Well well well

Congestion pricing is such a good idea everywhere there is rock solid public transit alternatives. Where there's not, it just becomes a tax on the poor.
- bicycles are good too, though maybe not for the longer distances that you would put congestion taxes on
  
  Can be good. I ride my bike when I can, but my area IS NOT built for it, so it actually pretty risky. Heck some normal routes for me would probably get me stopped by the cops for recklessness.
  
  How long are those distances?
- If I were rich, I would support congestion pricing. I could sell my helicopter. Who needs to fly over traffic when there is no traffic?
  
  Yeah but all this $9 add up to millions which you can funnel into heated massage chairs on the trolley, tram, boat, bus or train. I want Netflix and free WiFi.
- Can you explain congestion pricing?
  
  Think whole road tolls you can change based on a schedule, or based on current and expected traffic. All of it is meant to either disincentiveize driving to cut down total traffic, or at least shunt it to less congested times or roads.
  Aside: I 1000% don't consider individual toll lanes to be a type of congestion pricing. Those are just convenience surcharges (looking at you too TSA Pre check) and are complete elitist bullshit that hurts everyone but the city that takes in the fees.
  
  Can you explain congestion pricing?
  How about you explain how BigFish@'s comment is wrong instead. You clearly have a point to make, so do the work to make it.
- It's so great I'm considering implementing it for my driveway and only enforcing it for people I don't like.
- If you can afford a car, you can afford an e-bike, even a cargo e-bike. Cars are luxuries compared to bicycles. Never forget that.
  
  I don't know where you live, but that's just not true in large swaths of America. The other options add multiple hours round trip anywhere and in many parts of the US it's not an option.
  My work is currently a 20 minute drive down a freeway going 60 mph. There is no bus to take that route. There isn't even a connection, or a transfer, the only other option would be a cab.
  
  Maybe if you live somewhere it doesn’t snow
  
  Not true.
  I haven't owned a car for most of my adult life, and things start to get really difficult in winter with snow (insufficient bus routes in a given area, and sidewalks/bike lanes covered in snow and not able to be transversed).
  When job-hunting I had to exclude a lot of places because of how impossible it'd be to do the commute in winter. Given how expensive rent is, plenty of people are forced to live with relatives or live in certain cheaper areas long past when they'd prefer to leave, which means if the roof over your head is in an area without sidewalks/bike lanes/public transit, you rely hardcore on a car to get to work and back. And if you don't have that car, you basically lose your job. Maybe you can sustain it over the summer, but once winter snow kicks in you're pretty fucked the first hard snow or ice that comes through. If you're lucky, it's close enough to walk--but not everyone is lucky like that. Also, if your job has mandatory overtime and you're doing 50-60 hour weeks, walking 2-3 hours one way to work is a no-go.
  I say this as someone who regularly biked/used public transit in Chicago winters. Not having a car shaped my life in ways that effectively made me poorer/deeper in poverty.
  
  A car can be used to move an entire family safely. You need 3-5 bikes to do the same far less safely including the very young, old, infirm.
  Fatality rate for sedans is 2 per billion vehicle miles. Bikes are about 110.
  Bear in mind that this is in the US which has bad drivers driving aggressively in environs ill suited.
  Furthermore the average person commuting by car commutes 30 minutes by car the average bus rider an hour.
  These are often distances too great to bike.
  
  And if you are too poor to live near your employer?
  
  Even in contries where there's good public transport that's not really the case. My aunt lives in a town 40min from where I live, and she wakes up at 4am to go work at a factory 10mins from where she lives. There's no public transport at that hour and no, an ebike is not a viable solution for those roads.
  I'm all in for having big parking spaces outside of cities so people load off their cars and then use public transport, but in the countryside that's just not viable.
  
  I take it you've never been outside a big city in Texas, California, Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Wyoming, Minnesota, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Et Cetera.
  I'm only listing places I've been. An e-bike would just not cut it, especially if you have small children. There are places you can not go without getting on a freeway, and there is NO WAY IN HELL I'm putting a small child on the freeway or highway on a bike.

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.
  
  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
  
  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.
  
