My point is that charging both fees and taxes means that the poor are excluded, because they can't afford the fees, but they still have to pay part of the taxes.
All public goods are taxed even if they don't have associated fees. So, if we were to move everything to a fee-for-usage system, I don't think you'd like the result since the wealthy pay an extraordinarily outsized portion of funding for public goods and services (which they use far less than the average person). The poor would still be excluded because the new fee would be at least the existing tax+fee, plus some additional increased amount to account for the wealthier people who were paying an outsized portion through income tax previously. Now that rich person gets to pay the same $x as the poor person. The poor person is still priced out in your scenario.
Even though this pushes road use into being more of a transaction I still don't believe that we should think about road use as a pure transaction. Infrastructure shapes how people live, work and play. Roads that cost $12 to drive will change the city differently than roads that cost $50 to drive on.
Specifically, I'd be worried about driving away tourists and commercial traffic. I doubt a lot of well-off locals would start driving in Manhattan if there were a congestion tax and less traffic, they'd keep taking Uber.
Even if we did view normal everyday road use as a transaction, the road infrastructure is critical to other services like police, fire, and ambulance that still make sense to be funded from taxes. If you want to be able to call the police, you're relying on roads being available.
Tourists is probably less of an issue for Manhattan than it would be a lot of places. Sure, there's the family of five from a nearby state that drives into the city for the weekend because the train costs add up for that many people. But, for most, trains, planes, or busses make a lot more sense given parking costs and the fact that driving into New York is pretty much a big pain. I've done it but not when I've had other reasonable options.
A lot of things are partly public-funded and partly user-funded - museums come immediately to mind. That doesn't seem wrong - the public funding is justified in terms of the public benefit (even a road that's only used by "the rich" can increase productivity enough that the generated tax revenue outweighs the cost), and the user funding is justified because those who use it get the benefit.
"drivers would not have to pay if they entered Manhattan
by all but two of the city-owned East River bridges,
which are now free to cross, as long as they bypassed
the congestion zone."
I don't think I understand this part. Why would you have to pay if you "bypass the congestion zone"? no matter where you're coming from. Now, if what this means is that you don't have to pay the $11.52 fee after having already paid the $15 (if you pay cash) for the toll fee coming from New Jersey, makes sense.
I think one example would be that if you drive over the Brooklyn Bridge or Queensborough Bridge, but get directly onto the FDR, drive north to wherever the congestion zone ends (the last time they floated the idea it was 86th St), exit onto city streets and drive south from there. The Williamsburg & Manhattan bridges have no direct connection to the FDR.
It's confusing the way it is written and there's no actual map but:
"In turn, that means drivers can enter Midtown and Lower Manhattan by two bridges without paying as long as they go directly to the F.D.R. Drive along the East River and then continue on it until they are out of the congestion zone."
I believe what they're saying is that you still enter the congestion zone via those two bridges but you can stay on FDR drive and exit the zone without getting on interior streets [ADDED: and not get charged. FDR Drive is the road that runs along the East River.]
Poorly phrased, but I think the overall point is...
Previous proposals had the congestion zone covering a larger portion of downtown, which meant paying the toll even if you were just passing through on an arterial roadway.
New systems allow finer grained control of where the congestion zone begins. So, a small number of arterial roads/bridges can be left outside the zone, and toll-free.
Congestion pricing is one of the most economically literate ways to improve traffic, and those funds can be used to improve infrastructure. It isn't so different from surge pricing in ridesharing apps.
There is a narrowmindedness on the part of opponents of both congestion pricing and surge pricing, because they are ignoring the obvious point that if they weren't paying the fees they'd be paying in terms of time.
Not to mention that congestion has other negatives, like pollution. Infrastructure needs to get paid for somehow. It is fair when it is paid for by the people benefiting from it.
I agree the costs are high. That is largely a result of the high cost of living. There's additional economically literate funding methods which account for that.
For instance, when infrastructure is built, it causes surrounding land values and rents to rise. It is possible to use that rising value to pay for the infrastructure, via a special assessment.
There is also an issue where the people with the worst infrastructure would be paying the most under congestion pricing, which means that it would be important to prioritize improvements to the most congested areas.
The costs aren't high because of cost of living, they're high because of cushy agreements with workers unions and construction companies, among a myriad other things.
To further support your point, not only is it possible to use that added value to pay for infrastructure, but that's historically how it was done back when infrastructure projects had to be profitable (because they were private.) Today, the most similar thing might be the ski resort that is largely profitable because of the sale of slope-side condos.
The NYC subway system is a great example of spending on infrastructure over it's history. NYC may not be efficient in terms of spending, but the results tend to be extremely valuable.
Further, it's vastly more expensive to build a road inside a city than in the middle of nowhere. NYC's infrastructure is so extensive it's makes adding more incredibly difficult. That is then compounded by bureaucracy, corruption, and entrenched interests but not more so than most other large city's.
The only issue is when I had to run to Manhattan I jumped in my car and went either into a parking lot or just dropped something off. Still get charged for the Bridge Fees of $15!!!
$15 to use the GWB and anything going to Long Island or NJ is ridiculous and Verrizano is $17 and that is the the highest cost for a bridge in the nation. GWB is a major interstate and you have to swing up to the Tapanzee or go further north Fishkill Bridge to get lower fees.
Now add the $11 fee and my cost is $26 just to drive to one place in Manhattan.
When the train cost $27 round trip (off peak) or $38.50 (peak) it is a pain. Also if you have business in NYC you are stuck with either losing the whole day or half a day just to get there.
Now Chicago, Atlanta and LA have bad traffic it doesn't cost you a hundred bucks to commute for a week.
So move to the city and enjoy a shorter (and cheaper) commute. Of course, since you're currently living 50 miles outside the city, the increase in rent would be much more than $100, so you're still enjoying the cheaper end of the bargain.
> Now Chicago, Atlanta and LA have bad traffic it doesn't cost you a hundred bucks to commute for a week.
With parking, you could easily pay that much in other U.S. cities. In addition, they all have pretty terrible options for public transit compared to New York, so I'm not really keen on using them as a reference point.
Only counting gas and parking it would be ~$50+/week in my smallish town/city living 10-20 miles away. If you add in all the other car costs it would quickly reach $100/week.
That's what you get when you want to live that far out. I pay $50/week to go from Essex County, NJ. That was about what my commute cost me (driving) in Dallas.
> When the train cost $27 round trip (off peak) or $38.50 (peak) it is a pain. Also if you have business in NYC you are stuck with either losing the whole day or half a day just to get there.
What train costs this much? The closest I can find is the Port Jervis Metro-North line, coming all the way from Port Jervis (which is way the fuck out there). I wouldn't do that commute for any price unless I had to. If I did, I sure as hell wouldn't buy per-day tickets; I'd get the monthly pass for $488.
Time for me to get on the train and go to NYC one way is 2 hours plus, so over 4 hours round trip. It is 50 miles away from my old home. Cost is $27 round trip (off peak) or $38.50 (peak) for the ticket. So taking the train is convenient and I love it but it ruins the rest of my day.
Now there was a time when I was 19 and the last train left at 11 PM I the schedule said 1 AM kind of sucked and the next train was at 5 AM. It was with friends from LA and their flight was at 9 AM the next day.
You are on the trains schedule so I will have to wait for the train to leave. Usually if I had a quick stop in the city I would make other stops coming back home. Most people HATE driving in NYC and refuse to do it so I am not sure how much this will help.
> Time for me to get on the train and go to NYC one way is 2 hours plus, so over 4 hours round trip. It is 50 miles away from my old home. Cost is $27 round trip (off peak) or $38.50 (peak) for the ticket. So taking the train is convenient and I love it but it ruins the rest of my day.
Put another way, with congestion pricing, you have two options:
* Pay $27-$38.50 (total) for a four hour round-trip on public transit
* Pay $26 (not including gas) for a faster trip in a private car, probably about two hours round-trip[0]
I'm having a hard time sympathizing with this as a problem, especially since you're coming from 50 miles away. I know people who commute every day from Kingston to Brooklyn using public transit, and that's a full 100 miles.
[0] With no traffic, Kingston to Manhattan (100 miles) is about two hours by car each way, so I'll assume that your travel would take two hours for a round trip.
My WHOLE point is the cost is ridiculous. People paying $5000 to $12000 a year to commute to work in NYC. It also makes it more difficult to get around.
I grew up in Danbury, CT and probably 20% of the city works in NYC and I now live in Allentown, PA and know several that work there full time and it takes 30 minutes to get to a train station to NYC.
I had one full time job in Manhattan when I was 18 and commuted everyday on the train. I also would have contracted work to do some music or video production and need to be there around 3 PM until 11 PM to 4 AM. So there are certain things that the $11 fee just makes it harder for people to do work.
So don't you think some of those people would rearrange their lives if they had to face $12k of added annual commuting costs?
You'd probably see some increasing density in nearby areas that are still full of 2-3 story buildings. You'd see some parking lots reconsidered. And you'd see people moving to other cities. You'd probably see a whole lot of other creative solutions, too, to the fact that NYC is now allowing its problem of too many cars to be felt by those driving the cars.
Yes, it's not unlike surge pricing or any sort of increased pricing found for any product/service in the face of increased demand and constant supply. However, I find these types of situation to be different. These are supposed to be public roads, usable by anyone with a license as long as they obey the state laws governing the operation of a motor vehicle.
Now NYC wants to add an additional charge to each and every ride through it's most populated region? Seems unfair, especially to those who make less. Some might argue that those in the lower incomes probably don't have cars in a city like NYC or even live in Manhattan at all due to it's cost. And they may be right. But it's also a matter of principle. Seems immoral to me to charge people to use what they are already taxed for multiple times (direct gas tax and some form if income/property tax is used to pay for road maintenance). It also seems especially unfair to tax them to use what is essentially a public good that is already paid for. The tax is simply to incentivize a specific activity (i.e. not driving in Manhattan).
Should we also tax everyone who walks through the streets of Mid-town? Those streets are insanely crowded and I hate being there. Maybe we should tax anyone walking on sidewalks?
Yes, they would be paying with time instead of fees. But many people have time and not so much money and they would probably much rather give up their time instead because it's what they have in a relatively larger amount.
The space a vehicle takes up is also essentially a public good.
Your argument can probably be fairly recast as "everyone should have to pay equal costs in time if they want to use the road". And then never mind that a congestion charge is more predictable than sitting in congestion.
When I was down in Dallas, they have two parallel roadways - one which is the paid-for express version and one which is free. You can pay to get on the less-congested highway or choose to take the more congested, but free, highway. Maybe something like that for NYC would work? But with NYC's layout, I have no idea how that would work. Dallas has plenty of space to make that possible.
I'm always surprised by the only-in-this-circumstance libertarian philosophy of people who support congestion pricing. I think if you took the exact same logic and applied it to say, schools, supporters would feel completely differently about it.
Example: It's really hard to get your child into certain public schools in NYC. Why not start charging $3k a year per child (much less than private schools) at high demand schools in order to lessen the overcrowding of those schools? There are viable alternatives to paying (less in-demand schools), most lower income people are already not able to send their kids to in-demand schools for reasons of geography, and after all, parents choose to have children, they should pay for the services and infrastructure to support them.
That example seems to essentially be the same as what is proposed for congestion pricing, with many parallel arguments. Why is congestion pricing okay when applying the same philosophy to other matters of public good isn't?
(by the way, I'm a reluctant supporter of congestion pricing, and not of what I proposed for schools, but I struggle with why I believe one is okay and the other is not)
The report says "None of those fees should be charged, the task force said, until repairs are made to the public transit system." so it wouldn't be like they'd be "surge charging" a necessity like schools.
True. Going into a little bit more detail of what I mentioned though, all of the high demand schools I know of have other nearby schools that are in low demand. Typically, the high demand school is in a wealthy neighborhood (let's say Brooklyn Heights), and the low demand school is in a bordering poorer neighborhood (Vinegar Hill).
So, the city would not be surge charging for a necessity, just a preference for a high demand school. Likewise, most people would prefer to drive if they could, but the physical limitations of the system require that most people take public transport.
Sometimes this is also a preference for safety, as I learned attending k-12 in NYC. And sometimes the safety isnt a result of bad students, but a result of the entire system just allocating more resources to some schools over others.
They're both common in society. Instead of the school directly charging more money, increase property taxes, or don't allow apartments to be built. That describes most of the public schooling in America, and why a child's future is most dependent upon their zip code.
NYC is different in that the city government covers rich and poor people and can't legally separate the two so a different measure develops, such as entrance exams where kids whose parents are able to hire tutors perform better on. We can't have a hugely unequal society and expect certain bubbles in it to pretend as if those who have advantages aren't using them.
I'd offer up that while it may be useful to compare outcomes with zipcode, the same research would benefit from more granularity, and often is. For example, block to block neighborhood boundaries can reveal remarkable contrasts between socio-economic conditions.
Probably more that 50% of what makes a school good are the students that go to them. Once this is realized, fairly assigning students to the good schools becomes problematic.
For school age children, the parents are very relevant.
Some of the youngest schoolchildren already know how to read, count, say the alphabet, listen, and so on. Their parents read books to/with them, buy educational toys and so on. Other children have to learn all this at school. The parents of the children in the first group would prefer that the other children were similar.
Parents who care more are also more likely to get problems solved -- whether that's a problem their own child has (e.g. a learning disability) or with the school.
So in general, the quality of the teaching is often less important than the children and their parents.
Most countries gurantee a right to education, but driving a car is considered a privilege - which is why congestion charges seem more palatable, to me at least, compared to a use-fee for education.
...not that it doesn't happen already. Don't most public schools charge parents for meals at school, after-school activities, and equipment if they join the varsity sports team?
I'm not sure if I agree or not but I think this is a very insightful comment.
This is the level on which this conversation needs to take place - what's important? Are some things more important than others? It's not strictly about dollars and cents, or how to pay for it.
