The MTA "changed its flawed initial proposal to offer the [disability] exemption only to drivers or vehicles owners with state-issued disability plates" [1].
I'm sure you're being honest about your intent, but a glancing read of your previous comment sounded categorical, to my ear at least, "And they've all been proven false."
It’s hard from reading what is written how it is intended. Written communication is hard since it doesn’t encapsulate tone, emphasis, and other cues. I read “all” in this case to mean: “most of the commonly espoused objections”.
Please don't fulminate or engage in ideological battle here. The topic is fine to discuss and disagree about, but HN is for curious conversation not indignation, and the guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. You've posted several ragey comments in a short space of time, and that's not the way HN is meant to be used. Please have a read of the guidelines and make an effort to observe them when participating here.
This is also quantitatively correct because for two people coming in from afar you might change two trains or a bus and train and each ticket is at least 3.00$(bus/path from NJ) which is 24$ minimum both ways, with more than two it would make even more sense to take the car.
Congestion pricing brings in a toll above the 16$ you pay throu the tunnel. I think it's 18, So 34$ total?
So you are incentivized to get more than 2 people by car. Less traffic.
It makes driving more appealing if one discounts the best alternative use of the funds, which humans are irrationally likely to do. That driving seems better is because people suck at thinking about what else they might do with the money given compound returns on its investment.
Buses got significantly more reliable as a result of reduced traffic, more ridership on subways allowed for more police presence at stations, reducing crime.
"There is no such thing as a free lunch" is a very strong argument for tolls, I hope you realize.
> everyone paying the tolls who now needs to engage in additional pollution-causing economic activity merely to offset the costs of government-mandated congestion pricing
I don't think that's how economics work. People are already doing their best to generate money. Also even if that did happen, the thing you're describing as "pollution-causing" is GDP growth, which is overall desirable.
> tariffs
Whether a tariff is good depends on what the goal is (and whether it works toward that goal).
You can say that about any tax. Which makes it extremely unconvincing as an argument against any particular tax, since in the long term money not collected from tax A will be collected from tax B.
its not a tariff because tariffs are taxes on imports. you arent paying a tax related to the value of the goods being brought over, and to the extent that new car buyers are importing cars, its neglible compared to what youre trying to draw equivalence to, trump's 30% or so tariffs.
instead, its a toll or a usage tax.
but also, you want the economic activity of having people in the city, not the cost of supporting their light trucks. people coming from outside of new york are very costly in terms of pollution, road maintenance, and losing real estate to parking spaces.
How are you crashing out over a $9 toll while using a mode of transport that's (conservatively) 3x more expensive to commute just one way? Good grief lmao
No it’s not. NYC transit is already one of the most expensive in the world and quality is suspect. Pushing money into a dysfunctional structure doesn’t make it functional and might make it worse. A money grab from the public that goes through a maze of expenses.
The solution was to re-structure the MTA. But that’s hard work. Politicians would rather blame the other side and just raise taxes. The people like it because they are grabbing money from what they consider it to be their oppressors.
The quality is not suspect. It is one of the world’s few 24/7 systems, and there are many capital improvements happening constantly. For example, making more stations accessible and improving switching equipment to improve reliability and volume.
This comment is typical HN “government bad can do no right” fodder. The MTA is truly a marvel in the service it provides. The only advantage it has is age, which is why it is so expansive.
The MTA does not overpay when you compare to other employers in central NYC. It's an extremely expensive city due to housing policy failures.
As for commercialising the stations, does the MTA try to do so and fail, or are they forbidden from doing so effectively (often by the same people who are pushing the narrative that there is something wrong with the organisation)?
You may not realize this, but there are numerous rail systems around the world that are not subsidized and are in fact profitable. See Japan, for instance
Almost all rail in Japan is subsidized, directly and indirectly. Yes the single line that is the Tokaido Shinkansen is immensely profitable; even then, JR Central does not pay market-rate interest on even the portion of the construction debt that was not absorbed by the government.
The point is that the MTA is deeply in the red even though it still charges significant fares. Meanwhile, systems like the London Tube manage to recover at least their operating costs without charging fares that are much if at all higher.
