access would invest in building housing in the vicinity of that transit.
You can definitely predict what will attract people to an area - rapid access to everything that the downtowns of cities provide is one such thing.
My wife and I were going to a graduation party in Maryland and figured we’d stay in a hotel near the end of the metro line and ride into DC to see the National Mall, Union Square, etc.
The Shady Grove end of the red line has a large development of mixed commercial and residential of buildings that are uniformly about 5 stories (I think) tall that was built to go with the transit line, I understand it is like that in Virginia too.
China is famous for building metros before building the rest of the city.
Land near public transport services is generally prime real estate. The only developers who wouldn't jump on this opportunity are the ones that hate money.
At a certain point in time, building new streetcar lines and "streetcar suburbs" along those lines was fairly common in US cities. Often the property developer and the streetcar operator were the same company or ownership:
Most of those have since had the streetcar lines removed or abandoned as cheap cars and gas replaced them, and the incentive for the original developer to maintain them went away.
The lower mainland (just outside Vancouver) has the Millenium Line extension. It was, when planned and built, called a train to nowhere. It doesn't go to nowhere anymore :)
One way to do it is for the transit authority itself to build a large amount of real estate next to or over the new station and lease it out. The costs are front-loaded, though, so a large amount of financing (like selling bonds) will be needed.
It's a chicken egg problem... as usual there is no right solution. China is the largest example of building transit infrastructure first, my understanding is that there are a lot of issues there, but most of them are due to how the effort was structured. On the other hand when housing is built first there is a lot of demand for transit infrastructure, but it becomes extremely hard and expensive as seen in every metro area in USA.
In East Asia the problem is that the developments are so good, and nearly always get done with support for infrastructure that there are so many cronies in the government or with insider knowledge that can make bank off the outcome. Leads to some serious issues.
I highly, highly doubt it would be harder for those problems to happen here. In fact I think if it ever happened, it would be a huge corrupt mess.
> This guy has it all backwards. No developer in his right mind is going to plow billions of dollars into high density housing without existing rail access.
this is the default option? build a big complex with a courtyard, then surround it with a parking lot or dedicate 1/4 of the building to a garage.
I'm interested to see what happens with the new potomac yards wmata stop. I appreciate they are trying to expand rail in anticipation of growth, but it looks kinda dumb right now. it's a good 15 minute walk through parking lots to get to the nearest store or apartment building. you would never use that stop if you could afford a car. to be fair, the station just opened. it could look very different in 5-10 years. if they waited for it to densify first, people might be complaining about how much more expensive the station was.
If this is true, then why has almost the entire US worked to make it illegal to build high density housing? Presumably they wouldn't have bothered if nobody was trying to build it?
I eventually moved to New England because it became clear that despite the city having good bones, the leadership (and many voters) were more interested in coming up with ways to make it convenient for drivers to drive and/or park in every neighborhood in the city than making it a pleasant place to live. The ghost of Robert Moses influences everything there.
So I was floored when it seemed like such an incompetently managed city as NYC was actually going to implement the obviously correct solution of charging money to allocate a scarce resource. What was less surprising was the fact that it was derailed by a state politician but only at the last minute and after hundreds of millions had already been spent.
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