NYC is overplaying its hand, the fact is that Brooklyn, LI, Montclair, Jersey City, and other places around the area are now filled with people that have no real reason to go to Manhattan. I live 1.78 mi from Penn Station and I cannot recall the last time I was in midtown - the idea of it is frankly horrifying.
You know who will benefit from this? Rich people and tourists.
I feel sorry for the businesses, you think there are empty storefronts now? Just wait.
This isnt London, which has a regional planning authority and an pretty integrated system...until someone realizes norther NJ, Westchester, NYC and some of LI are in need of a all encompassing plan all of this is a joke.
The streets are not free to cars, drivers pa gas tax, tolls, registration fees, inspection fees, tax to purchase the car, tax when it is repaired and license fees.
Congestion Pricing is unfair and punitive. The elite of Manhattan do not want the peons from the outer boroughs on what they incorrectly perceive as their streets.
As I drove, today, along second avenue the congestion was caused by trucks double parked on both sides. On another street, in the sixties it was caused by the narrowing due to construction. None of the congestion was caused by passenger cars. It was caused by double parked trucks and construction. Other time it was caused by taxi cabs violating the law stopping where ever they want and not puling to the curb when there is room a few feet up the street.
These violatios of the law and lack of consideration when issuing building permit are the main cause of congestion.
I remember some years back there was a taxi strike, traffic moved very smoothly through Manhattan, not a cab in sight. I wonder if there was a connection. The city is trying to make money on the backs of hard working people who have to use their vehicle: handicapped people, people with two or more young child who cannot safely take them on the train or a salesperson who has samples and must make multiple stops. Get rid of the real cause of congestion which is NOT the cars.
Try prohibiting parking, for any reason on one side of all midtown cross streets. Its work great in other cities
2
Every single driver already pays some road related tax. Today’s NY Times says 20% of bus riders evade the fare. What?
2
Implies that the solution is to just start charging for something our entire way of life has established as near-free. Takes much, much more than that. For starters, alternatives. I'd be glad to take public downtown. But driving is 10 minutes, max, while the bus connections an average of nearly two hours.
Public spirit is one thing. And crazy is another.
2
Yes roads are a commodity, and the economic argument posited in this brief article is compelling and needs to be considered. But roads are also part of an agreement between the government and the landowner. You improve your property and we will make sure it has access to utilities and transportation, and then you will be assessed a tax and we will maintain and manage them. Let's not forget that roads serve more than just cars too. These are the topics that are going to come up when congestion pricing is litigated. As it will be I am sure.
1
Just because we aren't paying on the spot doesn't mean that i's for free. Just think of this of when you use your utilities such as electricity and water. To have them, you just pay your monthly bills or they get shut off. The same works with the roads and crossings. Just because they don't have tolls on them that doesn't mean that we're getting them free of charge. We're actually paying for them via taxes for infrastructure. In a way, they are being paid, but just indirectly. Part of the reason why some highways and bridges don't have tolls despite having them originally is because the main purpose of the tolls was to pay off the bonds and to be removed once that was done, which was the case for those that were prewar. However, it was the idea of politicians in the postwar era that they would be part of a revenue source, which is what lead to a lot to having them even after serving their purpose and to be hiked just to serve as revenue sources otherwise known as a cash cow. Doing so caused the hikes to be even more massive than before. Personally, I've always seen tolling as a form of double tipping where I was told by a waiter to leave a tip even if it's being including in the bill. I feel that congestion pricing will never really go where it's supposed to go to and will be hiked constantly just like the other tolls, which is why it should be stopped. I say we should audit the MTA before even thinking about this idea and see where their existing revenues are.
1
Taken to a logical conclusion, shouldn’t bike riders participate in cost sharing as well? Painting all those lines ain’t free. Additionally, bike lanes have contributed greatly to auto congestion by eliminating valuable auto traffic lanes.
2
So now you're going to mandate that everyone must have an E-Z-Pass? NO THANK YOU. The government has no right to track my every transit move, no right to track every time I leave or enter my home. And if you're going to rebut this with a wisecrack about how Big Brother is already taking a snapshot and tracking my movement anyway through its license plate surveillance, you've just made my point EXACTLY!
1
The government is not a separate entity from us and "it" does not give us anything for free. All of us taxpaying citizens pay for it. Period. It is not free by any means. The government gives us nothing. We are the government and we pay for it.
2
Of course they are not and have never been free. We pay a lot of taxes, but recently not enough because politicians are more focused on getting elected than doing what is required. Our infrastructure is so far behind that fuel taxes should be increased a lot to pay for the needed maintenance and improvements. Few if any are even considering that.
1
So now it appears that not everything is free, all must pay to use the roads, but heck free tuition, free medical care etc, etc. The reality will be harsh though, just like taxes on cigarettes and just about all else that has been targeted for taxation. People will indeed do the following in some combination: work from home, or move away which reduces the secondary spending within NYC, and that will have a ripple effect. Then those who continue to use mass transit in increasing numbers overburdening an already overloaded system that will have spiraling costs as congestion pricing revenues decrease with the fewer and fewer people driving into Mid-town and more and more riding the trains. No wonder people are voting with their feet and u-hauls.
1
2 paragraphs in and you already are leading the witness down the wrong path. We expect roads to be free of charge BECAUSE we pay taxes explicitly for the road construction and maintenance. The government does not have any money they do not subsidize anything. The US citizens subsidize programs not the government.
2
@DCooper - That was the part that made me laugh. Where do they think government gets money from? It's just like AOC think that the government has money to spend that wasn't originally taxpayer money.
Wait till you read a little further down you can definitely see the "you're a nazi" and eco-wallflowers coming out in support of this. You know the ones they don't have a cra because tye don't have a job and never will. Mum's basement is fine for them.
The concerns that the MTA will mismanage or squander the money are well founded. This is the agency that spends $1bn/mile for new subway track. Even Europe can do it for far cheaper. So step 1 is to reform (.org perhaps?!) the MTA.
That said, the subsidies for driving are so large and odious, they need to end. It’s effectively legal to kill someone with your car in this country and much of the true costs of the choice to drive are borne by everyone but the driver. For full details, I present this article by Greg Shill, professor of law: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3345366
Unfortunately in NYC the devil is always in the details. The article is certainly accurate but let's see how many 'exceptions' with permits are offered.
Unless really applied to everyone (LOL), this Law is bound to disappoint.
2
@Dan Broe
I can't wait to see news reports of elderly people skipping their medicine to pay to get into town for their doctor's appointments. Great optics.
Car owners steal public space for parking as if it were a God-given right.
Unlike many other big cities that use neighborhood parking permits, NYC welcomes masses of automobiles to litter our streets with free curbside parking. And then compounds the problem with blizzards of illegitimate free-parking placards for the thieves to place in their windshields.
1
Koz
I find it amazing that no one speaks about Janette Sadia-Khan who was appointed by then Mayor Bloomberg and transformed our avenues and streets into this menagerie of clogged streets. She went to Europe and was enamored by their street systems and brought it here. On any given day in Manhattan our avenues are clogged to one maybe two lanes of available flow. No likes to speak of reverting back since billions was wasted on this design that was never appropriate for the US
2
The MTA is jealous of WDW's congestion pricing.
Totally rethinking free roads would be nice in theory if we were starting from scratch, but it's much more doable to go with the grain of the wood we have. We should absolutely raise the gas tax and raise it a lot. And also maybe have vehicle taxes, like car registration, but much higher (especially for low efficiency personal vehicles) with way stations selling special permits when you cross borders (even city limits) for places that especially want to discourage unnecessary and solo driving.
This article gets so many things wrong. Roads are not free as they are payed over at least 3 times by tax dollars. When you purchase a car you pay sales tax on the MSRP price which is used to support the infrastructure, then you pay a tax in which you have to register your vehicle which is supposed to be used to support the roads. Then you pay gas tax when you drive which is supposed to be used to support the roads. We don't need more taxes, we need more accountable government. We don't have a tax revenue problem we have a government spending problem. Stop trying to make people pay more money and instead demand accountability from our government.
5
Streets serve more than just personal cars.
1. First responders
2. Pedestrians
3. Bicyclists
4. Public surface transportation vehicles (busses)
5. Delivery vehicles etc. all use streets, some are more critical than others.
From my perspective, personal cars should go away first.
2
The biggest problem with congestion pricing is that it exists so the MTA can "guarantee" bonds for the infrastructure. So that it costs significantly more to pay for brokers and bankers to administer these funds than the amount of funds that need to be spent.
As usual the enemy is Wall St. but people seem to be happy to make individuals the ones to bear the costs of improvement.
@C
The revenue, per Cuomo, is strictly going to the MTAs Capital Budget as bond collateral, which translates to pet projects in the districts of politicians, perhaps a new waiting room on the New Rochelle or Garrison Metro North stops. It is not going to track or switch maintenance, for example, which are the actual causes of the delays, and overcrowding of the subway system itself, the so called crisis.
How about congestion pricing for sidewalks, too? Those are subsidized as well. And what about government services like police? Shouldn't high utilizers like the people living in high crime areas pay more for their police protection? Otherwise the low or no utilizers of police services are subsidizing the high crime utilizers. What about other government services like the department of motor vehicles? Should we have congestion pricing there to encourage people to go there at inconvenient hours?
3
@Pa Mae We're on opposite sides of the congestion pricing debate, but I would still recognize a good point in your comment. You seem to be implying that it is not feasible for the government to implement user fees that perfectly capture the expenses that each individual creates on publicly-provided infrastructure. Depending on specifics that have yet to be determined, the congestion fee in Manhattan is designed to charge drivers the same amount for entering the pricing zone, regardless of how far drive and of what time of day they enter or leave the zone. If the congestion fee could quantify the amount of usage a driver gets out of the road and relative demand while they are within the zone, that would provide a superior pricing signal, but it would also make the program more complicated and expensive. We could come up with any other number of things that the governments pays for out of general funds for simplicity and an accurate user fee would just be too complex to administer. Even though I approve of the congestion fee, it's really just an incremental change getting us closer to a user fee, but leaving us far from an accurate fee.
The MTA will spend any new money on the pensions of retired workers. Meanwhile the cost of a cab/Uber/Lyft to the outer boroughs will rise sharply to cover the congestion fee for the driver to return to Manhattan!
3
Of course, there will be work arounds. I would most definitely NOT want to live on 61st Street once this kicks in.
1
Of course, New Yorkers being New Yorkers you can expect mass traffic diversion to avoid the new tolls. I would imagine a mass exodus coming off the FDR at 96th and 125th Streets with Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree style traffic year round coming down 2d, Lex, Park and 5th as well as across all Central Park Transverses.
Unfortunately, the streets are still free for the multitudes of placard abusers in city government and beyond. That is an abuse which the NY TImes should shed some light on. Pretty please!!
3
If I take my car onto a congested road, not only do I bear the costs of the extra traffic delays I cause, I also impose the same extra costs on all other drivers on the road. That's the basic point of congestion pricing: making all drivers recognize and pay the extra costs they impose on other drivers when they add to traffic. Otherwise, traffic jst gets worse.
Congestion pricing is like charging runners for their use of more air. Governments get paid to provide services to taxpayers. Roads and streets have been paid for and need regular maintenance. Without roads, there isn't an economy or a U.S. Perhaps that's the writer's goal?
2
In Northern Virginia there is relentless widening of highways and ever maddening traffic congestion with morning rush hour now going from 5 till 10 am. There is now HOT pricing on some interstate roads but that just diverts traffic onto non-HOT roads. Our Metrorail is failing for lack of investment.
We need congestion pricing as well as NYC. We need to raise our state gas tax. Use that revenue to improve Meto rail and lower fares. Congestion pricing will encourage carpools.
What we are doing today in major metro areas in the U.S. with regard to transportation and cars is a failure. Congestion pricing is just one needed fix.
Three points:
First: The presumption here is that the gov't is the "owner" of our streets ad roads, with with an unquestioned right and intent to extract "fair" value from the asset it owns. False - the gov't is a caretaker of public asset called roads and it manages that asset for the greater benefit of the public, in trust. The argument made by the author harms the public interest at large.
Second: The gas tax is essentially a road-use tax. Levied on a volume of gas purchased/consumed, it is directly ties to the miles driven, effectively tolling every mile driven. All other arguments about its effectiveness are a matter of personal (or idealogical) bend, not the fairness of use it represents.
Third: the congestion plan is discriminatory in that is singles out a one area of where congestion occurs, ignoring congestion in other areas of the city....Why not just make it a Manhattan-wide zone, why not the city zone, why not the whole metro area zone? All experience same congestion parameters - anyone tried to get across the Tappan Ze bridge (oppsss, sorry for being politically incorrect) or cross the I-287 in less than it 10 mins most of the days? How about BQE, downtown Brooklyn, or getting across Queens in lass than 1/2 hour? No congestion there? Another hypocrisy of what's being put into effect...In the end, we all will pay for it, one way or another, anyway.
6
I never see any reporting on how many companies in Manhattan, possibly including The Times, have been subsidizing the auto commutes of employees with lower or free parking rates in garages, shuttles to the office and so forth. No. Driving is a privilege, not a right. The Port Authority has used congestion pricing at the Hudson River crossings, but the $2 discount for off-peak travel isn’t effective. The toll should be $30. And when congestion pricing comes to Manhattan, how about slashing the fee in half or less for all-electric cars to improve air quality and reduce the city’s roar.
1
@Victor Sasson
This is backwards thinking, electric vehicles should be charged a premium for using the road without paying the gas tax that finances roads.
3
@Victor Sasson
Electric vehicles probably pollute way more than a gasoline vehicle with tight emission standards. Where do you think the electricity that runs them is generated, a hamster on a running wheel?
2
@Patrick - Lithium Batteries - Mined in one country, refined in another, made into batteries in yet another, and finally put into cars in usually another.
No one ever talks about the fact that there are plenty of 'bedroom' communities that could handle offices and other types of non-retail businesses that pay a healthy wage, people wouldn't need to drive alone for miles and miles. Antioch, California is one community that could have brought in some high-tech businesses. Instead they focus on retail (low wages, little education needed) and building more homes without the requisite infrastructure (roads) to support that growth. Maybe if you stop blaming the individual driver and start looking at what companies (and backward thinking managers) could be doing to move their companies, or allow more telecommuting, etc. I worked for one company where the manager SCREAMED at me because they were working on my office and I worked from home that day. I should have asked for other space in the office. Wow. What a jerk.
3
This article misses an important point. Restricting access to roads will unfairly penalize poor people. The wealthy are able to pay whatever it costs to ride in comfort, have goods and services delivered, etc. The poor ( which in NYC includes the middle class) have to take a crowded and inconvenient subway, even when schlepping heavy, bulky packages in awful weather. The entire idea is horrible.
4
congestion pricing is a toll. period.
4
@Rufus not if they decrease the congestion price in off hours. i realize they are not in manhattan, but for hudson riving crossing, they could have $30-$40 tolls from 700-900 am. and free from 1 a.m. - 5 a.m. or something like that. it could be revenue neutral and dynamic.
The framing of an issue in terms I had not before considered. Helpful in understanding.
Austin, Texas should consider. It’s a mess.
6
Enter Japan, most major roads are tolled. They routinely close large sections around shopping areas and train stations to cars because they so something the US will never do, value pedestrians and other non-motorized users. Everywhere you go in Japan you can see they think with pedestrians in mind. they haven't given their roads away to cars. It's sad that our country has gone all in on cars and has since 1950. Private industry and the government have conspired to ensure cars own the country. As I begin my masters in public administration you can be sure my specialization will be in transportation and infrastructure. I'm sick of yielding to cars everywhere I go, I'm sick of big box stores and places with no bike lane or sidewalks. Citizens of cities are waking up to a new world where cars aren't part of it and I will do my darn best to help us live a healthy lifestyle without 2 tons beasts of steel and wasted time and money.
5
@Patrick
This is awesome utopian ideal. as you advance in your education you will learn why we don't already live in Utopia. @ton vehicles will be replaced by 10 ton vehicles at a rate of more than 5 to 1 by a large margin, there is much efficiency in smaller bites.
Judging by your comment about my "utopian world" you seem to think that I may not know what I'm talking about. I currently work in local government so I do have some experience with the issues discussed. Obviously, vehicles in some form are not going anywhere but the response to your comment would take too long and be too boring for this comment board. I sometimes wish I had chosen a different career choice but as Leslie Knope from Parks and Recreation said, "What I hear when I'm being yelled at is people caring at me very loudly".
Ms Badger sure can write an academic term paper all right. She provides these idealistic reasons for congestion pricing and even supports her thesis with quotes from experts.
But all I hear the decision makers saying is that it is all about the money. Money needed for mass transit.
Which is it?
3
We're witnessing the reinvention of transportation in NYC. Between ride-sharing, Citibikes and (fingers crossed) improvements to the subways and buses, the future should be much better for residents, visitors, those who study and work here.
A logical next step - are you listening and are you brave enough Mayor de Blasio? - is to phase out the absurd tradition of free parking on residential streets around the city.
What a colossal waste of a precious resource. Imagine if just one side of side streets were clear of cars that sit and sit, horribly underutilized day and night. How many more ride-share vehicles, delivery trucks and bicycles would be able to move unimpeded? What if most side streets were completely car free?
And how insane is alternative side of the street parking? Has anyone ever counted the time wasted as people sit in their cars for hours several times a week waiting for a street sweeper to come by so they can gingerly move out of the way and then scurry back to their precious spots? In hot or cold weather, most run their motors for heat or air conditioning, pouring countless tons of pollution and greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
Why do we provide free parking anywhere for anyone? What would the market bear if we started to charge? In my neighborhood on the Upper West Side, garage spaces cost more than $500 per month! Surely many would pay $100, $200 or more. There are hundreds of cars on each Manhattan side street, why aren't we monetizing?