  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.

inb4 the supreme court rules that congestion charging is unconstitutional and furthermore that public transport, too, is unconstitutional.
- Congestion pricing bad, private tolls good
  
  Thanks Lars.
- If the founding fathers didn’t explicitly mention it in the Constitution then clearly it’s unconstitutional.
  
  Pooping is unconstitutional.
  
  Strangely, they did mention it!
- Exhaust Now Vents Directly Into Cab: EPA says, "For your health!"
- "Ladies and gentleman of the committee, I put it to you: thousands, perhaps millions, of American songwriters have written about missing their truck. How many have written about missing the bus? I rest my case."
  
  Counterpoint, "the wheels on the bus in fact, go round and round."
  
  I'd like to enter into evidence "skankin pickle" CW:ska https://youtu.be/FBtFbxhpmfc

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
  
  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
  
  I certainly hope it won't be spent on pubic transit, at least.
- Sorry best we can do is 80% to the police department.
- But we need more cops
  
  And those cops need tanks.
- Yeah, that's how we do it in Oslo. The road tolls mostly go towards funding transit and investments in bike and foot infra.

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.
- 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.
- Wait until the elevated highway collapses

See the Congestion Pricing Tracker for day by day measurements of the impact on congestion.
- This is an incredible resource. Love stuff like this And I pin this comment if I had that power.
- I’m trying to see the big improvement but it looks like there’s only a few minutes at best difference in drive time going on. What don’t I understand?
  
  Wait time is getting slashed across the board. An example: If in rush hour traffic, 8 minutes was added, but now it's 3 minutes, that's five minutes of car fumes and CO2 avoided, of more cars moving about, of goods being transferred. We're not shaving seconds, we're shaving literal minutes!
  We're talking about hundreds of thousands of vehicles. This is New York with millions of people. People, businesses, all these things are affected. If you combine this with other data, you might better see the outcomes.
  This isn't tiny incremental gains. From a economic/environmental/commerce standpoint, these are multipliers.
  
  I think it would behoove all of us to wait a month and see how things shake out. As it is there was snow last week and it was just coming off the holidays. Let patterns stabilize.

This is great, should be implemented in all cities. Most people who can use public transport should.
- Not all cities are equal. Many have large areas with no public transportation available.
  
  I get suggested to drive for 11 minutes and ALSO take a lyft if I wanted to use public transportation to get to work.
  
  That's also very easily fixable
- In SF they allocated some extra carpool lanes (taken from the total number of highway lanes) and started calling them "express lanes" instead of carpool lanes. Everybody cheered-- because transit hipstering is a great thing for the people who it actually works well for in our mediocre system. I guess everytone else is SOL. In SF it started out that you could still use them for free if you had 2 people in the car. Now its 3 people minimum to ride free, and the prices crept higher. Now you'll very often see all non-express lanes stopped with traffic but the price for express lanes high and the express lanes clear of traffic-- that road throughput capacity underused. Its become a rich persons lane, at the cost of reducing capacity of the total system. When it got put in they said the max would be $8.00, shortly after they doubled that, with no max per day. Fees rack up since they charge over short distances. Now I've started seeing express lanes on main thoroughfares that arent highways.
  Theres a patchwork of diconnected and not well thought out transit systems, with little hope of retrenching them to have usable coverage like NYC has. You'll end up using an uber or taxi to get to your final destination most of the time, and parking at transit stations is difficult, time consuming, and expensive.
  This is not the solution you think it is. It just makes things better for the rich, and does nothing for the poor and middle class. This is like the "clear" lane at the airport security. Once its in, its not going away. Pricing is not in the control of people who have your best interests at heart. If you're poor, your time is not worth as much as a rich persons. They are commoditizing the hours of your life and many of you cheer for it. Without progressive pricing for this you're just getting fleeced.
  The funds created arent going toward new projects . They are used for road maintenance, enforcement, and debt repayment in the county where the road is This simply frees up general funds that had been used for that before these went in, so no direct benefit in terms of transit projects is mandated.
  
  As I understand it, poor and middle class people are already taking public transit. It's the rich people who are driving in New York. This is making it easier for deliveries, taxis, buses, and emergency vehicles to get through by getting all of the entitled rich people off the road.
  
