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estearum 6 hours ago [-]
Congestion pricing is one of the few policy ideas that's so overwhelmingly positive that even the people who try to argue against it end up strengthening the argument. Love it.
"What about all the people who need to drive into the city for work?" Uhh... don't!
"What about the delivery people who need to bring this into the city?" They should be able to get in and out much faster, and their cargo makes it easy to amortize the cost!
"What about people who need to drive due to mobility issues?" Look, now they can park near their destination too!
baud147258 6 hours ago [-]
> "What about all the people who need to drive into the city for work?"
How are they going to do if there's no public transportation available for their commute?
edit: and how about plumbers (and the like) who need a vehicle to carry what they need to work?
notatoad 5 hours ago [-]
>How are they going to do if there's no public transportation available for their commute?
is there any city anywhere that has implemented congestion pricing without having public transit available?
bartread 5 hours ago [-]
Cambridge in the UK tried it. They promised to improve the bus service only after introducing the charge.
It didn’t go over well.
And even for a small city like Cambridge it is a huge lift to go from an already inadequate public transport infrastructure and set of services to infrastructure and services suitable for a city where cars have been largely eliminated.
The irony of course is that bus services, specifically the guided busway, will be cut again soon due to ongoing lack of use. But the lack of use has been caused by long-running and poorly managed maintenance on the busway disrupting services to the point of unusability, rather than because of any real lack of demand.
Some people didn’t trust that promises would be delivered on public transport when it came to the congestion charge. Obviously cuts like this add fuel to that fire.
On a more positive note we have, over the past 10 years or so, gained two new railway stations, and that’s good. But we haven’t gained new rail lines and rail routes so they haven’t done anything really to improve the transport and congestion situations around the city. It’s easier and more convenient to get to London though, depending on where you are.
dfxm12 5 hours ago [-]
A web search surfacing contemporary newspaper articles suggests this congestion charge was proposed, but never actually implemented.
bartread 1 hours ago [-]
That's correct. I said they tried it, as in tried to introduce it. It was never actually introduced.
It is quite likely to be tried again in future.
dbdr 5 hours ago [-]
> and how about plumbers (and the like) who need a vehicle to carry what they need to work?
This is literally addressed by the comment you are replying to:
"What about the delivery people who need to bring this into the city?" They should be able to get in and out much faster, and their cargo makes it easy to amortize the cost!
triceratops 4 hours ago [-]
> how about plumbers (and the like) who need a vehicle to carry what they need to work?
They pay the fee and pass on the cost to their customers. And now they can find parking near where they work so they'll save some time.
estearum 6 hours ago [-]
Given the increased road availability, we should invent trains that drive on roads.
strictnein 6 hours ago [-]
Snark isn't actually a productive way to discuss a topic.
A productive way would be to say that congestion pricing should be used to expand bus service.
estearum 6 hours ago [-]
Well I don't care how the money flows and neither should anyone else. It's a matter of allocating costs as closely to the origin of those costs as possible.
If you do that, it will turn out that buses (etc) are far superior methods of moving people around, but you really don't need to move money directly from one to the other.
strictnein 5 hours ago [-]
> Well I don't care how the money flows and neither should anyone else
Why shouldn't people care how the money flows and why are you the decider of what people should care about? If the money from congestion pricing was for a new stadium for the Yankees, or to build a new heliport for billionaires' row, or it just went into the pocket of the mayor I think that would be concerning for everyone involved.
estearum 5 hours ago [-]
Even if we took the money and lit it on fire each year, congestion pricing would still be a very, very good policy.
harvey9 5 hours ago [-]
I thought it was an allusion to trams.
tomrod 5 hours ago [-]
Arguably, tone policing is even worse. I guffawed at grandparent comment!
What about them? It’s good there will be less traffic so they can get to their jobs on time.
quickthrowman 5 hours ago [-]
> edit: and how about plumbers (and the like) who need a vehicle to carry what they need to work?
You charge the customer for the congestion charge and use it to pay the fee, just like anything else. I bid construction work and would include congestion fees into my bid or T&M rates if needed.
How do you think construction vehicles pay for parking? They charge the customer for it and use the money to pay for parking.
bryanlarsen 5 hours ago [-]
Presumably it would lower your bid by subtracting 20 minutes less of travel per trip and adding the congestion charge per day.
quickthrowman 1 hours ago [-]
Definitely, 20 minutes of an electrician in a truck costs me about $45 ($135/hr cost). Probably closer to $170-180/hr in NYC which would be close to $60 if it saved 20 minutes.
righthand 5 hours ago [-]
Always the plumber who can afford every other toll but not the very low priced congestion pricing. No other occupation ever gets mentioned so we must think of the non-existent hundreds of thousands of plumbers who can’t afford it.
wat10000 6 hours ago [-]
Is there any city implementing congestion pricing that doesn't have public transportation?
ipdashc 5 hours ago [-]
> Congestion pricing is one of the few policy ideas that's so overwhelmingly positive that even the people who try to argue against it end up strengthening the argument. Love it.
> "What about all the people who need to drive into the city for work?" Uhh... don't!
... Look man, I'm in favor of the policy too, but this reads like straight satire. Please tell me you're trolling.
estearum 5 hours ago [-]
No. People should not expect to free-ride on an adjacent city's economy while inflicting severe negative externalities on the local community and its infrastructure.
The entire point of the policy is to reduce the number of people driving into cities. "Well how am I going to drive into the city?!" is the position that's indistinguishable from satire.
BobaFloutist 22 minutes ago [-]
You kind of have it backwards. Cities that overbuild commercial space and underbuild housing get to reap the sales taxes without having to provide the same level of services.
And then the residents complain that people keep commuting to work in the offices they zoned for instead of housing towers.
kyboren 3 hours ago [-]
I'm not disputing the negative externalities from traffic, nor the laudable goal of reducing the number of vehicles entering cities. I'm not even disputing the effectiveness of congestion pricing at achieving that goal.
But the mechanism here is highly unfair. It's obvious why rich people support congestion charges--they're rich! They don't give a shit about the $20 or whatever, and it clears the roads of those dirty poors making traffic. Bring it on!