7
Well its either not enough road or too many cars. I say tax cars. Here of Staten Island it seems every household has many cars. Charge the going rate to register one then double it for each additional car at that address.
4
The author has a point but fails to note the economic growth propelled by the road system. The ability to move labor and materials long distances at low cost on a flexible schedule is one of the primary drivers of American prosperity in the late 20th Century. The failure to maintain and expand those systems is hampering continued growth today. The cost is born disproportionately by the poor, who must travel farther from home to work. The solution is higher gas taxes and better transportation systems.
Car manufacturers make cars. People love to buy them. The idea that there is some grand conspiracy to manipulate customers into that transaction is just silly.
The sad truth is that driving is usually about as fast as taking public transportation even with the congestion. Adding congestion pricing will just create more convenience for those that can pay and leave those who cannot with fewer options. The utopian public transportation vision only exists for the employees: As reported in this paper, the average salary & benefits for the New York MTA is $175K. 5,000 (!) managers make $275K. What a bunch of carpetbaggers.
2
@Larry
Thank you for shining a light on the inconvenient truth of modern day transportation and how much it adds value to our economy. You help expose the dirty little secret of very economically progressive people who don't want to admit to their own cost of living in the city.
This pricing solves so many problems including high cost housing. With no traffic, all of a sudden bus services make cheap semi-distant suburbs easily accessible to midtown.
2
This makes sense in principle, but I'm still concerned about the creeping trend to have two levels of public facilities; one for the rich, and a worse one for the rest of us. The rich now get to cut to the front of the security line at the airport. They zoom by in toll lanes while others are stuck in traffic. They can send their kids to private schools (for which they often want vouchers or other public funding) and drink bottled water instead of tap water.
The more they are insulated from effects of deteriorating infrastructure, the more they will object to paying taxes to improve conditions for the larger community. This is why there are Republicans.
9
Big automobiles and trucks designed to drive 80 mph on the highway have no business in the city. Use small electric vehicles for passengers and transfer good from huge tractor trailers into smaller electric delivery vehicles outside the city limits. Make the inner city safe for pedestrians and bicyclists.
This was the Green vision in 1985. Still an impossible dream?
9
Whether one calls it a subsidy or not, if the government is paying for something, that means everyone who pays taxes is paying for it.
Roads, parking lots, snow plowing, pot-hole patching, city transits, etc. -- they're not "free", and nobody in their right mind thinks they are. Even renters understand that part of their rent goes toward the owner's property taxes.
4
@Donna Nieckula - the problem is that people have been conditioned to think of this infrastructure as something that just needs to be built, then once that's done, it's essentially considered as something available for free.
Our infrastructure gets failing grades because of things like the failure to raise the federal gasoline tax since the late 1990s - while cars get better mileage and more miles are driven every year since. Because people don't want to vote for people who "raise taxes" they end up not allowing lawmakers to "pay for upkeep".
Everything that's built starts falling apart immediately. People realize that with their cars - and realize there's constant expenditure after purchase to keep the car running until another one needs to be bought. But we don't do the same for roads.
In every city, people can be coaxed into a tax increase or bond issue to build new lanes - which leads to more driving and nearly-immediate resumption of the same traffic jams from before. But people figure the lanes have been bought and paid for, so they fight against raising enough funds (and -enough- is the key) to properly maintain the investments.
Omaha is putting some of their roads back to gravel - to cut costs to the taxpayer. It does transfer costs to people using those roads quite effectively - cracked windshields and repairs on wheels and suspensions. And dust.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/07/us/omahas-answer-to-costly-potholes-go-back-to-gravel-roads.html
2
This article is a little over the top. I really don't think the majority of people consider roads "free." I think most people see their taxes as a chunk of their income that goes toward a number of governmental expenses - roads included. Also, I doubt most people think driving is cheap. The costs of purchasing a car, insurance, a license, registration, maintenance, property/sales taxes, gas, etc. are not cheap. We drive because we need to get to work. Also, at least in Texas, we also pay for municipal bonds that fund transportation projects. I'm not sure to what extent other states fund transportation projects this way.
5
@Nicole Probably correct, but as a cycling advocate (and a driver), the FIRST driver objection every single time is that cyclists should "pay their share."
There's a wildly prevalent misunderstanding of just how much of the cost of driving is subsidized.
I think that driving is so corrosive to perspective that we may never be able to completely rid people of their notion that gas taxes pay for the roads, but we're not even trying to overcome that misconception right now.
3
This piece is actually just a simple promotion of neo-liberalism (I use that in its extreme pro-free market sense as promoted by, amongst others, the Tea Party. Very different from he way 'liberal' is used in the US.)
Of course 'the streets were never free' but they were paid for collectively through taxation and provided as a public good. The solution to congestion is not to charge people for using bits of street (I once heard a presentation on an extreme version of this suggesting that each householder/landlord should own the bit of street outside their property and charge everyone who wanted to cross their bit of road.), but rather to remove the need for so much travel by individual vehicle through providing a collectively-funded decent and safe pubic transportation system and designing/re-designing cities so that the place where people live and where they work are in closer proximity.
Americans live in the world's richest country. Making cities work through collective effort shouldn't be beyond the realms of possibility.
3
General roadway tolls and fees for parking that everyone pays at the same rate are one thing. Congestion pricing explicitly reserves road capacity at the busiest time for those with the deepest pockets - and that's odious.
In terms of infrastructure, a single tractor trailer big rig can cause as much road wear as 5,000 typical passenger cars - this is where huge maintenance costs are generated.
8
@Jeff C
Congestion pricing is effective as well as unequal. Do you have a better plan for reducing congestion and its costs? One that would work?
The corporate owners of fleets of driverless cars have not paid a cent towards the construction and maintenance of our roads. We have, and the gasoline tax is also being avoided by electric cars. If we alow these fleets to use our roads, they soon will require special accommodations, like signal strips that we don't need. It is time to eliminate access for the private fleets or require healthy fees for access.
1
Chicago Blue Line was fantastic for decades, then boom times hit all up the line. Hipsters!
I sold my ghetto condo for a good profit and left Chicago far behind.
I even bought a pickup truck to blend in, a new whizzbang F150 and get 23 MPG on back roads.
Jesus just left Chicago by ZZ Top is my song.
3
Vision zero is a failure. Accidents involving pedestrians continue to rise. Drivers routinely (and rightly) ignore the 25 mph speed limit. New Yorkers are not like people from London. Our culture is remarkably different.
Illegal and discriminatory congestion pricing might raise money for the subway, but it will only add cars to Manhattan streets.
3
@Neil Accidents for pedestrians are down . whether vision zero has done that is debatable but the statistics aren't.
Wow! This congestion tax must be the best economic break-thru in decades. Think of the possibilities... everywhere there's a line of people, use facial recognition and slap a tax on the end of the line... guess what, line disappears. No more checkout lines at the grocery stores, the theaters, the doctors's offices, no where! All of the freeway jams will go away too, just snap a picture of vehicles in line to get on the freeway and slap a tax on them, no more lines. If you see a long line at a traffic light snap a pic of the lic plate and text it to the tax office, no more waiting there either.
This will revolutionize the economy, do away with sales taxes, income taxes and even property taxes!
What are we waiting for?
1
The reason why roads in the US are so crowded is because we've had a skyrocketing population since the '70s, which is projected to continue. Thus, even if congestion pricing mitigates the problem, those congestion prices will have to keep rising.
From 1970 to the present, we've added 130 million people, the equivalent of six and a half New York States, and Pew projects around 20 million (one NYS) per decade over the next 5-6 decades.
The major driver of that population growth to the present: mass immigration. Going forward, almost all the population growth will be due to immigration.
4
@David Holzman I entirely agree with Mr. Holzman. Most people simply fail to grasp the impact massive increases in population on every aspect of society. At the heart of every social problem, if one drills down, is the greatly increased demands of massive population growth. I could list fifty without breaking a sweat.
2
@David Holzman I guess you missed the part of economics class where an expanding market was required to create the endless growth which the current economy requires.
With shrinking birth rates and non-replacement levels of immigration, national deficits and debts become a time bomb which could crater the entire economy. Unless the current population wants to increase birth rates to 1950s levels, the economies of the developed nations are doomed to implode.
It's immigration or a cratering economy. Your choice, buddy.
4
Yes, the automobile is subsidized in the US to the detriment of just about every other form of transportation. Just one example: the federal government awards about $3 billion a year for airport construction and $45 billion for highway construction. Here's an idea- take $3B from the highway budget to airports, doubling the spend. US airports are shameful compared with much of the world.
3
@Michael F - if we want to consider environmental impact, encouraging more air travel might not be the right way to go today. There are stirrings of electric passenger aircraft starting to come into the industry, but it's baby steps right now - small planes, several passengers, short flights.
Most highway travel for cars is also generally trips within a metropolitan area, and flying from LaGuardia to Newark isn't a good fix to traffic in the metropolitan area.
1
ScrUw that! I live in SE PDX, OR, where it's ever-more crowded on our roads and highways, and I live 22 miles from my work on the opposite side of the city. We have a fairly good public transit system, if you work right down town, but if you work in the burbs as I do, forget it. So, I hit the freeways every morning and every afternoon in my new 3/4 ton PU truck, crank up the tunes or the news, and enjoy my ride at about 15 MPG. Car payment + Insurance + Gas + Maintenance = Plenty of $$$ spent on driving without paying an extra tax to drive on roads that my taxes already paid for. My taxes also already go for the public transit system that i don't use, so don't ask me to pay a 4th time.
2
@WhatConditionMyConditionIsIn - your taxes might have paid to build a road, but think of it like your truck - you buy the truck, but you haven't stopped spending to keep the truck running.
So how much taxes are you paying to budget for day-to-day repair and maintenance on those roads, plus savings for the eventual need for heavy repair/replacement of roads, overpasses, bridges, embankments, etc.
1
@b fagan - Isn't that why he pays fuel tax?
@Colin
Fuel taxes aren't enough to cover the costs of automobile usage. Often they aren't even as much as the sales taxes paid on other goods.
Seems like the obvious solution to many of these issues is to dramatically reduce the size of cars. Why are giant SUV's and barge-like limos even allowed on the streets of major cities? Personal vehicles larger than the "Smart" car (with occasional exceptions) should simply be outlawed. Add dedicated bus lanes with immaculately clean and very frequent busses and 90% of the problem would be solved.
5
Why not subsidize the train, invest in it and subsidize it or subsidize say office space in less congested areas? Why isn't the train fast and beautiful and free? And full of working women? Why not make the bus free and really encourage folks not to have cars? That is give folks serious financial incentives to do this. Is this not also a zoning issue... so why not let for more density in other areas.... or incentives for say garage as apartment outside of NYC And San Francisco and Silicon Valley etc. The zoning does not allow for it and is this not really bc the zoning supports the patriarchy and the slavery that allows for some to work and others not to? Why not insist that companies and gov have a certain percentage of say female workers. If this means less commuting, offer it, incentivize them to offer it... Why let large companies and Wall Street be so subsidized if they insist on only being in NYC... A 401k tax deduction is a subsidy to Wall Street - yet say property owners or companies that own and hire in other areas, more affordable areas, are they getting the same deductions... this sort of gets at what is a U.S. company... if they are U.S. companies why are the not in most of the U.S.
Why not subsidize companies that run offices with remote workers... Why not offer tax breaks to companies who can show that all the workers work from home at least say 75 percent of the time... maybe they don't have to pay taxes...
1
We should not give the MTA a penny until they stop wasting taxpayer dollars. One mile of subway in NYC cost more than 3 times what it cost in London and Paris - yes, using union labor.
1
@Dan M
primarily due to an overhead issue called 'corruption'
I'm all for making cars less ubiquitous, for all the usual reasons, but I'm afarid that this plan, like many plans, will have unintended consequences that will prove harmful to Manhattan's economy. People like me, who drive into the city to go to the theater, museums, concerts, etc. because public transportation is not a viable option, may not go as often as we'd like to when the new rules take effect and make the cost of driving in even more consequential.
If the roads are crowded, it is because people find it preferable to other forms of travel. Yes, you could make car travel in NYC even more expensive than it already is and then Manhattan will become an even better place to be rich and more miserable for the rest of us.
The best solution to NYC congestion is to vastly improve the subways. Essentially, the system needs to be smoother, faster and use technology to allow closer spacing of trains. These measures will allow more people to use the system more comfortably, making it more attractive than taking a car.
The money raised from congestion pricing is nowhere near enough to fix the subways (100 billion). It will take a large commitment at the state and federal levels to fix the subway. Such investment is justified as NYC is the prime economic and cultural center of the country and we can't allow it to stagnate. It may be a tough sell in the current backlash against coastal areas, but making NYC run more efficiently is in the best interest of all Americans.
2
I live in San Francisco which may be the next city to adopt congestion pricing. Stripped of its fallacious arguments, congestion pricing is simply another tax, another way to dip into people’s pockets. In San Francisco, it also represents an elitist assault on cars. There are some in San Francisco who believe that city residents should not own cars, that people should bike, walk or ride the public transportation system no matter how filthy, crowded or dangerous it is. The belief rests on the twin fallacious concepts that only the wealthy drive and that is more beneficial to citizens that the city be stripped of automobiles. The subsidies referenced in this article, i.e. gasoline taxes, are taxes paid for street access. Under this author’s platonic view, we will still pay these taxes but also pay more for driving access. Most people in San Francisco oppose this nirvana of double taxation. If the city adopts it, folks likely will resort to the political levers including referendums to remove any politician foolish enough to support it.
1
Finally the case of diminishing returns is starting to take effect. Building and widening highways, freeways, toll roads that are environmentally hazardous and cost enormous amounts of money with little or no sustainable benefits. We’re seeing major road overhauls that cost billions, cause years long chaos with tiny 1- 3 percent efficiency gains that are soon wiped out. Hopefully inner city congestion pricing will eventually change the dynamic fruitfully and allow our cities and towns to prosper and give residents and visitors more cultural opportunities.
This inherently contradictory way of thinking that tax and spend politicians try to sell their latest and greatest plans always amuses me. If a congestion tax is to "raise a ton of money" as the article finally admits in the end, that is because a ton of people are paying it, which is to say they are continuing to drive despite the tax. But a congestion tax is really only successful if it raises very little money, that is, everyone stops driving solo. Yet if no one pays the tax, and everyone abandons their cars, there is no money with which to pay for Mass transit expansion or improvements. I get the feeling I'll just be left with less money in my pocket and nothing to show for it.
2
We need to review the business of highway/roadway planning, design, and construction. There we will find conspiracy, bribery, payola, inefficiency, and a cultural aversion to all forms of transportation other than cars.
I spent many years working in DOT and in social issues of transportation in general.
I must say that through the years, our roadways are as safe as possible with current proven technology. That is a real benefit of throwing a lot of money and rules in the direction of civil engineers.
But they are the worst people to be deciding social standards and aspirations. No amount of money addresses the current power structure that has built up since the dawn of automotive mass production as well as honest public scrutiny does. Keep reporting please.
Good discussion y’all. Now let’s go deeper. I loved living in NYC for the access to public transport-lightyears ahead of Texas. I love living in Europe now for similar benefits and even more support for other transport means like public rights of passage on open land and connective bike lane. We are coping with the difficulties of city vs country.
More and more, the lobby of powerful business interests are visibly gaining sway. Disinformation campaigns like the ones that impact the Gilles jaunes in France are confusing community sentiments.
The freedom of the road is a well earned right supported by our representative government taxes. It stinks to pay while en route. Better a more equitable distribution of taxes.
3
@Paul Johnson
Funding and congestion = two different problems. A more equitable distribution of taxes would worsen the congestion problem.
From my travel experience - the cities that have made driving expensive just seem happier and healthier - end of story really. So many of the costs of auto use are not accounted for. The “but it’s not fair” argument doesn’t go far - the real poor here are on buses and bicycles stuck in dangerous polluted traffic jams caused by solo drivers in suvs.
1
lol. even the streets are, of course, not "free"--nothing is free...yet AOC and fellow Dems love to promise us free education, health etc.
there is no free lunch. get that through your thick skulls.
in europe, tax rates are much higher, plus everything you buy is 20% higher due to VAT. y'know why? IT PAYS FOR THE "FREE" STUFF.
5
An excellent plan to keep those ugly cars that poor people drive from cluttering up Manhattan streets. Less traffic and fewer eyesores. Another yellow brick road.
Thank you, NYT. "Let the private sector work it out," readers say. Well, as a railroad executive, let me tell you how this works: my company pays for its own right-of-way while competing against trucks that pay around twenty percent - at best - for the point heavy axle-loading costs that wear out the highways and bridges, and create the congestion we all experience on I78E and I80E. And we wonder why cargo diversion takes place ... You want a nice commute? Level the playing field.
5
@Stephen Weaver
An efficient transportation system is dependent upon the sensible utilization of all modes of transport.
Generally speaking, railways are expected to rely on PRIVATE investment to:
1. Acquire additional right-of-way.
2. Develop infrastructure on that right-of-way.
3. Maintain infrastructure.
4. Provide security & safety on and about their infrastructure.
5. Provide traffic control within their infrastructure, as well as between other modes of transport (such as drawbridges and grade crossings).
Railroad right-of-way AND infrastructure are TAXED.
Highway, aviation, and waterway infrastructure is provided, maintained, policed and provided traffic control by governments (TAXPAYER) and NOT taxed. User fees do NOT cover costs. RAILWAYS HELP SUBSIDIZE their competition.
