Has the added benefit of reducing gas prices (less demand) and less greenhouse gas emissions.
We have congestion everywhere and few transportation options. I cannot imagine the consequences of congestion pricing here. Sometimes it could take 30 minutes to get to the freeway 1.5 miles away during morning rush hour. I suspect congestion pricing here would motivate many people to simply abandon their employment if in a job where work from home is a disallowed viable possibility.
In my case I am currently unemployed and am turning down interview offers in locations I used to commute to just a few years back, because now the costs of commute are another form of wage depreciation that gets factored into the compensation rate.
I've only been to Jacksonville a handful of times but I'd rather walk along the side of road in August than ride a bus there. And they don't actually help congestion that much.
is there any city anywhere that has implemented congestion pricing without having public transit available?
It didn’t go over well.
And even for a small city like Cambridge it is a huge lift to go from an already inadequate public transport infrastructure and set of services to infrastructure and services suitable for a city where cars have been largely eliminated.
The irony of course is that bus services, specifically the guided busway, will be cut again soon due to ongoing lack of use. But the lack of use has been caused by long-running and poorly managed maintenance on the busway disrupting services to the point of unusability, rather than because of any real lack of demand.
Some people didn’t trust that promises would be delivered on public transport when it came to the congestion charge. Obviously cuts like this add fuel to that fire.
We have, over the past 10 years or so, gained two new railway stations, and that’s good. But we haven’t gained new rail lines and rail routes so they haven’t done anything really to improve the transport and congestion situations around the city. It’s easier and more convenient to get to London though, depending on where you are.
This is literally addressed by the comment you are replying to:
"What about the delivery people who need to bring this into the city?" They should be able to get in and out much faster, and their cargo makes it easy to amortize the cost!
You charge the customer for the congestion charge and use it to pay the fee, just like anything else. I bid construction work and would include congestion fees into my bid or T&M rates if needed.
How do you think construction vehicles pay for parking? They charge the customer for it and use the money to pay for parking.
It's not "arbitrage" to commute from a place you can afford to a place you can't. Being middle class isn't an arbitrage play.
It is a convoluted system of city and state tax credits, partial discounts, etc that you must do every year. Not only do you have to file additional forms as part of your tax return, you must also recertify your disability annually.
And if you are simply low income, you can apply and then you receive a 50% discount after your first 10 trips into the city each month. If you are going into the city 2-3 times a week, you receive no discount.
https://www.mta.info/fares-tolls/tolls/congestion-relief-zon...
Low-income: Show your tax return <$50k/yr or show your enrollment in a public assistance program.
Disability: Get your disability assess annually or show enrollment in the already-existing disabled-people transit assistance programs.
Not sure what you think is non-trivial about either of these?
If you're worried about poor people, the right move is to price things properly and then give assistance to those who need it, rather than giving away scarce resources to everyone for free.
Didn't the city already charge tolls on the bridges and tunnels in and out?
A road isn't a scarce resource. You can't deplete it.
Land is a scarce resource. Roads require land. Charging money for access to land is extremely common.
Why? Genuinely curious, I don't know much about US geography
I guess there are made up reasons not to use public transport there too.
And then imagine if there was offsetting spending.
estearum•42m ago
"What about all the people who need to drive into the city for work?" Uhh... don't!
"What about the delivery people who need to bring this into the city?" They should be able to get in and out much faster, and their cargo makes it easy to amortize the cost!
"What about people who need to drive due to mobility issues?" Look, now they can park near their destination too!
LoganDark•36m ago
What? Don't work? What else is there, the bus?
mc32•30m ago
apercu•30m ago
strictnein•27m ago
paimapi•25m ago
which isn't to say that this is right or just. it's simply the state of things given the way we've decided to arrange our society
monitron•30m ago
DiggyJohnson•30m ago
baggy_trough•12m ago
smelendez•28m ago
> Cities around the world, including London, Stockholm, Milan, and most recently, New York City (NYC), have adopted congestion pricing, charging drivers a fee to enter high-traffic zones.
estearum•23m ago
baud147258•34m ago
How are they going to do if there's no public transportation available for their commute?
edit: and how about plumbers (and the like) who need a vehicle to carry what they need to work?
estearum•27m ago
strictnein•25m ago
A productive way would be to say that congestion pricing should be used to expand bus service.
estearum•20m ago
If you do that, it will turn out that buses (etc) are far superior methods of moving people around, but you really don't need to move money directly from one to the other.
strictnein•11m ago
Why shouldn't people care how the money flows and why are you the decider of what people should care about? If the money from congestion pricing was for a new stadium for the Yankees, or to build a new heliport for billionaires' row, or it just went into the pocket of the mayor I think that would be concerning for everyone involved.
strictnein•31m ago
"What about people who need to drive due to mobility issues?"
vs
"What about people on a fixed income who need to drive due to mobility issues?"
Regressive taxes are still regressive, even if you like what they do.
I'm also not quite sure how this is a winning argument either:
> "What about all the people who need to drive into the city for work?" Uhh... don't!
Huh?
estearum•25m ago
The people who drive into a city to work should either pay for access to the city's economy and infrastructure that supports their job (and the entire surrounding region's suburbia), or they can get a job in their own community, or they can take a form of transit with fewer negative externalities on the city. Not that hard to understand.
jtbayly•21m ago
estearum•12m ago
You'll know they're paying their fair share when the arbitrage actually stops, but taxing non-resident earnings so aggressively to stop it produces way more negative side effects and regressive taxation effects than congestion pricing does. That's why congestion pricing is a good idea and 90% taxes on non-resident incomes is not (not to mention the ease of enforcement).
arnoooooo•30m ago
estearum•28m ago
wat10000•26m ago
If you don't like density, there are plenty of un-dense places you can be, with no congestion pricing.
tsunamifury•23m ago
Now work from home has essentially destroyed the downtown but also left it with very little traffic compared to 2019.
That being said the primary argument against it was that for residents who lived in S.F. it was an insanely bad proposal that had you paying to drop your kids at school, go to the grocery store and do average everyday things that had no public transit option.
ipdashc•13m ago
> "What about all the people who need to drive into the city for work?" Uhh... don't!
... Look man, I'm in favor of the policy too, but this reads like straight satire. Please tell me you're trolling.
clickety_clack•10m ago
I’m glad we all have great work situations, for many of us working from home whenever we want even. Most people are just a job loss away from having to commute to a job far away from the house near their kids’ school or their partner’s work. People don’t get jobs with a commute by choice to begin with, and this just punishes people for that.
Spooky23•4m ago