If you make it so only rich people can do a certain thing, you'll have way fewer people doing that thing. I'm curious what kind of inconveniences this has caused for people who can't afford to pay the fee though.
Are you actually curious or were you just trying to make a gotcha against congestion pricing?
I ask because the "only rich people" criticism of NYCs project has been beaten into the dirt and discussed at nearly every level of politics for more than a year now. If there's anything you want to know the information is readily available.
I'm not curious because I already know the answer. The inconvenience is that driving through the city is $9 more expensive without any improvement in other transportation alternatives. For some people that's no big deal but obviously for a lot of people it is, hence why there's fewer people on the road. The "missing" people are the ones who simply can't afford to be there.
The OP, as well as plenty of other articles, pointed out a rather immediate improvement in alternatives: the busses are faster as a result of traffic being reduced.
The source I found agree with 1-4% for bus routes within Manhattan, but it also said:
> Commutes on Hudson River and East River crossings for several express bus routes linking the boroughs with Manhattan have, on some lines, shaved more than 15 minutes off commuting times.
If you're going to massively inconvenience millions of people then you have to do better than a couple buses running faster. Better as in, using the new funds to completely revamp the whole system. If those faster bus lines don't provide an alternative to my previous route then they don't provide me an alternative to paying $9, losing my job, or picking a different city to live in.
If ~$200/mo is enough for you to quit your job in Manhattan, it's clear you weren't happy in the first place. Congestion pricing has done you a service.
>>The "missing" people are the ones who simply can't afford to be there.
I don't believe that for a second. They could afford to drive a car, insure it, maintain it, buy fuel, and pay for very expensive parking in NYC, but $9 is too much now?
I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong if there's any data that suggest that this is actually true.
People pay what they have to pay do get to work or get around. In that sense they could "afford" it, because the alternative is to move or get a different job.
You're trying to make it seem like driving in NYC is simply a lifestyle decision that people could choose to do or not do. For some people it is, for many people it's simply the only viable option. Once you make it no longer viable, people have no options left.
>>Once you make it no longer viable, people have no options left.
Which implies that the people who continue driving are indeed those who have no other option, and those who do have taken it instead of paying the $9. Would you disagree?
And no, of course I don't imply it's a lifestyle choice - merely that some people(not all!) were driving in NYC even though they indeed had other options available, because there was no extra cost associated with it - now that there is, those people use those other options where possible.
Again, it's really fun to speculate why who and where is doing what, but if you have more specific data then please share.
May I ask if you actually live in NYC? My understanding is that owning and regularly driving a vehicle is exceptionally expensive compared to almost any other city. Parking alone can massively eclipse the estimated monthly amount listed elsewhere in the thread.
Why would they not be there then? How is that supposed to even work if it doesn't affect consumers' behavior?!
This kind of argument reminds me of a French politician who defended a tax on sweet drinks as a way to fight against the obesity crisis looming (France performs better than most country in that regard, but the situation is still bad). She wanted a tax to deter the consumption of sweet drinks, but at the same time they wanted the tax to stay at “a level where it would not affect the purchasing power of people”.
Funny because I was going to use that exact example as something that absolutely works. I can easily afford the sugar tax where I live, it's been around for a few years now. But when I go to a store and a box of regular coke is more expensive than diet it makes me not pick regular even though the difference is meaningless financially to me.
I understand the same mechanism works with cigarettes and loads of other things - even if you can afford them the increasing price puts you off.
But maybe for a more relevant example - I can comfortably afford parking right in the city centre where I live. But the idea of paying what's being asked for parking puts me off so much I just park at the nearest park and ride and take the metro in.
> But when I go to a store and a box of regular coke is more expensive than diet it makes me not pick regular even though the difference is meaningless financially to me.
So you're telling me that the very same people who refuse to buy non-brand Coke copies whose taste is indistinguishable from true Coke in blind tests would accept to buy Diet Coke despite it tasting like shit in a way that everyone can feel? And they would do so for a smaller gain than what it would save them to buy the cheap copy?
Which is why I kept insisting that OP posts some factual data to back up their claims, because as much as I enjoy the guessing of who does what and how and when, it's just a bunch of strangers on the internet giving their theories so far(me included of course).
These are all lifestyle choices. You don't need to do any of those things. Getting to work or getting around one's own city are not lifestyle options. They're necessities.
Using market-style policies to try to nudge people around only works if there are alternatives they can choose from. In this case for many people there are not.
And like I said in my other comment - those people most likely still continue driving and pay the $9 fee. It's people who have other options or who simply don't really need to be there who have now stopped.
This exact same scheme has played out in many other cities already, this isn't new.
> People working _in Manhattan_ can't choose their employer and where to live
None of the blue collar workers in Manhattan (the janitors, the restaurant waiters and cook, etc. the massive working class that is needed for white collar work to be able to operate) can live in Manhattan.