During economic downturns, government often uses tax dollars to improve infrastructure in an appropriate effort to create jobs and stimulate economy. This effort is often focused on expanding capacity of highway, aviation and waterway. Conversely, during dips in the economy, railways must downsize infrastructure, and are understandably conservative with regard to investment/expansion during prosperous times.
Creating adequate and appropriate infrastructure for all modes of transport is what the USA needs to thrive, and doing so will highlight the safety, speed, comfort, fuel-efficiency, and appreciation of the environment that passenger trains – and railroads in general – provide.
these restrictions will further the divide between rich and poor.
the rich will still park and drive where ever they need to. The projected revenue will still not cover the real cost of the decades of deferred maintenance on the subways, much less any expansion of public transit. the funds needed for the repair and eventual replacement of bridges, tunnels, and utility infrastructure is much greater. only so far you can kick the can down the road.
4
They put a congestion price on my commute to work on a taxi cab. the trip went from 5 dollars and 50 cents to 8 dollars in my morning commute. I walk home. I moved into Manhattan more than 35 years ago and organized my life where I can walk to almost every thing important to me. If I am in a rush (I am a New Yorker) I take a cab.
I don't think we should subsidize train rides. People should live near where they work, like they do in Europe and Asia. In the 50's and 60's America decided people should live far from Work. I don't believe that is good in any way. And, I don't want my money to go to people taking trains. If they want to live an hour away from work, let them pay for their commute.
2
@MaxStar212 People work where jobs are and live where they can afford to. Not everybody can afford to live in Murray Hill (median home value: $900,000). New York City is already one of the most densely populated cities in the developed world, and Manhattan in particular packs people in closer than virtually any city in Europe or even most in Asia. It may be the case that, say, Houston could stand to put people closer to where they work, but in New York we're already about as close as we can get.
2
@MaxStar212
Believe it or not, most Americans don't live and work in NYC, and the jobs don't just come to them. They have to drive to the jobs. Walking 35 miles each way to one's office is not feasible for a few hundred-million Americans -- you know, those individuals who reside outside the NYC bubble.
2
imagine if we treated our road system the way we treat public transportation. When a bus or train is operating at under 10% of capacity, we often conclude that it is a "waste of money" and reduce the level of service.
Now, let's apply that same approach to our system of roads. Most residential streets and rural roads "operate" far below 10% of capacity. The budget is tight, we MUST eliminate these wasteful roads. Soon, all the collector roadways would be eliminated, leaving only the arterials. But, unable to reach the previously congested roadways, the remaining roads would also be devoid of traffic.
1
The city and the state allowed unlimited Uber and other for-hire cars onto the streets without any concern for the impact on people or traffic. In the past the number of taxis was limited by the city. The impact on the infrastructure was limited and fees were paid. The city collects minimal fees from Uber to operate and put hundreds of cars on the roads which greatly increase volume. Now their answer to this is to charge a fee on everyone coming into the city. This is not the answer! The answer is to reduce unlimited cars flooding the streets from Uber, etc. Why is Uber being allowed such privileges??? Make it safe and make it stop being a social menace.
7
Its been done....look at London England. Its been operating there for years with few problems and great results. Public transport
is well funded and roads being less clogged move to a timetable.
So whats the fuss? Just copy what they have been doing tweak
out the bits that don't suit the USA and get on with it.
3
@Mike Dixon
London CP a success?
As a lucrative tax - yes.
As a solution to traffic congestion?
No. Traffic has returned to pre-CP levels despite a near-doubling of the fee.
Article seems historically myopic. Freely available roads and paths have existed, well, forever. Suddenly demonizing the ability to travel "freely" just to fuel an agenda seems disingenuous.
The author does try to point out the Tragedy of the Commons aspects which is more appropriate for congestion pricing. The biggest problem with congestion pricing, as mentioned, is that bureaucrats become addicted to the opiate of the politicians (money) and will hoover up ever more ... it is for your own good, right?
6
I agree with the article, but I was expecting the author to provide an example of how to deal with the problem. She spoke of socialized services in other countries. How do they deal with it?
Yes, seriously, let's get all the poor and lower middle class people off the roads to make things easier for the people who can afford to go first (or in this case ONLY) class.
There's no way the money raised will be used to subsidize poor people who need their cars when the whole point of the tax is to get their cars off the road in the first place.
Is it time to start shopping for a yellow vest?
7
Total nonsense. I've lived in Brooklyn my entire life and I've always been fully aware that New York streets, especially in Manhattan, were never free. However, while we working people of the city paid for them, the wealthy never have, and seemingly never will.
It's no accident that this argues that working people are basically a bunch of ignorant parasites who haven't been paying for infrastructure our entire lives, when in reality those owning multiple luxury palaces in the sky, and using them as tax havens thanks to New York law, never pay as they pay no taxes. As proof, when Albany just passed congestion pricing it killed almost all taxes on billionaires because the real estate developers lobby objected.
This Congestion Pricing plan asks average New Yorkers to make sacrifices on top of sacrifices they've been making forever. The good news is that in order to compensate for the billions of dollars New Yorkers invested in infrastructure, including the Subways, and New York Governors from Pataki to Cuomo, and Mayors from Guiliani to di Blasio, decided to steal, New Yorkers get to pay yet again in use taxes.
Multiple studies have shown this will have little impact on congestion as it does not address massive real estate development, narrowing of roads, and closing roads. It will merely push traffic from specific sections of the city to other sections, but here highly regressive taxation is marketed as educational for the unwashed masses, so it must be worth it.
8
Ride your bikes people!
1
Not mentioned at all is that years ago NY state got rid of the nonresident taxes in NYC. So we have people using our resources without paying for them. A NYC resident cannot use Westchester facilities as we do not pay for them. Bring back the nonresident city tax. Use that money for mass transit. This city resident pays NJ more than NY just because I work there. There is no good way for me to get to work by transit. I work by the Holland tunnel. This will force me to go over the GWB and take over crowded streets to get there.
4
If you take this pay-to-play idea and apply it to the Bay Area for example, the issues with the proposal become clear. The urban poor are being pushed out to the suburbs, as only the wealthy can afford rent in the city centers. Resultantly, low wage service workers workers have a long car commute as opposed to a
3
Another little mentioned subsidy to the fossil fuel industry is the lung subsidy. American subsidize fossil fueled power plants that can't economically extract all noxious pollutants from their exhausts with their lungs, hearts and minds. This holds true for all internal combustion engines also of course.
lff
4
this article is a good introduction into the topic of how roadways are subsidized. An in depth examination would reveal many more ways driving is subsidized. Here is one of many more ways:
Several years ago the American Lung Association issued a report that stated that if a tax were levied on gasoline to recover the cost for treatment of respiratory disease attributable to tailpipe emissions, the tax would be about 40 cents per gallon. While that study was done prior to the significant improvement of tailpipe emissions, the inflation of medical care costs has risen dramatically. There are MANY other indirect impacts on medical care costs, both trauma and illness, and serious negative environmental impacts, attributable to driving.
5
Most of our expensive issues, like transportation and healthcare, are issues about how to fund. On one side is the notion that the equitable solution is to pay for what you use, typically a flat dollar amount per user. But there is another equitable method: to pay based on how much the service is worth to you. If I am wealthy, my health has more economic value to me than it does for a poor person, since when a rich person works they receive a much higher salary. The same goes for transportation, where good, safe and efficient transport has more value to a wealthy person, as it enables them to make much more money than it does for a person on the lower end of the income scale.
One place where higher salaried folks like things based on their income is pay raises. They seem to think that if everyone gets a 3% raise, that is equitable, even though that results in drastically different dollar salary increases.
Easy to see who makes the rules.....
2
If people pay more for the same thing X that someone else gets for lower price, they stop buying X and they buy Y, offering higher value value at the same price they pay for X. Capitalism, isn’t it great! Learn it, love it, live it.
1
Good idea — but most people realize that the money will just go into a black gov't hole with no accountability.
4
"When the government holds down the price of something people value, Mr. Manville said, we get shortages. " Aha! So THAT's why we have milk, wheat and green bean shortages! Hey, ya know what? If we get rid of the bicycle lanes, we can minimize the car congestion problem! How about we tax Sushi out of existence! This would minimize the need for refrigerator trucks, which clog the roads (especially when they double park) and use bazillions of gallons of gasoline running their refrigerator compressors! This is anti-automobile SENTIMENT papered over with poppycock economics, masquerading as science.
9
Only an economic illiterate would claim drivers are using streets for free.
12
@God
It's not that drivers are using the streets for free, it's that they are they are not paying the full marginal costs of their driving
7
Who ever said it was "free".
1
Seriously let’s go further then just congestion pricing and spread the costs thoroughly in order to raise the needed money to pay for real infrastructure improvements!! Put tolls on all bridges and not just the some!! Corporations like Lyft, Uber, Amazon, and others should pay fare-share of taxes for the use and abuse of infrastructure!! Limit number of TLC-vehicles!! Add more cameras at intersections to ticket reckless drivers and reckless bikers/e-bikers!! All bikers/e-bikers should have to get licenses!! Hire more traffic workers to ticket construction sites and double parkers!! Really put cameras onto Express Lane buses so they can ticket all vehicles that use the Express Bus Lanes as private loading/unloading lanes!! Residential parking permits renewable annually for all borough streets!! Surely I'm missing some other sensible revenue possibilities!! Why not spread the joy and go for all of it at once?? Every citizen benefits from streets and sidewalks!! Moreover, put a portion of all these new revenue streams towards a group that watch-dogs/analyzes MTA spending!! Upgrade subway, bus, and rail systems and add parking hubs for remote transit desert neighborhood and make all mass transit as accessible as possible including free/reduced fares for low-income residents and elderly!!
6
And then there are our trillion $ military invasions of ME countries (see, Chickenhawk George's random, unrelated-to-9/11, unfunded invasion of Iraq) to seize "our" oil so we can fill our tanks with subsidized gas in order to drive on subsidized roads.
3
I have to ask what planet Ms Badger grew up on. She is most certainly not describing the USA.
if you did not know the public roads are funded by our taxes I think you are not worth talking to about anything but why you are so ignorant.
This rant about "direct user fees" is bologna in aid of some other propaganda goal. Another dishonest effort by someone sure of how honorable they are.
Congestion pricing is a pathetic surrender to the corruption that has been allowed to hobble the public transportation infrastructure. If that were focused on the building of a good useful public transport system would be simple. Oh but wait we have to accommodate the degenerates who think they have to exploit every single thing for a profit and make sure no poor person benefits from it and no one gets ahead and
You are all just crabs in a bucket barely able to reach the rim, who pull down anyone you see grab it if you can.
12
This article is ridiculous. Congestion pricing is not analogous to parking your car on the street. This author has an axe to grind, but he’s shut himself in the foot. You think that’s a mixed metaphor? That’s my point about this article
3
While we're at it, how about treating drivers who injure and kill pedestrians and cyclists like the criminals they are, instead of calling their cell-phone distracted mayhem "accidents" and letting them off with a traffic citation. Freedom to drive should not mean freedom from responsibility for the consequences of your own arrogance and stupidity.
6
@Richard While were at it how about we treat like criminals all the bicylists who drive like they are the only one on the road and often threaten pedestrians. Then lets arrest all the pedestrians who look at their phones or wear headphones just like the bicyclists and almost kill themselves. After all they often walk into traffic with no regard for their pwn public safety. And I as the driver always get he blame. You know there are responsible drives.
Whether or not one owns and uses a car is not the issue as everyone benefits from roads. And how are roads conceptually different from air travel lanes and trains? All transit means benefit everyone. Roads are like air, everyone needs them. All goods are moved on them, most services exist because of them, but other than nature provided, they are human provided as necessary to our lifes. Oil comes from nature. Air comes from nature. We tax oil because of its secondary uses, should we also tax air? Should we all live within a mile or two of where we were born so we can walk everywhere? Trace back transit; first there was walking, then horses, then horses pulling carts, then we get to today. Roads are so valuable to livelihoods up the line that they are a necessary cost to everyone and should be funded by governments as are other public resources such as the police, courts, legislatures, and not to forget the biggest suck on all our wallets, our vaunted military. If you want sufficient road funding, cut in half the size of our state, township, county and federal government legislatures. And cut our military budget by 25%. I think there will then be sufficient funds for roads, national healthcare, infrastructure, educational needs and many other nececessary human benefits we require living in the greatest nation that ever was, is or will be under some deity or another. Or so we tell ourselves.
3
this article suffers from a lack of analytic grip.
roads are not free, because taxes and tolls pay for roads. if you've paid taxes, then you've graded and paved roads.
cars are allowed "free access" because it was decided, back around the time that Robert Moses bulldozed large tracts of Queens to make expressways, that cars were fundamental to economic activity.
if you want to equitably make road users pay for road use, then "congestion pricing" is not necessarily equitable. the most equitable route is a gas tax. that makes you pay for every mile of road used -- no toll booths required.
suburbia is an "infrastructure put" to make sure gasoline and the cars that eat it will be essential to the economic product. out here in california, many people routinely require a 90 minute commute to work. that's not 90 minutes of road, but 90 minutes of engine.
we've built our entire infrastructure, economy, lifestyle palette on the principles of cheap energy and continuous population growth. congested core urban roads are not the issue ... they're just an unintended consequence of the capitalist imperative of growth.
5
@drollere " the most equitable route is a gas tax." ...except that internal combustion engines are being phased out to make way for electric vehicles. Electric vehicles cause congestion just like gas-guzzling vehicles.
2
People are not against congestion pricing because of the idea of a free roadway. People are against congestion pricing because it exploits workers who have to travel regularly in a certain area.
1) The argument that Americans don't want congestion pricing because we believe roadways ought to be free is absurd. Gas is technically part of the infrastructure and we already pay for that, so I don't think Americans believe that driving is an American right that ought to be free.
2) People don't "seldom" pay directly for roads, we regularly do. Even if that were the case, gas taxes that are imposed specifically to pay for roads can hardly be considered as "general funds" subsidized by the government.
3) If the writer is trying to suggest that because Americans don't pay a tax that is titled "Road Tax" they are not aware that they pay for roads through other taxes, this is insulting. That suggestion also seems to imply that, for the Americans that aren't actually aware of the purpose of gas taxes, it's OK to just throw another toll in the mix.
4)"10 mph road speeds, clogged intersections" are not caused by the culture of the open road. The issue is that the government diverts tax revenues to funding that has nothing to do with roadways (in 2016, states raised $82 billion in gas and vehicle fees and diverted $23 billion to unrelated activities, according to the FHWA).
Why does the government insist on exploiting people who use the roadway to travel to work to pay for taxes?
5
Environmentalists & urban planners love congestion pricing. So do progressives. Guess who hates it? Everyone else. Especially us plebes who need cars to get to work. There're more of us than you. We will win this debate. Americans are not rock- throwers because we have elections every 2 yrs. We tend to punish anyone who sponsors something we don’t like. Everyday citizens are the ones who vote governments in or out, not environmentalists and certainly not columnists. Politicians serve at our pleasure not theirs. The French riots underscore an important point: Higher gas taxes, emission standards, even congestion pricing are unsustainable in France or anywhere else for that matter. That goes double for the U.S. People are getting squeezed. They move further away from economic centers because the cost of housing in urban areas is unaffordable, but now their way to get to work is becoming unaffordable as well. Low wage earners spend a lot to fill their cars that they need to get to work. Progressives want to make commuting more expensive for the plebes. Why? Because they rarely think of the poor & the hardship it causes to them. Politicians should reconsider the plausibility of trying to introduce a new tax that the majority of VOTERS CLEARLY DON'T WANT. We & (the world) will continue to use cars for the foreseeable future. Congestion pricing offers no benefit for drivers while using them as a revenue source for thoughtless politicians. This idea is insane & a gift to the GOP.
5
It’s not even about rush hour anymore, it’s trucks and delivery vans 24hrs a day, as behemoths like Amazon and every “dinner box” start-up scramble to meet peoples’ exponentially growing demand for “free same day delivery.” I’m guilty. It’s super convenient, and there’s no incentive to bundle orders. We can order one single item from amazon every day at no extra cost. But nothing is free, there is a cost.
5
UK (the educated part) has determined what is good for the whole society and has put a price on the impact of private vehicles in Central London making way for business vehicles to provide services, deliveries, etc.. removing a major obstruction to efficient business, congestion. UPS, Post Office, Freight delivery etc.. services always have a surcharge for congested urban areas.
Beyond the business economics, the state of California about 2 decades ago stopped constructing freeways and interchanges because the gas tax and vehicle fees were collected after the vehicle was on the road thus the construction was always playing catch up.
Northern Virginia in this no tax, no government era switched to privatized toll roads. The traffic is still horrendous and the public has to pay peek hour feed, just like Uber and Lyft. Many cities are dealing with the unlicensed taxis as a congestion problem that undermine public transit ridership and are hard to regulate for safety and security concerns about vehicle and drivers (Taxis are held to a higher standard).
If you live or work in an urban area where space is scarce, public transit is a necessity. If you can't afford the suburbs and driving then you may need to adjust your opinion of taxes, government and lifestyle you are will to pay for.
1
So a regressive tax on the poor and middle class is your answer? Try again.
7
@Gerry Power
No no no! We can socially engineer America solely by soaking the rich! AOC and Bernie said so and I believe them. Newish Green Deal! Huzzah!
1
Tax and spend DEMS. It never stops.
2
This piece ought to be re-run every time a Hooray! for Autonomous Vehicles piece is published.
