- cross-posted to:
- newzealand@lemmy.nz
- cross-posted to:
- newzealand@lemmy.nz
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As long as that money is spent on public transit improvements, I think it’s a great idea for many large cities.
is spent on pubic transit
Hahahahahaha
Oh sorry, I thought you were joking. Of course they won’t
I certainly hope it won’t be spent on pubic transit, at least.
is there any particular reason you’re saying that besides cynicism? I am having trouble finding specifics, but there’s a lot of reporting that the MTA is expecting to raise $15 billion from congestion tolling to fund public transportation repairs and improvements and pretty much all of the proposals for this in the past required all of the revenues to be earmarked for use by the MTA
People are so used to how bad things are they don’t trust improvement, even when it’s real.
But we need more cops
Less cars is the answer! And in what transit is concerned I would say that convenience is very important. Like in Netherlands they got bike locking stations. Not simply a tube that you lock your bike into which is screwed to the front door of a building and fits 3 bikes. I’m talking massive building with an automated system that keeps your bike secure for when you get out of work after the train ride. And restrooms… With cleaning.
inb4 the supreme court rules that congestion charging is unconstitutional and furthermore that public transport, too, is unconstitutional.
If the founding fathers didn’t explicitly mention it in the Constitution then clearly it’s unconstitutional.
Congestion pricing bad, private tolls good
Exhaust Now Vents Directly Into Cab: EPA says, “For your health!”
Are we sure that it’s causing people to take alternative transit more vs just… Not going to Manhattan though? I’m all for it, just worth studying more.
Either way, the policy is working as intended; there are fewer superfluous car trips being made to lower manhattan. If people are deciding not to go over a $9 fee, I don’t think they really needed to go that badly.
That’s why the congestion pricing revenues ought to be spent on improving public transit, to maintain the tourist economy.
The congestion zone only covers lower and midtown Manhattan. Most traffic not heading to that part of Manhattan is either going to take I-95 through Harlem, I-87 through upstate New York, or I-278 through Staten Island and Brooklyn.
You don’t need to study it more.
Can anybody tell me how much a drive through the congestion priced road would cost? Like a straight line?
It’s not so much a congestion prices road, it’s a zone. So anytime you enter that zone you pay $9 unless you make less than like $60 k then it’s like $4-5, and emergency vehicles are free.
$9 for cars, no matter if you go one block in or all the way through. And no daily charge for staying there multiple days, only charged when you enter.
That’s super reasonable, and if it actually helps it’s probably fantastic. I wonder if things like emergency response times will significantly improve as a result.
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It’s like $9
Good.
Outstanding move on NYC’s part.
Prior to this going live there was a lot of talk about how congestion will simply move from one place to another. I don’t know new york so can’t name places but it was regarding commuters using a street or bridge that is now under congestion charge so they will flow an alternative route through roads that aren’t designed for the additional traffic.
Is that now the case?
Some people may be inclined to go up and over Central Park to get to the other side without paying the $9. That likely only affects uptown residents. I can’t imagine anyone driving around the park from midtown to avoid the fee.
The only legitimate concerns I’ve read are from contractors with tools and small businesses who deliver. They should be offered exceptions if walking or mass transit are unrealistic options. You’re not riding the subway with acetylene tanks or delivering fresh meat on Metro North. Other than that, I love it.
They should be offered exceptions if walking or mass transit are unrealistic options.
No they shouldn’t. That’s how you let rich people skirt the law.
Tradespeople should just treat it like any other business expense. Eat it or raise your rates a little bit.
eat it
They never do
a little bit
It’s never a little, and we all bitch about inflation.
There’s never a simple solution.
They sometimes do, at least temporarily. But yes on the whole I agree. I can almost guarantee that it’s a net benefit, that the time saved by traffic reduction makes up for the additional cost in congestion charges
Construction firms make a ton of money in NYC, they can handle it, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone delivering food from a car in the city, they all use bikes.
Commercial deliveries, not consumer. Every pizza joint needs flour, cheese, and tomatoes.
We’ll see how it plays out. I could see less traffic meaning you can make more deliveries in a day, I figure one extra commercial delivery more than makes up for $10 extra.