I can also afford the parking in the city center, but mostly choose to patronize businesses in the suburbs where the parking is free (and usually plentiful). That I think is what city business owners are worried about.
It is, the subway is a few orders of magnitude safer and cheaper. Sometimes it can take more time... now. Because of congestion pricing. Before, it was often faster to just walk next to the cars than be in one of the cars.
I assume you're referring to just taking the metro instead. Not everyone who drives lives near a metro. Not every destination is accessible via the metro. Many people commute from more affordable areas far from the city where public transportation isn't always a viable option. Driving gets $9 more expensive but public transit doesn't suddenly get better for the people who can't pay $9.
There are very very few places in nyc not accessible via some combo of bus, metro and ferry. It's not as reliable as say Japan but the public transit network is pretty extensive.
Not everyone who drives through NYC lives in NYC. Even if it were, those transit hops add time. Now you're forcing people to choose between paying money they don't have or spending time they don't have.
If you're driving through NYC you probably have enough money for gas and $9 and all the other tolls on the road. No one is driving around on their last drop of gas going "gosh I could just get out of Nyc to Long Island if I just had that $9 for gas".
The poor car owner who can't afford $9 stories are all made up nonsense. "Not everyone has $9 to spend to drive their tens of thousands of dollars car."
If you want the government to help poor people, there are much better ways to do it than giving away access to one specific kind of public resource to everyone.
Sidewalks can fit an order of magnitude more people than roads can fit cars. Especially if one car lane was re-allocated to make sidewalks wider. Less traffic means less air pollution.
It's almost never needed to faregate sidewalks. Tourist districts can organize a special improvement district tax on stores to fund sidewalk upgrades, trash collection, shuttles, security, parking, and planting flowers. This makes the zone more even more attractive to tourists.
This analogy pretty much gets at the heart of what makes these policies distasteful. Me walking or driving through my own city or neighborhood, where I live, pay taxes, and vote, is not the same as me taking a trip to Disney. I don't do it just for fun. I do it because living requires me to occasionally move from place to place.
Auctioning off to the highest bidder the right to move around is cruel because you make it so that some people simply can't afford to exist in public spaces, and because you're telling people that their own city or neighborhood doesn't even belong to them.
The correct analogy here would be access to healthcare, water, or electricity.
Are people entitled to drive through an area? Or are people entitled to travel through an area? When you live in a car dependent society the two seem to be the same. But they're not the same. Only 22% of Manhattan residents own a car!
Look at a school. Many make the front driveway bus only. Because parents dropping off kids one at a time was very low capacity and causing a line of cars to form every morning backing up into the road. There's just not enough space for everyone to drive single occupancy cars to the same destination within the same half hour time slot. Favoring school buses in the school driveway is not an attack on drivers. It's acknowledging the limits of geometry and time, and choosing to get the most out of our common space.
Does this imply that the government should buy everyone a car? Or is driving not actually necessary for existing in this space and it's enough to let people walk for free?
Keep in mind that we're not talking about some suburb where you have to drive two miles to get to the store, but rather about the most walkable place of its size in the US.
The theory is that the price signal helps people make their own arbitrage between time and money and it would maximize society utility, but the reality is since people have a very different amount of money, it just do what you say: the rich pay without second thoughts and enjoy the higher quality of life when the less rich see a degradation of their own: they will either pay with money they don't have in excess and have to stop other consumption, or take public transports which is less convenient for them (since it's cheaper than car commute, they would be doing it if they didn't like it better).
Yeah, and I'm guessing the opinions of those people don't get taken into account by folks who are studying or manufacturing consent for these policies.
We have finite space for roads and an expanding population. Doing nothing means people spend as much time on congested roads as they would taking public transportation. Objectively the worst of both worlds and people having invested in a car and being used to it will continue living in it as it gets worse and worse.
Providing additional impetus to make a change seems virtuous.
If there's an overall plan to revamp transit and public spaces to accommodate all people then I'm in favor of it. That's how functioning cities do it. This is clearly just a money grab by a corrupt city.
If slack capacity exists in public transportation and roads are way over what's needed immediately is for people to switch over. Making it more expensive to drive instead of subsidizing it is a way to achieve this.
I'm convinced that having individual cars as default mean of transportation sucks, don't get me wrong.
But it's not because “doing nothing” is bad that any decision is good.
This kind of decisions that reduces the freedom of movement of the majority but spare the rich is exactly how people like Trump reach power.
You want to solve the urban planning problem that is car congestion, then the solution is a urban planning one, not a new tax.
Or at least if you want to leverage economic incentives, you have to give everyone working in Manhattan and not living there $200 a month so that their overall purchasing power isn't impacted (the marginal price of taking the car stays the same, and so does the incentive).
The situation as described on the ground seems to be fewer people driving so it seems like it is already working. It doesn't decrease freedom of movement by making people use public transit.
Trump got power because we are a garbage people with neither merit nor intelligence.