1
Everytime I take the subways, I must cope with the smell of homeless, lice-infested psychotic persons who reek of body odor, dozens of noisy and obnoxious "entertainers," and countless beggars who repeatedly apologize for disturbing my peace, but do so nevertheless. A ride to Manhattan from my neighborhood in Brooklyn -- a distance of 8 miles -- takes an hour or more during the evening. Mark my words, congestion pricing will not change these circumstances. The money grab will only serve to increase the crowds on the subway, forcing the MTA to remove seats, a process they are piloting on the Times Square Shuttle. The trains will become cattle cars, but without the legal protections offered to livestock about to be slaughtered.
79
@jrak
Exagération doesn’t help, but some reasonable points here. Congestion pricing should be moderate, and only one tool to address need vs want, and how to pay for all of it.
5
@jrak . easy to complain ...alot harder to make suggestions to fix it....
15
@jrak This sort of misanthropic argument against public transit doesn't change the geomoetry of the situation: cars are big and you can't fit a lot of them in a small space. Every one driving their own private automobile is simply not a scalable transportation solution.
And while you may dislike your fellow humans so much that you are willing to pay the fee, not every one is you. Others will make different decisions, congestion will decrease. and the funds from people like (willing to pay a premium to drive in) will improve the transportation system for every one.
49
Congestion Pricing? Well the rich will be safe and your wife will have to travel on the subway where sexual deviates hangout out (New York Post, March 17, 2019).
We don't have laws or rules to make our parks and subways and public transportation safe. The sexual deviates and homeless, urban campers (aka, homeless) are really in charge.
6
one of the reasons I stopped taking public transportation is bc of how many times I've been touched, groped, rubbed against by an erect man. it's disgusting and unsafe.
3
@Steve
Your wife is much more likely to be injured in a car accident than to be assaulted on the subway.
2
Save New York from cars. That is all.
1
When rental electric scooters invaded cites like San Fansico and Santa Monica one of the complaints was that scooters were taking up sidewalk space and littering the area. I pointed out to friends why don’t you feel the same way about cars? They litter pretty much every street in the country. Us humans are a funny bunch aren’t we.
We pay for our roads through taxes. Social engineering like this allows the rich to continue to live their lives unencumbered, while the have-nots have to pay more, Have lengthier communities, and limited freedoms. This is utter hogwash and congestion pricing laws should be throw out of court for extortion.
4
Wow, how we view the world determines how we view the world, doesn it? To say the roads are not free is obvious in the fact that NOTHING is for free. The government provides the roads for the prosperity, and safety of its citizens. NYC and New York is a big black hole of tax consumption and anyone with any sense will flee the place before they charge you your first child for an exit
2
Uber spent over $2M lobbying for this charge, which will be extremely advantageous to their business model of running at a loss until they can kill the licensed taxi business. The less personal vehicles on the street will incrementally increase margins and once Uber and Lyft have achieved duopoly status, prices will go through the roof.
The NYT editorial page has said basically nothing against the lawless Silicon Valley "platform" model since they dropped their illegal taxi business on cities and towns across the world.
I wonder why.
3
The "ton of money" that congestion pricing will supposedly create is another in a series of illusions that if we just keep pouring money into the MTA, soon it would run on time, provide clean, safe, service, and the fare would not keep rising every 6 months. In the famous musical "On the Town", in New York, New York, "the people ride in a hole in the ground." The lyricists should have added "bottomless" to "hole in the ground."
Not for nothing is a transit card use called a "swipe".
28
@Jeff M beginning with the Giuliani administration, funding for the MTA, including the subways, have actually generally decreased when you account for inflation. What we see today is the firstfruits of those decisions.
This article encapsulates a lot of what I've said: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/nyregion/new-york-subway-system-failure-delays.html
4
@Jeff M
Current gas taxes are quite enough to fund the infrastructure of streets and bridges completely, the problem is three fold. 1) the mass bureaucracy and waste 2) the fund getting raked for other purposes (mainly entitlement and enrichment programs). 3) poor city planning.
How can we alleviate traffic in a crowded downtown? Don't allow more office space than the streets going into the city can contain. I am not even sure how the problem can be fixed now. Perhaps having a double decker street everywhere (this is cost prohibitive). or kicking businesses out of the downtown (never going to happen).
@ItsAnTactic GAO reports have indicated that the gas taxes haven't covered road maintenance and improvements nationwide for almost thirty years. Where do you get your information that gas taxes easily cover the entire road infrastructure, let alone everything else?
I get it; we'll use congestion pricing revenue to fund mass transit, just like we used lottery ticket sales to fund education. Yeah, yeah, that's the ticket.
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@Dave Some states actually use lotto money for education, Tennessee has free college and Florida is pretty close as well. It is just your corrupt people who waste money.
@vulcanalex yes ,some do but a law would help that guards non users from subsidizing users. A set agreed minimum say 15% of citizens expected to use. That might avoid politicos from favoring a small user groups therefore buying votes with tax money, which is the way it is now.
The obvious unintended consequence - the wealthy will enjoy traffic free streets, everyone else will be forced underground into overcrowded subways.
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@Dan low income people won't have to pay this tax. Also, those who live in the area won't have to as well:
https://710wor.iheart.com/content/2019-04-01-congestion-pricing-budget-approved-by-new-york-state/
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@Dan
Also, those "traffic free" streets will become much more widely used by mass transit buses, bicycles, scooters, and pedestrians. The number of people that still need access to street "x" to get to destination "y" doesn't change... it's just going to change HOW they get to their destination.
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@Dan
Lovely thought.
However,
The London experience is that congestion has returned to previous levels whilst the fee has doubled.
5
So far I have seen not one word about how congestion pricing in Manhattan would be implemented. I predict that one result will be a massive increase in congestion about 60th Street. As someone who frequently travels to NY I would always prefer the train were it not terribly expensive. It costs $97 round trip from Albany with Sr. discount on dirty, smelly overcrowded Amtrak. Sometimes I just need to save the money and drive in spite of the misery of dealing with a car in Manhattan.
2
this is not what the majority of people want and where will these very large charges go and to whom. My guess patronage jobs and a private company like EZ Pass or someone else. the big loses are us all saddled with an big expense and not seeing any benefit. The Phony" were bragging how this Tax works in London and people in the know say it is not so. Maybe this "Congestion Tax"should be revoked before the damage is done.
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@perry r
The majority of people "want" something that is just not possible: Every one has an easy, private, comfortable car commute to work. A car can provide these things, but they take up a lot of limited space. How do we distribute other limited resources? By charging for them.
Then we use the funds to make other forms of transportation better.
3
At least part of the reason we have lots of roads, and don't have as much mass transportation-- is because What Was Good For General Motors Was Good For The Country. It's now well documented that GM and others "worked together," let us say, to convince The Powers That Be to dismantle the Pacific Electric trolley system in greater Los Angeles in favor of buses... which were subject to the same congestion as other motor vehicles, pushed more people to cars, and became a symbol of racism and classism.
We also didn't like railroads very much-- robber barons, you know. That's all true-- there was for example the Credit Mobilier scandal around the Transcontinental Railroad (150 years old this year!) which was as big a to-do as Enron was. But unlike Enron, at least we got something out of it.
Sure, I like my road freedom as much as the next automobile owner... but we were also sold on the idea too.
4
I feel bad for night shift workers or workers deep in the boroughs that drive to work due to an our inadequate subway system. Standing on the subway platform at 4 or 5 am going deep into the outer boroughs is not fun for a woman. They need to end congestion pricing at night. I know many bartenders that take care home these are the people that don’t make money and don’t deserve to be hit with this tax. Does the city forget the people who are not rich but keep this city working while we sleep?
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@Location01
While they haven't formalized any particular plan yet, congestion pricing doesn't make much sense at hours when there is no congestion. Presumably it would only be in effect during certain peak times.
16
@Location01 Good point. If you are a nurse working the night shift it is really not safe for you to be not driving in to some of these places... all over the U.S. not just in NYC. Your own car, not Uber. Uber is not safe for women.
1
@Nate
They are saying that it will be in effect 24/7 but only less at night, Money grab pure and simple.
3
I completely disagree with the premise of this article,
Nothing is free, including the roads you drive on, if you pay taxes. Period.
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@The Truth
Yes, but you pay those taxes regardless of if or how much you drive. So, the marginal cost of driving is made artificially low, if not free.
2
By 1830, well before the automobile era, Connecticut determined it needed a more robust system of roads if it were to achieve its potential as a leader of the Industrial Revolution and so it authorized the private construction of a system of roads, toll roads, enabling the proprietor to recover its construction cost by placing a t-shaped pike in the road blocking traffic until the driver of the horse and wagon paid the toll demanded and so the toll operator "turned the pike" to permit the traveler to pass. Yes, the road was called a "turnpike". Though these tolls are long gone, the toll houses still exist and many of those roads still carry the name turnpike. And just as we once had to figure out what to do with the mountains of manure generated by the last mode of locomotion, today we face the best sort of problem. Unprecedented American prosperity has brought the automobile within the reach of nearly everyone and we are choking on this success. I say raise a glass to the coming tolls, the symbol of our prosperity.
Government has a proper place in creating, developing, and maintaining roadways, airways, and waterways. Land based roads and railroads are a wonderous mix of public and private interests. Private drivers share the roads with commercial vehicles and military convoys, moving across vast lengths of nearly empty countryside or crawling through crowded cities. Ambulances, police and fire trucks respond to emergencies using the roads. The massive subsidy to the automobile and truck industry that the roads represent is offset by the evident power of good roads to create jobs, towns, and suburban homes where they go. This strongly shows the need for zero emission cars and trucks.
Cities responded to crowding by building up higher and higher. However, as in NYC, roads are generally just at ground level within those cities. If multi layer buildings are a solution to the needs of big cities, then multi layer roads are the obvious but generally unused solution to their traffic problems. Given technologies like carbon fiber, such multi layer roads are highly practical and a vastly cheaper potential solution to road crowding in cities then is generally recognized. Overpass road systems that could be constructed off site and quickly fastened into place could rapidly increase the capacity and safety of inner city roads.
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This article made one argument where there are many. Thank goodness for the many thoughtful comments rounding out the discussion. At the end of the day, does anyone really want to give politicians more of their money? Let their be congestion, and let the private sector work it out. Roads too crowded?people will decide to sit in traffic or take the train. This is merely a redistribution of $ from drivers to MTA with a large percentage of the $ being lost to the bureaucracy. Sounds inefficient to me. Eliminate parking on the street, the private sector will adjust.
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@Billy Bobby Your market solution suggestion manages to glide past the basic fact that driving is hugely subsidized and has been so since the first car on the first road.
The only way that drivers' money could be redistributed is if they were paying the costs of their car use, which they are not.
So, this is not a "redistribution of money from drivers to the MTA", it's a sound policy decision to reallocate subsidies from private vehicles to public transit.
Your assumption was false, your conclusion even more so.
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@Paul D Ah, but that was not my point. I never claimed there were no subsidies, I just don't want to give the politicians $$ to try to rectify a broken system. And by the way, your reasoning is just as flawed as what is not subsidized? Your home is subsidized as how do you get there but over the roads and a heavily subsidized mass transit? Those road subsidies keep your grocery prices down. I don't want to try to fix a system with more taxes. Tax me for health care for the poor, or free education for all; tax me for school lunches or free child care, I have no problem using my money to make our society stronger. I don't even care about this tax as I don't try into the city often enough to care, but this fix is flawed. Mass transit is not going to be improved by throwing money at it. Period.
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@Billy Bobby It seems you don't understand the point you're making. Taxpayers are already giving huge amounts of money to government to subsidize the road system, so you clearly do support the idea of spending money to fix a broken system. In this case, the road system.
The fact is that mass transit IS improved by throwing money at it. Evidence from all over the world proves that it's the primary thing which improves it.
Your argument is as simple as "cars good, transit bad" and that, sir, has been proven wrong over and over again.
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I would go even further and encourage the people who live in cities to own “their” space more forcefully.
They should demand clean air with Low Emission Zones, more walking and biking space etc.
Right now, vehicles with 30-year old Diesel engines can just roll in and spew carcinogenic fine dust and gases all over town.
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@Anne so move out of chicago and get your 'cleaner' air!
If you think about it, congestion pricing into Manhattan isn’t all that new. For decades, New Jersey and Staten Island commuters via the Verrazano, have had to pay pricey bridge & tunnel tolls to enter Manhattan. But now for some reason, it’s unconscionable in the minds of some New Yorkers, that you’d have to pay to enter the most congested part of Manhattan in your car from other parts of New York City besides Staten Island?! Somehow in the mindset of these New Yorkers it’s okay for people from New Jersey & Staten Island to pay to enter Lower Manhattan, but not for people coming in via automobile from other parts of New York City?
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It’s going to be an unmitigated disaster. There will be confusion amongst everyone. Cashless tolls? Like the ones in the Thruway that are causing innocent people to lose their license and registrations? How will they enforce the law for folks who live out of town? Does NY have the right to suspend someone’s registration in another state? No. So how will this work fairly? It’s going to be a nightmare.
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@Mike L No one "innocent" gets their license or registration revoked. There are signs everywhere, and bills are sent for months before any DMV action is started. They know exactly what they're doing. And yes, NY does in fact have the ability to revoke licenses and registrations in other states, it's known as the Compact.
At this point, every driver on the East Coast should have an E-ZPass, it's not rocket science. It's cheaper than accidentally blowing through just one toll.
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@Mike L Well ,how do you think we get more employees needed on the state payroll, many which are being rewarded for assist in the last election ? Creating jobs is what it really will do.
@Mike L about 3-4 times a year I get a letter threatening to do all kinds of things to me for failing to pay 2$ tolls here or 5$ tolls there and each time I point out that I have never had a car registered in Michigan or Colorado.
I support congestion parking . It will clear the air have less vehicles on the roads and be a safety factor if many of those drivers are pot or alcohol users. Its a win for every one.
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It’s a relief to see these issues, which are not new, finally begin to get an airing in the media. And this article doesn’t even touch on arguably the most expensive effect of America’s unfettered car culture: the catastrophic environmental cost of all those individual cars.
You pay one way or the other.
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Public school is in demand but we shouldn’t charge for that. Don’t call it a public street then.
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@Maria This is a shallow and civic-less observation. Nothing is "free", whether we call it "public" or not. Public schools are PAID FOR by our tax dollars, one way or another. Everything "public" is paid for by one form of tax on the public or another. The only question is how and how much. I would agree that I myself prefer much greater forms of progressive taxation to to fund our most vital needs and values.
I myself would prefer that the more wealth you accumulate and earn, the more you contribute to the society that afforded that opportunity to you, at greater percentages than those who struggle to get by. We once did that to great and historic effect, through the 1960's or 70's. The money earned at the highest amounts were taxed up to 70-90%, and our general economy, infrastructure, and middle class was literally built to historic awe and to top the world. Since we abandoned that taxation principle, all 3 of those sparkling assets of ours have crumbled miserably in front of the world's (and our) eyes.
Nothing "public" is free, Maria. If we value it, we must decide how to support and pay for it. Civics 101. It seems we have either completely forgotten that, or that it is no longer understood enough to be able to teach it. It's crushing us.
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Good article. It makes clear that 1) nothing is free and 2) just how much we are now paying for the right to drive on open roads.
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It all started when General Motors, in Los Angeles for instance, bought the street car lines and then ripped them up so that they could sell cars and busses..no doubt they focused on paying for the new roads to everywhere including the newly developing suburbs...all mostly free of additional charges to the users.
Our public transportation is laughable when compared with more most developed counties around the world. And 'Congratulations America" your stuck with it. The cost of cleaning it and the scars on the landscape and in the cities would be horrific.
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Free? State and federal taxes, tolls, gas prices that are 25% tax? We pay for the roads and the people that maintain them
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Now maybe we can start thinking about more and safer accommodations for pedestrians and cyclists.
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Nothing if 'free'. Every service costs taxpayers real money. Time for politicians to acknowledge this simple fact.
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Last year Collier County in Florida stopped selling $50 annual beach parking passes to non-residents. That's tough on snow-birds who now have to pay an $8 daily fee.
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Whoever said the streets are free? Don't taxpayers foot the bill to build and maintain them?
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@JHM asks "Whoever said the street are free?"
Well, just read the article. Franklin D. Roosevelt said it in 1939.
“Of course, there’s no such thing as a free road,” Mr. Norton said.
Sure there is. Free roads as well as toll roads exist on private property. Traffic is regulated not by government coercion but by free-market forces. Want a shortcut to your destination, saving you time and aggravation? Pay a toll. Prefer to travel "free"? Take the long way around. It's your choice. Of course, most Americans are terrified of "too much" freedom. The same government that, through regulations, mismanagement and poor planning, has created the problem, is now called upon to fix it. Guess how it will turn out.
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A few months ago the Times ran an article complaining that vehicles act "as if they owned the road" and pedestrians are treated as second-class. But since roads far funded by gas taxes, which are paid by vehicles and not by walkers, the vehicles really do own the road. It was invisible to the writer of that article.
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This needs to be done, or no one will be able to use the roads. Period. Take the money from the tax to upgrade mass transit.
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And this column doesn’t even touch on a much greater global issue and injustice; the fact that we use our shared atmosphere as a free-for-all giant carbon dump.
This will affect just about every sentient beings on the planet for millennia, not just the people who are momentarily being inconvenienced by (while contributing to) traffic congestion.
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How about get rid of your car and only take Uber? Your parking problem would be solved. Also, unless you drive more than ten thousand miles a year, you would save a lot of money.
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The eventual and inevitable solution: many city centers need to ban cars.
