Congestion pricing is great. I routinely end up in Manhattan on Friday and Canal Street at 5pm is running smoothly (not packed end to end with idling cars as before), the city looks like a regular city instead of the packed cars honking and spewing tire dust and exhaust. Long gone are the people that would drive into LES on Friday night with their expensive cars and blare loud music and rev their engines. It’s a different environment and everyone is loving it that I’ve talked to.
ericmay · 35m ago
> Long gone are the people that would drive into LES on Friday night with their expensive cars and blare loud music and rev their engines. I
I don't live in New York, but have been following along loosely on the congestion pricing policy as someone who has some official business but also just generally curious to see how it would work out, and this is a benefit that I had not considered. Thank you for mentioning this.
righthand · 18m ago
Yes I imagine a handful of crime was caused by the sheer number of people on the street. Fewer people idling about looking to cause a ruckus has made a huge difference. Passive benefits are what will keep cp in place.
xvedejas · 32m ago
Surely the reduction in vehicle count is more than enough to cancel this out, but a moving vehicle does emit more exhaust and tire dust per unit of time than does a vehicle idling. For the environmental improvements it's more about the reduction in the number of cars than about the better traffic flow.
mumbisChungo · 29m ago
The better traffic flow reduces the amount of time they’re operating for as well (assuming start/end of planned route is independent of travel speed)
jgalt212 · 27m ago
It remains amazing to me, time and time again, how relatively small fees can encourage large changes in behavior. At the aggregate level, people overvalue their time and undervalue their money.
somsak2 · 16m ago
i think it's the opposite right? people that didn't mind spending an hour in traffic are now unwilling to pay $9.
righthand · 8m ago
I think you’re agreeing with each other. GP was talking about at the aggregate level where your observation is about the individual specifically. At the aggregate level with traffic reduction you’d think individuals would weigh their money as a shortcut to regain time but they don’t. My personal guess is because Manhattan is not the actual destination, work and home are the destinations, Manhattan is just the environment. Before it was the cost of car maintenance to drive into Manhattan (in the individuals eyes “free”), now it’s car maintenance + $9/day.
yupitsme123 · 5m ago
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 there any measures that show any downside to this? I confess a bit of bewilderment at how many people will assert there must be something bad every time this comes up. I don't think a single measured outcome has gone poorly from this.
TulliusCicero · 44m ago
It reminds me of what happens nearly every time car parking on a busy retail street is removed for bike lanes/bus lanes/better walking.
Business owners universally oppose the change and predict catastrophe, the change goes through, and business/foot traffic goes way up instead.
It seems that business owners' ability to "know their customers" is rather limited; that, or they're just biased by their own need for car/delivery parking.
timeinput · 11m ago
I think the businesses do kind of know their customers.
This is an exaggeration of what (I think) happens: all of their current customers only ever drive there and park in front of their shop. They say oh with no parking I won't come any more. Then they stop coming. They lost all their customers! Everyone who can now safely walk to the shop (who couldn't / wouldn't before for multiple reasons) starts walking there. There are a lot more people who can now safely walk to and patronize the shop, and they do. The shops foot traffic went up by 10x. They still lost all their customers.
I think it's probably good that it's easy for people to walk / bike / bus to this shop, and the shop owner probably does to, but they still may have lost a lot of old customers.
ASinclair · 11m ago
I think it's often that the business owners themselves drive to their businesses and street park. They don't want to give up their own parking.
proee · 40m ago
Some changes, like having a highway bypass a small city, can be catastrophic to local businesses. A restaurant that might have hundreds of out-of-town cars go by, now has only local residents.
TulliusCicero · 39m ago
That's a completely different sort of scenario than what I'm talking about. I'm talking about changes to streets that accommodate greater population density.
mcphage · 36m ago
> It seems that business owners' ability to "know their customers" is rather limited
Movie production companies compared VCR sales to a serial killer. These were the leaders of large, successful companies, and they didn’t know shit.
Herring · 32m ago
It's basically that America has a caste system, and public transit is a lower-caste thing that any respectable member of society should ideally avoid. It's a pity because public transit done well is amazing - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNTg9EX7MLw [NotJustBikes]
conductr · 20m ago
We'd have to have an example of public transit done well to break the caste stigma you referenced. I don't think anywhere in the US is anywhere close to Amsterdam (discussed in video you linked)
siliconwrath · 5m ago
NYC generally doesn’t have this stigma as bad as the rest of the USA. Wealthy people and celebrities ride the MTA.
> Compared to other big cities, public bathrooms in New York City are rare, as the 1,100 public restrooms result in a rate of 16 per 100,000 residents. Most public restrooms are located in parks; comparatively few other public spaces, including New York City Subway stations, have public restrooms.
> As of 2022, the New York City Subway has 472 stations, 69 of which have public bathrooms. Several homeless people sued the New York City government and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) in 1990, claiming that the city and MTA created a "public nuisance" by failing to provide public toilets. A report by the Legal Action Center for the Homeless, who represented the plaintiffs, noted that of 526 public comfort stations surveyed in parks, almost three-quarters were "either closed, filthy, foul-smelling or without toilet paper and soap." In 2010, there were 133 open restrooms in 81 of the system's 468 stations.
There's a great quote on this: "A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation."
righthand · 16m ago
The project was studied for 10 years so the nay-sayers really don’t have a platform because they’re up against a decade of research. Most of the anti-cp has a romanticized view of driving into the city as some sort of right or NYer benefit.
xvedejas · 35m ago
I wonder whether pedestrian collisions will be slightly more deadly, since one effect is that traffic flows faster than before. Great for drivers but probably more dangerous for the jaywalking new yorker.
There are so many more initiatives from climate adaptation and environmental advocates and urban planning folks that will have similar, “well duh,” effects. It’s surprising how many easy, simple ideas there are that society and politicians dismiss.
Maybe we don’t need to burn the planet to “achieve AGI,” in order to “solve climate change,” and, “make cities livable.” It’s not like that tech, even is possible, is going to stop hurricanes or take cars off the streets.
Hope more cities in North America will follow suit. It’s sad how many have been doing the exact opposite of good ideas for so long.
amazingamazing · 22m ago
we need to do this with more things
throw7 · 1h ago
"Only after Donald Trump won re-election did it start."
That makes it seem like Trump was pro-congestion pricing... he was not. I remember reading there was a threat and attempt by him to reverse it. Lest it seem like I am a Trump hater, I am very much not impressed by Hochul's delaying which was certainly because of her special interests.