For what it's worth I think they're about equally important. There's no such thing as "an alternate road system", you either have one, or you don't. And I also think there's a place for people who don't have kids, who make a considered decision not to fund schools but want good roads so they can go places and get to work.
This is meat and potatoes politics: tradeoffs, values, what we think is important and are willing to pay for.
Wouldn't libertarian philosophy, taken to its logical end, imply private schools and private roads, where you pay whoever owns the school/road to use it?
But if we're going to have some public schools and roads, there's more of a moral principle behind the former than the latter. I would be uneasy with congestion pricing public schools because the moral principle they continue to exist on (nb: not that they were founded on, as far as I know) is equality of opportunity. That goes away the instant you start allowing wealthy people to fill up the best schools that otherwise non-wealthy peoples' children could have attended. It might as well be a private school.
>Wouldn't libertarian philosophy, taken to its logical end, imply private schools and private roads, where you pay whoever owns the school/road to use it?
That is correct, though the government still has a major role to play in enforcing their citizens rights. If a private company were to build a poor-quality and dangerous road, this would amount to an act of violence towards the drivers, thus the government would need to ensure that standards are met. If education is defined as a right, the government would need to ensure that private schools are meeting the standard held in it's definition.
Of course this is a simplification, but in a way I view these services as already being "privatised", except one organisation is granted a monopoly: the government! They indeed have some of the same conflict-of-interest that would scare some off private corporations replacing them; we all know that local politicians can be very selective in which stretches of roads receive maintenance, especially coming up to election time.
I can't tell if we disagree, but I would attack this from a different angle. Libertarians clearly want less power concentrated at a central level, but it's not clear why that should carry down to every single entity that can be called government. If kids call their parents the government for the home, should libertarians be opposed to parental authority?
I think it would be a fair statement that libertarians favor a strong family unit (certainly not its alternative, the dystopian sci-fi separation of children from parents at birth.) Households run in ways that are almost entirely communist. So why should this non-profit collaboration stop at the front door? I don't think a libertarian has to be opposed to every unit of government that dares to call itself government.
So let's say you abolish your municipal government, but you don't have money to pay for private schools, security, road building and welfare. Maybe you have a neighborhood watch for security, a group of neighbors who fill potholes, and a church that provides rudimentary welfare and schooling. Is that government? Maybe it seems similar, but libertarians would argue that government is a monopoly on force, and that doesn't sound like what's happening here.
But maybe a few people in town saved money to buy some livestock, and now they're having problems with coyote/mountain lion attacks. The obvious solution is to have the neighborhood watch carry guns, if they weren't already. After all, if they're already out, may as well kill two birds with one stone. So now you have a neighborhood watch who's also the gun-carrying livestock protection. You can't help but notice that now the neighborhood watch is the only guy carrying a gun around, and that probably makes you less likely to mess with him. Is that a monopoly on force yet?
What about if there are enough herders in town to start paying that guy full-time, and he's used for neighborhood watch too (since he's already out, after all?)
Hopefully you can see where I'm going; people will naturally band together to solve community problems, and that needn't always be via a for-profit venture. I think it's a misunderstanding of libertarian ideology to suppose that you have to be opposed to all levels of government, and it's a misunderstanding by those inside and outside of that movement.
When you realize that most of the popular functions of government are performed by the local (or maybe state) governments, you have to think libertarians could gain a lot of support by re-framing themselves in that way, and it doesn't seem like they would be compromising.
First of all, thank you for the thoughtful response; I imagine we would have to converse at length to full establish what we agree on, but anyway the real value is in the process. I by no-means identify as a "libertarian", but I am familiar with some of the principles and give them consideration when pondering political issues.
>Libertarians clearly want less power concentrated at a central level
The phrase "less power" is a little vague; to be precise, libertarians want the government to enforce the rights of the citizens, and to otherwise leave them alone. The population does this by collectively granting authority to the government to deal out force legally; the only exception, for the most part, is an individual using force in self-defence. This is the fundamental principle, I believe, on which libertarians base their thinking.
>I think it would be a fair statement that libertarians favor a strong family unit
Absolutely. Though, at the same time, I would wager than purists would not support government legislation that specifically favours the traditional family unit, tax-breaks etc.
>Households run in ways that are almost entirely communist. So why should this non-profit collaboration stop at the front door?
In order for a society to even attempt to be unified, we must first agreed on a set of axioms, shared-truths. We may take for granted that the bond an individual has with their own kin is stronger than that with others. While we can imagine an entirely communistic network where one's personal wealth is equally shared amongst all, it practically cannot work because humans are simply not built that way. There is enough historical data to suggest that it cannot be done. It is morally untenable because it relies on forcefully compelling people to share their resources, where it is given voluntarily in a healthy family setting.
Furthermore, it is debatable wether or not libertarians recuse themselves from their responsibility to be a force for good in the world, and to be charitable; they merely ask to not be forcefully compelled to do so, as this violates the non-aggression principle. The success of the libertarian approach to charity hinges on lessened taxation and regulation creating an environment of unparalleled prosperity and abundance, in which communities will humanely seek to better the world around them.
I think my above points about the governments role in dealing out force legally, which addresses much of the rest of your post. Empowering local and state government is certainly and immediate goal of the libertarian movement.
> Why is congestion pricing okay when applying the same philosophy to other matters of public good isn't?
I think the real root of the problem is that congestion pricing is never okay in matters of public good, we've just conditioned ourselves to believe that infrastructure is this special case of impossible problem to solve, so our terrible workaround to this artificial problem sometimes seems begrudgingly reasonable in context.
Which is why, if you took the exact same logic and applied it to almost anything else, the public would be outraged.
Manhattan is fundamentally limited by space, not sure how you expect to solve this problem when there is going to be more demand for this good than we can actually supply. This problem is only going to get worse as we get self-driving cars.
The immediate problems of infrastructure are two-fold: funding and the matching of supply and demand. Ignore the environmental ramifications for the moment and kick that can to your kids like everyone else does.
Supply and demand solves itself. The solution is staring right back at you any time you drive around a city at 5PM local. The funding could be solved by taking more money out of general revenue from income and other taxes. It's not too far a stretch from where we are now.
The argument for congestion pricing could be framed as frustration with either of those two components. First, some people want to pay for their use in dollars instead of hours. Second, some people would rather target the users of the public good to recoup the enormous costs of it. Personally, I try to opt out to the maximum extent because I find the time cost unacceptable, and I would avoid the monetary cost for the same reason. And given the risk of runaway time cost or runaway money cost for a rare trip, I'd rather keep the time. If nothing else, my loss aversion would make me avoid driving like the plague after paying a high toll.
We prefer bakeries to bread lines, and food is arguably more important to life than driving. So why should we want the bread line equivalent when it comes to driving? As far as I can tell, it's because that's the system we're used to, and change is hard.
Building more roads creates more traffic i.e. more “demand”. This is the unforeseen problem with road building schemes. The solution is mass transit and city planning to reduce road commuting.
I was working in the frame of parent's comment to show that delays and congestion are another solution to the problem. It's certainly not the one I'd choose, but I was trying hard to give an unaffected discussion of the tradeoffs (until the sarcasm in the last paragraph.)
> Building more roads creates more traffic i.e. more “demand”.
That is never an acceptable reason to neglect infrastructure.
By your logic, we should never build hospitals because building hospitals 'creates' sick people. We should never build public water systems, since that would 'create' sewage. We should never roll out faster broadband internet, because people will simply 'waste' the bandwidth.
Yes, induced demand is a concept that exists. But it's a gross misunderstanding of that concept to use it as an excuse to undersupply infrastructure capacity.
> The solution is (more) mass transit
I agree, that is one way to help the problem. Notice though, that it's not congestion fees on public right of way, and that it is additional infrastructure (the kind you just claimed would not work because it would create more demand).
Physical roadspace is far more limited. In most other OECD countries, schools aren‘t nearly as segmented. Public school quality is across the board high.
But all countries have road congestion issues, to my knowledge. It’s an intrinsic feature of road networks. There‘s also a lot more variance than with schools: roads are sometimes empty sometimes full. School attendance is static through the year. (Which suggests an optimal road price would actually be more like a surge, and vary through the day.)
> Why not start charging $3k a year per child (much less than private schools) at high demand schools in order to lessen the overcrowding of those schools?
If you just moved to Boerum Hill and paid cash for a $5,000,000 brownstone and converted it into a single family home, I don't see why not.
Take that money and put it toward improving the various segregated NYC schools that you used your money to avoid.
Sure as hell does. Here's the boundaries for the elementary school in my area: https://imgur.com/M1bAKEh. People are flipping out right now in part of one of the adjacent school districts, because they might be redistricted into the Annapolis elementary schools, instead of the Edgewater school on the other side of the river. I'll let you guess why.
That may act functionally as a congestion tax for the home buyer, but instead of the tax going to the state where it can be used to fund other schools it ends up being an arbitrary transfer of wealth to homeowners who bought before the school was built.
Property taxes in neighborhoods with good schools are significantly higher here in Chicago. It doesn’t go to the state though, but rather funds the local school district directly.
Note that this still isn't a libertarian approach, as I, hypothetically residing in such a district but sending my hypothetical children to a private school, would still be paying for this service that I am not using; I would be paying for the right to use this but not the actual use of it. It's basic taxation but on a hyperlocal scale.
In addition to property taxes mentioned by others, many jurisdictions have a transfer tax on the value of the property transferred. A jurisdiction would do well to have high demand schools at different levels in different areas, to encourage families to move, and pay transfer tax :)
In the U.S., a public education is considered a right. Driving is a privilege, not a right, and so the same considerations don't apply.
For example, we already charge drivers for the privilege of driving: annual license fees, mandated insurance, gasoline taxes, etc. Congestion fees/taxes are simply an extension of the costs associated with the driving privilege.
With respect to schools, we already have a de facto congestion charge, in the form of housing prices near desirable schools. In many states, property taxes near desirable schools are also higher to reflect the greater desirability of the neighborhood.
But the "right to an education" doesnt feel like a right in the same way as "the right to free speech" is it "the right to not have your house used as quarters for troops"... What makes that difference?
"In the U.S., a public education is considered a right. Driving is a privilege, not a right, and so the same considerations don't apply."
I find this conversation very interesting - first, the thought provoking notion from your parent that supporters of congestion pricing invoke a "libertarian but only for this" exception that they wouldn't apply to other goods like schools.
Then your (obvious) reply that driving is not a right, but a privilege.
I would counter that while driving is certainly a privilege, the roads themselves are a right, or a public good, comparable to schools. So regardless of what hoops you have to jump through to purchase and license your car, once jumped, the roads are analogous to the schools.
FWIW, I am personally enthusiastic about congestion pricing and have heard nothing but good things about its deployment in London. I would like very much to have it considered here in San Francisco.
> the roads themselves are a right, or a public good
Transportation is the public good. Roads are one means of providing it, but there are others, like public transit. It's up to the government to determine how best to provide that public good given existing constraints in funds, time, land area for roads and other transportation infrastructure, environmental considerations, etc. They've apparently determined that the distribution of modes is suboptimal, and are creating economic incentives to shift it and better pay for it, but ultimately people will still be able to get places one way or another.
> I would counter that while driving is certainly a privilege, the roads themselves are a right, or a public good, comparable to schools. So regardless of what hoops you have to jump through to purchase and license your car, once jumped, the roads are analogous to the schools.
Roads are by definition not a public good. A public good is non-rivalrous; roads are rivalrous as can clearly be seen if you look outside during rush-hour.
Obviously there's no "right" for a kid to get into one of those high demand schools though. Otherwise we're already violating the rights of everyone who doesn't get a spot (and/or their parents, if you believe the primary reason they're so motivated to get their kids into these schools is so they can brag about it to other parents).
Obviously there's no "right" for a kid to get into one of those high demand schools though. Otherwise we're already violating the rights of everyone who doesn't get a spot
That's not obvious, since it depends on the state and even the district.
In districts that determine enrollment geographically, a child does have the right to go their local high school if they are within the zone assigned to that school. This has been a contentious issue in districts in CA and NY when they redraw school feeder zones (usually when opening up new schools or closing non-performant schools).
[Note that like all rights, it can be limited, if for example the student gets suspended or expelled for disciplinary issues. This is similar in context to the prohibition on firearm ownership by felons.]
"In districts that determine enrollment geographically, a child does have the right to go their local high school if they are within the zone assigned to that school"
If what school you go to is entirely determined by where you live, you can already buy your kids' way in by buying a house or renting an apartment in the district. I don't think that's fundamentally any different from buying your way in directly, except that it's probably more expensive, since you're essentially forced to also pay for whatever else makes the neighborhood desirable, instead of being able to pay for only the school admission.
I think it's a matter of framing. You can parse congestion charges as either a tax on pollution and congestion, or a marketized way of redistributing a scarce resource more efficiently. It logically and intuitively fits within a broad range of ideological schema; it's both a collectivist means of pricing externalities and an individualist means of allocating resources.
The same can't be said of charging for in-demand school places - from a collectivist perspective, such a policy would be read as punishing poorer families for aspiration and disincentivizing social mobility. It's plausible that essentially the same policy could be reframed by redistributing funding from higher-performing to lower-performing schools and allowing or requiring affluent parents to make up the deficit.
I see the point but I don’t fully agree. There may be better examples than schools though.
Congestion pricing is hopefully geared to be lower or zero at non peak-hours. That is, people who must drive at 8am can do that for a fee, and those that can leave it until 10am get it cheaper. In the school comparison it’s not a privilege but a right, and also you don’t just “do it later” you only get one education which can be really important for your future life. That said, to really ensure social mobility you also can’t have “school districts” where land/house prices depend on school quality.
> Why is congestion pricing okay when applying the same philosophy to other matters of public good isn't?
