New York City has been debating the merits of a program that would charge drivers a $8.oo a day fee to travel into the most congested part of Manhattan during peak travel hours (For those unfamiliar with New York, we’re talking downtown where all the big skyscrapers are.). The fee was called congestion pricing, and it is designed to reduce pollution and traffic congestion in the city of New York. The fee would only be charged once a day, and tolls coming into the city could be deducted from the fee. Many were complaining that this is an undue burden on middle and working class people. Some said it would harm businesses, and others felt it would not reduce traffic. Some suburbanites are up in arms because this will make their commute much more expensive.
I have to be honest, while I’m sure this is a burden on some middle class people, I feel that many people are being really whiny about this and they are refusing to take the financial hit that many of us in the New York metro area already take. I don’t even drive into Manhattan, and I have to pay $8 a day in tolls. I travel from Westchester to Long Island and route that is basically inaccessible via public transportation. People who travel from Queens to the Bronx also have to pay the same toll, and we aren’t even talking about the most congested parts of the city. People who drive into Manhattan at least have the chance to take reliable public transportation. So right now the people who are not heading into the primary areas for rush hour traffic are paying out the wahzoo, and those traveling into Manhattan, are not going to have to pay a premium to do so. To me this seems absolutely backwards.
I know $8 is costly I’ve been paying it for years, but I don’t have much sympathy to others who are heading into a very inaccessible area and are refusing to take on any burden to do so. I also know this is hard to understand for people who haven’t lived in the NYC metro area. This area has horrible traffic, and the geography does nothing to help. Manhattan is an island, and Queens and Brooklyn are part of another island (Long Island). You also have Staten Island, which is obviously an island. The only borough that is not an island is the Bronx. So everywhere you go you are crossing bridges, and most of those bridges have tolls ranging from about $2.50-to $8.00 (The default seems to be $4 or $4.50 if you don’t have a EZ pass.). The bridges are often bottle necks for traffic, and an accident on a bridge can cause major delays (sometimes hours) The good news is that even though traffic is really bad, public transportation is well developed, especially in Manhattan. There are some weak spots for public transportation–traveling from suburban area to suburban ares is generally not easy via public transportation.
However, in the long run we are going to have to make some sacrifices. If I can already pay $8 a day to travel from suburb to suburb, my neighbors can pay the $8 to go into Manhattan. We need to reduce air pollution in New York, and cutting down on car traffic is one way to do that. I’m sympathetic to the small percentage of folks who are plumbers and other service workers who cannot take pubic transportation into Manhattan because they have to lug tools with them, but others who drive to Manhattan don’t get a lot of sympathy from me, especially when people who are not even driving in the most congested areas pay the same (or more) in tolls.
Let’s also not forget that all of those complaining suburbanites have been getting a “relative” break for the past few years, ever since the commuter tax was ruled unconstitutional (because the idiotic legislature decided to change it to only apply it to NY commuters instead of everyone (i.e., NJ, CT) who worked in the city). So all of these people went from paying taxes equivalent to city income taxes, to nothing, and now they’re complaining about a charge that they could completely avoid if they ditch their cars and take Metro North or the LIRR?
There are also options for those who don’t live near train stations – carpool? if you can fit 4 people into your car, then you’re down to $2/person. Plus, you’ve quartered the number of cars coming into the city.
The best thing I ever did when I moved into Manhattan was ditch my car. I haven’t missed it ever.
Would this possibly be the catalyst for better public transportation? Because if people started using it, maybe it’d be worth it.
$8 is too low. It needs to be higher. Parking in NYC is generally on the order of $20 per day (I think…I’m going by my memory of having seen signs, not actually having used the service.) Gas is around $3/gallon. Cars go for, what $10-20K? If you can afford a car, the gas to run it, and the parking, you can afford $8 for congestion pricing. And if you’re coming in from somewhere with gawdawful public transportation, drive to the outer buroughs, ditch the car in near NJ or Queens or the Bronx and take public transportation into Manhattan. Personally, I don’t think this idea goes nearly far enough. I’d love a car-free Manhattan. It’d probably actually be better for business: trucks could get in and out*, tourists would be more comfortable on the streets (and therefore more willing to window shop), and the space currently being used to house cars (parking garages, on-street parking, etc) could be used for people (apartments, stores, etc) instead.
*Currently, deliveries to Manhattan get an additional fee added on because the truck drivers assume that they’ll have to park illegally and get a parking ticket.
Well, this is part of the problem with the plan as written. There isn’t any realistic safeguard for residential parking in the outer boroughs. If downtown commuters begin parking en masse in these neighborhoods, it’s going to be a nightmare.