> What in particular about the MTA would you change?
Remove the diversity compliance requirement from bids, e.g. [1]. Open up bids to any firm in the nation and select winners based on cost and competence only. Subject the MTA to a forensic audit every ten or twenty years.
Poor people are forced by circumstance to live in the busiest areas so they will get the biggest health benefits and many do not own cars and often do not even own a car space, so I would beg to differ.
You can also offset the regressive nature of this taxation (if any) by putting the revenue into subsidizing public infrastructure like rail and bus.
Isn’t it the opposite though? The poor aren’t able to live in the most popular busiest areas, and usually have to live on the fringes of the city. They might train in though. This is mostly going to benefit the rich people who can still afford to live in the city, but with rent control there are still some non-rich people in the city.
It is both. People forget that probably a third of all housing in the congestion zone is rent-controlled or public housing.
Half of households in the congestion zone are living at or below 3x federal poverty level ($70K for a family of three). One in six residents makes $20K or less a year.
The congestion tax has far more impact on people who live and work above 60th or in the outer boroughs or NJ than it does Manhattanites. Retail, wholesale, trades, small businesses and yes commuters in these areas, which are poorer than Manhattan, suffer disproportionately
This mostly commuters and tradesmen. You aren’t going to get your tools on the train, snd you are driving into the city from white plains or somewhere similar.
The alternative is the tradesmen can now apply their trade for 30 minutes more each way rather than sit in traffic (probably better overall) That, and apparently they and their kids can breathe easier.
The 2.90 is even capped at $34 per week. Then there's the 50% discount for low-income NYC residents who qualify and apply for the Fair Fares NYC program, or for anyone regadless of residence who qualifies for reduced fares through age or a qualifying disability.
Both of these numbers are changing in early January to $3 and $35 respectively, but same idea.
Still, some European countries like Germany offer far cheaper than this, while others like the UK are probably pricer. NYC public transit gives very good value for the US at least.
Many things hurt the poor more, because there are many things that the poor do that have negative externalities that cannot be compensated for by the productivity of the poor. Strict enforcement against violent crime is pretty regressive in that more poor people are incarcerated when this is done. Others are that strict enforcement of traffic laws is pretty regressive; paid parking is regressive; as are fares for buses and trains. Requiring a minimum number of signatures for a ballot proposition is regressive. Allowing more expensive cars to incorporate more advanced safety features is regressive. Requiring grant applications to be carefully written is regressive. As are minimum flying requirements for pilots. DoD medical standards for soldiers are regressive. Officer ASVAB score requirements are regressive. Surgical requirements. Drug approval requirements.
In fact, anything that requires a standard of performance will be regressive. We don't have to subordinate all goals to regression avoidance. In fact, no functioning society does that.
I actually doubt it's very regressive in NYC. Also, you're still only counting the price and not the cost. The benefits are likely tilted towards the poorest residents who absorb the most costs of congestion in terms of both pollution and road safety. That's just an educated guess but it's very plausible.
A charge on the marginal driver looks regressive if you only examine who pays the toll, but not who’s been paying the externalities all along. Once you include the benefits - faster buses, cleaner air, better reliability, and the ability to reinvest revenue into transit - the incidence flips pretty quickly.
We’re basically shifting costs from people who can’t opt out of congestion to people who can. That’s about as progressive as a transport policy gets.
I couldn't find anything more recent that this but apparently it has made the streets safer for pedestrians too. "Traffic fatalities in the Congestion Pricing zone are down 40% from last year."
I live in Europe so it's still very much considered pedestrian-friendly, but cars and roads scale so bad. Especially with population density going through the roof in bigger cities.
EVs help with air pollution & congestion, but a huge part of the AQI impact of cars is tires, and I don't think there's a solution for that yet short of "fewer cars"
I thought the tire wear particulates being a huge source of particulate air emissions was an overestimate due to misunderstanding and misquotation of primary literature by secondary literature used by regulatory agencies.
EV shuttles will come in lots of capacities. Vans, buses. But you won't need to worry about schedules or preset routes because it's all dynamic.