Good question. Will we see sayings like "Save Road Neutrality"? Net neutrality is something that prevents ISPs from practicing a form of congestion pricing (zero rating, charge more for certain packets, etc...), yet the death of net neutrality has been likened to the death of the internet.
One of things I struggle with is aligning my belief system consistently across the board. It definitely leads to some challenging internal conversations.
Thats not really the same at all because the question with net neutrality revolves around being charged for the content of the data. No one is proposing congestion pricing which charges you based on the content of your vehicle.
Or a car with a "banker cargo" vs a "barista cargo". When I take a toll road, it is with full knowledge of what my time is worth, and that most people can't justify it.
Not quite. We're talking about something that is publicly-owned (roads) to something that is (besides certain municipal projects) privately-owned (last-mile internet access). Compounding this difference, there is monopolistic tendencies that arise with internet as it's rarely competitive. We're talking apples to cows here.
For me, the difference is that with congestion charges, there is typically another way to achieve the same end - alternative transport methods, or routes which avoid the area in question. I think that's not necessarily true with schooling - even just having to travel further because the nearest school is chargeable may have an impact.
I also think that there are reasons to avoid it with schooling even if the educational outcomes are the same -- I think separating schools into "can/will pay" and "can't/won't pay" would be bad for social integration/cohesion.
Further, a congestion charge applied to road usage is probably, partially, intended to discourage use altogether. That clearly isn't the case for schools.
Traffic causes negative externalities: pollution, wasted time, noise, etc.
Public education causes positive externalities: educated populace, a third party to help ensure kids are well taken care of, encouraging people to have children who will grow up to continue society, etc.
Even people who aren't making direct use of public education receive the benefit from it, so it makes sense to encourage it as broadly as possible, not to try to restrict people from it.
There are already tolls on lots of roads and bridges, and you have to pay to park in public parking garages and street spaces. You have to pay to enter national parks, get services from municipal utilities, ride transit, use the courts, register your vehicle, etc. There is nothing philosophically wrong with the government charging people money to use its property and services. No rule of thumb really helps you decide outright whether something the government provides should be free. What you have to do is to evaluate whether in each case pricing makes sense and how much to charge. Roads are free mainly because they are difficult to charge and because for most roads there is no point to doing so, as most roads are uncongested nearly all the time. Downtown Manhattan is an exception and thus requires a special solution.
It's okay to believe public schools should be free and still support congestion pricing. Congestion pricing has demonstrated that it works at solving road traffic externalities. In London it has saved many lives from reduced accidents, both in and around the charging zone. In Stockholm it has reduced asthma attacks substantially. The New York subway needs lots of upgrades and congestion pricing will pay for some of them (although it would be nice if they could get their costs under control).
Public schools are doing fine being free and paid for by taxes. By way of fairness, I guess one could argue that since every kid by law has to go to school they should be free. But I think we actually have the free system simply because it has worked for a long time. There are problems with education quality in the US, but they aren't due to how schools are paid for. We know that because there are better schools in other countries that are still free. By contrast, downtown streets are as crowded and polluting and dangerous as they are mainly because they are free.
The biggest difference is there are cheap alternatives to driving in your own car (foot, bus, subway, taxi depending on distance, etc). Public schools are akin to walking on foot, charter schools are the cars using public school land, which I learned is fairly common on NYC under some kind of timeshare arrangement (but I also mainly say this in jest).
As someone who moved from the Los Angeles area and enjoys driving (sans gridlock), it personally seems bananas to me to be driving in the city unless it's a cab/bus/freight/handicap vehicle.
In my view, the fundamental difference between roads and schools is this (in general):
more cars on the road == worse for me
more educated people == better for me
That said, I wouldn't necessarily oppose a congestion fee for schools, especially if that money was used to replicate the success of desirable schools in non-desirable schools.
Although in reality I don't think feeding more money into our archaic school system is the answer, it needs to be reengineered from the ground up, but thats a totally different conversation.
I think the reason is that we associate driving with negative externalities (pollution, renewable resource usage, etc.) and so if the response to congestion pricing is that people drive less and seek alternative means (using public transportation, telecommuting, etc) then that is an additional win.
Whereas we associate having children and schooling with positive externalities -- the creation of an educated workforce that will keep our country strong and prosperous in the next decades. So we intuit that if people responded to the tax by having fewer kids or unschooling the kids, that would be bad for society. (I personally don't actually think that public school produces positive externalities but I'm extremely unusual in that belief).
The other complication is that "good schools" are really the schools with the best students and best parents. With road congestion toll you are paying for an inherently limited resource -- wide, paved right-of-ways enabling leading connecting population hubs. Whereas with the limited number of "good" schools in NYC, the inherently limited resource is the good students themselves. So a "good school" tax is essentially charging good students to be around people like themselves, which is kind of a weird thing todo.
> I'm always surprised by the only-in-this-circumstance libertarian philosophy of people who support congestion pricing. I think if you took the exact same logic and applied it to say, schools, supporters would feel completely differently about it.
so, I think you are confusing people that believe that markets are useful tools with people who believe that markets are things that decide what is most ethical (which is, I think, what you mean by 'libertarian' in this context.)
That's the thing. I (and many people) believe that markets are good tools in many (but not all) situations for organizing production and distributing goods. I don't believe that using a market to distribute goods organize production is any more or less ethical than using any other method for deciding those things, any more than I think that using a drill or a saw when building something is an ethical choice, (I mean, except to the extent that avoidable suffering is caused by using tools that are grossly mismatched to the goal)
I think markets are great for matching up workers to jobs and schedules... and that's what we're doing, largely, with congestion pricing. If it costs a lot to get a worker to place x at time y.... well, that should be factored into the cost of whatever that worker is doing; because of this, I support congestion pricing.
I think markets would be terrible for allocating public school slots, because the whole point of having public schools is to see to it that everyone has some minimum level of education... and to give those who are smart and/or ambitious a chance of climbing the ladder, even if they came from poor families. Markets would produce results that moved in the opposite of those goals, that's why we have public schools rather than relying on a private school system in the first place.
While I agree in principle poor people are going to be hit by this the hardest and that's something that has to be taken into account in public policy.
Actually, lower income people are likely to overwhelmingly gain from this plan. Poor people don't drive to Manhattan. The cost of parking and tolls puts it out of their reach. Therefor, this is funding which will be used to upgrade the transportation system they do use - the Subway.
"The median household income of those with wheels is more than double that of those without - $85,000 compared with $40,630." [1]
Do you really think someone who is "poor" can afford "UP TO 12 HOURS $31.25" [2] daily parking, when an unlimited Metrocard is $32 weekly? The commute would be shorter in the car, but with $150/week for parking, add tolls and the cost of insuring/maintaining a car, I do not see congestion pricing being a poor tax.
I find it hard to believe that a congestion charge is going to disproportionately affect the poor, especially in Manhattan.
The majority of New Yorkers — and a supermajority of Manhattanites — do not own a car. Those who do own cars have incomes nearly twice as high as those who don't. Only 5.8% of commuters to Manhattan arrive by single-occupancy vehicle.
Might high middle class people too -- those not wealthy enough to live in posh Manhattan townhouses and go over the river to more affordable areas at the expense of lower/no subway coverage.
These statements have no relationship to reality. In real New York, the only 3% of households in the lowest income quintile own a car. "The poor" are overwhelmingly reliant on walking, biking, buses, subways, and trains. Car ownership rates are strongly correlated with income. The only income bracket for which the bare majority of households own a car is $500000/year or higher, a group of people who can easily afford to pay a few bucks to drive over a bridge. And still, half of those people are sensible enough to see that they don't need a car in New York.
> The poor also can't afford to live near work & public transit.
Transit in New York City (and the tristate area as a whole) is very robust -- I seriously doubt most blue collar workers in Manhattan are driving in and parking for work.
I think most people would support congestion pricing, if all the money collected went to building more road capacity. The people paying to get a fast trip now would be seen (and actually be) supporting faster trips for everyone in the future. Right now it just builds more resentment toward the 1%. Unfortunately this situation is not really possible today as places that so congested to want to use congestion pricing of roads cannot build any more (very expensive and politically impossible). If Musk's Boring company works out and congestion pricing on freeways in LA would pay for new tunnels, I think everyone would be on-board with it.
This is directly in opposition to the goals of congestion pricing. Traffic engineering has some not-so-intuitive principles. Adding capacity, for example, increases congestion through a mechanism known as induced demand. We don't want to create more demand for private cars in Manhattan, so your suggestion supports an anti-goal.
Adding more capacity does not cause more congestion. That is not what the studies around induced demand state. Building more capacity allows more trips (obvious right) because, since there is less congestion or it is quicker to get somewhere, people will travel more. If you believe that people making trips by car is intrinsically immoral, then building more capacity for car trips is a bad idea. I rather think that traveling around in a car costs money and time, even if the roads are not jammed, so people won't generally just drive around for now reason. Being restricted on where and when to travel due to clogged travel paths is not a public good to strive for. People calling out "induced demand" anytime someone proposes building more capacity for on-demand point-to-point travel is just blinded by an ideology they probably don't even know they follow.
Would you be against instant teleportation at low dollar, environmental and energy cost from point-to-point? I might be if used between cities or countries. The world is already pretty homogenized. But for within cities it would be great. The main benefit of cites is to have a huge number of possible people to interact with and the projects (companies, museums, clubs, etc) those groups of people create. Supporting policies of making people waste time waiting, doing nothing useful, to control where and when they move around seems like a very misanthropic and authoritarian view of how the world should work.
But not all hours are equally valuable. Some people are able to be flexible. If people know that they will have to pay more for recreational activities during rush hour, they'll be more likely to plan those activities at other times, freeing up the road for people who need to commute.
"Congestion pricing is one of the most economically literate ways to improve traffic"
It depends how it's implemented. In London, it is a flat fee for the entire day, rather than based on time spent driving within the charging zone, or on distance.
More importantly, taxis, which drive around _all_ _day_ _long_ and thereby cause more congestion than private cars (which might be on the road for 1-2 hours) are exempt from the charge.
Rich people benefit from London taxis, but neither the taxi drivers nor the passengers pay the congestion fee.
Um, no. Cars that aren't doing a journey don't cause congestion, as parked cars don't have cars behind them waiting to get past.
A private car wanting to spend 20 mins driving through the charging zone to get from south London to north London is in the charging zone for 20 mins, and pays the full fee.
A taxi wanting to spend 8 HOURS driving within the congestion zone pays nothing.
EDIT: and taxis spend large amounts of time driving around in circles without any passengers, and without any destination. Private cars don't do that. So even if every taxi passenger journey is replacing a private car journey with the same start and end points, taxis still cause twice as much congestion.
What about the time spent finding parking or the fact that taxis enable people to not have cars at all, this increasing ridership in all forms of transportation.
Private cars driving into or through central London don't spend 50% of their time finding parking. In many cases, they are just driving through central London to get to the other side. So there's zero time spent driving aimlessly or finding parking.
Your second point about enabling people to not have cars seems pretty tenuous. Is your argument that exempting taxis from the London congestion charge increases supply or decreases price, to the extent that more people can go without cars?
a friend was once visiting me in manhattan and decided to drive. He came over on the george washington bridge ($15 toll), missed his turn to my block and ended up getting turned around and going over to brooklyn (tunnel, of course: $8.50 toll), realized he was in the wrong place and turned around ($8.50 back through the tunnel).
This, of course, was after driving up from Virginia via I-95, which has its own $20+ worth of tolls along the route.
--
Where I live now, in Atlanta, we recently closed a $0.50 toll (GA400) because apparently we didn't need the money.
Freezing temperatures, salt, underground infrastructure, and large amounts of traffic increase costs tremendously. Additionally, sometimes the infrastructure cannot handle the demand, therefore demand has to be reduced, and the easiest (and maybe most optimal way for society) is to implement tolls.
Large amounts of traffic
means more tolls collected. They could get by fine on a normal toll amount. $15 is indefensible. Why is the answer "screw the poor"?
$15 isn't indefensible if the project is solely or mostly funded with tolls (and therefore not out of state / city budget).
But as to toll (flat) vs tax (progressive), you're right: it's definitely screwing over the poor.
I'm all in favor of usage based charging, but "unaffordable to live near work on a moderate salary" + "we're going to tax your daily commute, the same as your boss" doesn't feel fair.
How practical is that for the people who are currently driving in NYC?
In Chicago, the vast majority of people who live in the suburbs and work in the loop take Metra. But Chicago's transit system is so heavily hub-and-spoke that the public transit just isn't practical if you don't work near the hub, and plenty of people don't. For them, it's frequently a choice between an hour or so in traffic, and more like 2 hours split among some combination of traffic (to get to the commuter train station), train, and maybe bus. I can't really blame anyone for deciding that 4 hours total commuting is not an option.
> I can't really blame anyone for deciding that 4 hours total commuting is not an option
I know people who drive from their faraway place to a train station outside the city and then take the Metro-North into Grand Central Station. From street parking to bridges and tunnels, New York City massively subsidises drivers.
I'd strongly prefer we raise tolls and congestion charges and use the proceeds to modernize our subway system.
Sometimes, the world doesn't present us with a solution that is "fair", especially when demand is greater than supply. Assuming you were tasked with reducing the congestion of the road network in NYC and its surrounding areas, do you any ideas of a solution that is "fair"?
Edit: Elsewhere in this thread, someone posted a link to Beijing's solution to congestion, which seem interesting:
I can't speak specifically to the Beijing system but rationing (or lotteries) as a general approach are often seen as a fairer way to distribute a limited good than letting whoever has the most money have it.
That said, especially given the circumstances of Manhattan, congestion charging probably makes the most sense and also has the virtue of bringing in additional money that can theoretically be used to improve public transit.
[ADDED: I think the key here is that driving in Manhattan for individuals is something of a luxury good. We'd view things differently if this was about distributing relief food after a natural disaster.]