Meanwhile the poor--already struggling with affordability and cost of living--are the ones who bear the burden. They can't afford the congestion fee, so they're forced to find some alternative way to get into the city. But that comes at an obvious utility cost; if that alternative was the best way for them to get into the city, they'd already be using it! And poor people are the ones with no time to spare, so choosing between spending $20 they don't have or spending 30 more minutes that they don't have is a Hobson's choice.
Here's my proposal: Every vehicle gets 60 free days per year with no congestion charges at all. Days 61-100 have a $1,000,000 congestion charge. Days 101-365 have a $10,000,000 congestion charge. Congestion charges will be reduced, however, to 0.1% of the driver's AGI (for days 61-100) and 1% of the driver's AGI (for days 101-365) upon application. Now even hedge fund managers in Connecticut will be inconvenienced in just the same way as poor people.
Yet somehow I believe that if that were how congestion pricing was implemented, all these Econ professors would magically discover what a bad policy congestion pricing really is!
estearum 3 hours ago [-]
Simpler idea that will get 90% of the benefit: amplify congestion pricing based on KBB value of the car. Zero enforcement complexity. Yes rich people could drive a shittier car to save their $5k per year or whatever, but most won't, and the few ultra-cost insensitive people will pay for vast numbers of the most cost sensitive.
kyboren 3 hours ago [-]
Imperfect but much better than existing implementations. Really, though, the goal ought to be not only to reduce congestion, but to fairly distribute the net gain of utility among those affected.
A marginal $20 has very little utility to rich people, but 15 minutes saved in traffic has large utility. Congestion pricing results in large utility gains to the rich.
A marginal $20 has tangible utility to poor people, and 15 minutes spent finding alternative transport also has tangible utility. Congestion pricing results in large utility losses to the poor.
KBB values are an imperfect proxy for individual monetary utility but could definitely be used to more fairly distribute the utility gains from congestion pricing.
estearum 2 hours ago [-]
Yep, in sync with all of the above
RhysU 55 minutes ago [-]
> People should not expect to free-ride on an adjacent city's economy while inflicting severe negative externalities on the local community and its infrastructure.
Are you kidding me? Free riding?
I pay the same taxes on my NY income as if I lived in NY plus congestion pricing atop that. Your transportation in the city free rides on me after NY/NYC do their voodoo transfers.
You shut down soooo many lanes then pretend the problem is the commuters.
Consider: "Broad"-way is effectively 1 lane southbound in the southern part of Manhattan.
estearum 40 minutes ago [-]
Yes you are free-riding.
People who live in NY pay NY taxes and NY rent. The reason you do not live in the city is because you prefer to arbitrage the difference in rents. The reason this arbitrage exists is because the costs incurred by e.g. taxes and congestion tolls are not sufficiently high to fully eliminate the free-riding.
I don't think taxes and tolls should be high enough to fully eliminate the arbitrage, but the existence of the arbitrage is an existence proof of the gap internalized and externalized costs.
I also don't think the problem is commuters per se. The problem is cars. But commuters are the primary source of cars.
Spooky23 5 hours ago [-]
Not really. It's just a tolling overlay that changes the deal and perpetuates bad engineering. Just as traffic grows to fill a road, budgets grow to spend revenue.
The positivity of it varies dramatically based on the type of jurisdiction and what entity has what power. Manhattan and London have an existing chokepoint arrangement where you won't be able to really assess it's benefit/detraction for a long time. Proponents of the Manhattan congestion pricing tend to ignore where alot growth is happening - Hoboken and Jersey City are in some ways more vital. Most of the benefit could have been realized by tolling the free river crossings, as alot of the traffic reduction was eliminating toll-avoidance trips.
In other places, you can see part of the downside with speed cameras which are starting to pick up. My city adopted them and traffic dropped noticeably, immediately. We also saw a pretty immediate effect on retail and restaurants. My wife works for a restaurant group -- RFPs for large events basically say "not in <city>", because the city's brand is toxified by tolling.
estearum 5 hours ago [-]
I don't care about the revenue or what it's spent on. I care that people internalize the costs of their own decisions.
River crossings into NYC were already not free. Not sure what you're referring to.
Speed cameras and stop cameras are also great and should be virtually everywhere.
Spooky23 4 hours ago [-]
> I don't care about the revenue or what it's spent on. I care that people internalize the costs of their own decisions.
Cool, you're demonstrating that you have no understanding of the issue.
> River crossings into NYC were already not free. Not sure what you're referring to.
They sure are.
Trips that originate from Brooklyn, Queens or Long Island to New Jersey would go <origin> to Brooklyn/Manhattan/Williamsburg/Queenboro bridges. The outbound Hudson River crossings are all free.
Trips that originate from Brooklyn, Queens or Long Island to Westchester and points north or east would go <origin> to Brooklyn/Manhattan/Williamsburg/Queenboro bridges. You take the FDR drive/East Side highway to one of the free east river crossings to the bronx, then take the Deegan to one of the many parkways. You can take the Taconic all the way to Albany for $0.
BTW, the Westside of Manhattan around the tunnel crossings is now just as much of a shitshow as it was. They are just slurping up more revenue for the MTA to set aflame.
> Speed cameras and stop cameras are also great and should be virtually everywhere.
They are fine if they are everywhere. You'll feel differently when you get a $25 fine + $50 contractor fee when you drive through a 20mph school zone in the middle of August in some random town.
estearum 3 hours ago [-]
> Cool, you're demonstrating that you have no understanding of the issue.
How so?
You're talking about trips within New York City (Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island are part of New York City) or out of New York City.
These are not river-crossings INTO New York City.
> Westside of Manhattan around the tunnel crossings is now just as much of a shitshow as it was
> You'll feel differently when you get a $25 fine + $50 contractor fee when you drive through a 20mph school zone in the middle of August in some random town.
... why would I feel differently once getting penalized for breaking the law? I want every person who speeds through my child's school zone to get ticketed. If I'm the one doing the speeding, I should get ticketed.