Wherever there would be the most congestion is precisely where the app will give you the biggest discount to switch from your private vehicle into a bus, then switch back into another private vehicle for the last 5 minutes of your trip.
EVs are just going to further escalate the race to the bottom with traffic that we’re already seeing with services like DoorDash.
Driving down the marginal cost per hour to operate a vehicle on the road and removing humans who are averse to sitting in endless traffic is not going to result in the utopia people think it will.
That's so unbelievably difficult it might as well be impossible. It's easier to teach cars to drive themselves than it is to build transit. Ridiculous I know.
No, individualized point to point travel is better. I just got back from Tokyo and Taipei, which have transit systems better than any European country. And it was still faster to Uber everywhere.
I’m not aware of any transit-oriented city where average commute times are as low in absolute terms as in sprawling, car-dependent American cities. You just don’t like the aesthetics of that approach. I don’t either. But it’s an aesthetic critique at bottom.
Everywhere? This is a crazy thing to claim. I was also recently in Japan and I never took a car anywhere. I'm sure there are particular routes that are badly served but come on.
Everywhere. I was staying right next to Tokyo Station, too. I went from a meeting in Roppongi Hills to a bookstore in Jimbocho. Apple Maps says 31 minutes by train and 24 minutes by Uber.
And I was traveling alone this time. Last year when I went with my wife and three kids the differential was even more extreme. I’m convinced public transit is a major reason for the birth rate collapse in east asia.
And how much did that cost? You can get around Tokyo on the subway system for $5 for an entire day, and it's a profitable system that largely does not rely on taxpayer subsidy.
And how fast would it be if Tokyo and Taipei's trains weren't handling 80% and 40% of trips, respectively?
If you reduce Tokyo's 80% trip usage rate down to 5% like many American cities, that means for every other car on the road in Tokyo you'd now see 5 cars instead. How's that Uber ride looking now?
NYC has a better subway system than most Euro cities. Probably because NYC has the advantage of being old before cars became affordable.
For a few decades it seemed planners all over the world really had this crazy idea that everyone would just drive around for everything. Just put 10 lane highways straight through your town!
There was a study published about how much air pollution dropped in NYC during the COVID lockdown. PM2.5 was found to have dropped 36%. However with more robust analysis, this drop was discovered to not be statistically significant. I would caution anyone reading this who is tempted by confirmation bias.
"average daily peak concentrations of PM2.5 dropped by 3.05 µg/m³. For context, background pollution levels in the region typically hover around 8-9 µg/m³, making this reduction particularly significant for public health."
I think that the numbers are already low enough that the drop is actually not very significant, at all. Is there any data that shows better health outcomes at 8 vs 13 for PM 2.5 levels? From my understanding adverse health outcomes come at exposure over the long term to higher levels like 30 minimum
For context I have several air purifiers in my home and I'm all for better air quality but the percentage difference makes it sound like a much bigger drop but when these numbers are already so small I just am skeptical it really makes a difference...
But more importantly, when it comes to PM 2.5 levels, there are really no safe levels, the risks are just dose dependent, so lower is always better. In a city the size of NYC, lowering air pollution by 20% means a significant decrease in effects.
To give a good analogy, driving a car on the US is still quite safe, most of us take that risk, but still, thousands die annually from car accidents. A one fifth reduction in deaths from car accidents, even from its current low level, would be a major deal. In NYC, around 1 in 20 deaths is linked to air pollution.
> A difference between 8 and 12 PM 2.5 levels won't change that
Yes, it will, and that's the point I was making.
There are some things that have no harmful affects below certain concentrations, in that they are not toxic at low levels. PM 2.5 particles are not one of those - they are toxic at all levels. It's quite similar, in this context, to ionizing radiation. There is no safe level of ionizing radiation - every X-ray you get will slightly increase your chance of getting cancer. Of course, in the risk/benefit analysis, the risk is low and the benefits for medical X-rays are high.
It's the same with PM 2.5 pollution - every percentage reduction results in fewer health effects and related deaths. It's fine to argue that some level of pollution is worth it to get the benefits of industrialization, but it's simply false to say a reduction from 12 to 8 PM 2.5 levels won't reduce related deaths.