> I can't speak specifically to the Beijing system but rationing (or lotteries) as a general approach are often seen as a fairer way to distribute a limited good than letting whoever has the most money have it.
Lotteries are an absolutely terrible system. They fail the basic test of Pareto efficiency. Or in other words: lotteries result in outcomes in which one person could be made better off without making anybody else worse off. The only way to avoid this with a lottery is provide a secondary market, and that defeats the whole purpose of a lottery - at that point, you might as well skip the lottery and use a direct market.
Not all Pareto-efficient scenarios are good, but all scenarios that are not Pareto-efficient are bad, by definition. If Alice could be made better off without making Bob or Eve (or anyone else) any worse off, we know there's a problem.
There are scenarios though where lotteries are really the only reasonable option.
Say there's a national park campground that fills up within a few minutes of opening up reservations.
However the lottery is implemented exactly (wardialing, picking applications at random), it's pretty much how you have to do things. Raising prices until supply meets demand is (properly) politically a non-starter even if it's the "correct" economic solution.
You can have a waiting list (as I believe many Grand Canyon permits use) but creating multi-year waiting lists have their own set of problems because it makes it hard for people to plan.
I am not knowledgeable about the costs of roadwork and whatnot in NYC, so I can't speak to how much a toll should be or shouldn't be. However, there is a hard ceiling on how much capacity a network of roads can accommodate (assuming you want it to keep moving at a reasonable pace), so a toll can help in reducing the demand. I'm not sure how much a toll would have to be to reduce demand, but I can see many of the drivers in NYC being unphased by $15 (I'm not sure of the specifics of the toll plan, if it's for a certain number of hours or every time you enter and exit, etc).
Edit: "screw the poor" always happens when you have a limited quantity of the desired product/service. In this case, the allocation is based on how much money you have.
Then don't go places you can't afford to pay the externality for. It doesn't screw the poor, its allocating finite resources in a market-based economy. If we want to socialize the cost of infrastructure (which I agree with) then taxes need to be levied. Virginians aren't paying Manhattan property tax so why is it so outrageous to tax people entering over an expensive and congested bridge?
> They could get by fine on a normal toll amount. $15 is indefensible.
Who's to say $15 isn't a normal toll amount? As far as I know the bridge is quite busy which means it seems very defensible. They discount it for electronically billed tolls (which makes it faster for everybody) and discount it again for carpoolers (less cars, again faster for everybody). The $15 is the amount you pay if you're having the most impact.
> Large amounts of traffic means more tolls collected. They could get by fine on a normal toll amount. $15 is indefensible. Why is the answer "screw the poor"?
The answer isn't "screw the poor", because the poor aren't generally driving into Manhattan. They're taking public transit.
Driving into Manhattan is already incredibly expensive. $15 is a drop in the bucket compared to what people already have to pay.
So you'd rather have less people spend money at your establishments and visit tourist destinations (which is surely more than $15 spent per trip per vehicle). Whatever you say. Why not go full enclave and get rid of all bridges and tunnels in and out?
If New York was hurting for tourists and customers, they'd lower the toll. The defense for what people are calling "indefensible" is that enough people pay the toll that traffic is still a nightmare. If it was indefensible, no one would pay it.
As I understand it, public transport is a viable (toll-free) alternative for (less-affluent) locals. Such that this toll primarily targets the more affluent class and tourists. Given there are limits to capacity for tourists, driving up costs increases revenue per unit of capacity and as it's limited, that's probably a good choice. Not dissimilar to raising prices if you're selling 100% of your production/inventory.
It's probably a pretty good deal for the average new yorker.
It's unbelievable. How can anyone justify spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a bridge or a tunnel just for car usage when many New Yorkers don't even own a car? That's tens of thousands of dollars per resident. I'm glad I don't live in NYC.
Because cars in Manhattan are a blight on livability and safety. There are only a handful of reasons to legitimately have a car in Manhattan; off the top of my head: moving large items, transporting those with mobility issues, getting from specific subway dead zones to other parts, and leaving manhattan altogether. There is an enormous (albeit overloaded and dilapidated) public transit infrastructure allowing people to both move throughout the city and come into the city from basically anywhere in the tri state area. And even if direct transit options into the city aren’t spectacular, you can drive to any of the thousands of park-and-ride locations on the cheap and take public transit from there.
There are legitimate life circumstances that necessitate driving around manhattan, and I would be more than happy to exempt those from congestion pricing. And I have no problem with Taxis and buses and delivery vans operating, as they have high utilization. But private cars cause so many problems in manhattan, including danger to pedestrians (which make up the bulk of people in the city at any given time), noise pollution, air pollution, and inefficiency for legitimate ground transport/logistics, that I have no problem disincentivizing the use of them in Manhattan with large tolls. There’s a certain hubris required to be the only occupant in a vehicle in manhattan when the public transit infrastructure is so expansive and affordable.
And don’t even get me started on all the wasted space dedicated to parking that could be used for public space, business, bicycle lanes, etc...
Everyone keeps talking about Manhattan, but the GWB bridge serves more than Manhattan. I don't have any numbers to back this up, but I would guess the vast amount of traffic over the bridge serves commuters between Jersey and the other boroughs.
I'd actually wager that the vast majority of people commuting in from Jersey work in Manhattan, rather than the other boroughs. I grew up in central Jersey, and everyone I knew who commuted in on NJ Transit (along the Northeast Corridor line) were commuting into Manhattan. If you worked in Queens or Brooklyn, you'd live somewhere on Long Island. If you worked in the Bronx, you'd live in Westchester (or north). Some fraction of people have longer commutes, but my guess is that it would be a tiny one. You are correct, the GWB serves a diverse set of areas (I only take the GWB to get from Jersey to Westchester), but it's not the only means by which cars get into NYC.
Regarding why everyone talks about Manhattan, it's because it's where a huge fraction of people in NYC live and work. While there are only 1.6 million permanent residents of Manhattan, the population during the day swells to around 4 million due to commuters and visitors. The outer boroughs, while busy in their own right, operate on a completely different scale (population actually decreases during the day), because they're so spread out.
Don't forget the other direction. I commute from Queens to Jersey daily so my perspective might be biased. While I don't have to pay the GWB going towards Jersey, I still have to pay the toll going home (along with RFK or Whitestone). Looks like I pay between $400-$600 per month just in tolls.
My apologies on the commute, can't be pleasant to go through all that traffic. I don't think the the GWB tolls are congestion-based though, they're more for maintenance of the infrastructure that hundreds of thousands of people drive over daily. From my understanding of business in NJ, there are relatively few people doing your sort of commute, so perhaps with congestion prices in Manhattan, the amount of wear on the GWB and related infrastructure (along with maintenance costs) might decrease, which could result in reduced GWB tolls.
They can defend it by having good enough public transportation to not need a car in Manhattan. Unless you're carrying something large/heavy, there's no reason to go to Manhattan via car. It's something we Americans aren't used to and don't think about, but basing cities around cars instead of people is a bad idea.
In NYC, it's often faster to take the subway instead of drive.
Was Manhattan "based around cars"? I don't know the specifics but I thought NYC mostly just grew from its roots from a time quite a while before cars. I imagine a city truly based around cars could be made to have much less congestion while still accommodating walkers/bicyclists. More lanes between buildings, with sidewalks replaced by pedestrian bridges so traffic flows with less obstruction, for example. Less intersections and more straight stretches.
No, Manhattan was not based around cars, and that's a good thing. It's what allows for such high population density, and so many unique neighborhoods. Allowing so many people to live comfortably and efficiently in its limited space is what give Manhattan many of its most sought-after features: The food, the diversity, the infrastructure, the walkability. We shouldn't design for cars and accommodate for pedestrians, we should design for pedestrians and accommodate for cars.
There are many cities based around cars exactly as you describe. They're okay, and there are great places in them that you can drive. But it sort of necessitates driving. In these cities, it's harder to just walk out of your apartment and get groceries, or eat at a restaurant, or watch a movie, or go to a pub, because things are much farther away, because of the scale of roads and parking needed for fast car transportation. And that, in turn, decreases population density, increases isolation, and destroys any sense of a neighborhood. It make far, far, far more sense to make places easy to walk to first, and worry about cars second.
I don't think you realize what NYC would be giving up if it were designed the way you suggest. Less intersections and faster traffic + all the parking needed would mean less people, less shops, and most of all less culture. Those roads have to go somewhere. It doesn't matter how many pedestrian bridges you build, designing things around cars means that you need to design everything at the scale of cars. Imagining Manhattan designed around cars and every attraction having individual parking so people can drive there is a nightmare scenario. Times Square: Gone. Street food on every corner: Gone. Small niche shops and restaurants: gone. Because people couldn't walk there easily anymore.
Look at these two satellite images [0]. One is downtown Florence, Italy. The other is an interstate interchange in Atlanta. These two images are at the same scale. Which makes more sense? Which would you rather live in? How much does it matter that driving is hard in the first picture?
I was imagining widening the roads and replacing crosswalks with bridges while holding everything else pretty much constant. I spent a month in a city like the second picture, at a hotel for job training, and it was annoying that I couldn't safely walk right across the street to the stores over there, but if there were just some bridges it would've been fine.
Something else that I've imagined would be cool is a system of skybridges mirroring the sidewalks. Maybe even in that case pedestrian traffic could be removed from the street level, so pedestrians and vehicles would be fully separated, working out best for everyone.
Another interesting idea is a second network of roads on bridges that maybe go through buildings, which has happened a bit in a few cities. Unfortunately both of these ideas are probably too expensive in practice.
I see what you're saying. That seems like an acceptable way to make a city walkable while having faster driving. Another idea is some kind of underground road layer under the city. I think the important thing is keeping as much real estate as possible for spaces where people live, work, and eat. That's what is needed anyway to have the population density to produce the tax revenue sufficient for one of these solutions.
Lots of downvotes but this is actually a decent question. Why is the toll so high, and why don't east river bridges have tolls at all?
The answer has to do with the bridge construction process and ownership. The George Washington bridge was built by a "public authority": The Port Authority of NY & NJ.
As explained in Robert Caro's The Power Broker, the concept of a public authority was to allow a public entity to issue bonds for and manage the construction of a particular project, such as a bridge, with intent to turn the project over to the city once paid off. Other bridges were constructed via authorities that are now owned by the city, and the city chooses not to toll them.
Robert Moses, master governmental hacker of New York State, manipulated the concept of the authority by "renewing" bond issues the year before they expire, giving a single authority (in his case, the Triborough Bridge Authority) large amounts of money, which he then used to complete more public works projects, which could issue more bonds, and so on. The result is that this authority never dissolved, the works were never handed over to the city, and the tolls remain high, basically subsidizing the authority's other projects. He effectively created a public body with huge amounts of money that he could spend however he pleased, resulting in travesties like the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
The Port Authority of NY & NJ, who collects the extortionate $15 toll on the GW Bridge, runs every bridge between NY and NJ, every airport, the PATH train, the airport Airtrains, and One World Trade Center, among other investments.
Effectively, the extremely high GW bridge tolls are subsidizing the PA of NY/NJ's massive losing bet on 1 WTC. And that's why it costs $15.
Oh, we needed the money. :( I live on the OTP on the east side, so GA400 toll didn't hit me. There was a political promise to end the toll when the improvements on 400 were finished. Initially, the DOT wanted to keep the toll booths open to pay for additional improvements (GA400-I285 interchange, expansion of GA400, etc.) but the cries of broken promises ended that plan.
Let us not forget the congestion pricing for the express lanes on I85. The price kept going down and down during the first few months it was around. I seem to recall plans to use congestion pricing for further I75 and GA400 expansions.
I think I've also heard plans for congestion pricing on express lanes on 285 (not sure of the extent of those - I want to say between 75 and 85 on the north side?)
I'm pretty sure Atlanta could use the money. At the very least we could use it to buy salt and plows so that the city doesn't close down for two days after an inch of snow.
As someone living in Brooklyn who drives to NJ regularly, I wonder if this will increase congestion on the Staten Island bound route to NJ. People will dodge the Holland Tunnel to avoid this surcharge.
This is one of the only places in the US where public transportation is kind of good. Many people in NYC don't own a car and don't even know how to drive. It boggles my mind the amount of people complaining about how expensive it is to drive to Manhattan. ...Why did you drive in the first place? Unless you need to carry something large/heavy, there's no real reason to drive there. Just park, take a cab/train there, and once you're there, it's faster than driving to use the subway to get places.
People are stuck in old modes of thinking about the city. When my parents lived in the city during the 80s, it wasn't safe to take the subway. Everybody owned a car, even in Manhattan. Now, none of my (20-something) friends own cars, but I imagine a lot of older people don't want to give it up.
It does seem pretty nice to drive to work rather than cramming into a subway car for a half hour, even if you're stuck in traffic...
I drive to work in traffic, and I would much rather be on a subway. Where I live, there is no public transportation from my house to my office. If I could take a subway, I'd be able to zone out, or read a book, or go on Reddit, etc. for 40 minutes instead of being on constant low-level alert while driving.
Kind of? It can get pretty tight to the point where holding a book up is uncomfortable or not possible due to lack of space.
You only get internet at station stops and not in the tunnels, so it's a little bit tough to read Reddit. I usually get around this by pre-loading a bunch of essays I want to read.
Yeah, you can put on your earbuds and zone out. But it's dark down there, and given how short the days are in the winter, it doesn't feel nice to be trapped underground for so long. I'd honestly rather take a reliable bus (as if these even exist) in the morning.
Surprised that NYC doesn't have service in tunnels. CTA has LTE everywhere nowadays. Granted, most of CTA's network is above ground and there are only ~20 miles of underground tracks...
> Surprised that NYC doesn't have service in tunnels.
They don't? Damn, then the internet and telecom and providers in the States are really f*cking their customers up, pardon my French, but that's the gentlest way to put it. Let's say that I can understand that the US is a big country and that you cannot lay fiber over such big of an area as dense as it happens in certain parts of Europe, but to not have metro tunnel coverage for biggest cities in the world is just laughable. The Eastern European capital from where I'm writing this comment has had such a service for at least 5 years, if not more.