And this annoys me. According to the US Census Bureau, nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car. If you’re poor, and live in a bad neighborhood, you might find you need a car to get to your job. And because you live in a bad neighborhood, you’ll find that you pay thousands of dollars every year in higher premiums than drivers in higher income households. And you’ll be skipping lunch to pay for gas to get home from work, and your car is an $800 POS that you can’t really afford to fix when – not if – it breaks, and there are tolls and parking costs a fortune and you pray you never get a ticket because you can’t imagine how you’d ever manage to pay it. The point is, $8 isn’t a trivial sum for everyone who owns a car.
If you’re poor, and live in a bad neighborhood, you might find you need a car to get to your job
Not in NYC. There are good subway connections to Brooklyn and the Bronx, where most of the worse neighborhoods are. And there is a good Newark-Penn Station connection. And you can’t cross a street in Harlam without nearly getting run down by a bus…Sorry, not buying it. I’ve traveled by subway and bus all through NYC, including the “bad” parts. It’s never been a problem. It’s not even like you have to have a car to get to work on time: Transportation Alternatives has timed car versus subway versus bike in rush hour several times on several different routes through the outer boroughs to Manhattan and the car always takes longest.
When you look at the cars in NYC, they aren’t mostly the sort of cars that poor people buy to get around. They’re mostly shiny new SUVs and other greedmobiles that people drive because they want to show off how rich they are. Given that these cars probably use $8 worth of gas every time they start their motor and idle in traffic for 5 minutes, claiming poverty for their drivers is disingenuous to say the least.
Well, this is part of the problem with the plan as written. There isn’t any realistic safeguard for residential parking in the outer boroughs. If downtown commuters begin parking en masse in these neighborhoods, it’s going to be a nightmare.
So throw up some parking garages near the bridges and ferries. Put them on the Manhattan side and waive the fee for anyone who parks their car there if that’s the problem.
Another thing about cars in NYC: I was on a jury panel for a case in which a pedestrian was hit by a car on a corner in Manhattan. One of the first questions the lawyer (I can’t remember which one) asked was if any of the potential jury members had ever been hit by a car or had a close relative who had. Half the room raised their hands (including me.) If the jury pool was typical (and it may or may not have been) then half of New Yorkers have either been hit by a car or had a close relative who has been hit by a car. Does that not suggest that cars and NYC don’t mix? The streets are simply too crowded with pedestrians for cars to be safe. Or efficient–I’ve seen traffic stopped cold because a car wanted to turn but couldn’t because the crosswalk for the cross street was filled with people. Drivers would no doubt insist that pedestrians should get out of their way and if they don’t then they should be mowed down without consequence, but the law is otherwise: pedestrians in crosswalks have right of way.
My concern with congestion pricing is this: if more people opt to take public transportation, the subways and buses will be more crowded than they already are. As it stands, it’s a nightmare- and somehow I can’t see the MTA suddenly coming up with more trains to run. Not without a significant increase in fare. Which is difficult enough to manage.
They’re mostly shiny new SUVs and other greedmobiles that people drive because they want to show off how rich they are.
My experience in talking to SUV owners has been that their chief concern is safety in case of an accident, especially if they use the vehicle at least part of the time to transport their kids. They also seem to think that they will handle better in inclement weather (especially those with 4-wheel drive) and will be safer in that respect. What they don’t realize in such cases is that this is much more dependent on driver skills that they generally don’t either have or use. Instead, they figure “I’ve got 4-wheel drive!” and bomb around in snow or rain like it’s sunny, dry and 80 degrees (27 degrees Centigrade for the non-American crowd here).
Kitty, I think that mya be true for some newer and less densely populated cities, but I tend to agree with Dianne. Most poor people couldn’t even afford the parking in NYC during the day (which is damn near impossible to find).
And $20 is a strong underestimate. I recently had to go to Manhattan for a medical proceedure, which required me to have a car to get home. We parked in a garage because there were no spaces. We paid somewhere between 35-50$ for just three hours. If you park on the street, you generally can’t find all day parking. What you may find is a space where you can park for one hour only, and you pay 25 cents every ten minutes.
It does tend to be upper middle class and wealthy people on the roads in NYC, especially Manhattan. The number of SUVs and other giants cars is ridiculous, and 8 out of 10 times you have only 1 person in the car.
I think Antigone is on point, hopefully this will help public transportation develop better and further. The subways have flooded a few times recently, which I guess was unheard of a few years ago, so they need to update the infrastructure. When the subway is down, NYC becomes chaotic.
