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After years of debate, New York state has adopted congestion pricing to deal with traffic problems in New York City. Starting in 2021, fees will be imposed on all vehicles entering a pricing zone that covers lower Manhattan, from 60th Street at the southern edge of Central Park to the southernmost tip of the island.
This approach has succeeded in cities including London, Singapore and Stockholm. For scholars like me who focus on urban issues, New York's decision is welcome news. Properly used, congestion pricing can make crowded cities safer, cleaner and easier for drivers, cyclists and pedestrians to navigate.
The details matter, including the size and timing of charges and the area that they cover. Congestion charges also raises equity issues, since rich people are best able to move closer to work or change their schedules to avoid the steepest costs.
Are congestion pricing plans the wave of the future in American cities?
(Score: 4, Funny) by takyon on Tuesday April 02 2019, @09:56PM (7 children)
Can you elaborate on why you find one of the most populous and economically important cities on Earth "boring"?
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Tuesday April 02 2019, @11:10PM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday April 02 2019, @11:45PM
Internet sales tax is a different topic and this comment [soylentnews.org] only leads me to repeat my question.
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(Score: 5, Interesting) by schad on Tuesday April 02 2019, @11:37PM
I'm not the AC, but cities just aren't to my taste. The things they have to offer aren't the things that I care about in life. I can appreciate them and enjoy them for a while, but after a few days they grow boring to me. But drop me in a forest and I'll be happy as a clam. Never bored in a forest. I'm happy to sit on a rock (or in a tree) for hours at a time without moving. If it's snowing too, well, that's pretty much how I picture heaven.
But I bet that most people would find my "happy place" intolerably dull. Send them to a place like Sequoia National Park and they'll come away amazed by the experience and talk about how great it was. But they won't feel any desire to go back ever again. And even if they do go to see some other national parks or forests, after a while they won't want to go to any more. "I've seen enough trees and lakes and mountains," they'll say. "I don't need to see any more." That's... not something I would ever say. But it is exactly how I feel about cities.
Different strokes, etc. Mainly I wish that people who love cities so much would stop trying to make me love them, too. I've been to probably every great city in the East. I promise that I know what I'm missing (and I don't miss it).
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @11:55PM
You have pigeons, squirrels, mice, skunks, and rats. That is boring, except for the skunks, but that is the wrong kind of non-boring.
(Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday April 03 2019, @01:55AM (2 children)
Wait -- I'm confused. This is a site devoted to nerdiness and geekiness and many people here are more than a bit anti-pop culture. We don't care about what the average person likes or pays attention to and we're proud of it.
And somehow you think the fact the NYC is populous (and also implicitly popular) is supposed to be impressive? Lemmings don't impress me either.
Economically important, I'll grant you. But you couldn't pay me enough to live in NYC. Smelly, overcrowded, overly expensive, people who act like jerks. I mean no offense -- to each his own. And I have lived in other large cities. But there's very little interesting to me in New York. If I had to choose a weekend (or week) in any city, I'd literally list hundreds before NYC. I have a very good friend who lives there (and loves it), and every time I visit him, I can't wait to leave. Oh, did I mention the insufferable cheerleaders who just LOVE New York? My friend seems to love texting me about how he's on some random train going to who-cares-where. No, I don't live in NYC, so I don't know how the blah-blah train runs, nor do I give a crap, and I find the fact that you act as if every person on the planet should know the NYC subway schedule to be annoying.
Again, more power to people who live there. Let them be happy. But it's perfectly valid to think NY is boring... Lots of people who don't live there find it to be so. Sorry to burst your bubble. (And no, I'm not trolling. This is really how I feel. Yes, you can get just about anything in NYC, which is what makes it boring. It's just not as distinctive as most places...)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Wednesday April 03 2019, @02:18AM
"New York is boring. And redundant." is a dumb troll opinion without any elaboration. At least you gave some reasons.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday April 03 2019, @03:08AM
the secret sauce of new york is its fractal quality. a given place or time might seem mundane or merely crowded, but if you look closer you discern whole new levels of complexity. in the two block walk to our subway stop we can move through 70 countries worth of languages, customs, cuisines, and languages and all of them moving along in their own little bubbles. if you ever saw that movie "valerian and the city of ten thousand planets", that's sort of the effect.
i do also agree with schad upthread, though. nature is fractal also, and endlessly complex for those who care to look.
Washington DC delenda est.