To quote: Finally, as taxes and fees are introduced in the local economy, the community can start to issue a Universal Basic Income in its own currency, without causing inflation.
Various taxes can be organically introduced, including sales taxes, land taxes 1, and pigovian taxes 3 on things like pollution, fossil fuels, meat or cigarettes. By redistributing taxed money equally to everyone, this can align public incentives with taxing these negative externalities, and avoid them falling disproportionately on the working class, as happened with the yellow vest protests in France.
As demand for the local currency (and thus local real estate and services) grows, so does the town’s ability to tax various transactions. The town’s citizens could be given the ability to democratically vote on the level of taxes, and thus the level of UBI, they want to receive.
Thus the town can have both sound money and true democratic control of its fiscal and monetary policies, all the while becoming more self-sufficient and stronger. Any town will be able to introduce a local UBI to end food insecurity, improve health outcomes, reduce dependence on means-tested welfare programs, and so on.
PS: Why all the downvotes? Why always silent with no reason?
PaulHoule · 1h ago
The Economist was founded in 1843 to oppose the Corn Laws
whereas I see it what the center-right would be if we had a healthy media/political environment.
kristjansson · 1h ago
Impugns the source(s) trying to place them on the left-right axis more than anything.
tekla · 1h ago
They are classical liberal, which is impossible to place in the current US Left-Right spectrum because politics have become even dumber than previously thought possible
PaulHoule · 57m ago
… politics aren’t just dumb in the US. The Economist is politically homeless these days and has little faith in Labor, Tories or Lib Dems.
rsynnott · 31m ago
They're not _that_ far off being antonyms, really; neoliberalism certainly shares distant origins with the left, but that's about as far as it goes.
turnsout · 1h ago
It's confusing, but "liberal" and "neoliberal" are in fact antonyms.
recursive · 52m ago
Based on this comment tree, I'm tempted to believe neither of them mean anything. Or at least very few people are aware of whatever real definition they have. But many people have opinions about it.
tekla · 46m ago
They do mean things, but most who toss the words around only use it to mean "thing that I don't like"
rsynnott · 24m ago
> Or at least very few people are aware of whatever real definition they have
I mean, like many things, the meaning of 'liberal' has shifted over the last few centuries, and always differed somewhat between regions anyway. Words in English mean what people use them to mean.
PaulHoule · 1h ago
Not really. Ever seen a "liberal" liberate or a "conservative" conserve?
The term got its current usage when FDR came in because at that time it was a matter of "burn it all down" (real socialism) vs "fix the private property system around the margins".
Fair enough from a pedantic point of view, but I was using the term in this sense, as it is the most recognizable modern term to describe serious economic positions of this kind:
Neoliberalism is a political and economic philosophy that emphasizes free markets, reduced government intervention, and individual liberty. It's often associated with policies like deregulation, privatization, and free trade. Proponents believe these measures foster economic growth, efficiency, and individual prosperity. However, critics argue that neoliberal policies can lead to increased inequality, social instability, and exploitation
And my point was here they were applauding policies involving clear government intervention.
tekla · 1h ago
> they were applauding policies involving clear government intervention
Yes the Economist will do that, because they believe in classical liberal markets
kfajdsl · 1h ago
(neo)liberal != libertarian.
The government has a clear role for internalizing externalities, which makes markets more efficient. Or, in this case, using price signals to allocate scarce resources when it was just a free-for-all before.
ahepp · 1h ago
Congestion pricing seems like a pretty liberal policy to me. Using supply and demand to set a price.
Sure, you could crank the Friedman dial to 11 by say, privatizing the roads and letting the operators set the price based on competition.
But the policy is liberal at its core. A “lefty, collectively enforced” policy would be something like a quota or permit system.
A key difference being that anyone who wants to drive on the road can do so as long as they pay. It isn’t “everyone with odd license plate numbers can drive today, evens can drive tomorrow” but rather “you can drive today if it’s worth $9 to you”.
varispeed · 1h ago
It is classist. If it was liberal, then it would be based on % of someone's wealth (and using progressive scale).
These policies are aimed at getting unwashed pleb off the roads so the rich can show off their cars in peace.
miguelxt · 25m ago
I think you and the parent comment are confusing the term "liberal". He refers to "liberal" in the classical sense: free markets, limited government, rule of law, etc. You mean "liberal" in the North American sense: lefty, social justice, etc.
varispeed · 4m ago
Free markets presume equal opportunity to access infrastructure, not the rich buying exclusive use of public goods.
queenkjuul · 55m ago
All the poor people on the buses were never gonna drive and now have faster more reliable service
varispeed · 2m ago
Buses should serve both rich and poor. Otherwise this is a very definition of classism. The bus is the "back of the bus" now.
cute_boi · 44m ago
how are they going to have more reliable service?
rsynnott · 22m ago
Buses work better when there's less traffic.
TulliusCicero · 41m ago
They mean that buses are now faster/more reliable.
vkou · 37m ago
Buses spend less time stuck in traffic.
naravara · 54m ago
It’s classist to not want pedestrians in cities to die and get asthma from traffic?
Got it.
jowea · 1h ago
Charging for an scarce resource instead of letting the tragedy of the commons play out does sound like something obvious to come out of a neoliberal economist yes.
DangitBobby · 55m ago
Flat rates are not the only way to allocate scarce resources. Generally they would be called "regressive", even.
> The views expressed in the blog are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Economist Impact or the sponsor.
So not necessarily reflective of The Economist’s position.
jcranmer · 1h ago
The Economist has long been pretty outspoken over their preference for a carbon tax over cap-and-trade (see any article they write about carbon emissions).
vkou · 35m ago
Carbon taxes have always been a conservative/neo-liberal idea.
Modern 'conservatives' abandoning them tells you a lot about how far their politics have shifted over the past decade.
EA-3167 · 1h ago
While I support congestion pricing, I will say that The Economist is most notable these days a negative oracle: whatever it predicts, the opposite will happen.
ch4s3 · 8m ago
They were spot on about post covid stimulus fueling inflation.
tekla · 1h ago
Such as?
EGreg · 1h ago
The Jim Cramer of macroeconomics? :)
wakawaka28 · 38m ago
Since they define what success is, of course it will be.
ceejayoz · 35m ago
Which contrasting metrics that've gone in the negative direction would you like to highlight?
newyankee · 43m ago
Another predictable success would be converting entirety of NYC into a driverless car zone, but we are probably not ready for the repercussions as a society
ericmay · 16m ago
Maybe, or maybe just have more street cars and trams and such. More walking, and more biking to go from A -> B.