> The Eastern European capital from where I'm writing this comment has had such a service for at least 5 years, if not more.
I won't deny that the agency responsible for New York transit is incorrigibly corrupt, along with the New York State government that is ostensibly responsible for holding them accountable.
That said, there is cell service in most stations (I think they finished the rollout recently, so it may be in all stations now). You don't get cell service in all tunnels, but that's because the New York subway system is very old. For comparison, that's the case in London as well: you get cell service in most of the below-ground stations on the Underground, but not necessarily in all of the tunnels.
London will have phone service next year. The previous time public negotiations were discussed, something like 5-8 years ago, the phone companies weren't willing to pay the installation cost Transport for London (i.e. the government) demanded.
I can see the price to install the equipment being very high — confined space, only a few hours overnight in which to work, and many metal-lined tunnels which probably mean a custom solution is necessary.
I'm gonna guess you also live in Bucharest. Not really a fair comparison, since our Internet is so absurdly (considering nothing else works properly) amazing [1]. ^_^ Jokes aside, yeah, that's what you get when there's a lot of money at play and a longstanding monopoly [2].
Yeah, I think both Orange and Vodafone only started taking tunnel coverage seriously once RCS&RDS started providing free WiFi inside the stations for their residential cable and internet subscribers. Until then doing Internet coverage inside all the tunnels was presented to us, customers, as “too difficult”
As long as you always return to your vehicle on time. Otherwise that free parking turns into a $115 fine followed by a $185 tow plus the $10 Uber ride to get to the NYPD impound lot downtown.
Source: Just got towed. I was fined 15 minutes after I was in violation and towed 5 minutes afterwards.
parking on most streets in NYC, including mine, is free. you would only get towed due to alternate-side parking rules for cleaning. lots of people who don't live anywhere near here (or even in manhattan) take advantage. some building supers actually perform the paid service of parking and retrieving residents' cars in whatever street spots they can find around the city. we need a residential parking permit system to bring control back to neighborhoods and revenue to NYC. the city council has passed this plan but it was killed in Albany because upstate commuters demand free parking in the city.
It's amazing how habit-forming driving seems to be. A friend was recently talking about a colleague of his who lives right next to a tram stop and works right next to another stop on the same tram line. 20 minute tram journey, tram every five minutes at peak time. And instead they drive an hour to work at rush hour, because they're from a rural area and are used to driving. Makes no sense to me at all...
I think you have to live in big city and have taken public transportation on a daily basis, to understand the frustations, the dalays, the insecurity, the smell, the crowdness, and the freedom reducing of it.
If you don't want any of that, ride a bike. Of course all the fools driving in the city center make that a a rather perilous undertaking, which is why congestion charges like these are desperately needed.
I've been taking public transport in a largish city (1.5 million people) for most of my life. I really don't get the problem (except with certain infrequent and unreliable bus routes, but I'd hold that against those routes, not public transport in general). On the other hand, I'd hate to be dependent on a car.
I have been taking public transportation for my commute for the past three years and I never want to go back to driving. The stress reduction of avoiding traffic is immense.
I've been using public transportation every day since I've been 18 (before that, I mostly biked), and I just have to disagree. Transit is so much more freedom than driving or biking for me. I don't have to care about where I park, or the bike getting stolen, or about being stuck in traffic. Whenever I need to get anywhere, I go to the next spot, wait 5min, and just hop onto the next one. It's amazing how much freedom this gives me.
I lived in a medium-sized city in the middle of the US for several years (transit not viable option for 95% of trips). Now I live in NY and almost only take transit (every now and then I'll take a taxi/lyft). So I have about 5 years of experience with both lifestyles and I appreciate almost every single of aspect of NY/transit better. Sure delays suck but I just listen to my podcasts and chill, much preferable to gridlock on the interstate. "Crowds" you have to deal with either way, what do you think causes all that traffic? And, I feel I have a lot more freedom. Never have to park far away, never have to remember where I left my car, never have to pay for it or worry about it breaking down or getting broken into, never get it towed, never tempted to drive it after one too many drinks. I can go everywhere I could ever want just as easily or more.
I can’t imagine where you came up with that. In 1980, 80% of Manhattan households did NOT own a car. There has never been a time where the statement “everybody owned a car” was remotely true in Manhattan.
Yeah, my parents moved from NYC to Dallas in 1979 (a few years before I was born). Driving everywhere was something they had to get used to. When I was a little kid we took a few trips to NYC to visit extended family, and to prepare me for how different it was I remember my mom telling me that Manhattan may be the only place in the country where most people don't drive anywhere or even own cars. That had to have been in the late '80s, and it was based on memories my mom had of the '70s.
In my experience as a Brooklynite, the time trade-offs really depend on the time of day. Outside of commuting hours, taking a car is usually faster than taking a subway for me.
There are, of course, other benefits of the subway, including lower costs and the possibility of doing something else like reading.
Transit advocates like to point to New Yorkers as evidence that not everyone likes to drive, but I think NYC shows exactly the opposite to be the case, which is that people will put up with insane amounts of inconvenience to avoid public transit.
The fact that even a quarter of Manhattanites own a car demonstrates that people are willing to absorb enormous costs to continue driving. (A much higher percentage than that would, I'm sure, still like to own a car in Manhattan, but simply can't afford it.)
Many New Yorkers own cars for weekend trips or recreation, not commuting— if you've ever seen how long it takes for many cars to get dug out and moved in NYC after a snowstorm when alternate-side parking is suspended, this becomes very clear.
That represents an even bigger devotion to car ownership that does an insistence on commuting by car! These are people for whom car ownership is totally unnecessary, but who are willing to put up with enormous costs and hassles in order to keep a car available.
If you pay for a parking spot, it's not much of a hassle, just an expense. Renting cars can be fairly annoying and time consuming, especially when everyone else is renting them during the weekend.
The percentage of private vehicles on London roads is lower relative to other big cities. London streets are packed with buses, delivery vans, black cabs and minicabs.
> There was a 37 percent increase in the number of passengers entering the congestion charging zone by bus during charging hours in the first year.
> “Greenhouse gas emission was reduced by 16 per cent from 2002 to 2003. NOX and PM10 within the congestion charging zone decreased by 18 per cent and 22 per cent, respectively, by 2004."
> The scheme generated £122 million net in 2005/2006.
> By 2006, the congestion charging zone had reduced congestion in central London by 26 per cent from its 2002 levels.
> There have been between 40 and 70 percent fewer accidents that resulted in personal injury within the zone.
There are so many exemptions and discounts--e.g., for taxis and private hires and residents---that only a fraction of traffic is charged.
Also, London has changed its road network a lot to favor buses, pedestrians and cyclists. Speeds today are about what they were in 2002 before pricing, but there is more capacity for other modes.
Also there is tons of road construction in London all the time. That harms capacity a lot.
London has something similar, the congestion charge. Has helped somewhat, and def makes regular driving in central London a 'you did what?' thing. It's lifted on the weekend, which is nice if you want to pop to IKEA or whatever.
I think they're planning on pushing something similar all the way out to the north circular, and maybe the M25 for heavily polluting traffic.
Worth noting that the CC in London operates for 15 years now. I’m sure there is a wealth of data that can be analysed, and I’m even more sure that there are a number of studies and papers that have explored its usefulness and positive/negative impact on traffic/economy/environment/public transportation.
The limit for polluting traffic has been in place for a few years, it's called the Low Emission Zone. Only some larger vehicles are affected, and the fee is either £100 or £200 — I assume the idea is that you can move your rarely-used special construction equipment, but for pretty much everything else one should either upgrade or replace the vehicle: https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/low-emission-zone
Since surprisingly nobody has mentioned it in the comments here yet, we have a similar scheme in place in London, and have done for quite some time. It's only for the most central/congested zone and has had a hugely beneficial impact on congestion.
That being said, it almost never makes sense to drive a car inside central London anyway as the public transport is very reliable and has almost full coverage, and it's dealing with a very different problem in the first place (old horse and cart windy roads adjusting for the modern age).
I find concepts of road space rationing like in Beijing to be more fair.[1]
This plan for Manhattan will obviously only stop people with low financial power from driving, although they might already have paid for these roads via taxes and duties.
São Paulo has a similar system in place since 1996, where each vehicle has one day a week where they are banned from using the roads during peak times.
My understanding is that it doesn't really help that much because even with the rationing the tendency is still to saturate the roads with cars. São Paulo is one of the cities with the worst traffic congestion in the world. Additionally, rich people can bypass the rationing by purchasing additional vehicles.
> In a key change from past efforts, drivers would not have to pay if they entered Manhattan by all but two of the city-owned East River bridges, which are now free to cross, as long as they bypassed the congestion zone.
The West side should get the same benefits.
They should also increase the motorcycle toll discount back to 20% like it was years ago.
Weighing in as a Manhatto who works in midtown -- I welcome this! But another fruitful option is curbing the very worst behavior attendant to driving. Blocking the box -- apparently being policed heavily in Queens! [0] -- is typically addressed (near times square) by having traffic cops in the streets guiding traffic. How about tickets that scale up by orders of magnitude for each repeat offense, i.e. $1 for the first offense and $10K for the fifth and after that you lose your license?
The next thing I'd want to tackle is rampant honking. Not sure how to police this but it should probably cost $10 per second that your horn is making noise. that seems to me like a fair pricing of the externalities produced. And if you're honking to save someone's life i.e. if they're walking into traffic while looking at their cell phone -- ok that's a tough one.
In theory there is a $350 fine for needless honking in New York. In practice this is never enforced, and five years ago the city took down all the "no honking" signs.
Manhattan is 2 miles by 14 miles. Unless you are moving something heavy, there really is no reason not to use the Subway, it's faster, cheaper, and runs all night and all day.
Not only that, the majority of New Yorkers do not own cars. I don't even know how to drive. I do, however, take buses and ride my bike. (In NYC you'll get ticketed if you ride your bike on the sidewalk )
In NYC, real estate is extremely limited. Why should such real estate, which is paid for with city taxes benefit so few?
East-West across the park can be a bit of a pain on the train. If you're trying to get from the Upper West Side to the Upper East Side, a bus is going to be a faster choice than taking a train to midtown, transferring, and taking a train back up.
Is it wrong? I don't know, usually it is not as bad. But when it got that high and people were still jumping into the lane one has to wonder what's going on.
Granted the nearby counties are the wealthiest in the country, so maybe it shouldn't be that shocking.
This framing of the issue is typical for the mainstream press, however readers should note that this scheme changes nothing about the cost of driving. It only changes who pays, and how. Today everybody pays the costs associated with driving in Manhattan, even though driving in Manhattan is only practiced by a tiny minority of people. Congestion pricing will shift part of that burden to the people who cause it, which is perfectly fair.
Centers of work and business go wherever the majority goes. They're driving in the city because they don't want to live in the city but they want to work there.
Maybe it went over your head. The point that people live outside the city evaporates when their driving is useful to people inside the city. Only if they were driving through without stopping would there be validity to the idea that outsiders are taking advantage of the city.
Their presence is potentially useful but their driving is not. Each person who takes an empty seat on a bus into the city instead of driving is just as useful to people inside the city without causing traffic.
There's a massive amount of "driving through" Manhattan. People in Queens / Brooklyn / Long Island heading anywhere west of Manhattan can be a cause of through traffic. The entire point of congestion pricing is to setup incentives so that people drive north or south of midtown rather than through it.
From my parent's house in CT you can get to Grand Terminal in NYC by:
- Taking public transport only: 30 minutes of walking to the nearest bus stop (bus only on the hour btw). 20 minutes on the bus. 2 hrs 30 minutes on a train to Grand Central. All assuming bus and train time line up (they won't since the bus is hourly).
- Driving and taking a train: Drive for 30 minutes and take a 2 and a half hour train ride to Grand Central.
- Drive: 2 h 20 min at 5 o'clock on a Friday. Google maps shows 1.5 - 2hrs is average.
It's foolish to count driving to the train station in CT. Any time the traffic is minimal into NYC, the parking at train stations is also empty. Really everything you cited is fairly naive for getting into and out of the city. Parking is ~$40 a trip unless you can get a street spot (which can be really hard to count on in most neighborhoods).
The optimal path is to drive to a train station close to NYC that has frequent service, park and take the train for the last bit. I used to use the Greenwich train station and it worked well. The same is true from New Jersey, you can park at Metropark or get dropped off in Seacaucus.
Source: I lived in CT for 3 years, lived in Manhattan for the last 5 years, bought a car and keep it in Manhattan for the last 6 months.
It's foolish to speak so brashly since you don't even know which part of CT I'm referring to.
They aren't near enough to any train stations to make the trip faster by switching stations. Your "brilliant" drive to a closer train station idea is still a 2 and a half hour total trip time for reaching the same place.
And if your commute daily you're not going to be guessing where you park, you'll probably have a monthly garage.
This all goes back to the parent comment which was just being obtuse. In theory no one "needs" to do anything, we can just sit around all day until we waste away.
People who "need" to commute in their cars really want to commute in their cars. No one is saying it's cheap, but it's a right that people have, and it's not hard to imagine that for some people commuting from NYC to CT daily, doing it by car is preferable to public transit.
Your observation is true but also misleading. NYC residents also pay for the subway, bike lanes, and buses regardless of if they use them. Additionally, there are special taxes targeted at motorists like vehicle registration, bridge tolls, gas taxes, and sales tax on vehicles. I wouldn't be surprised if motorists were generously subsidized, but I also wouldn't say it's obvious without some accounting.
1) is who is actually causing the congestion in NYC - its my understanding that the bulk of the congestion is caused by non-NYC residents
2) a large unaddressed component is parking - the large amount of free parking available, especially to non-residents, creates a distorting subsidy in favor of commuting in many areas.