I wonder myself this too. Would people have to say "If NYC was a country would its GDP be 11th largest in the world compared to being the 12th largest GDP in the world like in 2024?"
What we can quantify is the economic impact the San Antonio River Walk has or the impact the Atlanta Beltline has which is billions of dollars in added economic activity. Based on those examples, likely it will increase the NYC GDP by millions if not hundreds of millions. We can prove with dollar amounts getting rid of cars in these cases increase the GDP by billions but in NYC they are only decreasing them so probably won't have the positive impact completely getting rid of cars does.
No city has reliable data on this for a fleet of reasons. The high quality data tends to show little effect on retail foot traffic, slightly more reliable commute times, and then the wealth of health benefits. Linking this to output seems to be beyond economists for cities that have done something similar (London, Stockholm, Milan, etc)
It's frustrating how poorly most people understand economics and the distinction between price and cost. Everybody in the world is being asked to blithely accept the massive unpaid costs of motor vehicle usage. This is a tiny step towards recouping some of this costs. Roadways, parking, collisions, pollution, noise have all be costs born by all of us. And in NYC that's a load of non-drivers. We should be adopting all sorts of policies to pass those costs on to drivers.
People panic over the thought of free buses when we have millions of miles of free roads.
The article says "average daily peak concentrations of PM2.5 dropped by 3.05 µg/m³. For context, background pollution levels in the region typically hover around 8-9 µg/m³, making this reduction particularly significant for public health."
But 8-9 was already considered a safe level: "Most studies indicate PM2.5 at or below 12 μg/m3 is considered healthy with little to no risk from exposure. If the level goes to or above 35 μg/m3 during a 24-hour period, the air is considered unhealthy." (https://www.indoorairhygiene.org/pm2-5-explained/)
So, good job on reducing pollution, but you already had very safe levels (well, the article doesn't tell us what the old "peak concentrations" were). Since the levels were "little to no risk", the claim of "significant health benefits" (i.e. reduction in disease or death) should be challenged.
Smaller doses of a poison are better than less small doses. Using coarse linguistic categories to argue otherwise is an abuse of the purpose of categories as a linguistic tool.
You act like driving in NYC is free even without the congestion price. You realize how much it costs to park in Manhattan right? $50/day? And if you are coming from the Jersey side, you realize how much the toll is for the tunnel? $17-27.
So yea, if you're poor, you're not driving your beater to SoHo and parking in a lot for $50 daily.
Most people driving into the city aren’t parking in Manhattan. When I was living in west Chester county, I would drive in into midtown and always find street parking near Columbia, free. I was surprised how easy it was to drive into the city because I heard lots of stories that it wasn’t. No tolls either.
I'm confused, if you lived in Westchester and were parking by Columbia why would you be in Midtown? Mind you, it's still like $14-$22 to cross the GWB and if you parked by Columbia after driving down from Westchester you don't have a congestion charge to worry about.
I’m not sure, I’m a bit hazy about the names, it was a dormitory, I never actually saw the school. The dormitory wasn’t on campus. We were interning at IBM Hawthorne at the time and my friend was living at a Columbia dorm and commuting. Sometimes when I took the train the nearest train line stop (to get back to Hawthorne) was Harlem.
I get it, remember the congestion zone isn't the entire borough of Manhattan. It's just below 59th street. And, if you were driving down there, good luck finding parking in the literal densest place on planet earth during work hours (187k people/sqm). Driving in the congestion relief zone is not a right.
(Also, this thread's root was "regressive tax affecting the poor" which I assert again, is just a silly mischaracterization)
> I like walking around new cities, but a lot of people are car life types
Congestion pricing makes driving in New York better. Broadly speaking, the tendency for someone to have a problem with the scheme is proportional to their distance from and inversely related to the amount of time they've ever spent in New York.
But we're talking about New York City here, not Kansas. Specifically the congestion zone which during the work day is the most congested place in the world (187,500 people/sqm).
We did perfect their mass production, and it propelled us to the world's largest economy. The only country with better GDP growth over the last 100 years is Japan, and that's in large part because they perfected the manufacture of cars themselves.
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