I'm not sure in the case of Manhattan that driverless cars are particularly valuable, and it's very much debatable whether they would be a predictable success for a few reasons.
Inevitably you arrive at a scenario where you have a limited number of them because of course otherwise would be to defeat the purpose of the congestion zone, and then you'll only have certain operators with the right permits able to extract money from moving people. Kind of like the taxi medallion scheme all over again.
One of the best things America could do is to be to reduce reliance and spend on cars. This applies to New York but even moreso to the rest of the country.
lysace · 1h ago
It’s great for the very wealthy.
See also: Singapore. When I first visited I was amazed at how little traffic there was. Turns out they had imposed so severe costs on car ownership that the vast majority can’t afford to own one.
Why Driving in Singapore Is Like 'Wearing a Rolex'
The biggest improvement are for the very poor, who rely more heavily than other socioeconomic classes on bus transportation, which has seen the greatest efficiency improvements from congestion pricing. The merely poor or middle class, in NYC, are already reliant on mass transit (although more likely the subway rather than the bus system), which sees somewhat more indirect benefits from increased funding as a result of the congestion charge.
The people whom congestion pricing hurts the most are those who feel that public transit is beneath them but still rely on driving in Manhattan to a degree that the congestion charge is a significant tax. Which unfortunately seems to include most of the media class in NYC, hence the incessant whining about it.
dh2022 · 56m ago
With this new moneys coming in they will not even fix one of these 50-year old subway switches. Nevermind buying some new subway cars, or improving ventilation / air conditioning during summer. This new moneys will go to waste. Meanwhile, yeah, rich investment bankers get to spend less time in traffic.
ceejayoz · 37m ago
> With this new moneys coming in they will not even fix one of these 50-year old subway switches. Nevermind buying some new subway cars...
"The M.T.A. expects to spend $10.9 billion to buy roughly 2,000 new rail cars, an order that will include 1,500 subway cars and more than 500 for the Metro-North and Long Island Rail Road. Some of the train fleet has not been updated since at least 1980, the year of the M.T.A.’s first capital plan. Another $3.3 billion will buy and support 2,261 new buses."
"The plan includes $5.4 billion to modernize the subway signal system, which dates back to the Great Depression. Over the past 15 months, the antiquated system has led to an average of nearly 4,000 train delays a month, according to the M.T.A."
lokar · 1h ago
Driving into manhattan and paying for parking is something only the fairly wealthy could afford anyway.
decafninja · 1h ago
Driving into Manhattan every day? Yes.
Occasionally? Tons of middle class people do it.
The majority of my social circle consists of middle and upper middle class Newjerseyans. Many commute daily into Manhattan via public transit. But if they’re going in for anything other than work, it’s always the car.
Which congestion price is perfectly fine for if you’re only going in occasionally.
the_mitsuhiko · 1h ago
> Occasionally? Tons of middle class people do it.
I would not be surprised if occasionally driving into Manhattan is cheaper now. Surely the excessive prices on parking should be going down.
lokar · 1h ago
It should be cheaper already if you place a non-zero value on your time.
mc32 · 1h ago
Do people put a value on time when not doing value added stuff? When they go for a walk, do they instead run? Do they try to only meet up with friends who can return an investment on their time? Do these people not shoot the shit? Are they busy beavers at all times maximizing wealth?
kfajdsl · 56m ago
These are all things that people find value in. Most people don't assign any value to sitting in traffic.
recursive · 44m ago
Shooting the shit could be precisely what they do instead of idling in traffic. Most people would prefer it.
mc32 · 43m ago
I dunno, man, It's rumored they have this thing called cellular telephony technology allowing just such a thing while in traffic --I could be wrong though, thems being wealthy and shit.
recursive · 40m ago
The rumors are true, but you seem to have missed my point. Some people might prefer to communicate in person. You might not be one of them.
echelon · 1h ago
The supply demand curve might mean prices temporarily drop with demand, but that might put pressure on some parking to convert to other uses, which will then lower supply.
lokar · 1h ago
I agree. Also, the money from the fee is supposed to improve transit (we will see how long that lasts…), and IMO a share should go to NJ transit into manhattan.
kjkjadksj · 1h ago
If that were true congestion pricing would not affect car counts
lokar · 1h ago
Like any moderate financial incentive it impacts a minority of people at the margin. For phenomenon like traffic that can make a big impact.
shipscode · 1h ago
Tell me you've never lived in lower Manhattan without telling me you've never lived in lower Manhattan.
Edit: Happy to be downvoted by people who actually live in Manhattan and take 5 seconds out of their day to talk to anybody who works in a local store. Brooklyn transplants can move along.
mtalantikite · 1h ago
Yeah, this is the only disagreement I have with congestion pricing too. I have a friend that lives in Tribeca (in the place he grew up in in the 80s) and needs a car to drive to his art studio in New Jersey. I feel like they should get an exemption or at least a heavily reduced rate.
But my in laws that drive in from the suburbs a few times a year? They can afford the $9.
dml2135 · 4m ago
I’m unclear on how $9 is not a fair price to drive a car from lower manhattan to new jersey. Public transit would cost at least that much.
righthand · 1h ago
Your buddy should move to NJ if he needs low cost access to his studio. The roads will be tolled and the price will only go up. The entire point is to reduce the amount of people using the roads for a cheap benefit (ex living in Tribeca one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the city and complaining that you have no low cost access to NJ).
No comments yet
lokar · 1h ago
In such a dense and complex place it’s impossible to avoid at least some negative impacts, at least early on. Hopefully transit will improve.
shipscode · 1h ago
Yep. The people who agree with congestion pricing either hate or ignore these people, along with the thousands of lower Manhattan small-business employees, subsidized housing residence that have cars or street park daily.
I postulate it's because they don't actually live there, or just moved there, if they do actually live there, they'd have to be severely socially inept to never speak to a store or restaurant owner and ask what their commute is like.
To act as though it affects nobody of moderate or lower income is downright dishonest, when 22% of Manhattan households own one - it's no longer an upper class activity, just a basic tool to get to work.
lokar · 1h ago
17th and 6th av
lokar · 1h ago
I would (I’ve since moved) worry that less traffic would mean faster cars. As a pedestrian I did appreciate just how slowly cars normally move in Manhattan.
selectodude · 16m ago
Manhattan is blanketed in unmarked speed cameras.
