this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
92 points (96.0% liked)

Fuck Cars

9639 readers
426 users here now

A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!

Rules

1. Be CivilYou may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.

2. No hate speechDon't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.

3. Don't harass peopleDon't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.

4. Stay on topicThis community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.

5. No repostsDo not repost content that has already been posted in this community.

Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.

Posting Guidelines

In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:

Recommended communities:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
ConfidentLonely@lemmy.world
Fried_out_Kombi@lemmy.world
toaster
92
[article] Maybe Don’t Drive Into Manhattan | The Atlantic (www.theatlantic.com)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Fried_out_Kombi@lemmy.world to c/fuckcars@lemmy.world
9 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Next year, congestion pricing is coming to New York City. And maybe, just maybe, the toll for motor vehicles entering the lower half of Manhattan should be set at $100.

That number comes from Charles Komanoff, an environmental activist, a transit analyst, and a local political fixture. It represents neither the amount that would maximize revenue nor the amount that would minimize traffic. Rather, it is an estimate of how much it really costs for a single vehicle to take a trip into the congestion zone—in economists’ terminology, the unpriced externality associated with driving into one of the most financially productive and eternally gridlocked places on Earth.

This number comes just from calculating the monetary value of the average delay incurred by each car's contribution to traffic, not even accounting for all the other negative externalities -- e.g., air pollution, sound pollution, injuries, deaths, etc. -- meaning this is probably a sever underestimate.

Non-paywall link: https://archive.ph/LSpi5

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] noredcandy@lemmy.world -3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don’t disagree however for people who work in NYC, but don’t live in NYC, there’s some real shit mass transit options and none of the money from congestion pricing is going towards anything but MTA, which is just NYC, not New Jersey or Connecticut.

[–] SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Honest question: Who are the people who work in Manhattan, live elsewhere in areas with poor transit, drive into the city every day, pay the high parking costs, yet get paid poorly enough that the cost of the congestion toll is prohibitive, such that wasting their free time in standstill traffic is preferable? With unemployment down, why can't they get jobs closer to home, which may pay less, but don't have the costs in time and money, so that they come out ahead?

[–] noredcandy@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Fair question, I think it harms two groups of people 1) people who live far enough outside NYC for cheaper housing, or people who work hours that aren’t normal commuting hours, where there is no mass transit service at all even in somewhat closer outside NYC areas. With that said, although I’m sympathetic to these somewhat edge cases, I fully support congestion pricing, but think there can be some tweaks, such as funding external to NYC mass transit, and potentially providing some accommodations to these edge cases.