Thanks, that is a great contribution to the discussion. I hope in the coming years these charging schemes will be so common that cataloging them becomes impossible!
I won't take a position on this plan until I see the details. There are plenty of neighborhoods south of 60th that aren't congested. And congestion varies greatly by time of day. It would be pretty unfortunate if entities which aren't actually contributing to congestion get swept into this scheme. Delivery trucks need to service businesses in busy areas, but they usually operate in the early morning when traffic is light. Likewise, taxis and rideshares that operate during off-off hours are filling in for the reduced service of the MTA without actually contributing to congestion.
A congestion pricing scheme that increases the efficiency of the total transportation system would be excellent, but I am skeptical. Congestion, whether on the subway or the road (or even the sidewalk), is already a negative feedback loop that encourages seeking alternate routes/times. If people are taking congested roadways, they are doing so _in spite_ of all the other options available to them in a city with extensive public transit. I am curious what kind of data informs this plan and whether it is primarily a solution to transit times or just another source of revenue for the MTA.
The article claims there are fewer cars entering the city than a year ago and yet traffic has gotten worse! Seems we can predict the outcome of additional incentives against driving: even worse traffic!
We've been implementing these schemes across Europe for a long time. In my home country, both Stockholm and Gothenburg has them and they're unpopular but actually do a lot of good. My parents have finally started taking the train and the tram again which was something they never did before and the data shows that people are driving less in both cities now.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 248 ms ] threadOtherwise poor people are subsidizing roads reserved for the rich that they can't even use.
correct, but they haven't been taxed for something they can't afford to use anyway, so they are better off.
Specifically, I'd be worried about driving away tourists and commercial traffic. I doubt a lot of well-off locals would start driving in Manhattan if there were a congestion tax and less traffic, they'd keep taking Uber.
Welcome to the state of infrastructure everywhere, but especially in big cities like NYC.
"In turn, that means drivers can enter Midtown and Lower Manhattan by two bridges without paying as long as they go directly to the F.D.R. Drive along the East River and then continue on it until they are out of the congestion zone."
I believe what they're saying is that you still enter the congestion zone via those two bridges but you can stay on FDR drive and exit the zone without getting on interior streets [ADDED: and not get charged. FDR Drive is the road that runs along the East River.]
Previous proposals had the congestion zone covering a larger portion of downtown, which meant paying the toll even if you were just passing through on an arterial roadway.
New systems allow finer grained control of where the congestion zone begins. So, a small number of arterial roads/bridges can be left outside the zone, and toll-free.
There is a narrowmindedness on the part of opponents of both congestion pricing and surge pricing, because they are ignoring the obvious point that if they weren't paying the fees they'd be paying in terms of time.
Not to mention that congestion has other negatives, like pollution. Infrastructure needs to get paid for somehow. It is fair when it is paid for by the people benefiting from it.
Let's just say New York does not have a great history of spending on infrastructure.
A recent New York Times piece, mentioned that the price of labor on infrastructure projects is 5 times more expensive then anywhere else in the world.
It just blows my mind that people in the NYC area are willing to put up with that type of congestion.
Doesn't Sidewalk Labs( alphabet company) have an office in Manhattan? Where are they in terms of solving traffic problems?
For instance, when infrastructure is built, it causes surrounding land values and rents to rise. It is possible to use that rising value to pay for the infrastructure, via a special assessment.
There is also an issue where the people with the worst infrastructure would be paying the most under congestion pricing, which means that it would be important to prioritize improvements to the most congested areas.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
The costs aren't high because of cost of living, they're high because of cushy agreements with workers unions and construction companies, among a myriad other things.
Further, it's vastly more expensive to build a road inside a city than in the middle of nowhere. NYC's infrastructure is so extensive it's makes adding more incredibly difficult. That is then compounded by bureaucracy, corruption, and entrenched interests but not more so than most other large city's.
$15 to use the GWB and anything going to Long Island or NJ is ridiculous and Verrizano is $17 and that is the the highest cost for a bridge in the nation. GWB is a major interstate and you have to swing up to the Tapanzee or go further north Fishkill Bridge to get lower fees.
Now add the $11 fee and my cost is $26 just to drive to one place in Manhattan.
When the train cost $27 round trip (off peak) or $38.50 (peak) it is a pain. Also if you have business in NYC you are stuck with either losing the whole day or half a day just to get there.
Now Chicago, Atlanta and LA have bad traffic it doesn't cost you a hundred bucks to commute for a week.
So move to the city and enjoy a shorter (and cheaper) commute. Of course, since you're currently living 50 miles outside the city, the increase in rent would be much more than $100, so you're still enjoying the cheaper end of the bargain.
> Now Chicago, Atlanta and LA have bad traffic it doesn't cost you a hundred bucks to commute for a week.
With parking, you could easily pay that much in other U.S. cities. In addition, they all have pretty terrible options for public transit compared to New York, so I'm not really keen on using them as a reference point.
And neither could my boss (a director) or his boss (the MD of a subsidiary of RELEX)
Only counting gas and parking it would be ~$50+/week in my smallish town/city living 10-20 miles away. If you add in all the other car costs it would quickly reach $100/week.
That's what you get when you want to live that far out. I pay $50/week to go from Essex County, NJ. That was about what my commute cost me (driving) in Dallas.
> When the train cost $27 round trip (off peak) or $38.50 (peak) it is a pain. Also if you have business in NYC you are stuck with either losing the whole day or half a day just to get there.
What train costs this much? The closest I can find is the Port Jervis Metro-North line, coming all the way from Port Jervis (which is way the fuck out there). I wouldn't do that commute for any price unless I had to. If I did, I sure as hell wouldn't buy per-day tickets; I'd get the monthly pass for $488.
Now there was a time when I was 19 and the last train left at 11 PM I the schedule said 1 AM kind of sucked and the next train was at 5 AM. It was with friends from LA and their flight was at 9 AM the next day.
You are on the trains schedule so I will have to wait for the train to leave. Usually if I had a quick stop in the city I would make other stops coming back home. Most people HATE driving in NYC and refuse to do it so I am not sure how much this will help.
Put another way, with congestion pricing, you have two options:
* Pay $27-$38.50 (total) for a four hour round-trip on public transit
* Pay $26 (not including gas) for a faster trip in a private car, probably about two hours round-trip[0]
I'm having a hard time sympathizing with this as a problem, especially since you're coming from 50 miles away. I know people who commute every day from Kingston to Brooklyn using public transit, and that's a full 100 miles.
[0] With no traffic, Kingston to Manhattan (100 miles) is about two hours by car each way, so I'll assume that your travel would take two hours for a round trip.
I grew up in Danbury, CT and probably 20% of the city works in NYC and I now live in Allentown, PA and know several that work there full time and it takes 30 minutes to get to a train station to NYC.
I had one full time job in Manhattan when I was 18 and commuted everyday on the train. I also would have contracted work to do some music or video production and need to be there around 3 PM until 11 PM to 4 AM. So there are certain things that the $11 fee just makes it harder for people to do work.
You'd probably see some increasing density in nearby areas that are still full of 2-3 story buildings. You'd see some parking lots reconsidered. And you'd see people moving to other cities. You'd probably see a whole lot of other creative solutions, too, to the fact that NYC is now allowing its problem of too many cars to be felt by those driving the cars.
Now NYC wants to add an additional charge to each and every ride through it's most populated region? Seems unfair, especially to those who make less. Some might argue that those in the lower incomes probably don't have cars in a city like NYC or even live in Manhattan at all due to it's cost. And they may be right. But it's also a matter of principle. Seems immoral to me to charge people to use what they are already taxed for multiple times (direct gas tax and some form if income/property tax is used to pay for road maintenance). It also seems especially unfair to tax them to use what is essentially a public good that is already paid for. The tax is simply to incentivize a specific activity (i.e. not driving in Manhattan).
Should we also tax everyone who walks through the streets of Mid-town? Those streets are insanely crowded and I hate being there. Maybe we should tax anyone walking on sidewalks?
Yes, they would be paying with time instead of fees. But many people have time and not so much money and they would probably much rather give up their time instead because it's what they have in a relatively larger amount.
Your argument can probably be fairly recast as "everyone should have to pay equal costs in time if they want to use the road". And then never mind that a congestion charge is more predictable than sitting in congestion.
You can even take a helicopter some places.
Example: It's really hard to get your child into certain public schools in NYC. Why not start charging $3k a year per child (much less than private schools) at high demand schools in order to lessen the overcrowding of those schools? There are viable alternatives to paying (less in-demand schools), most lower income people are already not able to send their kids to in-demand schools for reasons of geography, and after all, parents choose to have children, they should pay for the services and infrastructure to support them.
That example seems to essentially be the same as what is proposed for congestion pricing, with many parallel arguments. Why is congestion pricing okay when applying the same philosophy to other matters of public good isn't?
(by the way, I'm a reluctant supporter of congestion pricing, and not of what I proposed for schools, but I struggle with why I believe one is okay and the other is not)
So, the city would not be surge charging for a necessity, just a preference for a high demand school. Likewise, most people would prefer to drive if they could, but the physical limitations of the system require that most people take public transport.
Sometimes this is also a preference for safety, as I learned attending k-12 in NYC. And sometimes the safety isnt a result of bad students, but a result of the entire system just allocating more resources to some schools over others.
NYC is different in that the city government covers rich and poor people and can't legally separate the two so a different measure develops, such as entrance exams where kids whose parents are able to hire tutors perform better on. We can't have a hugely unequal society and expect certain bubbles in it to pretend as if those who have advantages aren't using them.
The good schools are going to be filled no matter what, so trying to assign them the fairest way possible makes sense.
This claim seems probably true for university and probably false for kindergarten?
Some of the youngest schoolchildren already know how to read, count, say the alphabet, listen, and so on. Their parents read books to/with them, buy educational toys and so on. Other children have to learn all this at school. The parents of the children in the first group would prefer that the other children were similar.
Parents who care more are also more likely to get problems solved -- whether that's a problem their own child has (e.g. a learning disability) or with the school.
So in general, the quality of the teaching is often less important than the children and their parents.
...not that it doesn't happen already. Don't most public schools charge parents for meals at school, after-school activities, and equipment if they join the varsity sports team?
It's not a logical argument, it's values.
This is the level on which this conversation needs to take place - what's important? Are some things more important than others? It's not strictly about dollars and cents, or how to pay for it.
For what it's worth I think they're about equally important. There's no such thing as "an alternate road system", you either have one, or you don't. And I also think there's a place for people who don't have kids, who make a considered decision not to fund schools but want good roads so they can go places and get to work.
This is meat and potatoes politics: tradeoffs, values, what we think is important and are willing to pay for.
Wouldn't libertarian philosophy, taken to its logical end, imply private schools and private roads, where you pay whoever owns the school/road to use it?
But if we're going to have some public schools and roads, there's more of a moral principle behind the former than the latter. I would be uneasy with congestion pricing public schools because the moral principle they continue to exist on (nb: not that they were founded on, as far as I know) is equality of opportunity. That goes away the instant you start allowing wealthy people to fill up the best schools that otherwise non-wealthy peoples' children could have attended. It might as well be a private school.
That is correct, though the government still has a major role to play in enforcing their citizens rights. If a private company were to build a poor-quality and dangerous road, this would amount to an act of violence towards the drivers, thus the government would need to ensure that standards are met. If education is defined as a right, the government would need to ensure that private schools are meeting the standard held in it's definition.
Of course this is a simplification, but in a way I view these services as already being "privatised", except one organisation is granted a monopoly: the government! They indeed have some of the same conflict-of-interest that would scare some off private corporations replacing them; we all know that local politicians can be very selective in which stretches of roads receive maintenance, especially coming up to election time.
I think it would be a fair statement that libertarians favor a strong family unit (certainly not its alternative, the dystopian sci-fi separation of children from parents at birth.) Households run in ways that are almost entirely communist. So why should this non-profit collaboration stop at the front door? I don't think a libertarian has to be opposed to every unit of government that dares to call itself government.
So let's say you abolish your municipal government, but you don't have money to pay for private schools, security, road building and welfare. Maybe you have a neighborhood watch for security, a group of neighbors who fill potholes, and a church that provides rudimentary welfare and schooling. Is that government? Maybe it seems similar, but libertarians would argue that government is a monopoly on force, and that doesn't sound like what's happening here.
But maybe a few people in town saved money to buy some livestock, and now they're having problems with coyote/mountain lion attacks. The obvious solution is to have the neighborhood watch carry guns, if they weren't already. After all, if they're already out, may as well kill two birds with one stone. So now you have a neighborhood watch who's also the gun-carrying livestock protection. You can't help but notice that now the neighborhood watch is the only guy carrying a gun around, and that probably makes you less likely to mess with him. Is that a monopoly on force yet?
What about if there are enough herders in town to start paying that guy full-time, and he's used for neighborhood watch too (since he's already out, after all?)
Hopefully you can see where I'm going; people will naturally band together to solve community problems, and that needn't always be via a for-profit venture. I think it's a misunderstanding of libertarian ideology to suppose that you have to be opposed to all levels of government, and it's a misunderstanding by those inside and outside of that movement.
When you realize that most of the popular functions of government are performed by the local (or maybe state) governments, you have to think libertarians could gain a lot of support by re-framing themselves in that way, and it doesn't seem like they would be compromising.
>Libertarians clearly want less power concentrated at a central level
The phrase "less power" is a little vague; to be precise, libertarians want the government to enforce the rights of the citizens, and to otherwise leave them alone. The population does this by collectively granting authority to the government to deal out force legally; the only exception, for the most part, is an individual using force in self-defence. This is the fundamental principle, I believe, on which libertarians base their thinking.
>I think it would be a fair statement that libertarians favor a strong family unit
Absolutely. Though, at the same time, I would wager than purists would not support government legislation that specifically favours the traditional family unit, tax-breaks etc.