Spooky23 24 minutes ago [-]
> You're talking about trips within New York City (Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island are part of New York City) or out of New York City.
People of Long Island, which is not part of NYC, go to great lengths to avoid tolls to the mainland. You only need a few thousand cars to make a huge impact. That's the congestion that was eliminated. You can, and people do, the same from Westchester north. There is no free route from New Jersey.
Compare your data, to what I said, not to what you are upset about. It's still a shitshow, just a shorter wait.
The routes used to avoid river tolls from Long Island (Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg, Queenboro Bridges) dropped. Crosstown traffic dropped.
FDR Drive, Battery tunnel, Queens Midtown Tunnel remained the same or marginally dropped.
estearum 6 minutes ago [-]
So am I understanding that we need to add more tolls and set them higher?
Fine by me!
LoganDark 6 hours ago [-]
> "What about all the people who need to drive into the city for work?" Uhh... don't!
What? Don't work? What else is there, the bus?
monitron 6 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure if this is a serious question, but: buses, subways, (e-)bikes, working from home, carpooling. I know these aren't an option for everyone in every situation, but congestion pricing areas tend to be set up in places where public transit is good and normal.
smelendez 6 hours ago [-]
Yes, or the train. All of these cities have a mix of public transit modes.
> Cities around the world, including London, Stockholm, Milan, and most recently, New York City (NYC), have adopted congestion pricing, charging drivers a fee to enter high-traffic zones.
estearum 6 hours ago [-]
Sure! Get a job in your own community or if you want access to the city's jobs, then pay to reduce the negative externalities of your access, or pick a transit method with fewer negative externalities.
DiggyJohnson 6 hours ago [-]
Telling people not to drive to work without viable alternatives does not seem like a solution.
fckgw 5 hours ago [-]
Good news! In all the areas where congestion pricing has been implement there are abundant alternatives to driving! Or, you can still drive and simply pay the toll!
baggy_trough 5 hours ago [-]
If they do not want to cover their externalities, then it is in fact a very good solution.
michaelmrose 5 hours ago [-]
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apercu 6 hours ago [-]
A significant portion of modern professional jobs can be done remotely and this has been true for decades.
paimapi 6 hours ago [-]
while true, this is reliant on company leadership (and their boards/shareholders) to allow for it. there's too much invested in commercial real estate at the moment that every publicly traded company with significant stake from some large investor(s) will be forcing RTO/hybrid. the calculus of 'slightly unhappy workers' vs 'complete collapse for X% of my portfolio' is not a difficult solve
which isn't to say that this is right or just. it's simply the state of things given the way we've decided to arrange our society
strictnein 6 hours ago [-]
This is a subjective observation, not an argument for congestion pricing.
LoganDark 5 hours ago [-]
I exclusively work remote jobs myself, but I wouldn't say just don't ever have or use a personal vehicle. It costs me $20–40 to get up to family in another state and a train ticket (one-way) in my area would cost twice as much.
mc32 6 hours ago [-]
And if reputation follows, more people will claim some disability or other of come off their disability much later than normal. If New Yorkers are known for one thing, it’s how to corrupt a system so I would propose having more scrutiny around disability qualifications with more frequent renewals.
tsunamifury 6 hours ago [-]
San Francisco wasted millions on congestion pricing research that ironically totally solved by Covid.
Now work from home has essentially destroyed the downtown but also left it with very little traffic compared to 2019.
That being said the primary argument against it was that for residents who lived in S.F. it was an insanely bad proposal that had you paying to drop your kids at school, go to the grocery store and do average everyday things that had no public transit option.
strictnein 6 hours ago [-]
I mean, sure, if you set up poor arguments like that, they're easy to knock down.
"What about people who need to drive due to mobility issues?"
vs
"What about people on a fixed income who need to drive due to mobility issues?"
Regressive taxes are still regressive, even if you like what they do.
I'm also not quite sure how this is a winning argument either:
> "What about all the people who need to drive into the city for work?" Uhh... don't!
Huh?
estearum 6 hours ago [-]
The fixed income case is absolutely trivial to solve by just giving them a stipend or discount card, which is obviously what they do in NYC.
The people who drive into a city to work should either pay for access to the city's economy and infrastructure that supports their job (and the entire surrounding region's suburbia), or they can get a job in their own community, or they can take a form of transit with fewer negative externalities on the city. Not that hard to understand.
strictnein 6 hours ago [-]
It's not "absolutely trivial" and it's not "obviously what they do in NYC".
It is a convoluted system of city and state tax credits, partial discounts, etc that you must do every year. Not only do you have to file additional forms as part of your tax return, you must also recertify your disability annually.
And if you are simply low income, you can apply and then you receive a 50% discount after your first 10 trips into the city each month. If you are going into the city 2-3 times a week, you receive no discount.
While the number of options for receiving relief can be large/varied/complex, each individual program is definitely not complex.
Low-income: Show your tax return <$50k/yr or show your enrollment in a public assistance program.
Disability: Get your disability assess annually or show enrollment in the already-existing disabled-people transit assistance programs.
Not sure what you think is non-trivial about either of these?
strictnein 5 hours ago [-]
You seem to be avoiding the point that to get a discount you must travel into the city by car more than ten times a month and those first ten times are full price.
And then you must pay 50% of the price after that. Then, in April, you may get some tax relief.
This is a good system and trivial in your mind? Because the average low income or fixed income person can just float that money for a year and then maybe get some of it back?
And you can't even do it if you've moved recently. If all of your documents don't have the exact same address you are out of luck. If you've moved since you filed your taxes and your address on your car registration is your old address you're out of luck until you file your next taxes and update your registration.
And then you have to mail it all in and just wait until you get a response. And if it's denied you get to start the process again. And then next year you get to do it again.
This isn't "trivial". Trivial is submitting your social security number, VIN, drivers license, and address.
estearum 5 hours ago [-]
You're mixing two distinct relief systems.
The standard low-income relief program does not entail any tax credits or fronting any money. It does not require a disability assessment. It's just a discount attached to your EZPass and you can get it if you're already enrolled in a federal or local public assistance program.