CPLX · 1h ago
That was the original criticism, or rather the cynical attempt to block it.
It hasn't panned out that way at all however, it's just great for everyone.
OK, actually not everyone. There's one very specific group that this sucks for, which not-coincidentally was the group that was loudly opposing it using the excuse you tried.
That group is people who work for the city and/or are connected so they get free daily parking. That's a lot of cops and firefighters and various city functionaries at various levels and agencies that have been able to get their hands on parking placards. It's a core NYC subculture and they were the annoying loud voices that tried to stop this.
Almost anyone who was driving into central Manhattan and paying for parking already is thrilled by this, it's only a little more expensive and in exchange they shave hours of traffic out of their commutes.
It's the people that were gaming the system to get free parking that are suddenly screwed. Fuck them.
wang_li · 1h ago
It's a bit absurd though. The roads are paid by tax payers from the general fund of the city, but they discriminate on how much it costs to use those roads based on where you live. If everyone entering the zone paid the same then it would be one thing. But they have exemptions and deductions based on residency and income. If they are going to charge people who don't live in the area and not charge the people who do live in the area, then the people in the area should have to buy all the roads and pay for the upkeep.
rozab · 43m ago
To someone who can't afford to drive it might seem absurd to be paying for roads with their taxes in the first place. Driving has been generally subsidized for so long that it's easy to forget it's subsidized at all. The backlash to proposals for free public transport demonstrates this.
CPLX · 58m ago
> It's a bit absurd though. The roads are paid by tax payers from the general fund of the city, but they discriminate on how much it costs to use those roads based on where you live. If everyone entering the zone paid the same then it would be one thing. But they have exemptions and deductions based on residency and income. If they are going to charge people who don't live in the area and not charge the people who do live in the area, then the people in the area should have to buy all the roads and pay for the upkeep.
These aren't deep moral questions. You're trying to draw some sort of universal fairness doctrine around this that doesn't apply. It's just public policy. The people who live in the area are buying all the roads, through various taxes and fees.
Roads don't work the way you describe. Are you aware that there's literally no way to drive to Long Island without going through New York City? Or that driving from Princeton New Jersey to Providence Rhode Island requires going through New York City or driving about 40-50 miles out of the way? Why is all this solely the problem of people who live in Manhattan below Central Park again?
timr · 1h ago
Elasticity of demand is not magic, so yeah, making something more expensive will likely reduce demand. While I have no doubt it is a success if you consider only reduced traffic, there are other considerations that override that for me:
1) It's a regressive tax on everyone living here -- even if you never use a car. Literally everything we buy and use in the city gets more expensive because of this law.
2) That same regressive tax is used to provide a lifeline for an exceptionally wasteful public organization (the MTA) that needs budget discipline, not additional funding. The MTA rivals Tammany Hall in terms of waste and fraud, and the talks of budget cuts were political crocodile tears.
3) (more minor) By definition, the point of this tax is to make it so that only rich people can drive. As the article notes, of course this is great if you're rich enough to afford it...but the article doesn't quote the people who can't now.
---
Edit: I'm just going to respond to the single point that everyone is making in one place, instead of repeating it: you don't just get to assert that the hypothesized "reduction in transit time" offsets the costs. You have to prove that argument.
You're the one arguing in favor of a new tax. It's not my job to prove the negative.
Ultimately, congestion was itself a cost, but it was a dynamic cost, increasing and decreasing with the amount of congestion to maximize utility of the roads. What the state has done here, effectively, is set the price of driving higher than the market at all times in order to guarantee a marginal reduction in demand.
rafram · 1h ago
It's a max of $21 for a truckload of goods, and that's if they deliver during the day. It probably costs the shipper more than that when the driver stops at a gas station to use the bathroom. Obviously the numbers will vary significantly depending on what the vehicle is carrying, but a truckload of groceries might go for around $100,000 retail [1]. The congestion charge is 0.02% of that.
> By definition, the point of this tax is to make it so that only rich people can drive.
That's not true. There's a tax credit for low-income residents and a full waiver for disabled people. The average person who drives in Manhattan makes $130,000, 40% more than the average income in the city as a whole [2], so letting them do it for free (while creating negative externalities that we all bear) is just a handout to people who don't need it.
> That's not true. There's a tax credit for low-income residents and a full waiver for disabled people.
That's a fig-leaf argument. Yes, there's some theoretical tax credit that may or may not offset the costs for particular groups of people -- and it would be insane if they didn't exempt the disabled. But if the tax weren't causing the marginal driver to stop driving, it wouldn't work, by definition.
rafram · 48m ago
It's not a "theoretical" tax credit. Here's the application form: https://lidp.mta.info/
Congesting pricing has dual goals of reducing congestion and funding the MTA. Low-income drivers get a break on the charge, so they fund the MTA a little less than other drivers, but they're still less likely to drive than they were before, because it costs more now.
timr · 39m ago
It's theoretical in the sense that it requires that you apply for it, and hopefully you'll get your money back someday.
(...poor people being notorious for having lots of time for precise accounting and follow through on government bureaucracy.)
Eric_WVGG · 48m ago
— and speaking of truckloads, the truckers & delivery guys love congestion pricing.
After being the most vocal critics for years, they’ve learned that low traffic == more, faster deliveries == more business and more coverage, or same business with fewer drivers.
This is the real reason why I think it'll never get repealed. If anyone tries, the industry lobbies will be arguing to keep it instead.
dml2135 · 1h ago
> Literally everything we buy and use in the city gets more expensive because of this law.
Aruguable. It’s very possible that the time saved by not sitting in traffic will outweigh the congestion charge for delivery trucks (which is what I assume you’re referring to).
bryanlarsen · 1h ago
The MTA has massive waste in absolute terms, but divide its budget by 5 million passengers per day and those numbers become much more reasonable.
Money spent on the MTA benefits everybody, especially the poor.
dh2022 · 1h ago
These new moneys coming in will not buy one new subway car, will not fix one mile of subway track, will not fix one mile of potholes-filled-streets. Will not even paint one mile of street sign. It will all go paying some bureaucrats to create some Tableau dashboards showing how much better something (anything) is.
rafram · 55m ago
It already has done the former two. (Fixing streets is NYC DOT, a separate agency run by the city, not the state.)