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What Ms. Badger omits from this foray into historical perspective and the real costs of the automobile culture is that much of what she describes was done as a boon for the oil industry. Also omitted is any reference to the disinvestment in and outright destruction of public transportation that can also be laid at the door of the Standard Oil crowd. Perhaps she is too young to recall old film footage of bonfires made of the city's trolleys, once a valued piece of New York's transit mix. Most of the world's major cities still rely on trolleys, an efficient and economical way to move their citizens. What we are presently seeing is a second round of egregious hypocrisy on the part of those forces , (now particularly the real estate interests and construction unions), whose phony pieties where bicycles and the lanes to accommodate them have worsened traffic congestion and made an ugly maze of our once rather beautiful streets. And, as usual, all of this is being done without the consent of the governed who are without recourse in government by fiats emerging from corrupt authorities such as the MTA.
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Most states now have "wildlife" license plates. Pennsylvania's features the sawwhet owl. In Idaho, one can buy a plate that features an elk or a bluebird. Ironic, you bet. The car and its attendant infrastructure has done more to destroy our natural heritage than any other factor.
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It used to cost more in tolls to drive a buggy county to county 150 years ago than it does in gas tax today, yet over and over I hear people say they get no value from the gas taxes they pay and that the gas tax should be significantly lowered or eliminated altogether. It is time for all the Republicans out there to belly up to the Ronald Reagan Bar and pay their user fees.
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The intent of congestion pricing is obvious. Low-income people's cars will be priced off the streets so that wealthy people can get where they are going more quickly.
If we really were concerned about traffic congestion, we would begin by banning stretch limos throughout the city, or at least in Manhattan. Anyone who has ever seen one stretch limo make it around a corner before the light changes will understand the point.
We could follow up with a ban on those advertising trucks which slowly cruise the streets blocking traffic and creating a public nuisance.
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It's another example of the tragedy of the commons. Does the gas tax cover the cost of pollution spewed into the air, road repair and maintenance, police, opportunity cost of real estate used for cars, etc.? Of course not. But that which is common property is easily abused in our society.
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Like many of your readers, I'm well enough off to afford congestion pricing. But to me, this smacks of greed and elitism.
What about the poor guy making 10 dollars an hour, who needs to get to work just as badly as I do? I can take the fast lane, he has to waste gas and go ever slower as cities keep putting in more and more paid "express" lanes. Let us instead, raise taxes on the most well off of us and use the money to rebuild our infrastructure. More efficient rapid transit, increasingly efficient cars, whatever. I case no one else has noticed, the middle of the country is hollowing out as big Ag buys out the small farms and as our youth flock to the only places they can make a decent living. Maybe we need to redesign our cities. Just, let's not put the worst of the burden on the already poor.
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@otto I don’t believe the government should hold a monopoly on the road, instead of punishing someone for making a lot of money we should look for alternative oppurtunites to reduce congestion in big cities.
AKA (Futurama Tubes)
@otto, in cities like NYC, drivers have to pay for parking, yet I do not hear all of this hullabaloo about "poor" people deserving to get cheap or free parking in Manhattan. So why should it be any different for congestion pricing? It's exactly the same principle.
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@otto This is a red herring. Statistics overwhelmingly show that the working poor do not drive private cars into Lower Manhattan and pay for parking on a daily basis. The most recent numbers I've seen show that around 4% of NYC residents drive to work in the congestion zone.
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My suggestion would be to offer tiered tax incentives to employers who employ people who live close to the job. Depending upon the city/suburb/rural structure, breaks would be offered when a certain percentage of employees live a certain distance from the job. Again, this would be tiered.
Here people commute from one end of the county to the other, passing others who commute the same distance in the opposite direction. Studies have shown the ill effects on commuters with long commutes. People do value their gained time with shorter commutes.
It may not work for every employment situation, but it could be a reasonable tool for the transportation issue toolbox.
This is one of the WORST IDEAS I've ever heard. Americans will NEVER accept it. It is REGRESSIVE POLICY in the worst possible sense. It will punish low income people VASTLY more than those with higher incomes. The wealthy of America OWE A LIVING to everyone else - where do you think their wealth comes from? PROGRESSIVE TAXATION corrects a number of social ills and provides a helping hand to people on the lower end of the ladder. If anything, create a Federal Excise Tax on the purchase of automobiles - and make it STEEP, but PROGRESSIVE. (Low rates on inexpensive cars, much higher rates for luxury vehicles.)
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@Tim O'Connor accept it or not it is going to happen. We have it in DC. I actually agree mostly with how they did it. If you are a lone driver you pay tolls that are based on volume and those tolls can get high during rush hour. If, however, you have multiple passengers in your car the ride is free. They have electronic devices, cameras and police to enforce. The end result is that even during rush hour these regulated roads provide a quick ride in. People who do not want to pay the tolls either car pool, or take public transit or bite the bullet and take secondary/non-regulated roads. The high tolls for single drivers fit right into your model of high income people paying the bulk of the cost.
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@jeffk
Has anyone talked to those people and businesses on the "secondary/non-regulated roads" to see how they've been affected by the spike in traffic as a result of the $40 congestion toll on I-66.
While I rarely use I-66 at peak traffic times, I suspect the policy has merely shifted much the congestion onto surface streets.
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@jeffk DC - you mean the urban area that feeds off of the taxes of the rest of America, that has BOOMED over the last 40 years with no signs of a slowdown, and got through the great recession of 2008-2010 with hardly a scratch, that enjoys the highest median household income of any other region of the country? That DC? We've had toll roads in this country for hundreds of years... and they are still in use. As long as they can be avoided, people accept them. Make tolls universal, and watch as your country burns down!
Congestion pricing is only one tool that can be used to reduce congestion. There are many other very effective methods. The overall objective should be to use "gas taxes" to get people out of their cars into alternative safe, efficient and convenient alternative modes of transportation. Most important is that the reality of impending climate change demands this approach. Yes, some people will complain...what they should do is get on their hands and knees and thank those enlightened people for creating a healthy and productive future for their children and grandchildren.
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I suspect congestion pricing will not work out very well in Manhattan. It will mostly increase costs for people who live and work there, most of whom don't drive. You might say everyone is so rich it doesn't matter, but there are already many empty storefronts.
As we've seen from the increase in wage costs at restaurants, many businesses are operating on thin margins and would not be viable with higher costs. Businesses will close, and customers will have to pay more.
@Jonathan congestion pricing is paid by actual drivers, not those who do not drive
@Jonathan How will congestion pricing negatively effect people that don't drive? Sounds like fake news to me.
@Washwalker, so do you think employees, goods and services magically appear at their destinations like in Star Trek? No. They often require the use of vehicles. As such, the cost of congestion pricing is passed onto the employers, stores, and consumers who rely on said employees, goods and services.
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An interesting article, thank you.
I'm in DC area and the entitlement to drive is incredible. It is true that metro is severely problematic but it is also true that drivers and municipalities do little to problem solve other than building more lanes for drivers to pay to go faster. It is unsustainable.
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This column gets the need for congestion pricing exactly right, but doesn't explain exactly how much driving is incentivized by average vs marginal pricing. Local roads and on-street parking are paid for with local sales and property taxes, so a resident pays the same average cost no matter how much or little she uses them. If you drive 30,000 miles you are (on average) involved in 3 times as many accidents as if you drive 10.000 miles, but you are currently charged the same no matter how much you drive. If you enter a road system that is already at or beyond capacity, you impose costs on all the other drivers (in lost time), but only pay a small fraction (the average) of the overall cost to all the system users.
If restaurants charged you not the cost of your meal (the marginal cost) but the cost of the average meal, then everyone has an incentive to eat bigger meals. This dynamic becomes a problem when the supply (the amount of roadway and parking) is fixed and cannot expand to meet demand.
See Todd Litman at Victoria Transport Policy Institute for more in-depth information about (and solutions to) all these issues
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Does anyone else find it amazing that within this discussion there is little said about the free ride companies like Uber and Lyft have on the streets in our major cities? It has seemed to me a dereliction of the publics interest in affordable public transportation that these services have essentially created a shadow system of the bus and subway systems that are more convenient to use AND more expensive with the end result being a reinforcement of class divisions in a place like New York. The cities have been slow to recognize this dynamic and it has echoes in the idea of municipal internet service, whereby companies like Comcast, ATT/Time Weaner etc get to control the pipes of what should be a public utility. If Uber and Lyft want to operate on the streets of Manhattan there has to be commensurate freight paid by these "for profit" companies to have access to the streets at all. After all, they are also one of the reasons congestion has gotten as bad as it is.
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@J. Sciarra
Yes, I agree, there should be a $10/ride Uber and Lyft fee in midtown.
They may be needed in the other boroughs and suburbs but certainly not in Manhattan.
I always see available Medallion cabs passing people who are standing on the corner looking at their phone waiting for their Uber (they stay put when the light changes), thinking they look cool but in fact look ridiculous, especially in the rain.
1
Roads and highways are NOT free. Gasoline taxes, which were raised by 23 cents a gallon in NJ a couple of years ago, are supposedly specifically earmarked for travel infrastructure maintenance and investment. This is the most direct way to collect taxes from drivers that use the roads, and was completely overlooked in the article. Congestion pricing on top of gasoline taxes is a double tax burden.
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@Larry the article describes exactly what you say. It talks about gasoline taxes in the 1st few paragraphs. Maybe give it a re-read?
Driving on the streets and highways has measurable value. Vehicles in the near future can and should have meters built in to “read” the true cost of driving. Costs can be modified to reflect a whole panoply of driving circumstances. In congested areas like midtown Manhattan using one’s car for an emergency trip to the hospital can and should be rated differently than using it to attend, for example, a Broadway show. Sensible and sophisticated metering can lower gas taxes; do away with e-z pass costs and other tolls; distinguish a car from a truck, even between makes and models of cars.
3
The public only has a beginning of a glimmer of what it would look like to pay the actual cost of things, or to stop subsidizing things we don't want. This kind of analysis should be applied to every dollar government spends (or does/does not tax) to find out what we are incentivizing by government subsidy, and what we are discouraging. Things might begin to look a lot different if citizens (and gov't officials) fully understood the extent to which we subsidize certain industries, activities or choices.
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@Madeline Conant - In the US, the vast majority of voters own cars and drive. It is not surprising that the government is willing to supply them with roads from their tax money. Trying to get rid of cars, in most places, would mean being promptly voted out of office.
@Madeline Conant
This is my constant refrain, that we pay nowhere near the actual cost of anything. The economy would break down if we actually did.
1
The problem is with out dysfunctional political system, the money raised will get split off to fund a number of things that will not impact the problem.
Here in San Francisco the planner have pushed the planning cause de jure which is to take 2 and 3 lane boulevards and take out a lane and use the space for LTR or BRT or bike lanes.
Great, but since there is zero political will to actually enforce double parking, we end up with single lane roads and back ups.
Infrastructure is a SYSTEM and all parts of the system must work together. The problem is that the system is not enforced all the while the planners push ideas that on paper work but I reality do not.
I do agree that there should be a better coupling between the "product" we use and the amount we pay for it.
Lets start by charging a hefty tax on a anyone using the public street for profit. USP, FedEx, Uber and Lyft. IN essence they are profiting from a "Gift of Public Funds" which in most States in not legal.
We need to charge the big truck. One semi going down the freeway does the same amount of damage as 20,000 automobiles. Their fuel usage does not come close to covering the difference. Railroads have been screaming for decades about competing with such subsidies for the truckers.
Distance to work. Why should I living in the middle of San Francisco have to pay to drive downtown when a big part, if not the greatest part, of the traffic is from people coming into town? We need to charge people for that.
3
@JD - Since the big truck delivers everything you use, then they will simply pass through the additional costs to you.
Businesses are not consumers, so they cannot cut consumption. Only the end user can either pay more or do without.
Two points:
1. If the cost of housing were affordable, people might be more willing to live in San Francisco or any other major urban area.
2. When the tourists decide it's not worth the extra cost to partake of the culture the city has to offer, guess who loses?
2
@JD
I live in the East Bay near San Francisco. The advent of Uber and Lyft have clogged SF's streets, making it very unappealing to drive in the City. The obvious response of people who live in the SF suburbs is to simply stay out of SF for discretionary events. Even without an additional toll, now we patronize world class Gourmet Ghetto local restaurants, Berkeley Rep theater and we shop in downtown Walnut Creek. It's actually a lot nicer than the City has become, with its many problems. And many suburbanites are moving their offices out of the City to avoid grueling lengthy commutes.
City dwellers should realize that cars coming into SF across the bridges from the East Bay and Marin already pay substantial tolls to enter SF. Those tolls subsidize mass transit (including service in and to SF), and we also pay property and sales tax for that.
Finally, the planners and academics need to examine their own tax bills. Streets and highways are not "free" or subsidized. They are paid for by taxes on property, vehicles, fees, fuel, tolls and sales. Adding another layer of tolls for "express" lanes is all the rage now, but the resulting "Lexus Lanes" are elitist and simply squeeze the rest of us into one less lane of traffic, creating residual traffic backups.
It would be smarter to encourage continued growth of decentralized places of employment located closer to where people live, thus using the existing costly infrastructure of roads and mass transit.
It always infuriates me when people complain that Amtrak isn't self-supporting, that it depends on government subsidies. Our roads are fully paid for by local, state and federal (tax) dollars, but do people complain about that?
39
What all the fuss about? Too much traffic in too confined a space...something had to be done ( improving public transport offers only a contributory solution as people are wedded to their cars ) just like in Central London or Athens and indeed in many large cities around the world in the coming years.
7
So I suppose sidewalks should have congestion pricing, too? Streets, etc, are paid for by members of the public through general fund taxes. Those taxes go for the public good, which includes paying for sidewalks, streets, curbs, and all that goes with it. Congestion pricing is taxing those who don't use subways and buses for the benefit of those who do.
And that's ok, because in the end, all of the public benefits from that pricing. But don't launch an article that the streets are free: look at your annual or quarterly tax bills.
6
@mk - Well, the sidewalks of Manhattan are horribly congested, and many people walk too slow. If we charged them by the hour, I'm sure we could get them to speed up!
@mk
Except walking is much cheaper than driving, in terms of societal costs. So we really want to encourage one of the other, as much as possible.
The NYC DOT puts out an annual report called the “Mobility Report” (easily Googled) that analyzes in great detail the movement of people and machines in NYC. In the executive summaries on both the 2017 and 2018 reports the head of the Department of Transportation lauds the fact that fewer cars have entered the central business district each year.
Fewer cars have been coming into the CBD almost every year since 2003! In 2003 it was 832,000 on average daily to 717,000 daily on average in 2016. These are NYC’s numbers.
What’s changed to warrant this new congestion tax? Yes, it’s tough getting around Midtown, but shouldn’t it have been tougher in 2003? I’m guessing that in 2003 a big swath of the 832,000 cars were driven into garages and retrieved at days end for the commute home. Not being endlessly driven around Midtown, hoping for a fare like Uber and Lyft. The instant delivery apps have also likely added to the mix
Government is typically reactive. City government didn’t react quickly enough to the influx of this new “sharing economy” that as a byproduct is killing not only the taxi industry, but sadly taxi owner/drivers who have taken their lives. Instead, their answer is a ham handed tax supposedly to “fund” the MTA that Black Hole, that can’t scrape by on the 15 billion dollars plus they pull in annually in revenues.
8
Congestion pricing is simply another tax in a long list of taxes foisted on us by Democrats who will use the big bucks proceeds to hire more civil service workers who will be indebted to them in the form of votes. The money raised will be wasted on whatever social programs are in vogue with these social scientists who never met a tax or a big government spending program they would or could not endorse. Heaven help us.
5
The only users of public space who have unpaid access are bicycles and pedestrians. Gas taxes subsidize them. Have bicycles and walkers pay their share, especially with the regressive structure of "congestion" pricing.
3
@Chris Kox, you want to tax pedestrians to use the sidewalks? Let's not forget the EV cars, they should pay their share for infrastructure though as well.
1
@Chris Kox Gasoline taxes only partly fund most streets to which cyclists and pedestrians have access. Income and sales taxes make up the rest. Everyone pays those. The careful studies on this issue that I've seen show that cyclist and pedestrians subsidize drivers. Congestion charges help equalize these subsidies.
10
@Chris Kox I am sorry your about wrong as one can be. Gas taxes are much too low to fully support the road structure. Best estimates are they pay about 1/3 of the total. Gas taxes fund state and federal roads, not local streets which are property and sales tax supported. Another hidden source of road monies is from mortgage payments because developers build or upgrade local roads and then turn them over to local governments for "free." Given that users should pay proportionate to the damage they inflict on the system, pedestrians and cyclists probably pay much higher per mile for their use of the roads.
6
One thing that should be mentioned is the price of gasoline (oil) in the US. The USA has built in tremendous tax breaks and incentives for the oil and gas industry to continue exploration and the opening up of new oil and gas fields.
Gasoline remains very cheap in the US when compared to other industrialized nations.
This in itself is a subsidy for the automobile.
Just as we subsidize farming to keep food costs down, so too is the oil/gas industry subsidized.
16
It's doubtful that congestion pricing will reduce the chocking traffic of lower Manhattan in the long term. What it will do, if instituted properly, is direct monies to public transit. This is the best we can hope for since we have a federal government which refuses to raise or direct automotive fuel taxes away from highways and private vehicles.
6
@Tim Main Pricing clears markets. If choking traffic remains, raise the price.
2
@Tim Main - A lot of the congestion is due to construction and deliveries. The cement guys and UPS are not going to ride the subway.