>Households run in ways that are almost entirely communist. So why should this non-profit collaboration stop at the front door?
In order for a society to even attempt to be unified, we must first agreed on a set of axioms, shared-truths. We may take for granted that the bond an individual has with their own kin is stronger than that with others. While we can imagine an entirely communistic network where one's personal wealth is equally shared amongst all, it practically cannot work because humans are simply not built that way. There is enough historical data to suggest that it cannot be done. It is morally untenable because it relies on forcefully compelling people to share their resources, where it is given voluntarily in a healthy family setting.
Furthermore, it is debatable wether or not libertarians recuse themselves from their responsibility to be a force for good in the world, and to be charitable; they merely ask to not be forcefully compelled to do so, as this violates the non-aggression principle. The success of the libertarian approach to charity hinges on lessened taxation and regulation creating an environment of unparalleled prosperity and abundance, in which communities will humanely seek to better the world around them.
I think my above points about the governments role in dealing out force legally, which addresses much of the rest of your post. Empowering local and state government is certainly and immediate goal of the libertarian movement.
I think the real root of the problem is that congestion pricing is never okay in matters of public good, we've just conditioned ourselves to believe that infrastructure is this special case of impossible problem to solve, so our terrible workaround to this artificial problem sometimes seems begrudgingly reasonable in context.
Which is why, if you took the exact same logic and applied it to almost anything else, the public would be outraged.
Supply and demand solves itself. The solution is staring right back at you any time you drive around a city at 5PM local. The funding could be solved by taking more money out of general revenue from income and other taxes. It's not too far a stretch from where we are now.
The argument for congestion pricing could be framed as frustration with either of those two components. First, some people want to pay for their use in dollars instead of hours. Second, some people would rather target the users of the public good to recoup the enormous costs of it. Personally, I try to opt out to the maximum extent because I find the time cost unacceptable, and I would avoid the monetary cost for the same reason. And given the risk of runaway time cost or runaway money cost for a rare trip, I'd rather keep the time. If nothing else, my loss aversion would make me avoid driving like the plague after paying a high toll.
We prefer bakeries to bread lines, and food is arguably more important to life than driving. So why should we want the bread line equivalent when it comes to driving? As far as I can tell, it's because that's the system we're used to, and change is hard.
That is never an acceptable reason to neglect infrastructure.
By your logic, we should never build hospitals because building hospitals 'creates' sick people. We should never build public water systems, since that would 'create' sewage. We should never roll out faster broadband internet, because people will simply 'waste' the bandwidth.
Yes, induced demand is a concept that exists. But it's a gross misunderstanding of that concept to use it as an excuse to undersupply infrastructure capacity.
> The solution is (more) mass transit
I agree, that is one way to help the problem. Notice though, that it's not congestion fees on public right of way, and that it is additional infrastructure (the kind you just claimed would not work because it would create more demand).
But all countries have road congestion issues, to my knowledge. It’s an intrinsic feature of road networks. There‘s also a lot more variance than with schools: roads are sometimes empty sometimes full. School attendance is static through the year. (Which suggests an optimal road price would actually be more like a surge, and vary through the day.)
This is not the case for schools.
If you just moved to Boerum Hill and paid cash for a $5,000,000 brownstone and converted it into a single family home, I don't see why not.
Take that money and put it toward improving the various segregated NYC schools that you used your money to avoid.
We have congestion pricing for schools. Try buying a house near one of the good elementary schools in DC or Chicago.
Note that this still isn't a libertarian approach, as I, hypothetically residing in such a district but sending my hypothetical children to a private school, would still be paying for this service that I am not using; I would be paying for the right to use this but not the actual use of it. It's basic taxation but on a hyperlocal scale.
For example, we already charge drivers for the privilege of driving: annual license fees, mandated insurance, gasoline taxes, etc. Congestion fees/taxes are simply an extension of the costs associated with the driving privilege.
With respect to schools, we already have a de facto congestion charge, in the form of housing prices near desirable schools. In many states, property taxes near desirable schools are also higher to reflect the greater desirability of the neighborhood.
I find this conversation very interesting - first, the thought provoking notion from your parent that supporters of congestion pricing invoke a "libertarian but only for this" exception that they wouldn't apply to other goods like schools.
Then your (obvious) reply that driving is not a right, but a privilege.
I would counter that while driving is certainly a privilege, the roads themselves are a right, or a public good, comparable to schools. So regardless of what hoops you have to jump through to purchase and license your car, once jumped, the roads are analogous to the schools.
FWIW, I am personally enthusiastic about congestion pricing and have heard nothing but good things about its deployment in London. I would like very much to have it considered here in San Francisco.
Transportation is the public good. Roads are one means of providing it, but there are others, like public transit. It's up to the government to determine how best to provide that public good given existing constraints in funds, time, land area for roads and other transportation infrastructure, environmental considerations, etc. They've apparently determined that the distribution of modes is suboptimal, and are creating economic incentives to shift it and better pay for it, but ultimately people will still be able to get places one way or another.
FWIW, roads were for people first, not cars.
That isn't true. They are for people. First people in wagons, then people in cars. But always for people.
That's not obvious, since it depends on the state and even the district.
In districts that determine enrollment geographically, a child does have the right to go their local high school if they are within the zone assigned to that school. This has been a contentious issue in districts in CA and NY when they redraw school feeder zones (usually when opening up new schools or closing non-performant schools).
[Note that like all rights, it can be limited, if for example the student gets suspended or expelled for disciplinary issues. This is similar in context to the prohibition on firearm ownership by felons.]
So, separate but equal then?
The same can't be said of charging for in-demand school places - from a collectivist perspective, such a policy would be read as punishing poorer families for aspiration and disincentivizing social mobility. It's plausible that essentially the same policy could be reframed by redistributing funding from higher-performing to lower-performing schools and allowing or requiring affluent parents to make up the deficit.
Congestion pricing is hopefully geared to be lower or zero at non peak-hours. That is, people who must drive at 8am can do that for a fee, and those that can leave it until 10am get it cheaper. In the school comparison it’s not a privilege but a right, and also you don’t just “do it later” you only get one education which can be really important for your future life. That said, to really ensure social mobility you also can’t have “school districts” where land/house prices depend on school quality.
We don't even let people from outside the city send their kids to school there.
Good question. Will we see sayings like "Save Road Neutrality"? Net neutrality is something that prevents ISPs from practicing a form of congestion pricing (zero rating, charge more for certain packets, etc...), yet the death of net neutrality has been likened to the death of the internet.
One of things I struggle with is aligning my belief system consistently across the board. It definitely leads to some challenging internal conversations.
I also think that there are reasons to avoid it with schooling even if the educational outcomes are the same -- I think separating schools into "can/will pay" and "can't/won't pay" would be bad for social integration/cohesion.
Further, a congestion charge applied to road usage is probably, partially, intended to discourage use altogether. That clearly isn't the case for schools.
Public education causes positive externalities: educated populace, a third party to help ensure kids are well taken care of, encouraging people to have children who will grow up to continue society, etc.
Even people who aren't making direct use of public education receive the benefit from it, so it makes sense to encourage it as broadly as possible, not to try to restrict people from it.
It's okay to believe public schools should be free and still support congestion pricing. Congestion pricing has demonstrated that it works at solving road traffic externalities. In London it has saved many lives from reduced accidents, both in and around the charging zone. In Stockholm it has reduced asthma attacks substantially. The New York subway needs lots of upgrades and congestion pricing will pay for some of them (although it would be nice if they could get their costs under control).
Public schools are doing fine being free and paid for by taxes. By way of fairness, I guess one could argue that since every kid by law has to go to school they should be free. But I think we actually have the free system simply because it has worked for a long time. There are problems with education quality in the US, but they aren't due to how schools are paid for. We know that because there are better schools in other countries that are still free. By contrast, downtown streets are as crowded and polluting and dangerous as they are mainly because they are free.
As someone who moved from the Los Angeles area and enjoys driving (sans gridlock), it personally seems bananas to me to be driving in the city unless it's a cab/bus/freight/handicap vehicle.
more cars on the road == worse for me
more educated people == better for me
That said, I wouldn't necessarily oppose a congestion fee for schools, especially if that money was used to replicate the success of desirable schools in non-desirable schools.
Although in reality I don't think feeding more money into our archaic school system is the answer, it needs to be reengineered from the ground up, but thats a totally different conversation.
Whereas we associate having children and schooling with positive externalities -- the creation of an educated workforce that will keep our country strong and prosperous in the next decades. So we intuit that if people responded to the tax by having fewer kids or unschooling the kids, that would be bad for society. (I personally don't actually think that public school produces positive externalities but I'm extremely unusual in that belief).
The other complication is that "good schools" are really the schools with the best students and best parents. With road congestion toll you are paying for an inherently limited resource -- wide, paved right-of-ways enabling leading connecting population hubs. Whereas with the limited number of "good" schools in NYC, the inherently limited resource is the good students themselves. So a "good school" tax is essentially charging good students to be around people like themselves, which is kind of a weird thing todo.
so, I think you are confusing people that believe that markets are useful tools with people who believe that markets are things that decide what is most ethical (which is, I think, what you mean by 'libertarian' in this context.)
That's the thing. I (and many people) believe that markets are good tools in many (but not all) situations for organizing production and distributing goods. I don't believe that using a market to distribute goods organize production is any more or less ethical than using any other method for deciding those things, any more than I think that using a drill or a saw when building something is an ethical choice, (I mean, except to the extent that avoidable suffering is caused by using tools that are grossly mismatched to the goal)
I think markets are great for matching up workers to jobs and schedules... and that's what we're doing, largely, with congestion pricing. If it costs a lot to get a worker to place x at time y.... well, that should be factored into the cost of whatever that worker is doing; because of this, I support congestion pricing.
I think markets would be terrible for allocating public school slots, because the whole point of having public schools is to see to it that everyone has some minimum level of education... and to give those who are smart and/or ambitious a chance of climbing the ladder, even if they came from poor families. Markets would produce results that moved in the opposite of those goals, that's why we have public schools rather than relying on a private school system in the first place.
"The median household income of those with wheels is more than double that of those without - $85,000 compared with $40,630." [1]
Do you really think someone who is "poor" can afford "UP TO 12 HOURS $31.25" [2] daily parking, when an unlimited Metrocard is $32 weekly? The commute would be shorter in the car, but with $150/week for parking, add tolls and the cost of insuring/maintaining a car, I do not see congestion pricing being a poor tax.
1: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/19/opinion/editorials/manhat...
2: grabbed from one major garage site. not the end-all pricing, but it's close http://www.rapidparknyc.com/daily-parking-nyc-garage-rates-M...
The majority of New Yorkers — and a supermajority of Manhattanites — do not own a car. Those who do own cars have incomes nearly twice as high as those who don't. Only 5.8% of commuters to Manhattan arrive by single-occupancy vehicle.
https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/04/21/a-reminder-pricing-ca...
So this ends up not impacting the rich, but drastically hurts the poor.
Transit in New York City (and the tristate area as a whole) is very robust -- I seriously doubt most blue collar workers in Manhattan are driving in and parking for work.
Would you be against instant teleportation at low dollar, environmental and energy cost from point-to-point? I might be if used between cities or countries. The world is already pretty homogenized. But for within cities it would be great. The main benefit of cites is to have a huge number of possible people to interact with and the projects (companies, museums, clubs, etc) those groups of people create. Supporting policies of making people waste time waiting, doing nothing useful, to control where and when they move around seems like a very misanthropic and authoritarian view of how the world should work.
It depends how it's implemented. In London, it is a flat fee for the entire day, rather than based on time spent driving within the charging zone, or on distance.
More importantly, taxis, which drive around _all_ _day_ _long_ and thereby cause more congestion than private cars (which might be on the road for 1-2 hours) are exempt from the charge.
Rich people benefit from London taxis, but neither the taxi drivers nor the passengers pay the congestion fee.
A private car wanting to spend 20 mins driving through the charging zone to get from south London to north London is in the charging zone for 20 mins, and pays the full fee.
A taxi wanting to spend 8 HOURS driving within the congestion zone pays nothing.
EDIT: and taxis spend large amounts of time driving around in circles without any passengers, and without any destination. Private cars don't do that. So even if every taxi passenger journey is replacing a private car journey with the same start and end points, taxis still cause twice as much congestion.
Your second point about enabling people to not have cars seems pretty tenuous. Is your argument that exempting taxis from the London congestion charge increases supply or decreases price, to the extent that more people can go without cars?
But I see that wasn't exactly what you were trying to say.
This, of course, was after driving up from Virginia via I-95, which has its own $20+ worth of tolls along the route.
--
Where I live now, in Atlanta, we recently closed a $0.50 toll (GA400) because apparently we didn't need the money.
But as to toll (flat) vs tax (progressive), you're right: it's definitely screwing over the poor.
I'm all in favor of usage based charging, but "unaffordable to live near work on a moderate salary" + "we're going to tax your daily commute, the same as your boss" doesn't feel fair.
In Chicago, the vast majority of people who live in the suburbs and work in the loop take Metra. But Chicago's transit system is so heavily hub-and-spoke that the public transit just isn't practical if you don't work near the hub, and plenty of people don't. For them, it's frequently a choice between an hour or so in traffic, and more like 2 hours split among some combination of traffic (to get to the commuter train station), train, and maybe bus. I can't really blame anyone for deciding that 4 hours total commuting is not an option.
I know people who drive from their faraway place to a train station outside the city and then take the Metro-North into Grand Central Station. From street parking to bridges and tunnels, New York City massively subsidises drivers.
I'd strongly prefer we raise tolls and congestion charges and use the proceeds to modernize our subway system.
Actually, the bridge and tunnel tolls are major revenue generators for the MTA. The subway is near revenue neutral. The buses lose tons of money.