Analemma_ · 56m ago
Citation needed. It drives me nuts when people treat their own Boomer Facebook-esque rants about "The System, Man" as adequate evidence in what should be empirical discussions about policy tradeoffs.
timr · 1h ago
"Sure, Tammany Hall was corrupt, but the corruption was only a tiny amount per capita...and what a nice courthouse!"
rafram · 1h ago
Pointless strawman response. If you think the MTA's waste is in any way comparable to Tammany Hall, back that up with numbers.
> An accountant discovered the discrepancy while reviewing the budget for new train platforms under Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan. The budget showed that 900 workers were being paid to dig caverns for the platforms as part of a 3.5-mile tunnel connecting the historic station to the Long Island Rail Road. But the accountant could only identify about 700 jobs that needed to be done, according to three project supervisors. Officials could not find any reason for the other 200 people to be there.
> For years, The Times found, public officials have stood by as a small group of politically connected labor unions, construction companies and consulting firms have amassed large profits.
> Trade unions, which have closely aligned themselves with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and other politicians, have secured deals requiring underground construction work to be staffed by as many as four times more laborers than elsewhere in the world, documents show.
> Construction companies, which have given millions of dollars in campaign donations in recent years, have increased their projected costs by up to 50 percent when bidding for work from the M.T.A., contractors say.
> Consulting firms, which have hired away scores of M.T.A. employees, have persuaded the authority to spend an unusual amount on design and management, statistics indicate.
This is literally what Tammany Hall did.
8note · 18m ago
an alternative interpretation is that the union workers know more about how to safely do underground work than accountants and supervisors do.
ceejayoz · 4m ago
I think that particular theory is addressed by the "four times more laborers than elsewhere in the world" bit, if it includes the developed world. (Which I strongly suspect it does.)
paulgb · 1h ago
> Literally everything we buy and use in the city gets more expensive because of this law.
Congestion was already priced into all goods and services in NYC, it just came in the form of a deadweight loss (paying delivery workers / tradespeople / professionals to sit in traffic) instead of a tax that at least ostensibly will fund better transit.
timr · 40m ago
> Congestion was already priced into all goods and services in NYC
I agree!
> instead of a tax that at least ostensibly will fund better transit.
Telling me that the money will be set on fire by a public organization with good intent doesn't convince me.
What has happened here -- and mathematically, this has to be true, or it wouldn't work -- is that the city has taken what used to be the market cost of congestion, and set an artificial floor higher than that market. They then captured the difference as revenue.
That's the fundamental argument against the assertion that traffic speed increases will offset the costs. It cannot be true, or people would choose to drive.
8note · 21m ago
> higher than that market
i dont think thats true. the cost can also be much cheaper, but people price differentiate better when they can actually see the number than when they cant.
you can look at 19.99 as an example, vs 20 as example of making people feel a certain way to get them to shop differently, or credit cards - which get people to pay much more for an item than they otherwise would with the interest payments, or with the klarna styled buy now pay later.
its not a tautology that a higher price drives down cost.
i think the government price is likely much less than the cost of congestion, especially once you price in the externalities of pollution, but drivers werent aware of how much cost they were incurring from the congestion, and now that there's a number, they can make decisions based off of it
paulgb · 23m ago
> That's the fundamental argument against the assertion that traffic speed increases will offset the costs. It cannot be true, or people would choose to drive.
I think the mistake you're making here is assuming that the value of driving and the cost of congestion are the same to every driver.
For some people, driving is an elastic decision. They mode shift, or time shift to off-peak, or carpool, or combine errands in the city into one trip instead of multiple.
For other people, driving is necessary. They'll benefit from fewer of the first type of person being on the roads during peak hours.
timr · 16m ago
No, I don't need to make assumptions about any of that. It's a complex interplay of factors (like any economic system), and everyone has their own reward function.
I'm just saying that if the marginal driver were still choosing to drive, then the system wouldn't work at all. That seems tautological?
The MTA has to set the price high enough above market that the reduction in demand is X%. Whether someone is driving because of speed, or comfort, or some other factor, the cost has to exceed their personally calculated benefit.
ceejayoz · 1h ago
> Literally everything we buy and use in the city gets more expensive because of this law.
Significantly? Aren't those delivery trucks spending a lot less time paying drivers to idle in traffic now?
timr · 1h ago
I don't know, but you don't have any evidence for that argument.
ceejayoz · 1h ago
I'm asking for evidence of your argument.
We do have concrete evidence the buses, at least, are moving around faster.
No comments yet
arolihas · 56m ago
We know there's less congestion, which means less time delivery trucks are idling...
maybelsyrup · 51m ago
> I'm just going to respond to the single point that everyone is making in one place, instead of repeating it: you don't just get to assert that the hypothesized "reduction in transit time" offsets the costs. You have to prove that argument.
> You're the one arguing in favor of a new tax. It's not my job to prove the negative.
You ok man? Like, respect for your passion on this issue but you’re also seething pretty hard about New York City having cleaner air and less traffic.
timr · 48m ago
I'm not seething, and I can assure you from the disgusting piles of city dust that accumulate in my apartment that the air is not cleaner in any way that matters to me.
ceejayoz · 43m ago
The difference might matter to your asthmatic neighbor. It's early to assess, but:
> The New York City health department’s readings of PM2.5, one air quality measure, improved citywide the first three months of this year compared with the same period in 2024. The improvement was more pronounced within the congestion zone, but it’s too early to attribute that to the program, or to know if that’s a lasting pattern, experts said.
"My apartment still gets dusty" seems like a pretty desperate anti-congestion charge argument.
timr · 33m ago
I was not being serious, but as you've repeatedly said, there's no evidence for the argument you're making.
A three-month change at the beginning of the year in PM2.5 is noise.
ceejayoz · 27m ago
I provided clear, reliably sourced evidence for it, while noting it's too early for that evidence to be conclusive yet.
You've yet to provide any for your assertions. Just feels.
timr · 21m ago
Again, in case it's not clear: I was being whimsical. I'm obviously not resting my opposition to this on a one-off argument about dust in my apartment.
I personally don't think the PM2.5 thing would justify the implementation of the system even if it were true, but that's not a debate I want to get into.
ceejayoz · 15m ago
> Again, in case it's not clear: I was being whimsical.
Buddy if you are going to make an argument where you make statements, people are going to ask for evidence. You are making statements in the affirmative. So you also have to give proof as well. You are arguing the tax should be removed. Do you have proof that literally everything will become cheaper without this tax?