@Tim Main, the "chocking" of traffic in Manhattan is largely self-inflected. Those silly bike lanes that are essentially Uber and taxi rest areas. Those concrete curbs at intersections that prevent taxis and Ubers from pulling over. The Disneyfication of Times Square with that unnecessary pedestrian mall. And worst of all are the delayed green lights that only allow 3 or 4 cars to get through an intersection per green light. Before NYC gets into a discussion about traffic, they need to look in the mirror first.
1
If you’ve travelled to cities worldwide you will sadly see how behind the US is. Whether it’s rail, airports, or subways, in comparison we are like a third world country. But there’s always Infrastructure Week!
38
People, through their government, picks 'winners & losers' and the US (among other countries) has tremendously subsidized the automobile. The subsidy goes far beyond gas taxes, which in many areas have failed to keep pace with the underlying costs. The US Interstate systems of roads and bridges was built with Federal dollars, not from the state's gas taxes. The maintenance is the responsibility of the state; as the system ages, states have had to shift the limited tax revenue around resulting in shortages (and poor maintenance) of many of the secondary roads & bridges. Additionally, few people ever considered the 'total cost' of the automobile. Most people see the 'benefits', tranportation of goods and people but rarely, if ever, consider the costs in terms of lives lost and health impacts (respiratory illnesses).
7
I am all for congestion pricing but toll money should not be used to finance public transportation. The employers that cannot pay enough so that their employees can reach their place of work by non-subsidized public or private transportation should not be in business supported by taxpayer money.
2
@Rahul So the mom and pop businesses with 2-50 employees should pay to get those employees to work or just go out of business? Not every company is a Microsoft/Facebook/Amazon/Apple that can afford to pay for buses running on numerous routes to ferry their workers from home to work and back again.
@Rahul Wow. Are you always this lucid?!!
@Rahul
When you get down to it, everyone is in business supported by taxpayer money. That's part of the social aspect of America that I'm guessing you derisively call Socialism.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but my recollection is that there wasn't a lot of support initially in congress during the 1950s for the interstate highway system being promoted by President Eisenhower. So he presented it as a defense issue. Were we to be invaded by a foreign power, we would need to be able to move our military assets to our coasts rapidly.
5
@Jim T
You are basically correct, Eisenhower had participated in a military convoy to cross the US in the early part of the 1900s, mostly dirt roads and tracks, slow and difficult to move troops and materials. He also saw the German Autobahn when he led the Allied troops into Germany and realized the significant advantages. So, yes it was primarily a military issue with Eisenhower. The same argument is true for the UK's M system (their equivalent of the Autobahn/Interstate); it was primarily built to support the defense of the home country.
4
This column and the idea of congestion pricing ignores the basic issue in this country. The oil companies, federal and state governments, industries such as the car and its associated industries made this country dependent on cars and highways (of course, this country is vast and the car made it possible for housing to develop in suburban and rural areas. Mass transit and public transportation has not been developed or maintained to enable people to travel efficiently or at all without a vehicle.
4
@David The remedy for our lack of efficient public transportation networks might be to allocate funds raised through congestion pricing to subsidize the creation and construction of such systems as exist in other parts of both the developed and developing world. The lack of land for new systems might be solved with technologies like the monorail systems like those in China, where less real estate is needed because the system is supported on poles, which can be placed in the medians of existing freeways in many parts of the country.
5
his article, and the proponents of congestion pricing entirely miss the point.
The photograph at the start of the article says it all. It shows a line of private passenger cars. But as anyone who stands on a midtown street corner for a few minutes can testify, there are very few such cars in midtown. And Ms. Badger, who I presume is a regular visitor to midtown, should be well aware.
Most midtown traffic consists of trucks and various vehicles with "official" sanctions including government owned and leased vehicles, utility vehicles (Con Ed, Verizon, etc.), buses, taxis and "hired" vehicles, and those with any of the varied city issued or accepted placards (including PBA cards). So how many vehicles will actually pay any congestion fee?
It has already been pointed out that this is not a true congestion fee since it will not be based on congestion. And, least major hospitals be closed down, medical visits will be exempt. So who will pay the fee and how much money will really be collected?
Finally, Ms. Badger argues against free public services. Streets are public because they provide an essential service necessary for the city's functioning. More necessary even than police, fire, or schools. Will she suggest a charge for those services? Certainly libertarians would like that, but not those who wish to live in a civilized society.
4
@Eugene Nope. She argues against public services that SEEM free. We all pay for the roads (and the fire, police and ambulance services) we just don't see it happen most of the time.
Take a look at those property tax bills you pay through the escrow account held by your mortgage company and disbursed through same. They almost certainly hold line items that include levies to fund all those basic services and more (libraries, schools, parks). In other words, we are paying for them, we just don't feel it. We should.
2
@Charles - In my town, 90% of the budget goes to the schools. I think that is probably true in most areas.
@Eugene And often overlooked is the army of UBER, LYFT and the green cabs that were supposedly going to democratize livery services in the city while those who invested in taxi medallions commit suicide for the impoverishment that this brave new world has brought them.
2
Another windfall perk for the wealthy. I can only believe that the most penurious of the rich would care about the additional cost of congestion pricing. For most well to do folks it will provide a more enjoyable ride.
4
Congestion pricing of roads in a city can work only if there is a comprehensive and reliable public transportation system in place. The best example that I can think of is Singapore. It has congestion pricing called the ERP (Electronic Road Pricing) for motor vehicles to get into the Central Business District. Public buses are exempt. Taxis are not. It does have a fairly efficient Mass Rapid Transit system although occasional problems have been occuring here and there. The Singapore government also makes it exorbitant to own a car to discourage general car ownership and to manage the number of vehicles on the road. In order to own a car, you need to bid in a government auction of Certificate of Entitlement that allows you to buy/own a car. Latest price is S$29k (US$21k) and above. And that only entitles you to buy a car andnit the car itself. You can call it an extreme way of managing but it appears to be highly effective.
5
@Sanity Check Access to public transportation is not a problem in New York.
1
In five years there will be a measurably significant decline in consumer spending in the affected areas, only it will be too late. NY is NY, but there are lessons to be learned from smaller cities.
Like Philadelphia. In successive waves, after concluding that traffic congestion was a threat to the Center City business community, Philadelphia eliminated about two-thirds of on-street parking. The meter rate on the remains was dramatically increased to be on par with garage parking (why was never explained). Then the garages increased their rates. Meanwhile, the city planners (younger, hipper "in-touch" folks) went about reducing most downtown streets to one lane, to allow for safer biking. This slowed the auto traffic down considerably, and did not dramatically increase the percentage of people who prefer to bike. Or walk. Or ride public transit. Or, perhaps to open shop in Center City.
What it did do was provide the final reason for many people, who would have spent their money in town, to decide to spend it instead in the nearby suburbs (which have clearly thrived as the city has further declined), where shopping, dining, and entertainment wouldn't be such a buzz-killing hassle.
Now, traffic in downtown Philadelphia is slower than it has ever been. And much of the non-bar/restaurant retail space is empty, or is occupied by discount stores. Gone is the variety, the charm, the funkiness, the unexpected. Gone is browsing, and with it, the allure of the city.
9
@Allen Thank you. That explains why the Center City population has increased so greatly in the past decade! Greatly on account of suburbanites selling their houses and moving into the city.
BTW Philly's streets were always overcrowded, as were Manhattan's, DC's, etc.
The fact is that our mature cities weren't planned around the automobile; there will always be too much motor vehicle traffic in those cities vis-à-vis the capabilities of 18th and 19th Century streets to handle them.
2
Let’s be clear, NYC’s recent congestion tax has little to do with reducing congestion, and everything to do with creating a new revenue stream to fund other services.
Stories like these can wax poetic about congestion pricing, but at the end of the day it’s still another tax, a regressive one at that. Transportation taxes like these slow down economic activity and can become extremely burdensome on those who rely on vehicles to do their job, often nowhere near the top of the income ladder.
It will make driving and living in NYC, which is already hard, even harder.
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@Michael Sander
So the solution is.... gridlock?
Sounds like the worst way to get anywhere.
3
"Congestion pricing is premised instead on the notion that public roads are a valuable and scarce resource."
Like some other commenters, I object to the idea that fees are the only solution to any environmental or infrastructure problem. How convenient, that all taxpayers pay and then the well-off can hog the public infrastructure to themselves with a "fee."
Whatever happened to regulation? In Washington, taxpayers were tricked into paying for "high occupancy vehicle lanes" to encourage ride sharing and carpooling. Eventually, legislators turned them into "Lexus Lanes" with electronic tolling cards that let the better-off sail by the peasants, on the lanes that taxpayers financed.
The op-ed clams we are "free to use the roadways" or at least that's our ideal. This is not true. One can't jet down a residential street at 80 mph, nor park anywhere he pleases. This is due to regulation. And regulation could equitably address the congestion problem as well.
The problem is that elite environmentalists and congestion crusaders don't want to ban single occupancy vehicles from congested areas, because that would dry up the flow of big-shot campaign contributions into political coffers. So they reach for the more appealing idea of redlining the peasants, who paid for the infrastructure they won't be using. Another example of how left-wing politicians join the right wingers in promoting income inequality.
7
@Charles Coughlin
What regulation are you proposing? Banning SOVs?
So now you're advocating for making it impossible for someone to pick up their kid or run an errand, instead of giving them the option still do that activity but pay the fee. You're limiting someone's choice.
Charging a fee means they have to pay for that choice, but they have the choice.
The revenues that the government charges, in the interest of social justice, ought to scale with the ability to pay
Your income tax does not only scale proportionally to your income, it scales progressively, charging the rich a higher fraction of your income
Congestion pricing, as to be implemented in NYC, violates the principle.
Progressivity could have be implemented - modern software reading license plates could just as easily have linked to the value of your car, it's load on the road, or to your last years income.
Alternatively, it could have followed the Scandinavian example. Stockholm does have a congestion charge, but that is deductible from your income tax. There is no space to get into the details, but the effect is that the rich do pay a higher congestion charge than the poor.
None of above was ever considered - and to this reader it is not surprising. The rich want the poor out of the city centers .
Which brings me to the politics .
It is the rich who finance the campaigns of the politicians - not the poor. Congestion charges reflect it
4
@Woof, if we were going to charge people according to their ability to pay, why wouldn't we start with more essential things like food, shelter and medicine rather than someone willfully driving a private vehicle into an urban center? That like saying BMW should price their vehicles based on someone's personal income tax return.
To me in the Midwest, city infrastructure has privileged motorists for a long time. Interstates and parking lots cut off services from many while favoring those who commute. There are race, class and environmental implications here. There’s the (true?) study that reveals “sitting in traffic” as the number one stressor for many Americans. There’s storm water picking up oil and other pollutants as it hits the curb and heads for the river...We don’t have congestion like NY but an attitude shift would benefit us in other ways.
14
Fine, but the "subsidies" this article outlines are financed by a graduated income tax.
By that logic, congestion pricing should also be graduated, in order to have a more equitable impact across economic classes.
3
@Amv
It'd be better to give folks money and let them choose how to spend it instead of distorting the market more.
The graduated income tax + tax credits accomplishes that.
What is needed is a fully loaded cost analysis of the personal automobile, I mean everything, all obvious costs and the hidden costs. One that doesn’t stop with the individual’s costs of purchase, interest, insurance, depreciation and garaging. But includes the hidden costs, the shared burden, of untaxed urban space for streets, the supposedly 5 parking spots for every one car that add to the tax and building burden on business and retail. How much does society, car owners and non owners alike, subsidize the use of person cars in different settings?
11
@DWS
It's been done. See Tod Littman at Victoria Transport Institute
Congestion pricing is a scheme which deliberately creates a barrier to access for all who cannot afford to pay the fees. It is a part of the continual process for New York City to become habitable and functional only for the rich, the elites, and prosperous business.
And what of the traffic and parking above 60th street? What will this do to traffic flow, congestion, on street parking, garaging costs, and the life styles of residents and visitors alike?
Will there be enough transportation, public and private, to get people from above 60th street to below it?
This system may not solve anything on the ground. New York City has enough wealthy people and businesses to pay the fees with abandon. Congestion might even increase now that the wealthy could feel that they have purchased rights and possession and use the streets even more.
The old system, regardless of economic thought and purity, worked for all in allowing people to get where they were going by America's basic form of transportation, the car.
8
I agree congestion pricing is a misnomer. What is being imposed is a toll. Congestion pricing adjusts prices to reflect the value placed by users of a scarce resource; this is the concept used in electricity markets where users bid for the right to transit energy in transmission constrained areas. That is not what the NYC system will do, instead it is a toll that is very unlikely to reduce traffic.
A number of years ago I sat with the Mayor Bloomberg congestion team and asked what was the goal of congestion pricing, I thought it would be to increase the average speed of traffic or to reduce the volume of traffic to a targeted level. The reps looked at me and mumbled no, but they did not elaborate. Things have not changed, this is a toll. It is not a bad idea but please call it what it is not like some high sounding economics concept.
@P
Tell ya what. The really poor don't have cars in NYC. They are reliant on transit and bikes and feet.
This argument is a strawman to protect middle and upper class people who CHOOSE to drive into a congested area from outside that area, imposing a time cost on others by creating even more congestion, instead of taking transit.
1
@LEM
New York City has always been a city with congested areas. Even in the days of horse and buggies. Take a look at the old pictures of NYC.
The charges may not help the truly impoverished, remove congestion, or increase transit speed.
For many, the tolls could be a financial burden that could affect function, lifestyle and productivity. Whether we are aware of it or not, convenience and efficiency are important factors in American daily life.
Neighborhood parking permits are an important part of congestion pricing. As commuters get on transit earlier, parking turnover helps business and residents. Tickets pay for the enforcement to help keep our streets safer.
3
Why are parking permits important? There are good reasons to treat all cars alike. There are better reasons for cutting commercial delivery a break than cutting residents Tribeca a break. That is what the sharing economy is for. Give up your car or pay for the burdens your car imposes.
@John McMahon, a large part of the reason that people choose to drive into the city is that there is some free street parking, especially on weekends. Reserving these street spaces for residents only will drastically reduce the incentive for people to drive into the city. I personally think this would be far more effective than congestion pricing in relieving congestion; however, it does not generate any money, which is always the end-goal.
Commercial and business benefit by not having commuters lock up parking all day long (as well as blocking street cleaning). Anyone could park free for a limited time (say 2 hours) and only after that would a neighborhood sticker be needed. San Francisco has successfully done this for many years.
The problem I have with congestion pricing is that the charges will be the same, regardless of income. To the wealthy, the charge will be trivial, and to the middle class and less, the charge will be significant. As a result, lower income people will leave the streets for the benefit of the wealthy.
If the answer to all overcrowding is to impose a user fee so that some can no longer be users, then I guess the non-elite can always eat cake.
11
@RM
The reason the charges "will be the same, regardless of income" is because the costs a driver imposes on system by driving when demand exceeds supply "will be the same, regardless of income" of the driver.
4
@Steve
I guess you support a system where all scarce resources are allocated on the basis of the ability to pay for them.
Which means, those with large families should pay more school tax than those with few or no children, and we do away with food stamps, as it costs the same to grow a potato regardless of the wealth of the consumer.
4
@RM
If you can afford a car and drive it in NYC, you can afford the congestion price.
If you can't, take the bus or subway.
4
If it is “congestion” pricing, then how come I don’t hear about it being turned off from, say, 1 AM to 5 AM, and on weekends? The fare should be double during rush hours to offset any loss. That’s REAL congestion pricing. What we have now is just another tax.
Also, if the fuel tax is not sufficient to repair roads, it can always be raised.
I would be more in favor of congestion pricing if NYC did not already have high income taxes.
7
@Joseph A cursory amount of googling will show you that in cities that have implemented congestion pricing, it is only in effect during the busiest hours. For example, the hours for congestion pricing in London are 7AM-6PM, Monday to Friday. Please don't make things up.
7
@Eric Murphy- but there is no information re: implementation, cost, security, technology, or the amount of revenue expected in this phantom so-called budget item. If you know something about how NYC will do any of the points I mention, Eric, please post them. Thanks
I live on W 94th, pay taxes at that address and park my car on the street. When congestion pricing goes into effect, charging vehicles who venture below 60th street, I can imagine the fist and knife-fights breaking out over the already sparse and hard-won parking spaces that exist now for residents. A sensible neighborhood parking sticker program at a reasonable price (like Boston's used for years) is something I'd be happy to pay to keep the wolves at bay.
5
@Jim
Boston's street permits for residents are (stupidly) free.
Street parking permits should cost at least $100/month. I'm sure there are plenty of cars on your street that sit for days on end, sometimes weeks.
That's a market failure right there.
1
@LEM, not so... streets are "cleaned" twice a week, so car owners have to play the alternate side parking game accordingly.
If the federal gas tax was indexed to inflation, it would be about 40 cents per gallon rather than the current 19. Think what we could do for transportation infrastructure with twice the budget.
17
There's a lot wrong here
Numerous investigations have shown that for passenger cars the tax on gasoline DOES pay for the maintenance of roads
The deficit comes from trucks, that do about 40 times more road damage per miles traveled than passenger cars. But do not pay 40 times as much in road taxes.
If, as Mr. Norton claims, the idea to travel free is an American one, how come that say, Germany , the first country to build highways does not have congestion pricing or toll roads ?
The bottom line is that people should have the freedom to move - regardless on how much they make.
Congestion pricing is another step towards a more unequal society
The equivalent of first class passenger only screening lines by the TSA
13
@John Germany has truck tolls, and is in the (controversial) process of tolling "foreign cars." These tolls are levied through purchasing stickers, with heavy fines for not displaying one. Also, overall driving costs, from fuel taxes to car sales taxes to parking, are generally much higher in Europe than the U.S. These high costs temper demand.