Edit: Elsewhere in this thread, someone posted a link to Beijing's solution to congestion, which seem interesting:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_space_rationing_in_Beij...
Unfortunately, I don't know if I would trust the politics of NY to allow for that.
From what I've heard well off families in Beijing will then just have multiple cars, one with an odd license plate and one with an even one.
That said, especially given the circumstances of Manhattan, congestion charging probably makes the most sense and also has the virtue of bringing in additional money that can theoretically be used to improve public transit.
[ADDED: I think the key here is that driving in Manhattan for individuals is something of a luxury good. We'd view things differently if this was about distributing relief food after a natural disaster.]
Lotteries are an absolutely terrible system. They fail the basic test of Pareto efficiency. Or in other words: lotteries result in outcomes in which one person could be made better off without making anybody else worse off. The only way to avoid this with a lottery is provide a secondary market, and that defeats the whole purpose of a lottery - at that point, you might as well skip the lottery and use a direct market.
Not all Pareto-efficient scenarios are good, but all scenarios that are not Pareto-efficient are bad, by definition. If Alice could be made better off without making Bob or Eve (or anyone else) any worse off, we know there's a problem.
Say there's a national park campground that fills up within a few minutes of opening up reservations.
However the lottery is implemented exactly (wardialing, picking applications at random), it's pretty much how you have to do things. Raising prices until supply meets demand is (properly) politically a non-starter even if it's the "correct" economic solution.
You can have a waiting list (as I believe many Grand Canyon permits use) but creating multi-year waiting lists have their own set of problems because it makes it hard for people to plan.
But, yes, in general the alternatives for excess demand of a fixed quantity item tend to be:
1.) Increase price
2.) Have a lottery (which doesn't really make any sense here)
3.) Have some sort of rationing scheme (waitlist, can only buy X of item, etc.)
Edit: "screw the poor" always happens when you have a limited quantity of the desired product/service. In this case, the allocation is based on how much money you have.
Why screw the middle class? Is paying 15$ every time you drive somewhere sustainable for you? If it is, then your not middle class - your rich
Who's to say $15 isn't a normal toll amount? As far as I know the bridge is quite busy which means it seems very defensible. They discount it for electronically billed tolls (which makes it faster for everybody) and discount it again for carpoolers (less cars, again faster for everybody). The $15 is the amount you pay if you're having the most impact.
The answer isn't "screw the poor", because the poor aren't generally driving into Manhattan. They're taking public transit.
Driving into Manhattan is already incredibly expensive. $15 is a drop in the bucket compared to what people already have to pay.
It's probably a pretty good deal for the average new yorker.
There are legitimate life circumstances that necessitate driving around manhattan, and I would be more than happy to exempt those from congestion pricing. And I have no problem with Taxis and buses and delivery vans operating, as they have high utilization. But private cars cause so many problems in manhattan, including danger to pedestrians (which make up the bulk of people in the city at any given time), noise pollution, air pollution, and inefficiency for legitimate ground transport/logistics, that I have no problem disincentivizing the use of them in Manhattan with large tolls. There’s a certain hubris required to be the only occupant in a vehicle in manhattan when the public transit infrastructure is so expansive and affordable.
And don’t even get me started on all the wasted space dedicated to parking that could be used for public space, business, bicycle lanes, etc...
Regarding why everyone talks about Manhattan, it's because it's where a huge fraction of people in NYC live and work. While there are only 1.6 million permanent residents of Manhattan, the population during the day swells to around 4 million due to commuters and visitors. The outer boroughs, while busy in their own right, operate on a completely different scale (population actually decreases during the day), because they're so spread out.
In NYC, it's often faster to take the subway instead of drive.
There are many cities based around cars exactly as you describe. They're okay, and there are great places in them that you can drive. But it sort of necessitates driving. In these cities, it's harder to just walk out of your apartment and get groceries, or eat at a restaurant, or watch a movie, or go to a pub, because things are much farther away, because of the scale of roads and parking needed for fast car transportation. And that, in turn, decreases population density, increases isolation, and destroys any sense of a neighborhood. It make far, far, far more sense to make places easy to walk to first, and worry about cars second.
I don't think you realize what NYC would be giving up if it were designed the way you suggest. Less intersections and faster traffic + all the parking needed would mean less people, less shops, and most of all less culture. Those roads have to go somewhere. It doesn't matter how many pedestrian bridges you build, designing things around cars means that you need to design everything at the scale of cars. Imagining Manhattan designed around cars and every attraction having individual parking so people can drive there is a nightmare scenario. Times Square: Gone. Street food on every corner: Gone. Small niche shops and restaurants: gone. Because people couldn't walk there easily anymore.
Look at these two satellite images [0]. One is downtown Florence, Italy. The other is an interstate interchange in Atlanta. These two images are at the same scale. Which makes more sense? Which would you rather live in? How much does it matter that driving is hard in the first picture?
[0]: https://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2014/06/sprawl.jp...
Something else that I've imagined would be cool is a system of skybridges mirroring the sidewalks. Maybe even in that case pedestrian traffic could be removed from the street level, so pedestrians and vehicles would be fully separated, working out best for everyone.
Another interesting idea is a second network of roads on bridges that maybe go through buildings, which has happened a bit in a few cities. Unfortunately both of these ideas are probably too expensive in practice.
Lots of downvotes but this is actually a decent question. Why is the toll so high, and why don't east river bridges have tolls at all?
The answer has to do with the bridge construction process and ownership. The George Washington bridge was built by a "public authority": The Port Authority of NY & NJ.
As explained in Robert Caro's The Power Broker, the concept of a public authority was to allow a public entity to issue bonds for and manage the construction of a particular project, such as a bridge, with intent to turn the project over to the city once paid off. Other bridges were constructed via authorities that are now owned by the city, and the city chooses not to toll them.
Robert Moses, master governmental hacker of New York State, manipulated the concept of the authority by "renewing" bond issues the year before they expire, giving a single authority (in his case, the Triborough Bridge Authority) large amounts of money, which he then used to complete more public works projects, which could issue more bonds, and so on. The result is that this authority never dissolved, the works were never handed over to the city, and the tolls remain high, basically subsidizing the authority's other projects. He effectively created a public body with huge amounts of money that he could spend however he pleased, resulting in travesties like the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
The Port Authority of NY & NJ, who collects the extortionate $15 toll on the GW Bridge, runs every bridge between NY and NJ, every airport, the PATH train, the airport Airtrains, and One World Trade Center, among other investments.
Effectively, the extremely high GW bridge tolls are subsidizing the PA of NY/NJ's massive losing bet on 1 WTC. And that's why it costs $15.
Let us not forget the congestion pricing for the express lanes on I85. The price kept going down and down during the first few months it was around. I seem to recall plans to use congestion pricing for further I75 and GA400 expansions.
It does seem pretty nice to drive to work rather than cramming into a subway car for a half hour, even if you're stuck in traffic...
Kind of? It can get pretty tight to the point where holding a book up is uncomfortable or not possible due to lack of space.
You only get internet at station stops and not in the tunnels, so it's a little bit tough to read Reddit. I usually get around this by pre-loading a bunch of essays I want to read.
Yeah, you can put on your earbuds and zone out. But it's dark down there, and given how short the days are in the winter, it doesn't feel nice to be trapped underground for so long. I'd honestly rather take a reliable bus (as if these even exist) in the morning.
They don't? Damn, then the internet and telecom and providers in the States are really f*cking their customers up, pardon my French, but that's the gentlest way to put it. Let's say that I can understand that the US is a big country and that you cannot lay fiber over such big of an area as dense as it happens in certain parts of Europe, but to not have metro tunnel coverage for biggest cities in the world is just laughable. The Eastern European capital from where I'm writing this comment has had such a service for at least 5 years, if not more.
I won't deny that the agency responsible for New York transit is incorrigibly corrupt, along with the New York State government that is ostensibly responsible for holding them accountable.
That said, there is cell service in most stations (I think they finished the rollout recently, so it may be in all stations now). You don't get cell service in all tunnels, but that's because the New York subway system is very old. For comparison, that's the case in London as well: you get cell service in most of the below-ground stations on the Underground, but not necessarily in all of the tunnels.
I can see the price to install the equipment being very high — confined space, only a few hours overnight in which to work, and many metal-lined tunnels which probably mean a custom solution is necessary.
https://www.ft.com/content/3cead702-4530-11e7-8d27-59b4dd629...
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_...
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Telephone_Company
Source: Just got towed. I was fined 15 minutes after I was in violation and towed 5 minutes afterwards.
There are, of course, other benefits of the subway, including lower costs and the possibility of doing something else like reading.
The biggest problem with Manhattan is that it's hard to get to the rest of NY without going through Manhattan.
If they fixed that, a TON of the traffic would be alleviated.
The fact that even a quarter of Manhattanites own a car demonstrates that people are willing to absorb enormous costs to continue driving. (A much higher percentage than that would, I'm sure, still like to own a car in Manhattan, but simply can't afford it.)
https://www.centreforpublicimpact.org/case-study/demand-mana...
> There was a 37 percent increase in the number of passengers entering the congestion charging zone by bus during charging hours in the first year.
> “Greenhouse gas emission was reduced by 16 per cent from 2002 to 2003. NOX and PM10 within the congestion charging zone decreased by 18 per cent and 22 per cent, respectively, by 2004."
> The scheme generated £122 million net in 2005/2006.
> By 2006, the congestion charging zone had reduced congestion in central London by 26 per cent from its 2002 levels.
> There have been between 40 and 70 percent fewer accidents that resulted in personal injury within the zone.
Also, London has changed its road network a lot to favor buses, pedestrians and cyclists. Speeds today are about what they were in 2002 before pricing, but there is more capacity for other modes.
Also there is tons of road construction in London all the time. That harms capacity a lot.
I think they're planning on pushing something similar all the way out to the north circular, and maybe the M25 for heavily polluting traffic.
But the additional charge for the worst diesel cars is new: https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/emissions-surcharge
That being said, it almost never makes sense to drive a car inside central London anyway as the public transport is very reliable and has almost full coverage, and it's dealing with a very different problem in the first place (old horse and cart windy roads adjusting for the modern age).
This plan for Manhattan will obviously only stop people with low financial power from driving, although they might already have paid for these roads via taxes and duties.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_space_rationing_in_Beij...
My understanding is that it doesn't really help that much because even with the rationing the tendency is still to saturate the roads with cars. São Paulo is one of the cities with the worst traffic congestion in the world. Additionally, rich people can bypass the rationing by purchasing additional vehicles.
The West side should get the same benefits.
They should also increase the motorcycle toll discount back to 20% like it was years ago.
The next thing I'd want to tackle is rampant honking. Not sure how to police this but it should probably cost $10 per second that your horn is making noise. that seems to me like a fair pricing of the externalities produced. And if you're honking to save someone's life i.e. if they're walking into traffic while looking at their cell phone -- ok that's a tough one.
[0] http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2017/09/21/ridgewood-ticket-trap...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/29/nyregion/new-york-removes-...
Not only that, the majority of New Yorkers do not own cars. I don't even know how to drive. I do, however, take buses and ride my bike. (In NYC you'll get ticketed if you ride your bike on the sidewalk )
In NYC, real estate is extremely limited. Why should such real estate, which is paid for with city taxes benefit so few?
East-West across the park can be a bit of a pain on the train. If you're trying to get from the Upper West Side to the Upper East Side, a bus is going to be a faster choice than taking a train to midtown, transferring, and taking a train back up.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-gridlock/wp/2017/12/0...
Is it wrong? I don't know, usually it is not as bad. But when it got that high and people were still jumping into the lane one has to wonder what's going on.
Granted the nearby counties are the wealthiest in the country, so maybe it shouldn't be that shocking.
Making poor people pay as always.
- Taking public transport only: 30 minutes of walking to the nearest bus stop (bus only on the hour btw). 20 minutes on the bus. 2 hrs 30 minutes on a train to Grand Central. All assuming bus and train time line up (they won't since the bus is hourly).
- Driving and taking a train: Drive for 30 minutes and take a 2 and a half hour train ride to Grand Central.
- Drive: 2 h 20 min at 5 o'clock on a Friday. Google maps shows 1.5 - 2hrs is average.
The optimal path is to drive to a train station close to NYC that has frequent service, park and take the train for the last bit. I used to use the Greenwich train station and it worked well. The same is true from New Jersey, you can park at Metropark or get dropped off in Seacaucus.
Source: I lived in CT for 3 years, lived in Manhattan for the last 5 years, bought a car and keep it in Manhattan for the last 6 months.
They aren't near enough to any train stations to make the trip faster by switching stations. Your "brilliant" drive to a closer train station idea is still a 2 and a half hour total trip time for reaching the same place.
And if your commute daily you're not going to be guessing where you park, you'll probably have a monthly garage.
This all goes back to the parent comment which was just being obtuse. In theory no one "needs" to do anything, we can just sit around all day until we waste away.
People who "need" to commute in their cars really want to commute in their cars. No one is saying it's cheap, but it's a right that people have, and it's not hard to imagine that for some people commuting from NYC to CT daily, doing it by car is preferable to public transit.
1) is who is actually causing the congestion in NYC - its my understanding that the bulk of the congestion is caused by non-NYC residents
2) a large unaddressed component is parking - the large amount of free parking available, especially to non-residents, creates a distorting subsidy in favor of commuting in many areas.
If you want to read a great book on the broader subject, check out Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt http://tomvanderbilt.com/books/traffic/
Singapore is also switching over to a satellite-based per-km charge.
A congestion pricing scheme that increases the efficiency of the total transportation system would be excellent, but I am skeptical. Congestion, whether on the subway or the road (or even the sidewalk), is already a negative feedback loop that encourages seeking alternate routes/times. If people are taking congested roadways, they are doing so _in spite_ of all the other options available to them in a city with extensive public transit. I am curious what kind of data informs this plan and whether it is primarily a solution to transit times or just another source of revenue for the MTA.