New York City’s Congestion Pricing Plan Can Move Forward, Feds Say

[bobtehpanda]

6 hours ago, R10 2952 said:

As long as Brooklyn and Queens continue to be physically located on Long Island, they're always going to be part of Long Island.  The cultural distinctions do exist but they don't exactly put Nassau and Suffolk in a separate dimension of time and space.  Culture is an artificial human construct- geography is not.

I sure wish someone would tell the IRS that they're "an artificial human construct" and I don't need to pay my taxes.

It still matters. And Brooklyn and Queens have lower car ownership and higher transit usage than Nassau and Suffolk. I lived in a household with a car in a transit desert in Queens, but I don't really drive into Manhattan and I support congestion pricing.

Edited April 7, 2021 by bobtehpanda

[Gotham Bus Co.]

On 4/6/2021 at 5:47 PM, GojiMet86 said:

Contrast that to Moses, who had a boner for cars despite never driving himself, and had no problem destroying large swaths of the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn for them.

 

Robert Moses once stated publicly that "cities exist only to be conduits for suburban traffic" (and thus aren't entitled to their own viability).

Edited April 10, 2021 by Gotham Bus Co.
Clarification

[MisterSG1]

10 hours ago, Gotham Bus Co. said:

 

Robert Moses once stated publicly that "cities exist only to be conduits for suburban traffic" (and thus aren't entitled to their own viability).

But does that mean the opposite must be embraced. The hardcore opposite, such as expansions of the 14th Street project to other streets?

Why can't a balanced approach be possible? 14th Street bus may be practical during rush hours, but what about after rush hours, when there could be more cars on the street than passengers in the buses?

Want to knockdown FDR Drive next, because it's an eyesore in Lower Manhattan, well don't put it past them. Funny how road infrastructure is always seen as eyesores while rail infrastructure isn't. Urban planners want to make a city look nice no matter what, while traffic engineers want to keep the city running practically.

Edited April 10, 2021 by MisterSG1

[Deucey]

45 minutes ago, MisterSG1 said:

But does that mean the opposite must be embraced. The hardcore opposite, such as expansions of the 14th Street project to other streets?

 

You'd have a point if 13th and 15th Streets didn't exist. And since the cars that used to take 14th Street haven't moved to 13th or 15th, nor 23rd, 8th or Houston, you don't have a point.

46 minutes ago, MisterSG1 said:

Why can't a balanced approach be possible? 14th Street bus may be practical during rush hours, but what about after rush hours, when there could be more cars on the street than passengers in the buses?

After cars had defacto exclusivity to road spaces - with buses and bikes having to find gaps, this would be a balanced approach, as now bus and bike riders are getting the opportunity to have a faster and safer commute.

46 minutes ago, MisterSG1 said:

Want to knockdown FDR Drive next, because it's an eyesore in Lower Manhattan, well don't put it past them. Funny how road infrastructure is always seen as eyesores while rail infrastructure isn't. Urban planners want to make a city look nice no matter what, while traffic engineers want to keep the city running practically.

What's the practicality of being stuck in a traffic jam or stop-and-go traffic for two hours? Asking as a former Los Angeleno and Sacramentan.

[bobtehpanda]

1 hour ago, MisterSG1 said:

But does that mean the opposite must be embraced. The hardcore opposite, such as expansions of the 14th Street project to other streets?

Why can't a balanced approach be possible? 14th Street bus may be practical during rush hours, but what about after rush hours, when there could be more cars on the street than passengers in the buses?

Want to knockdown FDR Drive next, because it's an eyesore in Lower Manhattan, well don't put it past them. Funny how road infrastructure is always seen as eyesores while rail infrastructure isn't. Urban planners want to make a city look nice no matter what, while traffic engineers want to keep the city running practically.

City voters vote for city politicians who put in city policies.

With the elimination of the commuter tax the suburbs have no leg to stand on.

Also point to me where there is elevated rail infrastructure within the core of Manhattan, or cutting off an actual park from the city.

[RR503]

Not to state the obvious here, but: congestion pricing is most fundamentally a means of internalizing an externality. When car n + 1 enters the Manhattan highway network, it imposes costs on other drivers (congestion) and society (increased traffic accidents, emissions, road wear), which it does not have to pay for. Extremely for this serving broader goals of road capacity and VMT reduction -- which are critical to keeping Manhattan, much less the Rockaways above sea level by the end of the century -- but you need not go far beyond basic economics to prove the worth of the cordon pricing scheme. 

[N6 Limited]

On 3/31/2021 at 12:58 PM, Deucey said:

Then there's the other thing that goes with it: what if it's successful?

Kinda like how tobacco taxes were to fund Medicaid programs, and they were flush with cash until the number of smokers dropped and caused Medicaid programs to run deficits and then get cut.

Soon as folks stop driving below 59th St...

Right, they instituted the tobacco taxes and kept increasing the tax as if people didn't have other choices. They may do the same in Manhattan, I mean look at the MTA and Port Authority tolls, increasing to infinity.

[Deucey]

12 minutes ago, N6 Limited said:

Right, they instituted the tobacco taxes and kept increasing the tax as if people didn't have other choices. They may do the same in Manhattan, I mean look at the MTA and Port Authority tolls, increasing to infinity.

But the tobacco tax was a success - especially when the tax was applied smartly so it wasn’t cheaper to walk or train to NJ or Westchester to buy a pack (for the people who didn’t buy bootlegs). But the point of it was to discourage tobacco use. So when those numbers fell, the taxes went up to keep the funded programs funded, and then that Laffer Curve came into play.

Congestion Charge itself isn’t a bad idea as a behavior modification method; it’s unfair because there’s no way to avoid giving  money to get off Long Island without making Downtown Brooklyn, Fort Greene, and Bed-Stuy, along with Harlem and Washington Heights, as congested and asthmatic (or more) than the lower half of Manhattan (supposedly) is.

It’s akin to building highways through the hoods because the suburbs judged them unsightly. A new spin on environmental racism is how I see it. And easily ameliorated by making the Westside Highway and all the roads leading from the bridges or NJ tunnels to the Westside Highway and FDR outside the zone.

But making that money a revenue source for  is just repeating the same scheme as when merging in TBTA was supposed to finance transit - tolls go up and transit investment goes down while maintenance costs increase. Then we’re back to this.

While a food and beverage tax in the boroughs could generate sustainable dedicated funding - if Albany doesn’t want to actually be in the business of running a statewide transit funding supplement scheme (like other states do).