2
Congestion Pricing is just another tax. I live near Metro North, so I pay a tax that keeps the train fares in check. But I don't use the train. Nor does anyone in my family. My wife and I take care of her 97 year old mother who doesn't want to move out of Manhattan. We drive her to her doctors, dentists, therapists, temple, and to see other family members. We drive her in our car because she can't take public transit. The cost of care is already high. Congestion pricing just added to that. Stockholm has congestion pricing. A city of 950,000 with very modern mass transit and a income tax rate of up to 75%. When the dust settles Congestion Pricing will not cover the sky high costs in NYC. But then I read that $128 million is lost to bus fare beaters, and more to turn style jumpers. And then that Gov. Cuomo is not the highest paid governor in America. I'm sure Emily Badger has a point. It's a point that is unfortunately lost on me and a majority of the people polled regarding Congestion Pricing, who think it's a bad idea. Do you think Congestion Pricing will help keep people in NY or encourage them to leave?
5
@JS
Try using the train. You live near it, and it’s not so bad.
1
@JS, last time I checked, there are health care practitioners and houses of worship outside of Manhattan.
1
@Ed- OK , I'll ask my Mother in law to move. I'll get back to you on what she says
2
Everybody knows roads are not free. Everyone but the poor are aware of the taxes they pay. Everyone sees the gas tax (CT is high, NJ just raised) and the tolls. I cannot visit family without paying to cross the Hudson and incurring road tolls. I saw my town lay asphalt in front of my house and a bunch of workers getting paid for weeks. Believe me, I know it's not free. Your fundamental premise, that the cost is invisible, is completely flawed. It's just that we have chosen to distribute the costs as we have, and we prefer that, rather than to be bled a little with each boundary crossing (through driving between NYC and DC on I-95, every little state and bridge takes a massive toll).
By the way, where are the park and rides at the terminus of each subway line? Nowhere. Where's this great public transportation system I should be taking? Nowhere. Where's this money gonna go? It will not improve the system, but some people will get paid more. It's just the opening gambit and then they'll have biannual fee increases.
20
@Not Convinced - Yeah, putting a huge free parking lot at the end of the subways in the Bronx and Queens is really an excellent idea. People who are driving in from upstate and Connecticut would be happy to take the subway in the Bronx, and people driving in from Long Island could take the subway from Queens.
@Not Convinced
Too few comments have mentioned that the majority of Americans can not afford any extra expense, such as road use tolls and surcharges. They are already financially stretched and stressed out!
Very thoughtful essay indeed, but mostly congestion pricing tells you once again that Manhattan looks more and more like Disneyland. It’s even got a cover charge now!
I’m happy to surrender all of its downtown to tourists. In the meantime, let’s make Queens the borough where the real stuff happens.
1
Congestion pricing mechanisms should be primarily focused on providing the economic and financial incentives to discourage automobile dependence and shift the reliance upon transportation to mass transit, trains, buses, et al. The money derived from instituting such a policy should augment and help expedite the quality of non-automobile transportation options.
Want less driving? Fewer cars? Discourage it so it's not viable financially and use the pricing mechanisms to subsidize more efficient and safer modes of transportation.
8
@Will Adams I appreciate your concern Mr. Adams. I guess when Manhattan is a city where only police cars and limos are the only cars. Do you think when there are less, maybe even no cars to pay the new tax, that Congestion Pricing will fund mass transit? Does Atlanta have Congestion Pricing?
While you can probably get away with this in NYC downtown because of the transportation infrastructure and density of people, probably a bad idea for any other American city. Would just be a great way to make new construction leave, put a burden on union and working people who need to drive in their tools/materials, and scare away any remaining shoppers to look for easier suburban locations.
5
Congestion fee? Car free zones? Fine. But - first create the infrastructure that allows people to get into the city. Train station lots are full by 8:00am. Congestion pricing will push that time earlier. There must be a comprehensive solution or we just push costs and inequality to a different set of people.
31
@LPatker Carpool to the train station if you don't have bus service to get there.
2
The cost of public transportation is minor compared to the cost of auto infrastructure to the taxpayers.
Public transportation deserves a more honest and full discussion by the media and in our elections.
Congestion pricing is just another band aide, mostly to cover our eyes.
10
Isn't the problem actually because of population growth? (a topic that seems to have been a popular one 30 years ago but now seems to be largely ignored).
People need "space." For the most part I have been able to avoid large cities and traffic congestion, but I wonder what the long-term effect of people riding buses and trains is. In a car, at least you have some "space." I would hate to give that up simply because I don't want to be packed in with other people twice a day. I'd rather crawl home at 10 mph.
Regardless of any immediate solution for large cities, if the population continues to grow even those solutions eventually will not work.
Too many people for a planet which is not all that large. Trying to tackle that by getting people to give up cars is spitting in the ocean.
8
@Dan
Other societies already exist on this planet, you might have heard of places outside the US, mostly with higher population density (NYC the exception). And they live full, happy, healthy lives in many cases, healthier than we do and happier than we do.
Space is wonderful. You can still pay for it. Most of the US is full of it. But this is not about that.
And I would have liked to see some acknowledgement that free infrastructure in a huge, empty nation was a big economic driver. Those free highways drove a lot of economic growth in rural areas that are now suffering for lack of public funding. The free infrastructure between our cities and between the coasts shouldn't be dismissed.
7
Excellent article. Taxpayers have been subsidizing automobile manufacturers and energy companies who make the gasoline cars run on, since the turn of the last century. We the taxpayer pay for the infrastructure cars literally run on. Without taxpayers, there would be no automobile or energy industry as we have known it. The price of cars and gasoline, if it factored in infrastructure construction and maintenance, would increase dramatically. People would be forced to drive less, and use more public transportation. Which of course, is exactly what Americans should do.
Railroads pay for their infrastructure and maintenance. Airports as well.
13
@Van Owen. Thank You Mr. Owen. Are you saying that railroads and airports are not subsidized by tax payers? If only that were true. If the real cost of rail & air transport was removed form my tax bill that would be a great day.
3
I think I could easily write a 10,000-word essay on the negatives of automobile congestion, but everyone already knows what that essay would say. Auto congestion is a serious problem, and we all pay for it, who could disagree ? We could ban cars from center city, but the government would rather sell the driving privilege and use the revenue to improve public transportation. Why not ? Yes, the streets were never free, we all paid for their construction and maintenance and, especially because of winter, we haven't solved the pothole problem. Congestion pricing: necessity has, yet again proved to be the mother of invention.
10
I have always wondered about usage of our roadways. A transport-based business like a limousine service, or a household garbage service, will wear down our roads, bridges and tunnels more than 50 individual motorists. It has to do with the frequency of travel, the route of travel, the number of vehicles, the type/weight of vehicle, and other factors.
It seems to me that, barring the standard license fees and tolls, a limousine company for example, which makes all its money using our roads, pays no additional user fee.
If we are to get into the business of congestion pricing, then we really need to look at overall usage. Because that's where the real wear and tear is happening. A fleet of garbage trucks doing morning routes 6 days a week will wreak havoc on pavement over time. Where is the compensation for that?
Congestion is only one part of the picture. If we are to charge for congestion, we need to address usage too.
6
@Martin X is right that heavy trucks and buses do all the pavement damage. That is just one reason why fuel taxes are still the BEST way to fund road maintenance. And BUSES are the most effectiveand flexible public transportation for most people. As for widening, or building new roads, why? Where and whether to plan infinite population growth is the issue, to keep our lfinite little planet healthy and fun.
1
Here's a little logic for you. Other than work, where are people going? Someplace to shop. Or, someplace to visit on vacation. Do you know what they're doing? Spending money. Why do you think store owners crave locations where parking is available? Because if they don't have parking, people would shop somewhere else.
Consumerism is two thirds of our GDP. That's why we have roads--so people can get those in-demand avocados. Otherwise, how are people supposed to get avocados? Maybe, eventually, Amazon will own everything and will deliver avocados to our doorsteps by drones, at which point I'm sure we'll have drone congestion pricing, but we're not there yet.
It's not that the government provides roads as some big giveaway entitlement, the government does it to encourage business. There would be nothing in our stores if we didn't have interstates and local roads for trucks to travel on.
Yes, I want government funded programs like health care and education (need cars to get to those places too) and I want roads so I can go to work and earn my money to support our GDP.
I agree that we need congestion pricing in NYC. It's exactly the same as installing parking meters where there's too much demand for parking. But, don't make it sound as if Americans don't realize we're getting something for free. The government has given away road space to promote business, and we all benefit from that whether you like cars or not.
22
@CF
Yes, this, they completely ignored the huge boost from free infrastructure in the last century. 20th century America couldn't have been a golden age without the free highways, subsidized and regulated phone and mail services. We live in a big, empty land we need to be able to rely on that infrastructure. Metering is easier than ever, so perhaps that could change, but it shouldn't.
Trump shouldn't sell off the highways to the Goldman Sachs and Waste Managements of the world, rural America needs that subsidy, esp with stingy Republicans in charge so often. Urban areas are obvs a different matter. Congestion pricing and fewer mandatory parking spots make a lot of sense there. So would public housing, we've gone too long without it.
5
@CF "Why do you think store owners crave locations where parking is available? Because if they don't have parking, people would shop somewhere else."
If this were true, we wouldn't have had to legislate the construction of parking through zoning codes; businesses would do it them selves.
3
This is such an important discussion. I live in Los Angeles where street space is getting increasingly squeezed by congestion. Cars are relatively cheap and the economy is booming so more people are driving. L.A. is struggling to expand mass transit but it is not very popular here. Buses are infrequent and trips are double the time of driving. Rise sharing is great but not all that cheap. I live in a city designed for cars. For us, I think the answer is to avoid overdevelopment. Jamming too many apartment buildings into small areas like LA’s Westside is what is really causing long-term congestion. We have to put the brakes on developers. They make their fortunes and run. Commuters are left stuck in traffic.
5
@Alexander Wells your comment surprised me because I think of dense development as one solution to congestion. If people are packed into smaller spaces, they will not have to travel to get to many goods and services and when they do, public transit will be more efficient. I live in the Northeast. Perhaps these differences in outlook have to do with when and how our respective regions developed.
6
@Alexander Wells
I recently got back from LA where I got around solely by walking and public transit. It wasn't too bad, except I waited 20 minutes for a subway train on a Saturday. And I felt weird walking downtown because there were so few other people walking around there.
It's a bit of a chicken and egg. People don't take public transit because the buses and trains are infrequent. But public transit is infrequent because there isn't a demand and they can't justify more buses and trains.
As far as building apartments and creating a more dense city, that's what you want to increase the viability of better public transit.
6
@Annie Lou
I grew up in Boston and lived in NYC and Philly before moving here and I know what a good mass transit system looks like. I love subways and trolleys. But out here, you’re looking at much bigger distances. I have wished that LA would build up enough rapid rail transit to make it all a desirable replacement for car travel. But I doubt it will happen in my lifetime. And I’m not sure now that is ever going to happen. City planners are trying to nudge people away from driving with “traffic calming” road reconfigurations and sidestepping zoning laws to build apartment buildings. But the transit infrastructure is way behind - hence we have growing traffic gridlock. I recently read a great book about LA - “The Fragmented Metropolis” by Robert M. Fogelson - which explained how our once-renowned streetcar system was actually not the creation of a benevolent and far-sighted regional planning commission, but the brainchild of developers who sought to lure home buyers out to the suburbs. The system eventually suffered as all the trolley cars ended up bottlenecking in downtown LA, causing suburbanites to forego trips to downtown and stay in the suburbs and eventually adopt the automobile as their preferred means of getting around.
The main problem with cars and driving is that they represent the illusion that each individual can seek his or her own personal benefit at the expense of everyone else. This is why we have all of the horrible, albeit unintended, negative health, safety and environmental consequences to driving everywhere to do everything in America.
18
Congestion pricing is not about congestion. It's about raising money. If Albany wanted to address congestion, it would limit the number of cars that could commute on any given day (odd/even, stickers, etc). Or, it could provide reliable mass transit. Here's an idea you won't hear from Albany: Make all mass transit free of charge (like the roads used to be). Folks will leave their cars for a free ride any day. But we live in the age of punishment, not reward.
85
@George Locker
I don't see how making someone pay for something that costs the state money is causing "the age of punishment". Perhaps you would like the construction workers, subway maintenance workers, bus drivers, etc. to work for free since you are unwilling to pay for it. The money raised from the congestion pricing fees will go to the MTA, so they can improve the mass transit options in the city.
5
@George Locker
Usage fees are not punishment, they are a transaction. Mass transit and roads both need funding, esp with Republicans having destroyed normal taxation.
4
@George Locker making public transit free might not be an unreasonable idea. However it's often extremely politically unpopular as many taxpayers expect the metro to pay for itself. Which, of course, is extremely ironic because nobody levies the same standard against roads.
6
Yes, government worked with oil and car business for many years during the major growth of the country, and civic planning phases. Problem is now that commerce depends on people's mobility in order to work, shop and eat. It's going to take a massive effort on redesigning cities to get back to decentralized commerce and residential models. Bicycles and scooters are going to make a big comeback whether people want them or not.
13
Would really appreciate an article explaining the mechanics of how this pricing actually works. How are vehicles entering the congestion zone tracked and billed? Are vehicles fitted with sensors and tracked by a congestion network? What about vehicles from other parts of the US that wander into the zone? How difficult will it be to hack into the zone system? As always the devil is in the details.
12
@dksmo
I don't know specifics, but I'd be shocked if they didn't use the same system as London aka cameras at every point of entry capture your license plate and auto bill you via the mail - incredibly easy if this is limited to Manhattan.
In this country, there are already many localities with license plate trackers collecting data for law enforcement, most notably in Oakland.
3
@dksmo. Thank you so much! My heart is with you in Rincon. This scheme is backwards. First develop a detailed system of implementation, payment, accountability, security, privacy, limits & exclusions. Congestion Pricing was passed as part of a budget, so how much money is expected to come in and by when? This is smoke and mirrors at best. No hard facts- all promises and potential.
1
Yes, we spend collectively to produce and maintain roads and other infrastructure that enables us to drive cars. And only part of the cost is paid by car owners and drivers.
But the same is true for pedestrians and mass transit users, who likely pay proporionately less of the costs of sidewalks, bus stations, and rail lines. And who also suffer from over-crowding at peak times. How about congestion fees for walking and riding the bus at rush hour? (Or to go one step further, congestion fees for living in urban areas that have exceeded their supporting infrastructure?)
10
@Bob Krantz A city bus, as large as it is, can replace the same carrying capacity as 40 automobiles (which in transit would occupy more than a city block). Buses do not park curbside or in downtown garages.
Washington DC MetroRail has had congestion (rush-hour) pricing since its inception in the 1970s. The busses do not. The fear is that congestion pricing for busses would drive people back to cars.
14
@Jack
"A city bus, as large as it is, can replace the same carrying capacity as 40 automobiles (which in transit would occupy more than a city block). Buses do not park curbside or in downtown garages."
However, buses do not go everywhere. I looked at a bus map of my city once and there were huge areas not served by buses. They were low-density residential neighborhoods.
The transportation authority even made the huge political mistake of trying to eliminate bus service in suburbs Comparing buses to cars is really valid only in crowded cities like New York.
4
@Bob Krantz
The buses already have usage fees, that's the whole point, in the US typically roads do not. That's why it's an invisible subsidy, like tax cuts on mortgages, which are very regressive - the more money you can spend on real estate, the better the tax break. To the point that we have so much empty office buildings, yet are still building next door.
How much would commutes shrink if we didn't reward real estate developers like Trump so much for failed projects and empty buildings?
6
Is it really different in any other country? I've paid $5 for a liter of gas in France so I'm assuming that's a much higher tax, but everything else felt the same.
1
@gmor
you mean $5 / gallon? It is currently around $1.70 / Liter in western European countries.
But more to the point, yes, actual gas taxes that hurt at the wallet are a clear way to pay for streets, so is paid and or restricted parking, and dedicating a bigger share of the infrastructure to pedestrians and cyclists.
Also, congestion pricing started in European cities, many of which also have restricted driving during high pollution events.
4
@Thomas. Stockholm has Congestion Pricing. Its a city of 980,000 in a country with a smaller population than Manhattan metro area. A top tax rate of almost 75% of income, and a modern, easy to use mass transit system. To take the train on the Metro North line, from my home, plus parking at the station and subways costs around $800/month. Congestion pricing won't solve anything. It's just another tax
4
I hope the Times publishes an intelligently written piece about the role of cars rather than this polemic. Gasoline taxes have raised tens of billions for roads, and bridge and tunnel tolls (in NYC) have raised huge sums for public transportation- all good things. If we move to electric vehicles, one of the biggest challenges will be how to replace the revenue from taxes on gasoline and diesel.
I'm broadly in favor of New York's plan for congestion pricing, but God is in the details. I'm afraid all these funds generated on our streets will get siphoned off by Albany to marginal election areas in the suburbs so the Democrats can keep their new Senate majority.
7
We are all subsidizing car usage with our health. Much like Coal, the true subsidy is through damaged lungs and other health-effect vectors. If the true pollution costs of cars were recognized, the $10 to drive in Manhattan would seem like a bargain.
32
@Jason. Thank You Jason. Many buildings use oil heat. These heaters are like giant car engines that burn 24 hrs a day for half the year. Is there a plan to add a pollution tax for buildings that heat with oil? Congestion Pricing is just another tax to cover failed fiscal policy
1
American men (most, not all) have a much different relationship with their trucks and cars than most (not all) women have with theirs: Independence and a visible sign of masculinity versus "get me from here to there and back." Most (not all) women will gladly drive less or not at all - or accept the arguments in favor of congestion pricing - if there is are viable transportation alternatives. Most (not all) men won't.