A different relief program gives you a post-facto tax credit.
These are two different systems. One is easier for one group, the other is easier for a different group.
Sure go make it more trivial. No complaints there!
jtbayly 6 hours ago [-]
They already pay substantial taxes out of their income to the city they work, in most places. They already are paying for access.
estearum 5 hours ago [-]
Empirically demonstrated by their continued decision to live outside of the city and commute into it, they believe they are getting more value than they are paying in via whatever tax scheme the locale has in place.
You'll know they're paying their fair share when the arbitrage actually stops, but taxing non-resident earnings so aggressively to stop it produces way more negative side effects and regressive taxation effects than congestion pricing does. That's why congestion pricing is a good idea and 90% taxes on non-resident incomes is not (not to mention the ease of enforcement).
strictnein 5 hours ago [-]
Living in NYC is really expensive. Those that earn a lot can do so. Those that have families frequently cannot.
It's not "arbitrage" to commute from a place you can afford to a place you can't. Being middle class isn't an arbitrage play.
estearum 5 hours ago [-]
That is quite literally arbitrage.
People with families aren't often willing to accept the living conditions they'd need to in order to live in NYC while paying market prices. So they arb and get suburban living conditions with urban employment.
The cost of their decision to do that is mostly borne by the respective communities (home community loses economic productivity and then city community bears increased infrastructure consumption).
We would know there's zero arbitrage when zero people did this. Which again, I don't think is the goal to shoot for. But simply asserting you have some god-given right to make this arb indefinitely at zero cost is a losing argument.
jtbayly 4 hours ago [-]
So what?
You didn’t say they should pay as much as they are willing to pay. You said they should pay.
They are paying!
Your new goal is that nobody can afford to work in the city except residents, but that is an objectively dumb idea, and certainly has nothing to do with a “fair share.”
estearum 4 hours ago [-]
I certainly did not declare that as a goal, lol. I said that you'll know you have eliminated the arbitrage when people no longer do the arbitrage. This is a simple description of reality and not a normative claim.
First, in most cities people don't pay income taxes to the cities they work in but do not reside in. At least in the US this is not typical.
Second, the position that people should pay to reduce their negative externalities does not necessarily imply the view that they pay nothing today. It implies they ought to pay more.
If someone pays for entry to Disneyland, steals a t-shirt, is a valid defense that "they paid" when they bought the ticket? No, obviously not. Does demanding that they pay for the t-shirt imply that they did not pay for a ticket? No, obviously not.
jtbayly 3 hours ago [-]
No you said, "You'll know they're paying their fair share when the arbitrage actually stops.” It might not have been intentional, but you communicated clearly that people should be charged more until they are unwilling to work inside the city and live outside. Otherwise they are not "paying their fair share.”
Nevertheless, NYC is the only city I’m aware of in the USA that has congestion pricing, and I’m shocked to find that non-residents who work there do not pay income tax to the city. I live in OH and have to pay an income tax to the small city I work in even though I’m not a resident of said city. I thought it was more common.
estearum 3 hours ago [-]
You're jumping from "it's unfair that people can do X" to "the goal is to prevent all X."
I, as a realist, believe in systems with flex. As our very own patio11 put it: the optimal amount of fraud is nonzero. Here, the optimal amount of unfairness is nonzero. Or stated another way: the cost of eliminating all unfairness would not be worth it.
The assumptive jumps are not necessary here!
jtbayly 2 hours ago [-]
Fine, let’s take it for granted that you don’t want to all of it. But the clear implication of saying that people aren’t paying their fair share is that they generally should. So your ideal may not be 0, but it is (even by your own analogy), close to 0. It’s like saying the goal is to end fraud, and you bring up the technicality that actually the cost of ending all fraud is not worth it. Ok, but the ideal is still no fraud, and nobody is confused about the general goal being to get rid of as much of it as we can cost effectively.
So now I’m honestly asking, are you or are you not arguing that the general goal is to end people "not paying their fair share” (which you equate to living outside of the city you work in)?
Also can you please explain why you believe that “fair” is measurable in this way? Can you give another example of something where a common person would use a similar definition of fair? I think that your definition of fair means stores without dynamic pricing are unfair, which seems crazy to me.
estearum 2 hours ago [-]
Uhh... I've already stated explicitly that's not a goal. I don't know why you're fixated on something I never said or even implied.
wat10000 6 hours ago [-]
I don't think this should be described as a tax. It's paid access to a scarce resource, no different from a parking garage charging people to park. In this case it just happens to be a government-owned resource, but that doesn't make the price a tax.
If you're worried about poor people, the right move is to price things properly and then give assistance to those who need it, rather than giving away scarce resources to everyone for free.
strictnein 6 hours ago [-]
A government fee or whatever you wish to name it is still a tax.
Didn't the city already charge tolls on the bridges and tunnels in and out?
A road isn't a scarce resource. You can't deplete it.
wat10000 5 hours ago [-]
So when I go buy rum at the local liquor store, the price on the shelf is actually a tax? That's not what the word means.
Land is a scarce resource. Roads require land. Charging money for access to land is extremely common.
strictnein 5 hours ago [-]
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arnoooooo 6 hours ago [-]
What I don't like about congestion pricing is that the people asking for money are the ones who are responsible for the congestion. They are always making cities denser and denser, bigger and bigger, which no resident asks for.
unglaublich 5 hours ago [-]
You have no clue. Low-density suburbs create much more traffic than dense areas, just because you _have_ to travel >5km just to the next supermarket. In dense areas, most people walk.
wat10000 6 hours ago [-]
People love density. What they don't like are some of the consequences of density, such as traffic. This alleviates a major consequence without getting rid of the stuff people like.
If you don't like density, there are plenty of un-dense places you can be, with no congestion pricing.
estearum 6 hours ago [-]
"Asking for money?" Who are you referring to?
clickety_clack 5 hours ago [-]
This shows a total lack of empathy for people without the wealth to live wherever they want. “You can sit on a bus for an hour and a half, dummy” is a terrible argument.