  As someone who takes public transit into SF every work day. It exists. It works. It's faster than driving
  
  Also, those lanes were open to everyone for 2 months before they had everything online. There was absolutely no traffic those months. Once they turned on the scam lanes, traffic was back with a vengeance... Unless you paid.

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.

Nice. Now cars are only for the rich like they should be.
Real solution: Ban cars in parts of NYC.
- 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
  
  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.
  Why can't you start building shit before reducing their numbers? I don't see what one has to do with the other.
- 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
  
  I feel like what this good intentioned quote misses is that the poor are priced out of the city core entirely and pushed into banlieus
- 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
  
  What does that have to do with the OP?
- True wealth is not needing to drive a car at all.
- 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.
- The poorer you are the less you can afford paying for it. This is really just a method of opening the streets just for the rich.
  Regressive solution.
  
  Counterpoint, this funds public transport which is cheaper than car ownership and driving.
  If you are poor, this pushes you to take a train or bus which saves you money.
  The only people this taxes is the rich which makes this a progressive solution.
  
  Cars in Manhattan were already "just for the rich".
  It's simply making the rich think for a moment, before taking their car to the street. Which makes the streets safer for everyone who's not rich.
  
  This is really just a method of opening the streets just for the rich.
  Anyone who takes the bus knows this is bullshit
  
  You mean like how most things are anyways?
  
  I'd say almost anywhere in the US besides the NYC area, this would probably be true. Given public transit is the norm there, it hardly seems regressive. I don't think giving the rich the privilege of taking care through the city is a good thing, but at least the city gets to take some money from them. It would be much better if health care ceos all took public transit. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure an outright ban on private vehicles would be strongly opposed by such people right now...
  
  congestion pricing doesn't apply to public transit, which is the point. Take the damn bus to work. If it's a long walk from your stop, you can buy an ebike with money saved from not maintaining a car.
  
  It's only regressive if you assume cars are a necessity, they're really not in NYC. I sold my car after moving down from New England and haven't regretted it, and it's not an affordability issue for me either.
  Also the rich will always have access to luxuries that poor people don't. There will always be fancy restaurants and nicer clothes than are inaccessible to the poor, but that is separate from them having decent quality food and clothes, and maybe can go out to a nicer dinner every so often, just not a $500 tasting menu.
  
  Public transport won't be built?

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.

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 incredibly short sighted. How long before companies realize that they aren't paying employees enough to live in NYC or deal with the congestion tax and the company has no choice but to leave NYC altogether? Then tax revenue declines and the city is short on the budget!
  If you understand that the congestion tax (and lets face it, it's a tax) goes up in years 3 and 5, you'll realize that this isn't going to get better. I commute to work in NYC every day and drive my personal vehicle probably once a month. It was never cost effective to drive into NYC. Someone who's already paying $850 for parking, $300 for bridge tolls and the cost of their car is not worried about the extra $9/day.
  Oh and BTW, the first day of the congestion tax was a snowstorm so no one was driving in anyhow!
- 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.
- It's been widely studied in other cities already. Studying it more is ok, but at some point you gotta wonder whether we need all that many studies about whether water is wet, or if the resources and manpower could be better spent elsewhere.

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.
  
  That sounds pretty reasonable actually.
- $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.
  
  Could they make it more expensive for cars that enter the zone once and drive around all day (Uber)
  
  Kinda unfair tbh
- It's like $9

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:
  
  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:
  
  Lmfao, that's the same distance as my commute to work, and I can bike that in 17-20 minutes
  
  Half an hour to cross that bridge isn't even that bad.
- Make sure you compare apples to apples. The day that images was taken may have been the snowstorm... No one was going to drive in anyhow.

...if it isn't the bridge I said I'd cross... Wait, not going to pay that congestion charge.

Fixing traffic by... discouraging people from driving, lol. Well I'm not complaining.

Now do the Van Wyck. Disincentivizing cabs, livery, rideshare, car service, whatever else constantly clogs that that few miles of road that takes 25-30 minutes could be done in five.

Good.

Hilarious, a move that was proven to work in Istanbul was avoided... Because..?
- Republicans.
  