CPLX · 1h ago
> 1) It's a regressive tax on everyone living here -- even if you never use a car. Literally everything we buy and use in the city gets more expensive because of this.
That's an empirical question, you're going to have to prove it. The time saved by delivery drivers or contractors, for example, has value. If they can make more deliveries, or fix more elevators in the same day those services get cheaper. If the only downside is that the assistant patrol supervisor deputy liaison that would have driven to 1 Police Plaza takes the train instead it's clearly a net savings and economic improvement and makes everything we buy and use in the city cheaper.
> 2) That same regressive tax is used to provide a lifeline for an exceptionally wasteful public organization (the MTA) that needs budget discipline, not additional funding.
The MTA is chronically starved for cash and unable to do large scale long term projects because of unstable funding. If this policy, which as we saw above might well have literally zero aggregate economic downside, also builds more efficient transit, it's a virtuous circle of winning.
> 3) (more minor) By definition, the point of this tax is to make it so that only rich people can drive. As the article notes, of course this is great if you're rich enough to afford it...but the article doesn't quote the people who can't now.
Rich people can already drive. Now those rich people give money to transit for everyone else. Working people or people who need to drive (like those with a van full of stuff that needs to be somewhere) are able to do so much more efficiently and most likely face net lower costs.
The "downside" is midly affluent people who do have cars and regularly drive in the central area take fewer trips or take the train a few more times instead. And the other downside is that the tens of thousands of assholes who've been abusing the city parking placard process for decades have to find another way to get to work like the rest of us.
timr · 1h ago
> That's an empirical question, you're going to have to prove it.
I don't have to prove anything. I'm not the one implementing the tax.
rafram · 51m ago
The MTA did prove it. That's how they got approval from USDOT. Here's an 868-page report if you're actually serious about wanting proof: https://www.mta.info/document/93446
timr · 32m ago
Since you've read all 868 pages, please cite the place where they prove it. I'll wait.
CPLX · 57m ago
If we're talking burden of proof then the only real one that matters is the popularity of the program. It's very clearly popular and a success, so here we are.
I don't live in New York, but have been following along loosely on the congestion pricing policy as someone who has some official business but also just generally curious to see how it would work out, and this is a benefit that I had not considered. Thank you for mentioning this.
Business owners universally oppose the change and predict catastrophe, the change goes through, and business/foot traffic goes way up instead.
It seems that business owners' ability to "know their customers" is rather limited; that, or they're just biased by their own need for car/delivery parking.
This is an exaggeration of what (I think) happens: all of their current customers only ever drive there and park in front of their shop. They say oh with no parking I won't come any more. Then they stop coming. They lost all their customers! Everyone who can now safely walk to the shop (who couldn't / wouldn't before for multiple reasons) starts walking there. There are a lot more people who can now safely walk to and patronize the shop, and they do. The shops foot traffic went up by 10x. They still lost all their customers.
I think it's probably good that it's easy for people to walk / bike / bus to this shop, and the shop owner probably does to, but they still may have lost a lot of old customers.
Movie production companies compared VCR sales to a serial killer. These were the leaders of large, successful companies, and they didn’t know shit.
https://www.eonline.com/photos/6722/stars-on-the-subway
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilets_in_New_York_City
> Compared to other big cities, public bathrooms in New York City are rare, as the 1,100 public restrooms result in a rate of 16 per 100,000 residents. Most public restrooms are located in parks; comparatively few other public spaces, including New York City Subway stations, have public restrooms.
> As of 2022, the New York City Subway has 472 stations, 69 of which have public bathrooms. Several homeless people sued the New York City government and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) in 1990, claiming that the city and MTA created a "public nuisance" by failing to provide public toilets. A report by the Legal Action Center for the Homeless, who represented the plaintiffs, noted that of 526 public comfort stations surveyed in parks, almost three-quarters were "either closed, filthy, foul-smelling or without toilet paper and soap." In 2010, there were 133 open restrooms in 81 of the system's 468 stations.
There's a great quote on this: "A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation."
Maybe we don’t need to burn the planet to “achieve AGI,” in order to “solve climate change,” and, “make cities livable.” It’s not like that tech, even is possible, is going to stop hurricanes or take cars off the streets.
Hope more cities in North America will follow suit. It’s sad how many have been doing the exact opposite of good ideas for so long.
That makes it seem like Trump was pro-congestion pricing... he was not. I remember reading there was a threat and attempt by him to reverse it. Lest it seem like I am a Trump hater, I am very much not impressed by Hochul's delaying which was certainly because of her special interests.
Yet they stay true to economics principles even when they are more lefty and collectively enforced :)
Now imagine what else Pigovian Taxes can do to help solve collective action problems, if we had a UBI and local city currencies: https://community.intercoin.app/t/rolling-out-voluntary-basi...
To quote: Finally, as taxes and fees are introduced in the local economy, the community can start to issue a Universal Basic Income in its own currency, without causing inflation.
Various taxes can be organically introduced, including sales taxes, land taxes 1, and pigovian taxes 3 on things like pollution, fossil fuels, meat or cigarettes. By redistributing taxed money equally to everyone, this can align public incentives with taxing these negative externalities, and avoid them falling disproportionately on the working class, as happened with the yellow vest protests in France.
As demand for the local currency (and thus local real estate and services) grows, so does the town’s ability to tax various transactions. The town’s citizens could be given the ability to democratically vote on the level of taxes, and thus the level of UBI, they want to receive.
Thus the town can have both sound money and true democratic control of its fiscal and monetary policies, all the while becoming more self-sufficient and stronger. Any town will be able to introduce a local UBI to end food insecurity, improve health outcomes, reduce dependence on means-tested welfare programs, and so on.
PS: Why all the downvotes? Why always silent with no reason?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_Laws
so there is nothing "neo" about their "liberal".
https://www.allsides.com/news-source/economist
whereas I see it what the center-right would be if we had a healthy media/political environment.
I mean, like many things, the meaning of 'liberal' has shifted over the last few centuries, and always differed somewhat between regions anyway. Words in English mean what people use them to mean.
The term got its current usage when FDR came in because at that time it was a matter of "burn it all down" (real socialism) vs "fix the private property system around the margins".