What also gets me is how asbackwards they are with tolls. They need to be chargin greater tolls to get in the most congested areas. I wish the bridge I travel on would get a rapid EZ Pass where you could drive through at full speed, they would help with congestion, and since I’m not going to Manhattan, there is no reason they need to slow down traffic so much.
London already does this:
http://www.cclondon.com/
It has reduced traffic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_congestion_charge#Effects
From the New York Times: Who Drives in Manhattan. It might surprise you. Most car commuters are coming from New York City, not the suburbs. Most of them live in parts of Brooklyn and Queens that don’t have good subway access. People who work in “transportation, warehousing and utilities,” government and construction are considerably more likely than those who work in finance or professional services to commute by car.
In my experience, rich people in New York tend to live in areas with very good public transit. They live in the Upper East Side or Brooklyn Heights or in lovely old commuter suburbs with awesome train lines to the city. There’s no reason to drive in from Hoboken or Short Hills, because it’s quicker and more pleasant to get to Manhattan on the train. The people who live in outer Queens, which doesn’t have good transit to Manhattan, are lower-middle-class folks who can’t afford to live in those places. So I do think that this will disproportionately impact, not poor people, but lower-middle-class people.
Having said that, I can still see some good arguments for it. But I do think that it would be important to address the needs of those people in under-served Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods who will be hurt the most. Maybe they could use some of the money to set up a better system of express buses to midtown?
I’d just like to point out that if there is a significant increase in people using the services, there will be a significant increase in funding available (from the increase in the total number of fares). Therefore, no need to increase fares.
What about the idea of bringing smaller, Japanese Kei-cars for example, to market? Speeds there aren’t high, so crash safety isn’t as big of an issue, plus it makes parking easier. Add to that, the small engine sizes directly reduce pollution and fuel consumption, all without costly technology that would otherwise drive up the costs of cars.
I found it interesting in Japan how they did their crosswalks in Tokyo. These areas are even more congested with cars than what NY is, yet cars and people cohabitate pretty well. Some intersections the crosswalk is put directly under or over the intersection so traffic never has to watch for them. In other areas were that isn’t feasible, the crosswalk timers are sync’ed with the car lanes so as to stop all cars from the intersection while pedestrians use it, then stop all pedestrian crossing while cars use it. Being a country that is culturally brought up to respect others, yet living in close confines, has brought them to come up with, for American’s, ingenious ways to deal with our most rudementary problems. Problems we’ve still yet to learn how to face.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1495201511100893364&q=Japanese crosswalk&total=48&start=10&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=4
I’m surprised that you’d be in favor of a program like this. It is a fairly large transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.
This type of program modifies the marketplace in road space. Right now, the availability of the road for transport is rationed on the basis of time. The more people who use the roads, the slower they become, and the higher the price that users pay, in terms of their time spent on the road.
Adding a toll fee adds a monetary cost to the transaction. When you raise costs, usage goes down. The people who are more likely to avoid the roads now that it costs $8 are those for whom $8 is a substantial sum. Donald Trump won’t care or notice, you feel it as a real cost but manage to pay it, for Alice the cleaning lady it’s more than she can manage. Which of the three of you finds another way to work?
Now there are fewer people on the road, and more of them as a proportion are wealthy than were before. The road now moves more quickly, since there are fewer users, so the time cost for using the road diminishes. The 40 minute trip becomes a 35 minute trip, for example.
So the program ends up making the trip faster for rich people (which adds to their wealth, since time has value far in excess of the fees for the wealthy) and more difficult/expensive for poor people (diminishing their wealth). The toll drives out the undesirable poor to make life better for the pampered rich.
Which, as a good Republican, I am all in favor of, but it’s odd to see you on this particular yacht.
But as Sally noted in Post #11, affluent people aren’t predominantly the ones using the roads now. Rather, they’re so important and their time is so valuable that they’ve rigged the public transpiration system in their favor. So they’re indifferent.
Would poor people use the roads less? Hard to say because, as Robert notes, both the price and the quality are changing: Drivers give an extra $8, but drivers get less congested roads.
Who wins? I’d guess those who move around a lot. If you merely go to an office in the morning and go home at night, you’re probably a loser in this deal. If you make lots of stops throughout the day, you may well be a winner. So, which social class parks their pasty white asses behind a desk all day, and which social class hauls their asses all around town all day?
If Alice can pack in an extra cleaning job now that she can get across town faster, the extra $8 is tax-deductible peanuts.