I’m glad we all have great work situations, for many of us working from home whenever we want even. Most people are just a job loss away from having to commute to a job far away from the house near their kids’ school or their partner’s work. People don’t get jobs with a commute by choice to begin with, and this just punishes people for that.
Edit: I haven’t had a car since 2018, but before that I had one because I needed it, and I hated that commute. The alternative to a 25- to 35-minute drive was 1:45 on 2 trains. You shouldn’t have to literally experience things in the world yourself to recognize that people are in situations that you are not in yourself.
estearum 5 hours ago [-]
No, quite the contrary. Unlimited free road consumption has created the conditions under which jobs get super-concentrated into commercial centers and away from communities, which centralizes land values and urban vitality into the few neighborhoods the wealthy can live in.
jcranmer 5 hours ago [-]
Job concentration predates the automobile by some amount. The concept of suburbs largely originates from the development of streetcars (very much not free!), although the suburban sprawl associated with US cities nowadays arises from the private automobiles. Note that streetcar suburbs are generally associated with medium-density development: it allowed urban centers to grow larger without having to really pack everyone into high-density tenements (though that still happened in many cases). White flight and the automobile means that post-WW2 suburbs become large low-density suburbs, focused on detached single-family homes.
In essence, the "unlimited free road consumption" created the disaggregation of decentralized, low-density suburban regions from the high-density commercial districts, which predates that concept by several decades.
estearum 4 hours ago [-]
You're saying the same thing that I'm saying.
Subsidized roads creates an arbitrage that allows people to live away from their jobs. This concentrates commercial activity, i.e. it creates commercial-only zones and residential-only zones that are far away from each other. Prior to that, people lived and worked in the same area. These were very dense areas, but the economic activity of the region wouldn't be described as concentrated because there was no gradient to low-activity surroundings.
Obviously actual zoning policies play a (significant) role here as well.
pchristensen 5 hours ago [-]
Transit access is what concentrates jobs and creates urban vitality. Highway access has a similar effect but creates corridors and edge city clusters which also drive up land values and cost but are impossible to effectively serve by transit, requiring every single person to drive.
clickety_clack 5 hours ago [-]
This is backwards. With public transport you have to be near public transport. With a car you can go from any start point to any end point. Banning cars would mean you either work in a local coffee shop or supermarket or something, or you work in the office buildings and large employers at public transit hubs, which are usually downtown. It increases concentration of jobs into zones, increasing the need to be in a residential area that can access them, increasing demand for those locations, increasing wealth inequality by limiting access to jobs based on where you can afford to live.
strictnein 5 hours ago [-]
How can you argue here that it is "free road consumption" while in another comment you point out that there were already tolls?
Which one is it? Is it free or were there tolls?
estearum 5 hours ago [-]
In another comment thread I was talking about New York City in particular.
This comment thread is talking about the general dynamics of commutes.
Unlimited free or near-free road consumption is the norm across the entire US. NYC in particular has always been ahead of the curve in mitigating this. The bridge tolls are obviously not priced anywhere close to the value of crossing the bridge, or else land values would be the same on both sides of the bridge.
I suspect this isn't actually hard to follow and you're just getting irritated for some reason.
nkrisc 5 hours ago [-]
As opposed to sitting in their car for an hour and a half?
clickety_clack 5 hours ago [-]
Seeing as the comparable drive is probably a half hour, if you’ve sat in the car for an hour and a half then you’ve found a great way to spend your time.
Nobody wants to commute either by bus or by car, so the reason that they are doing it to start with is that they must do it. It’s not like people think to themselves “I’d love to find a job an hour away from my house”.
wat10000 11 minutes ago [-]
The places that are doing congestion pricing are not the places where your commute is 30 minutes by car but 90 minutes by bus.
satvikpendem 5 hours ago [-]
Improve public transit then. This is not a good argument to instead allow everyone to have cars.
unglaublich 5 hours ago [-]
Now that you can't white knight for the people with medical emergencies, you're white knighting for the poor?
Cars are a money sink, everyone would be richer if you don't need them for personal transport.
clickety_clack 5 hours ago [-]
I never said anything about medical emergencies, and nobody is forcing you to own one today.
game_the0ry 6 hours ago [-]
You know what would also help traffic congestion? Allowing people to work from home.
Has the added benefit of reducing gas prices (less demand) and less greenhouse gas emissions.
justonceokay 5 hours ago [-]
I think you overestimate the number of people that can work from home. For society to function the majority of us have to actually go to a physical place and do something real with our hands and our time.
austin-cheney 6 hours ago [-]
My city is growing at about 25,000 people per year. Just take a second to run some numbers in your head to let that sink in. In 1990 this city was the 29th largest city in the US and now it is the 10th. By 2050 it is projected to be the 9th largest city in the US surpassing Dallas in population.
We have congestion everywhere and few transportation options. I cannot imagine the consequences of congestion pricing here. Sometimes it could take 30 minutes to get to the freeway 1.5 miles away during morning rush hour. I suspect congestion pricing here would motivate many people to simply abandon their employment if in a job where work from home is a disallowed viable possibility.
In my case I am currently unemployed and am turning down interview offers in locations I used to commute to just a few years back, because now the costs of commute are another form of wage depreciation that gets factored into the compensation rate.
usrnm 6 hours ago [-]
Let me introduce you to this very new invention called public transport
austin-cheney 5 hours ago [-]
I am so envious of DC and Chicago for their metro systems. It's always interesting to talk to people who live in those locations and take their mass transit for granted, like a spoiled entitlement. Here if you don't have a car you will quickly become homeless or starve to death.
pc86 5 hours ago [-]
If Google is right they live in Jacksonville, which aside from being a terrible place to live in general, can't physically or geographically support subways or light rail. So you're basically limited to busses if you want to implement public transportation.
I've only been to Jacksonville a handful of times but I'd rather walk along the side of road in August than ride a bus there. And they don't actually help congestion that much.
usrnm 5 hours ago [-]
> can't physically or geographically support subways or light rail
Why? Genuinely curious, I don't know much about US geography
pchristensen 5 hours ago [-]
Jacksonville (and most of Florida) is extremely low lying with a high water table, so sub-surface construction (basements) and subways are basically impossible.