Possibly. It may disproportionately impact eateries with more diverse menus or foods with shorter shelf life. Time will tell.
Eh, it’s NYC food is already super diverse. There’s fairly established infrastructure for niche food products. If that truck needs a single restaurant to eat that $10, they were probably already paying an arm and a leg for that delivery.
The other concern I’ve heard, and has not been brought up in this thread yet, is the lobbying influence from rideshare companies to pass the congestion laws.
It’s arguable that ride share vehicles are a better traffic density alternative to single rider personal vehicles, but there are pretty clear downsides to consider as well.
Source:
You can be self interested and still accidentally be on the right side of an issue. It doesn’t spark joy, but I’m not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater on this. It’s still a win, imo.
The only legitimate concerns I’ve read are from contractors with tools and small businesses who deliver.
Maybe, but anecdotally the lighter traffic allows contractors to accomplish more jobs per day because they spend less time in traffic, which more than offsets the congestion charge.
Going from three hours per day in traffic down to even just two means there’s an extra hour a contractor has available to make money each day.
sure, but you can also deliver those with lighter vehicles that don’t cause traffic. Congestion is congestion.
I’m confused. How will I deliver 15 pounds of Trump skirt Steaks if I can’t drive my lifted Ram 3500 Heavy Duty with the high-output Cummins Turbo Diesel engine in downtown Manhattan?
I’ve paid more just to go through the park lol
For real.
The other location would be the Subways and buses in this case. I went home at 5 yesterday, right in the heart of rush hour, and it seemed like a normally packed subway not an especially congested one.
Of all the things on Reddit, I miss remindmebot the most. They tried to kill it numerous times but it survived like a roach in radiation. On lemmy, I find an interesting question and have to set a timer for myself. This is the most first-world of problems, but I’m still moderately upset every time
@remindme@mstdn.social 10 days
@remindme@mstdn.social 10 minutes
@bdonvr Ok, I will remind you on Monday Jan 20, 2025 at 12:08 PM PST.
@RemindMe@programming.dev 1 year pls
Good luck. The bot hasn’t sent a message in almost a year.
Unsure, I don’t live in NYC. However, I can say that this will encourage many more people to take transit, which is good. Plus, I don’t doubt that the tolled routes will still see active use by millions as they’re still the fastest way to and from work.
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Wonderful news for people with porches or flexible schedules.
Hey! I’m woahkin hee-ah!
We’ve been seeing a lot of anecdotal posting on Xitter of people who were skeptics or in opposition to this suddenly realizing that they just gained an hour or more per day because the traffic has been significantly reduced. So even some regular people (i.e. not the wealthy) who have to drive in NYC because of their job are realizing that there’s a cost benefit even if they do pay for the congestion pricing.
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Does anyone have a good before screenshot of the same map view / area? I want to stitch together a before shot before I share so that people not from the area can get an idea of the change and not just immediately think “oh well my small town has traffic and it looks like that so what’s the big deal”
not exactly but with Google Maps you can setup a route with a start time set in the past and look at the congestion at that moment:
Half an hour to cross that bridge isn’t even that bad.
yeah i wasn’t sure when rush hour would be, i just put something random and took a screenshot before my battery would die ^^
Gotcha, I found that on desktop you can do “average traffic” for a day of the week and time for the whole map without putting in a destination so I picked an average Monday at 5:30:
oh nice then that’s exactly what you needed :)
Lmfao, that’s the same distance as my commute to work, and I can bike that in 17-20 minutes
Yeah, but you can’t bike through the tunnels
Why not?
There’s no space for you to bike safely in the Holland or Lincoln tunnel.
I REALLY wish they’d implement that in my home city of Montréal, Québec. We’re facing huge traffic congestion because of construction. It’s so bad it’s actually costing lives due to driver impatience.
Downtown Toronto too, please. This last year was the first time I have seen multiple emergency vehicles not being able to get to their destinations because of traffic gridlock. It’s insane.
Properly built bike lanes can be used as an emergency lane for emergency vehicles.
