Well well well

That's also very easily fixable

I get suggested to drive for 11 minutes and ALSO take a lyft if I wanted to use public transportation to get to work.

As I understand it, poor and middle class people are already taking public transit. It's the rich people who are driving in New York. This is making it easier for deliveries, taxis, buses, and emergency vehicles to get through by getting all of the entitled rich people off the road.

As someone who takes public transit into SF every work day. It exists. It works. It's faster than driving

Also, those lanes were open to everyone for 2 months before they had everything online. There was absolutely no traffic those months. Once they turned on the scam lanes, traffic was back with a vengeance... Unless you paid.

Can be good. I ride my bike when I can, but my area IS NOT built for it, so it actually pretty risky. Heck some normal routes for me would probably get me stopped by the cops for recklessness.

How long are those distances?

Yeah but all this $9 add up to millions which you can funnel into heated massage chairs on the trolley, tram, boat, bus or train. I want Netflix and free WiFi.

Think whole road tolls you can change based on a schedule, or based on current and expected traffic. All of it is meant to either disincentiveize driving to cut down total traffic, or at least shunt it to less congested times or roads.

Aside: I 1000% don't consider individual toll lanes to be a type of congestion pricing. Those are just convenience surcharges (looking at you too TSA Pre check) and are complete elitist bullshit that hurts everyone but the city that takes in the fees.

Can you explain congestion pricing?

How about you explain how BigFish@'s comment is wrong instead. You clearly have a point to make, so do the work to make it.

I don't know where you live, but that's just not true in large swaths of America. The other options add multiple hours round trip anywhere and in many parts of the US it's not an option.

My work is currently a 20 minute drive down a freeway going 60 mph. There is no bus to take that route. There isn't even a connection, or a transfer, the only other option would be a cab.

Maybe if you live somewhere it doesn’t snow

And if you are too poor to live near your employer?

Not true.

I haven't owned a car for most of my adult life, and things start to get really difficult in winter with snow (insufficient bus routes in a given area, and sidewalks/bike lanes covered in snow and not able to be transversed).

When job-hunting I had to exclude a lot of places because of how impossible it'd be to do the commute in winter. Given how expensive rent is, plenty of people are forced to live with relatives or live in certain cheaper areas long past when they'd prefer to leave, which means if the roof over your head is in an area without sidewalks/bike lanes/public transit, you rely hardcore on a car to get to work and back. And if you don't have that car, you basically lose your job. Maybe you can sustain it over the summer, but once winter snow kicks in you're pretty fucked the first hard snow or ice that comes through. If you're lucky, it's close enough to walk--but not everyone is lucky like that. Also, if your job has mandatory overtime and you're doing 50-60 hour weeks, walking 2-3 hours one way to work is a no-go.

I say this as someone who regularly biked/used public transit in Chicago winters. Not having a car shaped my life in ways that effectively made me poorer/deeper in poverty.

A car can be used to move an entire family safely. You need 3-5 bikes to do the same far less safely including the very young, old, infirm.

Fatality rate for sedans is 2 per billion vehicle miles. Bikes are about 110.

Bear in mind that this is in the US which has bad drivers driving aggressively in environs ill suited.

Furthermore the average person commuting by car commutes 30 minutes by car the average bus rider an hour.

These are often distances too great to bike.

Even in contries where there's good public transport that's not really the case. My aunt lives in a town 40min from where I live, and she wakes up at 4am to go work at a factory 10mins from where she lives. There's no public transport at that hour and no, an ebike is not a viable solution for those roads.

I'm all in for having big parking spaces outside of cities so people load off their cars and then use public transport, but in the countryside that's just not viable.

I take it you've never been outside a big city in Texas, California, Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Wyoming, Minnesota, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Et Cetera.

I'm only listing places I've been. An e-bike would just not cut it, especially if you have small children. There are places you can not go without getting on a freeway, and there is NO WAY IN HELL I'm putting a small child on the freeway or highway on a bike.

is there any particular reason you’re saying that besides cynicism? I am having trouble finding specifics, but there’s a lot of reporting that the MTA is expecting to raise $15 billion from congestion tolling to fund public transportation repairs and improvements and pretty much all of the proposals for this in the past required all of the revenues to be earmarked for use by the MTA

I certainly hope it won't be spent on pubic transit, at least.

And those cops need tanks.

Counterpoint, "the wheels on the bus in fact, go round and round."

I'd like to enter into evidence "skankin pickle" CW:ska https://youtu.be/FBtFbxhpmfc?si=6MBEF0r13GjUTprz

Pooping is unconstitutional.

Strangely, they did mention it!

Thanks Lars.

Some people may be inclined to go up and over Central Park to get to the other side without paying the $9. That likely only affects uptown residents. I can’t imagine anyone driving around the park from midtown to avoid the fee.

The only legitimate concerns I’ve read are from contractors with tools and small businesses who deliver. They should be offered exceptions if walking or mass transit are unrealistic options. You’re not riding the subway with acetylene tanks or delivering fresh meat on Metro North. Other than that, I love it.

Of all the things on Reddit, I miss remindmebot the most. They tried to kill it numerous times but it survived like a roach in radiation. On lemmy, I find an interesting question and have to set a timer for myself. This is the most first-world of problems, but I’m still moderately upset every time

The other location would be the Subways and buses in this case. I went home at 5 yesterday, right in the heart of rush hour, and it seemed like a normally packed subway not an especially congested one.