Structurally, it's a low density, car-based city so light rail (as opposed to busses) requires a lot of up front investment without the land use to justify it. At this point, like many US cities, adding effective transit is a chicken and egg problem with land use.
pc86 5 hours ago [-]
There are a couple reasons (not the least of which is political will but that's a separate discussion). Jacksonville sits on a coastal plain and is almost entirely fine sand. You simply can't build a subway in that without astronomical cost. As for rail I'm pretty sure Jacksonville already has elevated rail in some places but ground rail would be difficult for the same reasons.
qgin 5 hours ago [-]
It's the 2nd least dense large city in America. It has a population of San Francisco but across like 15x more land.
maxerickson 5 hours ago [-]
I'll bet you a dollar that it is Austin.
I guess there are made up reasons not to use public transport there too.
pc86 5 hours ago [-]
Austin is the 12th most populous city so it's possible they're just wrong but probably not.
maxerickson 6 hours ago [-]
Why do you assume it would be onerous? New York City apparently charges individuals in private cars up to $13.50?
And then imagine if there was offsetting spending.
austin-cheney 5 hours ago [-]
New York has excellent mass transit and high population density, so you have options besides using a car or can walk to meet up for a car pool. These options just don't exist here. So charging people a penalty without providing alternatives is just another unavoidable tax.
maxerickson 4 hours ago [-]
Well yes, the idea is to charge a tax.
Charging fees for things that are scarce certainly isn't perfect, but it's often better then simply leaving everyone to suffer.
fckgw 5 hours ago [-]
Ok. Sounds like your city is not a good candidate for congestion pricing and probably won't happen.
"What about all the people who need to drive into the city for work?" Uhh... don't!
"What about the delivery people who need to bring this into the city?" They should be able to get in and out much faster, and their cargo makes it easy to amortize the cost!
"What about people who need to drive due to mobility issues?" Look, now they can park near their destination too!
How are they going to do if there's no public transportation available for their commute?
edit: and how about plumbers (and the like) who need a vehicle to carry what they need to work?
is there any city anywhere that has implemented congestion pricing without having public transit available?
It didn’t go over well.
And even for a small city like Cambridge it is a huge lift to go from an already inadequate public transport infrastructure and set of services to infrastructure and services suitable for a city where cars have been largely eliminated.
The irony of course is that bus services, specifically the guided busway, will be cut again soon due to ongoing lack of use. But the lack of use has been caused by long-running and poorly managed maintenance on the busway disrupting services to the point of unusability, rather than because of any real lack of demand.
Some people didn’t trust that promises would be delivered on public transport when it came to the congestion charge. Obviously cuts like this add fuel to that fire.
On a more positive note we have, over the past 10 years or so, gained two new railway stations, and that’s good. But we haven’t gained new rail lines and rail routes so they haven’t done anything really to improve the transport and congestion situations around the city. It’s easier and more convenient to get to London though, depending on where you are.
It is quite likely to be tried again in future.
This is literally addressed by the comment you are replying to:
"What about the delivery people who need to bring this into the city?" They should be able to get in and out much faster, and their cargo makes it easy to amortize the cost!
They pay the fee and pass on the cost to their customers. And now they can find parking near where they work so they'll save some time.
A productive way would be to say that congestion pricing should be used to expand bus service.
If you do that, it will turn out that buses (etc) are far superior methods of moving people around, but you really don't need to move money directly from one to the other.
Why shouldn't people care how the money flows and why are you the decider of what people should care about? If the money from congestion pricing was for a new stadium for the Yankees, or to build a new heliport for billionaires' row, or it just went into the pocket of the mayor I think that would be concerning for everyone involved.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
You charge the customer for the congestion charge and use it to pay the fee, just like anything else. I bid construction work and would include congestion fees into my bid or T&M rates if needed.
How do you think construction vehicles pay for parking? They charge the customer for it and use the money to pay for parking.
> "What about all the people who need to drive into the city for work?" Uhh... don't!
... Look man, I'm in favor of the policy too, but this reads like straight satire. Please tell me you're trolling.
The entire point of the policy is to reduce the number of people driving into cities. "Well how am I going to drive into the city?!" is the position that's indistinguishable from satire.
And then the residents complain that people keep commuting to work in the offices they zoned for instead of housing towers.
But the mechanism here is highly unfair. It's obvious why rich people support congestion charges--they're rich! They don't give a shit about the $20 or whatever, and it clears the roads of those dirty poors making traffic. Bring it on!
Meanwhile the poor--already struggling with affordability and cost of living--are the ones who bear the burden. They can't afford the congestion fee, so they're forced to find some alternative way to get into the city. But that comes at an obvious utility cost; if that alternative was the best way for them to get into the city, they'd already be using it! And poor people are the ones with no time to spare, so choosing between spending $20 they don't have or spending 30 more minutes that they don't have is a Hobson's choice.
Here's my proposal: Every vehicle gets 60 free days per year with no congestion charges at all. Days 61-100 have a $1,000,000 congestion charge. Days 101-365 have a $10,000,000 congestion charge. Congestion charges will be reduced, however, to 0.1% of the driver's AGI (for days 61-100) and 1% of the driver's AGI (for days 101-365) upon application. Now even hedge fund managers in Connecticut will be inconvenienced in just the same way as poor people.
Yet somehow I believe that if that were how congestion pricing was implemented, all these Econ professors would magically discover what a bad policy congestion pricing really is!
A marginal $20 has very little utility to rich people, but 15 minutes saved in traffic has large utility. Congestion pricing results in large utility gains to the rich.
A marginal $20 has tangible utility to poor people, and 15 minutes spent finding alternative transport also has tangible utility. Congestion pricing results in large utility losses to the poor.
KBB values are an imperfect proxy for individual monetary utility but could definitely be used to more fairly distribute the utility gains from congestion pricing.
Are you kidding me? Free riding?
I pay the same taxes on my NY income as if I lived in NY plus congestion pricing atop that. Your transportation in the city free rides on me after NY/NYC do their voodoo transfers.