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism
Neoliberalism is a political and economic philosophy that emphasizes free markets, reduced government intervention, and individual liberty. It's often associated with policies like deregulation, privatization, and free trade. Proponents believe these measures foster economic growth, efficiency, and individual prosperity. However, critics argue that neoliberal policies can lead to increased inequality, social instability, and exploitation
And my point was here they were applauding policies involving clear government intervention.
Yes the Economist will do that, because they believe in classical liberal markets
The government has a clear role for internalizing externalities, which makes markets more efficient. Or, in this case, using price signals to allocate scarce resources when it was just a free-for-all before.
Sure, you could crank the Friedman dial to 11 by say, privatizing the roads and letting the operators set the price based on competition.
But the policy is liberal at its core. A “lefty, collectively enforced” policy would be something like a quota or permit system.
A key difference being that anyone who wants to drive on the road can do so as long as they pay. It isn’t “everyone with odd license plate numbers can drive today, evens can drive tomorrow” but rather “you can drive today if it’s worth $9 to you”.
These policies are aimed at getting unwashed pleb off the roads so the rich can show off their cars in peace.
Got it.
Update: wow you’re right: https://impact.economist.com/sustainability/net-zero-and-ene...
https://lomborg.com/news/how-avoid-political-pitfalls-carbon...
> The views expressed in the blog are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Economist Impact or the sponsor.
So not necessarily reflective of The Economist’s position.
Modern 'conservatives' abandoning them tells you a lot about how far their politics have shifted over the past decade.
I'm not sure in the case of Manhattan that driverless cars are particularly valuable, and it's very much debatable whether they would be a predictable success for a few reasons.
Inevitably you arrive at a scenario where you have a limited number of them because of course otherwise would be to defeat the purpose of the congestion zone, and then you'll only have certain operators with the right permits able to extract money from moving people. Kind of like the taxi medallion scheme all over again.
One of the best things America could do is to be to reduce reliance and spend on cars. This applies to New York but even moreso to the rest of the country.
See also: Singapore. When I first visited I was amazed at how little traffic there was. Turns out they had imposed so severe costs on car ownership that the vast majority can’t afford to own one.
Why Driving in Singapore Is Like 'Wearing a Rolex'
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/24/world/asia/car-certificat...
(https://archive.is/X6dpP)
The people whom congestion pricing hurts the most are those who feel that public transit is beneath them but still rely on driving in Manhattan to a degree that the congestion charge is a significant tax. Which unfortunately seems to include most of the media class in NYC, hence the incessant whining about it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/29/nyregion/mta-budget.html
"The M.T.A. expects to spend $10.9 billion to buy roughly 2,000 new rail cars, an order that will include 1,500 subway cars and more than 500 for the Metro-North and Long Island Rail Road. Some of the train fleet has not been updated since at least 1980, the year of the M.T.A.’s first capital plan. Another $3.3 billion will buy and support 2,261 new buses."
"The plan includes $5.4 billion to modernize the subway signal system, which dates back to the Great Depression. Over the past 15 months, the antiquated system has led to an average of nearly 4,000 train delays a month, according to the M.T.A."
Occasionally? Tons of middle class people do it.
The majority of my social circle consists of middle and upper middle class Newjerseyans. Many commute daily into Manhattan via public transit. But if they’re going in for anything other than work, it’s always the car.
Which congestion price is perfectly fine for if you’re only going in occasionally.
I would not be surprised if occasionally driving into Manhattan is cheaper now. Surely the excessive prices on parking should be going down.
Edit: Happy to be downvoted by people who actually live in Manhattan and take 5 seconds out of their day to talk to anybody who works in a local store. Brooklyn transplants can move along.
But my in laws that drive in from the suburbs a few times a year? They can afford the $9.
No comments yet
I postulate it's because they don't actually live there, or just moved there, if they do actually live there, they'd have to be severely socially inept to never speak to a store or restaurant owner and ask what their commute is like.
To act as though it affects nobody of moderate or lower income is downright dishonest, when 22% of Manhattan households own one - it's no longer an upper class activity, just a basic tool to get to work.
It hasn't panned out that way at all however, it's just great for everyone.
OK, actually not everyone. There's one very specific group that this sucks for, which not-coincidentally was the group that was loudly opposing it using the excuse you tried.
That group is people who work for the city and/or are connected so they get free daily parking. That's a lot of cops and firefighters and various city functionaries at various levels and agencies that have been able to get their hands on parking placards. It's a core NYC subculture and they were the annoying loud voices that tried to stop this.
Almost anyone who was driving into central Manhattan and paying for parking already is thrilled by this, it's only a little more expensive and in exchange they shave hours of traffic out of their commutes.
It's the people that were gaming the system to get free parking that are suddenly screwed. Fuck them.
These aren't deep moral questions. You're trying to draw some sort of universal fairness doctrine around this that doesn't apply. It's just public policy. The people who live in the area are buying all the roads, through various taxes and fees.
Roads don't work the way you describe. Are you aware that there's literally no way to drive to Long Island without going through New York City? Or that driving from Princeton New Jersey to Providence Rhode Island requires going through New York City or driving about 40-50 miles out of the way? Why is all this solely the problem of people who live in Manhattan below Central Park again?
1) It's a regressive tax on everyone living here -- even if you never use a car. Literally everything we buy and use in the city gets more expensive because of this law.
2) That same regressive tax is used to provide a lifeline for an exceptionally wasteful public organization (the MTA) that needs budget discipline, not additional funding. The MTA rivals Tammany Hall in terms of waste and fraud, and the talks of budget cuts were political crocodile tears.
3) (more minor) By definition, the point of this tax is to make it so that only rich people can drive. As the article notes, of course this is great if you're rich enough to afford it...but the article doesn't quote the people who can't now.
---
Edit: I'm just going to respond to the single point that everyone is making in one place, instead of repeating it: you don't just get to assert that the hypothesized "reduction in transit time" offsets the costs. You have to prove that argument.
You're the one arguing in favor of a new tax. It's not my job to prove the negative.
Ultimately, congestion was itself a cost, but it was a dynamic cost, increasing and decreasing with the amount of congestion to maximize utility of the roads. What the state has done here, effectively, is set the price of driving higher than the market at all times in order to guarantee a marginal reduction in demand.
> By definition, the point of this tax is to make it so that only rich people can drive.
That's not true. There's a tax credit for low-income residents and a full waiver for disabled people. The average person who drives in Manhattan makes $130,000, 40% more than the average income in the city as a whole [2], so letting them do it for free (while creating negative externalities that we all bear) is just a handout to people who don't need it.