Unsure, I don't live in NYC. However, I can say that this will encourage many more people to take transit, which is good. Plus, I don't doubt that the tolled routes will still see active use by millions as they're still the fastest way to and from work.

Wait time is getting slashed across the board. An example: If in rush hour traffic, 8 minutes was added, but now it's 3 minutes, that's five minutes of car fumes and CO2 avoided, of more cars moving about, of goods being transferred. We're not shaving seconds, we're shaving literal minutes!

We're talking about hundreds of thousands of vehicles. This is New York with millions of people. People, businesses, all these things are affected. If you combine this with other data, you might better see the outcomes.

This isn't tiny incremental gains. From a economic/environmental/commerce standpoint, these are multipliers.

I think it would behoove all of us to wait a month and see how things shake out. As it is there was snow last week and it was just coming off the holidays. Let patterns stabilize.

Properly built bike lanes can be used as an emergency lane for emergency vehicles.

Yeah. I live in Montreal and try to avoid driving anywhere if I can help it. That's why I got a place near a metro station not too far from downtown. I have bus routes that go to all the nice places in 20-30 minutes. And my neighborhood is awesome. Everything I need is walking distance and it's a cool place in the summer with lots of activities, bars, restaurants, specialty stores, etc.

That's incredibly short sighted. How long before companies realize that they aren't paying employees enough to live in NYC or deal with the congestion tax and the company has no choice but to leave NYC altogether? Then tax revenue declines and the city is short on the budget!

If you understand that the congestion tax (and lets face it, it's a tax) goes up in years 3 and 5, you'll realize that this isn't going to get better. I commute to work in NYC every day and drive my personal vehicle probably once a month. It was never cost effective to drive into NYC. Someone who's already paying $850 for parking, $300 for bridge tolls and the cost of their car is not worried about the extra $9/day.

Oh and BTW, the first day of the congestion tax was a snowstorm so no one was driving in anyhow!

That sounds pretty reasonable actually.

That’s super reasonable, and if it actually helps it’s probably fantastic. I wonder if things like emergency response times will significantly improve as a result.

Could they make it more expensive for cars that enter the zone once and drive around all day (Uber)

Kinda unfair tbh

Zippity zoppity let's redistribute some property

Step one of reducing car-dependency is to reduce their number on the road. Then you can start bulding shit that accommodates the poor through actually nice-to-use public transit, bicycle paths, and walking routes.

Why can't you start building shit before reducing their numbers? I don't see what one has to do with the other.

A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation.

- Gustavo Petro, current president of Colombia, former mayor of Bogota

I feel like what this good intentioned quote misses is that the poor are priced out of the city core entirely and pushed into banlieus

Buses --> tram

Ambulances --> single lane road/biking path

Construction vehicles, commercial trucks --> single lane road

Problem solved, no need for cars inside the city

What does that have to do with the OP?

Please elaborate the "if you can prepare parking spaces" part.

Counterpoint, this funds public transport which is cheaper than car ownership and driving.

If you are poor, this pushes you to take a train or bus which saves you money.

The only people this taxes is the rich which makes this a progressive solution.

Cars in Manhattan were already "just for the rich".
It's simply making the rich think for a moment, before taking their car to the street. Which makes the streets safer for everyone who's not rich.

This is really just a method of opening the streets just for the rich.

Anyone who takes the bus knows this is bullshit

You mean like how most things are anyways?

I'd say almost anywhere in the US besides the NYC area, this would probably be true. Given public transit is the norm there, it hardly seems regressive. I don't think giving the rich the privilege of taking care through the city is a good thing, but at least the city gets to take some money from them. It would be much better if health care ceos all took public transit. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure an outright ban on private vehicles would be strongly opposed by such people right now...

congestion pricing doesn't apply to public transit, which is the point. Take the damn bus to work. If it's a long walk from your stop, you can buy an ebike with money saved from not maintaining a car.

It's only regressive if you assume cars are a necessity, they're really not in NYC. I sold my car after moving down from New England and haven't regretted it, and it's not an affordability issue for me either.

Also the rich will always have access to luxuries that poor people don't. There will always be fancy restaurants and nicer clothes than are inaccessible to the poor, but that is separate from them having decent quality food and clothes, and maybe can go out to a nicer dinner every so often, just not a $500 tasting menu.

Public transport won't be built?

Gotcha, I found that on desktop you can do "average traffic" for a day of the week and time for the whole map without putting in a destination so I picked an average Monday at 5:30:

Lmfao, that's the same distance as my commute to work, and I can bike that in 17-20 minutes

Half an hour to cross that bridge isn't even that bad.

Your comment presumes that everyone has access to public transit that suits their needs. Many people do not.

All those green lines aren't supposed to be an example of efficient transportation? Is that not exactly what the author is trying to convey?

According to NPR the other day, apparently NJ's (Democrat) Governor Murphy is against it. I'm not exactly sure why (I missed that part). It may have had something to do with revenue sharing, and NJ taking in much less than they did before?

I don't know and not sure if I care enough to look into it... But yeah, apparently not just Republicans.

For real? I didn't know it was that cheap...

Hoboken

Isn't that a street fighter move?

Is there some kind of monthly transit pass you can buy to make it cheaper overall for regular users?

My tiny rural japanese train has hourly trains (and like 6 running about 10min apart during rush hour). That's nuts to me.

and it has an option for low income people to pay less.

You've never been poor have you. Its an extra 300 bucks taken away for no benefit, assuming they qualify for the low income benefit, and its 400 fliushed down the tubes if they dont.