You shut down soooo many lanes then pretend the problem is the commuters.
Consider: "Broad"-way is effectively 1 lane southbound in the southern part of Manhattan.
People who live in NY pay NY taxes and NY rent. The reason you do not live in the city is because you prefer to arbitrage the difference in rents. The reason this arbitrage exists is because the costs incurred by e.g. taxes and congestion tolls are not sufficiently high to fully eliminate the free-riding.
I don't think taxes and tolls should be high enough to fully eliminate the arbitrage, but the existence of the arbitrage is an existence proof of the gap internalized and externalized costs.
I also don't think the problem is commuters per se. The problem is cars. But commuters are the primary source of cars.
The positivity of it varies dramatically based on the type of jurisdiction and what entity has what power. Manhattan and London have an existing chokepoint arrangement where you won't be able to really assess it's benefit/detraction for a long time. Proponents of the Manhattan congestion pricing tend to ignore where alot growth is happening - Hoboken and Jersey City are in some ways more vital. Most of the benefit could have been realized by tolling the free river crossings, as alot of the traffic reduction was eliminating toll-avoidance trips.
In other places, you can see part of the downside with speed cameras which are starting to pick up. My city adopted them and traffic dropped noticeably, immediately. We also saw a pretty immediate effect on retail and restaurants. My wife works for a restaurant group -- RFPs for large events basically say "not in <city>", because the city's brand is toxified by tolling.
River crossings into NYC were already not free. Not sure what you're referring to.
Speed cameras and stop cameras are also great and should be virtually everywhere.
Cool, you're demonstrating that you have no understanding of the issue.
> River crossings into NYC were already not free. Not sure what you're referring to.
They sure are.
Trips that originate from Brooklyn, Queens or Long Island to New Jersey would go <origin> to Brooklyn/Manhattan/Williamsburg/Queenboro bridges. The outbound Hudson River crossings are all free.
Trips that originate from Brooklyn, Queens or Long Island to Westchester and points north or east would go <origin> to Brooklyn/Manhattan/Williamsburg/Queenboro bridges. You take the FDR drive/East Side highway to one of the free east river crossings to the bronx, then take the Deegan to one of the many parkways. You can take the Taconic all the way to Albany for $0.
BTW, the Westside of Manhattan around the tunnel crossings is now just as much of a shitshow as it was. They are just slurping up more revenue for the MTA to set aflame.
> Speed cameras and stop cameras are also great and should be virtually everywhere.
They are fine if they are everywhere. You'll feel differently when you get a $25 fine + $50 contractor fee when you drive through a 20mph school zone in the middle of August in some random town.
How so?
You're talking about trips within New York City (Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island are part of New York City) or out of New York City.
These are not river-crossings INTO New York City.
> Westside of Manhattan around the tunnel crossings is now just as much of a shitshow as it was
This is just objectively not true. https://www.congestion-pricing-tracker.com/
> You'll feel differently when you get a $25 fine + $50 contractor fee when you drive through a 20mph school zone in the middle of August in some random town.
... why would I feel differently once getting penalized for breaking the law? I want every person who speeds through my child's school zone to get ticketed. If I'm the one doing the speeding, I should get ticketed.
People of Long Island, which is not part of NYC, go to great lengths to avoid tolls to the mainland. You only need a few thousand cars to make a huge impact. That's the congestion that was eliminated. You can, and people do, the same from Westchester north. There is no free route from New Jersey.
> This is just objectively not true. https://www.congestion-pricing-tracker.com/
Compare your data, to what I said, not to what you are upset about. It's still a shitshow, just a shorter wait.
The routes used to avoid river tolls from Long Island (Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg, Queenboro Bridges) dropped. Crosstown traffic dropped.
FDR Drive, Battery tunnel, Queens Midtown Tunnel remained the same or marginally dropped.
Fine by me!
What? Don't work? What else is there, the bus?
> Cities around the world, including London, Stockholm, Milan, and most recently, New York City (NYC), have adopted congestion pricing, charging drivers a fee to enter high-traffic zones.
which isn't to say that this is right or just. it's simply the state of things given the way we've decided to arrange our society
Now work from home has essentially destroyed the downtown but also left it with very little traffic compared to 2019.
That being said the primary argument against it was that for residents who lived in S.F. it was an insanely bad proposal that had you paying to drop your kids at school, go to the grocery store and do average everyday things that had no public transit option.
"What about people who need to drive due to mobility issues?"
vs
"What about people on a fixed income who need to drive due to mobility issues?"
Regressive taxes are still regressive, even if you like what they do.
I'm also not quite sure how this is a winning argument either:
> "What about all the people who need to drive into the city for work?" Uhh... don't!
Huh?
The people who drive into a city to work should either pay for access to the city's economy and infrastructure that supports their job (and the entire surrounding region's suburbia), or they can get a job in their own community, or they can take a form of transit with fewer negative externalities on the city. Not that hard to understand.
It is a convoluted system of city and state tax credits, partial discounts, etc that you must do every year. Not only do you have to file additional forms as part of your tax return, you must also recertify your disability annually.
And if you are simply low income, you can apply and then you receive a 50% discount after your first 10 trips into the city each month. If you are going into the city 2-3 times a week, you receive no discount.
https://www.mta.info/fares-tolls/tolls/congestion-relief-zon...
Low-income: Show your tax return <$50k/yr or show your enrollment in a public assistance program.
Disability: Get your disability assess annually or show enrollment in the already-existing disabled-people transit assistance programs.
Not sure what you think is non-trivial about either of these?
And then you must pay 50% of the price after that. Then, in April, you may get some tax relief.
This is a good system and trivial in your mind? Because the average low income or fixed income person can just float that money for a year and then maybe get some of it back?
And you can't even do it if you've moved recently. If all of your documents don't have the exact same address you are out of luck. If you've moved since you filed your taxes and your address on your car registration is your old address you're out of luck until you file your next taxes and update your registration.
And then you have to mail it all in and just wait until you get a response. And if it's denied you get to start the process again. And then next year you get to do it again.
