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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: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 03 2019, @03:10AM (4 children)
Depending on where you live, there are commuter rail/bus lines ( https://mta.info [mta.info] , https://njtransit.com [njtransit.com] ) that will take you right into the heart of Manhattan. Once there, there are local trains and buses (as well as for-hire bicycles [citibikenyc.com]) that can get you pretty much anywhere you want within the 4-6 square mile area covered by congestion pricing. Given that NYC is ~302 square miles in area [wikipedia.org], this is not a huge deal.
During a normal work day, the area of Manhattan below 60th Street (which is the *only* area covered by congestion pricing) more than doubles in population. If you look it up, the population of Manhattan *doubles* from 1.6 million to more than three million with all the commuters. However, a good chunk (more than half, IIRC) of that 1.6 million lives above 60th street.
As such, that area is incredibly crowded. And getting as many cars out of the area as possible would be a blessing for just about everyone. Those who live in areas not served by the NYC subway can drive their cars to commuter rail, express bus and subway stations outside the *tiny* area covered by congestion pricing and use public transportation.
What's more, the folks who will drive anyway will help to maintain and improve the public transportation infrastructure.
It's a good plan that is supported by the vast majority of NYers. Don't like it? Don't come to NYC. You won't be missed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 03 2019, @04:17PM (1 child)
Today it is proposed as 4-6 square miles. Tomorrow?
I don't know if the proposal has provisions for disabled persons? If it does, cool. Otherwise try maneuvering 2 miles in an unpowered wheelchair or on crutches, then reevaluate how huge a deal it is.
Never planned to before. Don't plan to now. Don't want the area I live in to be contaminated with stupid ideas from elsewhere in the US, either. (And it's differences like this which will stoke the fires of the civil war to come....)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 03 2019, @04:38PM
Good. We don't need or want you in NYC anyway. We already have enough morons and don't need any more.
Go ahead and cower like a frightened child in your bunker/cave waiting for the civil war. Assuming you're still alive, someone will let you know when it's safe to come out. The rest of won't miss you.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Wednesday April 03 2019, @11:47PM (1 child)
I'm well aware. I spent a number of my formative years growing up in Manhattan. I used the heck out of the subway, too, as did my sister.
However, I also spent a number of those years living in eastern PA, where driving the 70 or so (don't recall exactly) miles into NYC meant "car" no matter how much you wanted it otherwise. So we drove. We spent our money at the museums, the shops, down on "electronics row" and in the district where you can buy fabric. We did take advantage of the subway, but we had a place to go — we parked at my sister's apartment on 171st street and took the subway (168th street station A or AA, or sometimes the 1 IRT) from there. Most people won't have a place like that to anchor them.
Every penny mattered. Everything that made it more expensive would have made it less often.
Later, having moved a bit, we had bus access into port authority, however driving into the city a car took 45 minutes, and going by bus took several hours as the Shortline bus (apparently) followed an algorithm to find the absolute longest distance between just a few points. It was an awful ride.
From Port Jervis NY, my father commuted on Erie-Lackawanna (long defunct now) passenger trains into Manhattan to work. Which was good, because that's the only place you could get on that train in the region. I still model the Erie-Lackawanna in n gauge. And I have an engineer's hat, a stock certificate, and some patches, too. 😊
So while I'm certainly with you on the (very high) general value of mass transport, it can be done well (NY subway FTW) but it can also be done poorly, and any presumption that it reaches very far out of NYC in a comprehensive manner is simply wrong. It would be great if it did, of course.
However, I don't see turning Manhattan into a place where you have to have more spare money to drive as a reasonable solution. There are all kinds of people out there; some of them will find this a negligible load, some won't. Public spaces, IMHO, should be aimed at the public. Not the wealthy.
--
Calculus... the agony and dx/dc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 04 2019, @01:07AM
It's not, and never has been, about advantaging wealthier people. It's about the smog, the traffic and the incredibly overcrowded streets filled with cars that has a negative effect on the quality of life for people who *live* there. Shall we prioritize visitors to your town over the residents too?
NYC, as you obviously know, is not some sort of theme park for suburbanites to come and play. That said, many do, and that's just fine. And there exists an enormous infrastructure (trains and buses) to bring those folks in and out of NYC.
It's an actual city where people live and work. Are you suggesting that the people who live in NYC should be made to suffer through insane traffic congestion for the benefit of the bridge and tunnel crowd [wikipedia.org]?
What's more, the *50 mile* radius around NYC has a full 10% (~30,000,000) of the US population living within it. Within that 50 mile radius, there is, as I mentioned, a *huge* infrastructure for moving folks in and out of NYC.
Out where you were in Eastern PA, you could always (and still can), drive to a NJ Transit station and park (for free, no less) and get into NYC without clogging up the streets. Or you could go to Philadelphia and clog up *their* streets.
Just to make sure I understand, your argument is that since there are folks who can't *conveniently* get mass transit into NYC near their homes nearly 100 miles away, the residents of NYC should have to deal with traffic congestion that essentially makes much of midtown and downtown Manhattan a parking lot for a good portion of each day.
Is that about the size of it?
Thankfully, most NYers disagree with you, and I will be much happier once the congestion pricing plan goes into effect.