  According to NPR the other day, apparently NJ's (Democrat) Governor Murphy is against it. I'm not exactly sure why (I missed that part). It may have had something to do with revenue sharing, and NJ taking in much less than they did before?
  I don't know and not sure if I care enough to look into it... But yeah, apparently not just Republicans.
- What move?
- Widening roads makes money and adds more cars that also makes more money. If you fix the problem, how are you gonna keep milking it?
  Your silly trains, busses and bikes aren't going to pay for the yacht.

- This one was taken at 10:30 AM Eastern Time if that helps.

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.

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know the average fare of getting from NJ to NYC by train?
- Hoboken to Manhattan on the PATH is 2.75$.
  
  Hoboken
  Isn't that a street fighter move?
  
  For real? I didn't know it was that cheap...
- Depends on where you're starting from. From my town, it's about $8.50 each way to/from Penn Station, and it's usually a 35-40m ride (edit: assuming NJTransit is on time, lol), with roughly hourly trains on weekdays and every 2h (plus a transfer) on weekends.
  If you're starting from down in (e.g.) Princeton, though, it's going to be more like $19.
  
  Is there some kind of monthly transit pass you can buy to make it cheaper overall for regular users?
  
  My tiny rural japanese train has hourly trains (and like 6 running about 10min apart during rush hour). That's nuts to me.

Sam from Wendover did a very good job explaining why Congestion Pricing is the best solution to address this particular problem, including arguments on why this is not a regressive tax when you analyze it closely.
Canonical YouTube link so you can use your favorite Invidious/Piped instance https://youtu.be/B2j-LgcA7Gk
- And same on nebula: https://nebula.tv/videos/wendover-the-battle-over-nyc-congestion-pricing/

What's the situation in NYC with regards to the Return to Office bullshit? Surely this development will give clear heads another logical argument for continued working from home, right?

I mean you're just making efficient transportation something that wealthy people can just buy...
- Private vehicles aren't efficient, they're convenient.
  
  Your comment presumes that everyone has access to public transit that suits their needs. Many people do not.
  
  All those green lines aren't supposed to be an example of efficient transportation? Is that not exactly what the author is trying to convey?

Wonderful news for people with porches or flexible schedules.
- Hey! I'm woahkin hee-ah!

Is this the least full Times Square has been after COVID? Cam

Regressive tax. Yet another kick in the face of the lower class. Why not a progressive tax based on personal income? It works pretty well for speeding tickets in northern Europe.
- I'm all for reducing traffic, but yeah, how is this not at least partially regressive? Folks who can only afford to live in New Jersey but then have to work in NYC now have yet another new expense.
  But maybe I'm not aware of just how ubiquitous subway stations are in New Jersey that go into NYC. Would it be an easy transition?
  
  It's my understanding that poor people in NYC already take public transit. It's just the rich people who drive.
  Besides, less traffic in NYC probably means cheaper parking, so people who have to drive will probably see their cost unchanged.
  
  Looks like a significant chunk of the New Jersey riverside on the Hudson is basically just NYC public transit.
- We can't hold every type of tax-incentive based progress hostage because our culture won't tolerate day-fines or other income-scaled penalties. I mean we could, but it wouldn't make sense. This is a good program and it has an option for low income people to pay less. Furthermore we can always funnel money from rich to poor in other ways (e.g. through unrelated).
  
  and it has an option for low income people to pay less.
  You've never been poor have you. Its an extra 300 bucks taken away for no benefit, assuming they qualify for the low income benefit, and its 400 fliushed down the tubes if they dont.
- This tax hits the rich more, which is good. Now there is more tax money to help the poor. Stop Advocating for making the rich richer
- The fee is reduced based on income.
  
  sort of. 50% off after the first ten trips per month if you reach a poverty threshold. Its still a big increase for any poor worker and it doesnt scale up to add cost for the rich bastards. So if you come in every weekday thats 4 weeks, 20 trips. 50% off after 10 trips means you get half off for 2 weeks. So its basically 25% off. Figure 20 bucks a day of new cost, now 25% off, = 300 bucks of new cost for a person who can prove they are in poverty. 400 if you cant. 400 is pocket change to a wealthy person and a whole lot for an hourly worker to start giving to MTA.