This isn't "trivial". Trivial is submitting your social security number, VIN, drivers license, and address.
The standard low-income relief program does not entail any tax credits or fronting any money. It does not require a disability assessment. It's just a discount attached to your EZPass and you can get it if you're already enrolled in a federal or local public assistance program.
A different relief program gives you a post-facto tax credit.
These are two different systems. One is easier for one group, the other is easier for a different group.
Sure go make it more trivial. No complaints there!
You'll know they're paying their fair share when the arbitrage actually stops, but taxing non-resident earnings so aggressively to stop it produces way more negative side effects and regressive taxation effects than congestion pricing does. That's why congestion pricing is a good idea and 90% taxes on non-resident incomes is not (not to mention the ease of enforcement).
It's not "arbitrage" to commute from a place you can afford to a place you can't. Being middle class isn't an arbitrage play.
People with families aren't often willing to accept the living conditions they'd need to in order to live in NYC while paying market prices. So they arb and get suburban living conditions with urban employment.
The cost of their decision to do that is mostly borne by the respective communities (home community loses economic productivity and then city community bears increased infrastructure consumption).
We would know there's zero arbitrage when zero people did this. Which again, I don't think is the goal to shoot for. But simply asserting you have some god-given right to make this arb indefinitely at zero cost is a losing argument.
You didn’t say they should pay as much as they are willing to pay. You said they should pay.
They are paying!
Your new goal is that nobody can afford to work in the city except residents, but that is an objectively dumb idea, and certainly has nothing to do with a “fair share.”
First, in most cities people don't pay income taxes to the cities they work in but do not reside in. At least in the US this is not typical.
Second, the position that people should pay to reduce their negative externalities does not necessarily imply the view that they pay nothing today. It implies they ought to pay more.
If someone pays for entry to Disneyland, steals a t-shirt, is a valid defense that "they paid" when they bought the ticket? No, obviously not. Does demanding that they pay for the t-shirt imply that they did not pay for a ticket? No, obviously not.
Nevertheless, NYC is the only city I’m aware of in the USA that has congestion pricing, and I’m shocked to find that non-residents who work there do not pay income tax to the city. I live in OH and have to pay an income tax to the small city I work in even though I’m not a resident of said city. I thought it was more common.
I, as a realist, believe in systems with flex. As our very own patio11 put it: the optimal amount of fraud is nonzero. Here, the optimal amount of unfairness is nonzero. Or stated another way: the cost of eliminating all unfairness would not be worth it.
The assumptive jumps are not necessary here!
So now I’m honestly asking, are you or are you not arguing that the general goal is to end people "not paying their fair share” (which you equate to living outside of the city you work in)?
Also can you please explain why you believe that “fair” is measurable in this way? Can you give another example of something where a common person would use a similar definition of fair? I think that your definition of fair means stores without dynamic pricing are unfair, which seems crazy to me.
If you're worried about poor people, the right move is to price things properly and then give assistance to those who need it, rather than giving away scarce resources to everyone for free.
Didn't the city already charge tolls on the bridges and tunnels in and out?
A road isn't a scarce resource. You can't deplete it.
Land is a scarce resource. Roads require land. Charging money for access to land is extremely common.
If you don't like density, there are plenty of un-dense places you can be, with no congestion pricing.
I’m glad we all have great work situations, for many of us working from home whenever we want even. Most people are just a job loss away from having to commute to a job far away from the house near their kids’ school or their partner’s work. People don’t get jobs with a commute by choice to begin with, and this just punishes people for that.
Edit: I haven’t had a car since 2018, but before that I had one because I needed it, and I hated that commute. The alternative to a 25- to 35-minute drive was 1:45 on 2 trains. You shouldn’t have to literally experience things in the world yourself to recognize that people are in situations that you are not in yourself.
In essence, the "unlimited free road consumption" created the disaggregation of decentralized, low-density suburban regions from the high-density commercial districts, which predates that concept by several decades.
Subsidized roads creates an arbitrage that allows people to live away from their jobs. This concentrates commercial activity, i.e. it creates commercial-only zones and residential-only zones that are far away from each other. Prior to that, people lived and worked in the same area. These were very dense areas, but the economic activity of the region wouldn't be described as concentrated because there was no gradient to low-activity surroundings.
Obviously actual zoning policies play a (significant) role here as well.
Which one is it? Is it free or were there tolls?
This comment thread is talking about the general dynamics of commutes.
Unlimited free or near-free road consumption is the norm across the entire US. NYC in particular has always been ahead of the curve in mitigating this. The bridge tolls are obviously not priced anywhere close to the value of crossing the bridge, or else land values would be the same on both sides of the bridge.
I suspect this isn't actually hard to follow and you're just getting irritated for some reason.
Nobody wants to commute either by bus or by car, so the reason that they are doing it to start with is that they must do it. It’s not like people think to themselves “I’d love to find a job an hour away from my house”.
Cars are a money sink, everyone would be richer if you don't need them for personal transport.
Has the added benefit of reducing gas prices (less demand) and less greenhouse gas emissions.
We have congestion everywhere and few transportation options. I cannot imagine the consequences of congestion pricing here. Sometimes it could take 30 minutes to get to the freeway 1.5 miles away during morning rush hour. I suspect congestion pricing here would motivate many people to simply abandon their employment if in a job where work from home is a disallowed viable possibility.
In my case I am currently unemployed and am turning down interview offers in locations I used to commute to just a few years back, because now the costs of commute are another form of wage depreciation that gets factored into the compensation rate.
I've only been to Jacksonville a handful of times but I'd rather walk along the side of road in August than ride a bus there. And they don't actually help congestion that much.
Why? Genuinely curious, I don't know much about US geography
Structurally, it's a low density, car-based city so light rail (as opposed to busses) requires a lot of up front investment without the land use to justify it. At this point, like many US cities, adding effective transit is a chicken and egg problem with land use.
I guess there are made up reasons not to use public transport there too.
And then imagine if there was offsetting spending.
Charging fees for things that are scarce certainly isn't perfect, but it's often better then simply leaving everyone to suffer.
What's the issue?