[1]: https://selectliquidation.com/collections/grocery-liquidatio...
[2]: https://fiscalpolicy.org/impact-of-payroll-mobility-tax-on-n...
That's a fig-leaf argument. Yes, there's some theoretical tax credit that may or may not offset the costs for particular groups of people -- and it would be insane if they didn't exempt the disabled. But if the tax weren't causing the marginal driver to stop driving, it wouldn't work, by definition.
Congesting pricing has dual goals of reducing congestion and funding the MTA. Low-income drivers get a break on the charge, so they fund the MTA a little less than other drivers, but they're still less likely to drive than they were before, because it costs more now.
(...poor people being notorious for having lots of time for precise accounting and follow through on government bureaucracy.)
After being the most vocal critics for years, they’ve learned that low traffic == more, faster deliveries == more business and more coverage, or same business with fewer drivers.
This is the real reason why I think it'll never get repealed. If anyone tries, the industry lobbies will be arguing to keep it instead.
Aruguable. It’s very possible that the time saved by not sitting in traffic will outweigh the congestion charge for delivery trucks (which is what I assume you’re referring to).
Money spent on the MTA benefits everybody, especially the poor.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
> An accountant discovered the discrepancy while reviewing the budget for new train platforms under Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan. The budget showed that 900 workers were being paid to dig caverns for the platforms as part of a 3.5-mile tunnel connecting the historic station to the Long Island Rail Road. But the accountant could only identify about 700 jobs that needed to be done, according to three project supervisors. Officials could not find any reason for the other 200 people to be there.
> For years, The Times found, public officials have stood by as a small group of politically connected labor unions, construction companies and consulting firms have amassed large profits.
> Trade unions, which have closely aligned themselves with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and other politicians, have secured deals requiring underground construction work to be staffed by as many as four times more laborers than elsewhere in the world, documents show.
> Construction companies, which have given millions of dollars in campaign donations in recent years, have increased their projected costs by up to 50 percent when bidding for work from the M.T.A., contractors say.
> Consulting firms, which have hired away scores of M.T.A. employees, have persuaded the authority to spend an unusual amount on design and management, statistics indicate.
This is literally what Tammany Hall did.
Congestion was already priced into all goods and services in NYC, it just came in the form of a deadweight loss (paying delivery workers / tradespeople / professionals to sit in traffic) instead of a tax that at least ostensibly will fund better transit.
I agree!
> instead of a tax that at least ostensibly will fund better transit.
Telling me that the money will be set on fire by a public organization with good intent doesn't convince me.
What has happened here -- and mathematically, this has to be true, or it wouldn't work -- is that the city has taken what used to be the market cost of congestion, and set an artificial floor higher than that market. They then captured the difference as revenue.
That's the fundamental argument against the assertion that traffic speed increases will offset the costs. It cannot be true, or people would choose to drive.
i dont think thats true. the cost can also be much cheaper, but people price differentiate better when they can actually see the number than when they cant.
you can look at 19.99 as an example, vs 20 as example of making people feel a certain way to get them to shop differently, or credit cards - which get people to pay much more for an item than they otherwise would with the interest payments, or with the klarna styled buy now pay later.
its not a tautology that a higher price drives down cost.
i think the government price is likely much less than the cost of congestion, especially once you price in the externalities of pollution, but drivers werent aware of how much cost they were incurring from the congestion, and now that there's a number, they can make decisions based off of it
I think the mistake you're making here is assuming that the value of driving and the cost of congestion are the same to every driver.
For some people, driving is an elastic decision. They mode shift, or time shift to off-peak, or carpool, or combine errands in the city into one trip instead of multiple.
For other people, driving is necessary. They'll benefit from fewer of the first type of person being on the roads during peak hours.
I'm just saying that if the marginal driver were still choosing to drive, then the system wouldn't work at all. That seems tautological?
The MTA has to set the price high enough above market that the reduction in demand is X%. Whether someone is driving because of speed, or comfort, or some other factor, the cost has to exceed their personally calculated benefit.
Significantly? Aren't those delivery trucks spending a lot less time paying drivers to idle in traffic now?
We do have concrete evidence the buses, at least, are moving around faster.
No comments yet
You ok man? Like, respect for your passion on this issue but you’re also seething pretty hard about New York City having cleaner air and less traffic.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/05/11/upshot/conges...
> The New York City health department’s readings of PM2.5, one air quality measure, improved citywide the first three months of this year compared with the same period in 2024. The improvement was more pronounced within the congestion zone, but it’s too early to attribute that to the program, or to know if that’s a lasting pattern, experts said.
"My apartment still gets dusty" seems like a pretty desperate anti-congestion charge argument.
A three-month change at the beginning of the year in PM2.5 is noise.
You've yet to provide any for your assertions. Just feels.
I personally don't think the PM2.5 thing would justify the implementation of the system even if it were true, but that's not a debate I want to get into.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=schrodinger%...
The benefits of reducing PM2.5 pollution are... not in dispute. https://www.epa.gov/pm-pollution/health-and-environmental-ef...
That's an empirical question, you're going to have to prove it. The time saved by delivery drivers or contractors, for example, has value. If they can make more deliveries, or fix more elevators in the same day those services get cheaper. If the only downside is that the assistant patrol supervisor deputy liaison that would have driven to 1 Police Plaza takes the train instead it's clearly a net savings and economic improvement and makes everything we buy and use in the city cheaper.
> 2) That same regressive tax is used to provide a lifeline for an exceptionally wasteful public organization (the MTA) that needs budget discipline, not additional funding.
The MTA is chronically starved for cash and unable to do large scale long term projects because of unstable funding. If this policy, which as we saw above might well have literally zero aggregate economic downside, also builds more efficient transit, it's a virtuous circle of winning.
> 3) (more minor) By definition, the point of this tax is to make it so that only rich people can drive. As the article notes, of course this is great if you're rich enough to afford it...but the article doesn't quote the people who can't now.
Rich people can already drive. Now those rich people give money to transit for everyone else. Working people or people who need to drive (like those with a van full of stuff that needs to be somewhere) are able to do so much more efficiently and most likely face net lower costs.
The "downside" is midly affluent people who do have cars and regularly drive in the central area take fewer trips or take the train a few more times instead. And the other downside is that the tens of thousands of assholes who've been abusing the city parking placard process for decades have to find another way to get to work like the rest of us.
I don't have to prove anything. I'm not the one implementing the tax.