16
@Luke Depends where you live. In central Toronto, men without cars are not seen as lesser beings. I assume it's the same in Manhattan.
1
I understand the need to fully find infrastructure projects. The reliance on traffic to fund other infrastructure is a bad idea. If the cars stop coming then the revenue stream stops- this should either be a public policy decision to lessen traffic or a toll to fund the subways etc- but don’t try and do both. It’s akin to increasing taxes on cigarettes- the premise is to reduce smoking but it’s not in the interest of the state for the reduction to occur as they are dependent on the taxes. Secondly; where are the monies that are collected and taxes appropriated for public transit and why aren’t those being used properly to fund depreciation on subways and other surface trains? In addition to income taxes, The tolls and fees over the years are another tax everyone has been paying- including revenue from fares- where is that money? It’s an industrial complex that has become so layered and bloated that it needs more and more resources or it will starve - time to look at other options and models, this isn’t working and won’t work in the future. Raising more and more revenue isn’t always the answer.
9
Culture change is a slow process. Funding from this will fund improving and growing for efficient and more effective public transportation like the subway system. Which goes hand in hand with reduced congestion on streets which improves overall quality of life.
Simple.
12
@Stephen S. And the Lottery was supposed to fund education. To lower our school tax bill. That never happened. This won't work either. Simple
1
I just would like to thank the person who selected such an interesting picture to illustrate the story. How elegant in its simplicity, meaningfulness, and originality! Bravo!
4
Yes, but potentially a misleading photo implying that congestion has been an issue across the United States for decades - even in rural areas. In fact, this photo from February, 1962, at Cape Canaveral likely shows cars lined up for John Glenn’s launch - the first manned US orbital spaceflight, which launched on February 20th. That’s clearly not indicative of typical traffic in the area at the time.
1
@Otavio Guimaraes
A temporarily congested Florida road on a NASA launch day makes a nice picture but it isn't remotely pertinent to the article.
1
By equating public infrastructure with commodities, Ms. Braden puts the final nail in the coffin of the notion of a public good. And by suggesting that the funds raised by reserving the use of our public roads for the wealthy can go to providing better mass-transit, she sounds very much as if she's all-in with the 1%. Bless her heart.
27
@Jay Kardon So you're arguing that the roads are a public good, but each member of the public needs a $20,000 private machine to access them? Why not make cars free, too?
3
Widespread use of autonomous vehicles will require considerable additional infrastructure investment. Who is going to pay for this? I read some time ago that Foxconn asked Wisconsin to put in for a roughly quarter billion dollar grant from the Feds to upgrade 19 miles of interstate to allow for autonomous shuttle buses between far flung parking lots and their new mega-factory.
4
No, the streets are not free. But it's not just the drivers that are freeloaders.
If you own a business (or stock in a business) like a grocery store, then your business is subsidized by the roads that allow your customers to visit your establishment.
Who benefits more from the road? The laborer that uses the road to get to work and shop, or the business owner whose clients arrive at his store for free. Clearly the business owner is getting a free ride.
23
I will also add the laborers you refer to work and pay taxes and tolls and fees to fund the very roads they use- they are by no means freeloaders and that term is an error because it assumes people use it and don’t pay one way or the other for the benefit of using it.
20
Freeloaders? What about all of the tolls and taxes that are paid every year to fund the government which includes roads? If the resources are Insufficient to maintain infrastructure when we need to look at innovative ways to fix that. But to call drivers and businesses free loaders isn’t fair and is erroneous.
1
@may21ok... right... so businesses don't pay property taxes and income taxes to pay for infrastructure? Well, that's news to me.
1
This piece points out the need for major infrastructure re-design and build. Electrical power and autonomy are coming. We are putting them on top of an obsolete paradigm. Congestion pricing may be a shift in the view of public space in transportation but it should only be a temporary solution to a much bigger problem.
10
By this mindset crowded sidewalks in midtown should result in a congestion charge for pedestrians. And bicycle riders should be taxed for there use of road and bridge infrastructure and the very expensive clear space they get.
Most drivers are taxpayers paying for infrastructure with income, insurance and gas taxes. Heaping a 4th level of tax on them to pay for something when they likely don’t have a good alternative is not equitable.
A much fairer way to gain that money is to make parking very expensive in the congestion zone. And reduce for hire cars back to reasonable levels, you really don’t need an Uber in Manhattan, there is plenty of transit available.
Geography in NYC makes many people have to cross through the zone to connect across from transit desert to transit desert. Often across state lines and multiple transit systems, try it it’s not useful.
Oh yeah and actually make the MTA efficient and lower the cost of building infrastructure equal to the rest of the western world, would go further.
44
@C Whatever drivers pay for using public infrastructure, it's nowhere near enough. Pedestrians do not require 40% of the surface area to transport their bodies. Pedestrians do not kill and injure hundreds of New Yorkers every year. Neither pedestrians nor bicycles pollute the air with toxic chemicals and hypertension-causing noise. Neither pedestrians nor bicycles emit greenhouse gases that cause global warming. In NYC, much of the privilege of driving a car is paid by people who don't own a car. In the U.S., the privilege of driving is paid by the rest of the world, 80% of which will never own a car. Time to pay up, drivers!
99
@C
Yeah! I’m sick and tired of these heavy-stepping pedestrians wearing out the sidewalks so quickly and exhaling all that hot breath.
9
@ando arike
Whatever Brooklynites pay for living in Brooklyn, it's nowhere near enough. The Danner Amish do not use washing machines. The Swartzentruber Amish do not use inside flush toilets or propane gas. Neither Danners nor the Swartzentrubers or billions of people across the world who live on the edge of poverty pollute the air with toxic chemicals and hypertension-causing noise. Neither Danners nor the Swartzentrubers or billions of people across the world who live on the edge of poverty emit greenhouse gases from washing machine, propane or electricity use that causes global warming. In the world, much of the privilege of using washing machines or electricity is paid by 71% or the world that does not use washing machines or 16% of the world with no residential electricity. Time to pay up, Brroklynites!
6
Dear NYC: While you're at it, if this goes through, how about making sure no exemptions are given for electrically powered private cars - just in case that thought occurs? They are taking up as much space as others. And, since they don't pay fuel taxes, how about having them pay a fee to use any road - not just congestion pricing?
66
@Harpo, absolutely! A fee on the electric cars because they take up space, too. But an additional fee on gasoline cars for the pollution they spew into the urban environment, and the extra heat and noise they generate.
11
Why can’t there be an exemption for electric cars? They don’t pollute the city the way regular cars do.
4
@Harpo
I'm pretty sure "congestion" means all vehicles, regardless of how they are powered, but your eagerness to punish drivers of electrics is duly noted.
"they don't pay fuel taxes"
No, just sales taxes, property taxes, electricity taxes and fees, communications taxes and fees, water taxes and fees, a city tax, a state tax, a federal tax -- why, they are worst kind of freeloaders!
5
Auto travel will become obsolete, because it is already obsolete. How many accidents are there per week on the Belt Parkway? The BQE? THE LIE? How do these accidents add to health care costs? Police costs? Time lost for commuters stuck in traffic? The cost of litigation? Roads cannot be remade once communities are built up around them. Development of the upper east side has already increased traffic, not because residents of high rises drive, but because they take taxi's and have deliveries by trucks that "double park" and block major avenues. This, too, should stop. . Trucks double park along major secondary roads (65th street in Brooklyn is an excellent example) reducing two lane roads to one even when there is space to pull over to the curb, with dangerous results. "Double parking" is a business subsidy that is unfair, and unsafe.We all pay, and it is not fair.
11
@et.al.nyc
I take issue with one of your statements: "Roads cannot be remade once communities are built up around them."
In fact, communities were remade when roads were built up around them. Beginning in the 1920s, government at all levels in the U.S. began to design and alter roads to facilitate the movement of motor vehicles, leading to a redesign of buildings, sidewalks, and building setbacks (think houses with garage-dominant primary facades; narrow-to-nonexistent sidewalks; stores and malls set far back from the road to allow enormous parking lots--just to name a few). These now-commonplace features were unheard of 100 years ago. Yes, it has taken years to get where we are now, and it will take years to re-make our environment--again. But it can be done. Will it be in time, though?
15
Look at supply and demand curves for various types of transportation. The train as a plateau or upper limit. Put on more train cars or add double decker and raise the plateau. Planes are similar. Roads with cars buses Uber have the following issue. As demand goes up supply goes down and finally goes down to zero with gridlock the traffic jam. This is true all over the world not just here in the USA. So build our cities around rail and they will prosper. Build with roads alone and you get LA.
57
@Dr. Randolph l Cookestien
The irony is that the reason LA has so much sprawl is that it once had a fabulous public transportation system, which was then bought up by and subsequently dismantled by the auto industry, which then promoted the building of the freeway system.
https://la.curbed.com/2018/9/6/17825186/los-angeles-streetcar-map-red-pacific-electric
This legislation has been called a congestion tax so limiting ourselves to congestion we see that:
1. Unused portions of bike lanes in NYC are wasted space especially during rush hour. This is especially true of dedicated bike lanes which have narrowed the roads and are off limits both legally and physically. Car oarking lanes are also wasteful but at least they are used and benefit someone. Still I would be ok with reducing parking lanes or charging for street parking overnight.
2. A bike rider in NYC often gets wide berth so the effective “footprint” of a solitary bike rider is actually quite big even when there are many bikers on the same stretch.
Taking 1 and 2 into account someone should determine the amount of real estate per biker that is used up during peak congestion hours. I am sure it will be quite high.
So if road real estate is the issue I am sure a case can be made for bikers to use public transport.
10
@Pantagruel
Seems like you are saying:
1. Bikes cause congestion.
2. The solution to congestion is to fit more cars on the streets.
But if the opposite is true it seems like a great case can be made for drivers to use bikes.
40
@Pantagruel, if the city were to continue to encourage bicycle use, the footprint of ten or twenty bicycles on the road is far smaller than ten cars, not to mention the reduced need for parking spaces. Bicycles are only seen as a hindrance if your focus remains on cars as the primary source of transportation.
86
@Pantagruel As someone who commuted to work on a bicycle in mid-town Manhattan, 7 miles each way, for several years, I can assure you, my footprint on the streets was very low as I dogged between and around automobiles that, for all intents and purposes, ignored me (or, worse, aggressively confronted me). It is obvious, even to the casual observer, more bicycles mean less congestion for automobiles, period. Who can argue with that?
60
Free parking at the curb in New York City, inhibits street cleaning and access to stories for shopping and deliveries. There should be a fee to park in NYC. Purchase a sticker at the time of registration for $125/year makes sense. This could be used to maintain roads or aid mass transit. Why is parking free? If you can afford a car, you can afford a modest parking fee.
111
@Billy P
There should absolutely be a fee. As in other major cities, like Boston and Chicago. And there should be a similar fee for a curb cut.
Here in Park Slope a large majority of the cars driving on the side streets are looking for parking. You can tell, by after a car pulls out of a spot, counting how many cars pass before taking the spot. Often it is the first car that passes.
NYC is also losing out on sales taxes. At least 10% of the cars that regularly park around here have out-of-state license plates. And other cars are registered at second homes based in the state.
Is addition to lost sales tax, this increases the cost of car insurance. There is much car insurance fraud in Brooklyn. Taking honest drivers out of the pool increases the rates for everybody else.
With parking permits, they would be issued only to cars registered in NYC, increasing sales tax revenues and lowering insurance rates.
47
@Billy P Good point. If you want further data to back up your point, see Donald Shoup's work on parking policy. It is brilliant. I believe you need to add congestion pricing as well and perhaps even move to such a pricing system on highways. Market-priced parking (see Shoup) rates that fluctuate with the number of parking openings and time of day provide a regular stream of available spaces while generating revenue. Cars devastate the environment. Pedestrian deaths have risen substantially in recent years due to many more larger SUVs and to people texting while driving. People need to "buddy up" to eliminate single-person vehicles. Next time you're on the highway, just count the number of single-occupant vehicles. It's frightening. The technology to do all of this is here. It only requires political will and an educated populace.
6
Excellent and timely piece. Governments do need to guarantee adequate access and mobility to urban populations, and these should be seen as one more public service. Trying to do this through constant road building for private cars is unpayable, plus users don't actually pay directly for it, as this article argues. Governments should then opt for mobility systems that are more space efficient, like public transit, whose subsidies are more in the open -and thus more frequently denounced. We should make all costs for mobility systems transparent, so we can then make informed decisions.
18
Good article. But the subsidy of the automobile goes far beyond what you describe. What percentage of costs for police and court systems are associated with automobile and truck travel? Shouldn't part of the gas tax reimburse municipalities for these costs? Amtrak's costs include all rail maintenance, police, etc. Yet many people complain about the subsidy for Amtrak -- which probably is far less than for automobiles.
122
@Tom correctly describes additional costs associated with roads. Now add to these the indirect costs of the pollution and carbon loading which affect health and global climate change. Nobody pays directly or even considers the impact of these costs. Other costs are paid with gas tax and general state and federal funds (which are not totally invisible to consumers). But the cost of pollution and carbon are left to be paid for by the future!
35
@Tom
Agreed. More importantly, though, gas tax revenue will diminish as electric vehicles are the future.
9
@Tom
Traffic tickets are revenue generators for many municipalities.
They help pay for the court system, police, and subsidize budgets that may be straining to make money through taxation or other sources. In fact, sometimes the traffic tickets or citations are used (often unfairly in my opinion) as a cash cow for local governments.
Check out some of the links below.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/tripping/wp/2018/06/05/lawsuit-shows-how-traffic-tickets-and-other-municipal-fines-may-skew-justice/
https://www.motorists.org/blog/traffic-tickets-are-big-business/
https://newyorkspeedingfines.com/towns-collect-traffic-ticket-revenue/
https://www.nj.com/news/2016/05/where_your_ticket_payment_money_goes_funds_new_jer.html
6
Another aspect of our city road system that seems incomprehensible is their design. Each morning, in the city of Chicago, every interstate highway is inevitable clogged by a single incident. One mishap will cause backups and delays for the subsequent 10's of thousands of subsequent cars.
15
Finally, it’s starting. The suburban entitlement around car ownership is so short-sighted and fundamentally illiberal. I grew up in an “enlightened” place (Silicon Valley) and spent way too much time scared to death of drivers while on my bike or sitting in the back seat of a car, being driven around by adults with better things to do. Swore I would never again live in a place where I “needed” a car. Haven’t since, though most around me still think they’re essential. I remember in grad school (Ann Arbor) that some of my friends would insist on meeting up away from downtown because it was easier to find parking! This shift in mindset can’t come soon enough.
168
@Scientist
In other words, freedom of travel, of motion -- and freedom itself -- is greatly overrated.
5
@Scientist
Luckily for us you are not a dictator because transforming individual aesthetic choices into universal moral codes is what dictators do best.
But as long as your beliefs affect only your own choices and you content yourself with calling people who disagree with you, "short-sighted and fundamentally illiberal" I have no problems.
7
@Scientist
Yes. Enjoy Bay area, however, each outing requires a traffic check, meaning we often forgo Santa Cruz or Berkeley events. Not worth six lanes of harrowing traffic compounded by texting drivers. Look forward to returning to NY to give up car and walk. Early memories of being car sick while adults loved the ride. Kids are natural walkers till grown ups teach otherwise.
3
This distinction between public roads being 'free' vs. public roads being a 'valuable and scarce resource' is one of THE most important ideas for a largely urbanized 2019 world, and sadly one of the most neglected.
Around the world people are moving in large numbers from rural areas to cities, city limits are being extended, cities are growing vertically at a crazy pace, and there's very little attention being paid to public transport/mass transit.
It's worse in Indian cities, where pedestrians are pariahs and car makers want to make a whole lot of money thanks to favorable demographics.
Cities are the future. How do we get everyone from point A to point B in the fastest possible time, safely, comfortably and at a reasonable price - that has got to be the focus.
Public roads are not a cheap or free commodity to be used and misused by anybody just the way they want to. Public roads are a valuable, scarce resource, getting increasingly scarcer by the day. If there are studies being conducted on just how much of a dent the conditions on city roads are making in the economic growth/GDP of countries, then the results should be publicized worldwide. I bet it'd be quite an eye-opener.
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Know what? Sometimes public transit is insufficient for a lot of people. Instead of my car trip to work taking 1-1/2 hrs round trip every day, waiting for a bus or train would take twice that amount. AND I have a 5-y/o kid to pick up from school every day after work, since CA does not have bussing for children. How’s that supposed to work exactly? I’m certainly not rich - how’s that not extortion then? The real solution is to mandate nighttime or early morning deliveries and getting idling trucks off the street.
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Regarding parental responsibilities, we all have jobs and families and making life choices around them is fundamental to making life work. Where you live relative to where you work and where your kids go to school are choices, very hard choices with huge impacts. In a nation that prioritizes individual freedom of choice over all, each of us are forced to make the best choices that meet our needs. Following that logic, we are not entitled to free open roads to get our kids to school 6 miles away and to get to work another 6 miles from there.
We make our choices, we live by them. You want an open road? Pay for it. Can’t afford it, make different choices.
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@Stephen S. I live in an area that built a free parking garage at the commuter rail station, at a cost of 40K per space. The transit to the station immediately dropped off as you have to pay for that. All the parents use the same story, my life is too important to take a local bus. They cause gridlock because of it but my life is too important to take transit.
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