I know its not torontos fault they are getting removed. At least Chow seems to be trying to reduce traffic by ensuring transit fares stay the same by freezing fare imcreases and also investing into various parts of the network.
But the emergency vehicle access might be useful as an argument against Ford’s decisions, not that he would care.
Their counter argument would actually be, “Nah, get rid of the streetcars instead” and people would unironically agree. I wish I was kidding.
The hostility towards non-car/public transit infrastructure I am seeing in Toronto after coming home post-pandemic is insane to me. And, no, it’s not coming from the Indian immigrants everyone keeps trying to blame everything on.
From my observations, immigrants rely on transit more than other demographics.
Wait until the elevated highway collapses
It’s because of everyone being forced back into the office to help “reinvigorate the downtown core” and to help landlords cover real estate costs
Dude Montreal is currently insanity. You couldn’t pay me to drive there. Lovely city otherwise
Yeah. I live in Montreal and try to avoid driving anywhere if I can help it. That’s why I got a place near a metro station not too far from downtown. I have bus routes that go to all the nice places in 20-30 minutes. And my neighborhood is awesome. Everything I need is walking distance and it’s a cool place in the summer with lots of activities, bars, restaurants, specialty stores, etc.
Nice. Now cars are only for the rich like they should be.
Real solution: Ban cars in parts of NYC.
True wealth is not needing to drive a car at all.
Right because everyone needing a car means everyone who can’t afford one just automatically gets one.
Step one of reducing car-dependency is to reduce their number on the road. Then you can start bulding shit that accommodates the poor through actually nice-to-use public transit, bicycle paths, and walking routes.
Charge the rich. Build for the poor. Better yet, charge the rich, build for everyone. Not just cars. Because not everyone has cars.
Like FFS “good job now the poor can’t drive” is hardly a comeback when it’s like the most expensive mode of transit, massively subsidized with taxpayer money, just to kind of make it work. It wasn’t something that could be made affordable or even efficient enough for everyone to use on a daily basis to begin with.
Zippity zoppity let’s redistribute some property
Cut to me dramatically removing my “fuck cars” jacket like a Yakuza character to reveal a “fuck private property” t-shirt
What was that saying again, something along the lines of: A great city is not where the poor own and drive cars, but the rich take public transportation.
A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transportation.
- Gustavo Petro, current president of Colombia, former mayor of Bogota
Now cars are only for the rich
More that roads are for high occupancy or professional vehicles - buses, ambulances, construction vehicles, commercial trucks - that still need access to Manhattan but can’t be placed on a train.
Buses --> tram
Ambulances --> single lane road/biking path
Construction vehicles, commercial trucks --> single lane road
Problem solved, no need for cars inside the city
Ambulances --> single lane road/biking path
I should not need to explain why running an ambulance down a bike lane is a bad idea.
Construction vehicles, commercial trucks --> single lane road
Why would reducing the number of road lanes without implementing congestion pricing be a preferable solution? How would this improve access to construction vehicles and wide-body trucks?
No, you should explain why ambulances using bike lanes is a problem as multiple european countries do that and it works perfectly.
Because reducing lanes means less people will use the road because if you literally cant get anywhere with a car you will use an alternative(of course that has to be provided). Also this is another european thing but you can just ban cars that are not there to do stuff(idk what they call it english but in hungarian its “célforgalom”).
multiple european countries do that and it works perfectly
You know that ambulances also cause accidents on roads?
Banning cars actually works really well if you can prepare parking spaces or fully focus public transport
Source: Taksim Street
Please elaborate the “if you can prepare parking spaces” part.
Multistory and underground parking spaces with a toll on how long a car stays, turkey has İSPARK which maintains this
This’ll both allow people with cars to travel here, and will also lead to people preferring to walk or use public transport
The profit incentive to build parking is through the roof in NYC, they can charge a ton for parking, and there’s still not enough.
…if it isn’t the bridge I said I’d cross… Wait, not going to pay that congestion charge.
You need longitudinal data to make any clear conclusions. Market actors will compensate in other areas to adjust to an increased cost. This immediate change is evidence of a transitory shock to the space and nothing more.