Ah, but you see Robert, people who drive aren’t the only (or even the main) stakeholders here. The overwhelming majority of New Yorkers don’t drive at all, so the eight dollars isn’t going to make any difference in whether they drive or not. It will, however, affect the quality of the air they breathe, the speed of the buses they take, and, if they spend time in Manhattan, the likelihood that they get run over while crossing the street. Or at least that’s the theory. I think the pedestrian thing is debatable: when there’s less congestion, cars will go faster and presumably be more likely to hurt or kill pedestrians, and at any rate a lot of the most dangerous spots in NY for pedestrians aren’t anywhere near this zone. I don’t think this will change the number of cars zooming down Queens Boulevard.
The whole transportation situation in NYC is a big conundrum. In most American cities, the solution to congestion problems is to get more people to take public transit, but in New York the Manhattan subway lines are operating past capacity as it is. (And by that, I mean both that individual cars are packed and that there are as many cars on the tracks as the tracks can sustain.) Maybe in ten years everyone will telecommute, and people won’t need to come into Manhattan at all. But I doubt it.
My experience in talking to SUV owners has been that their chief concern is safety in case of an accident, especially if they use the vehicle at least part of the time to transport their kids.
Well, apart from their poor performance in safety testing. They are also so large that it is hard for drivers to see the road in front of them properly, leading to an excess of pedestrian deaths. Anecdotally, an incident occcurred at the gas station a block from where I live: A bunch of cars were in line for the pump, with the line crossing the sidewalk. People continued to use the sidewalk, of course. The line moved just as a woman with an infant was crossing in front of it. The SUV driver sitting immediately in front of the sidewalk either didn’t see the woman or didn’t care and ran over her, killing the child. I do hope that the driver feels some remorse, but given the way most SUV drivers behave, I’m not at all sure. Pseudo-safety for the driver at the expense of real safety for everyone else? How American.
They also seem to think that they will handle better in inclement weather (especially those with 4-wheel drive) and will be safer in that respect.
I don’t know about that. The tipping on emergency handling tests suggests otherwise, but that aside, how often are people expecting to have to barrel through blizzards on the streets of NYC? It’s not exactly back country driving and when the weather’s really bad everything closes up and people are told to stay home until the snow plows can get through (it’s happened maybe twice in the 10 years I’ve lived in NYC.)
People who work in “transportation, warehousing and utilities,” government and construction are considerably more likely than those who work in finance or professional services to commute by car.
If it had been retail and the service industry, you might have had a point. As it stands…
Warehousing? There used to be warehouses in SOHO, but they have long since been converted into apartments for Kennedys, fluxist poets, and other such riff-raff. If there are warehouses in NYC, they’re not in Manhattan and so anyone needing to drive to work there wouldn’t be affected by congestion pricing. Transportation, likewise, if you mean MTA employees, they probably start work at the distant lots and also wouldn’t be affected (though the idea of MTA employees who don’t or can’t use the MTA to get to work is disturbing). On the other hand, it’s hard to imagine that people working at Penn Station or GCS don’t have access to public transportation to get to work. At least on the work end. Maybe they need park and ride access. I’m afraid I’m going to have to admit entire ignorance on the issue of utilities.
Government workers, now there’s a scam. Government employees drive more often because they often have free parking as a perk of employment. The only bit that’s half way justified is the police and fire personnel who may have to come in at weird hours and in emergencies. But they are unlikely to be affected by congestion pricing (which would be in effect only when congestion exists) and if they had to come in in an emergency, less congested streets would be extremely helpful. Anyone who has ever lived in NYC has seen emergency vehicles caught in traffic jams, unable to get through the mess, and probably wondered if anyone was burning to death, being murdered, or dying of a heart attack because the firefighters, police, or EMS couldn’t get to them. Emergency workers on their way to work might reasonably be exempted from congestion pricing. The mayor, on the other hand, who uses the subway to get to work as he promised in his campaign, but drives to the subway, needs to pay the extra $8 if he wants to avoid the long, arduous walk.
Construction workers again may use cars because of odd shifts. In which case, they wouldn’t be affected. Even if not, construction work pays reasonably well–as it should, of course. But they can afford the $8. Just because they work with their hands doesn’t make them the oppressed prolitariate. Many people in finance and professional services (depending on how that is defined) make far less.
When you raise costs, usage goes down. The people who are more likely to avoid the roads now that it costs $8 are those for whom $8 is a substantial sum. Donald Trump won’t care or notice, you feel it as a real cost but manage to pay it, for Alice the cleaning lady it’s more than she can manage.
Alice the cleaning lady takes the E train or the 7 from Queens. However, Robert’s got a good point: a set fee is an undue burden on the poor. Why not go with a sliding scale fee based on, say, the cost of the car being driven, its probable effect on air quality and road integrity (i.e. size and gas mileage), and age of the car. That would be a lot more equitable.
On the whole, though, I’m not sure that an $8 fee would be much of a loss in the end. Gas is $3 a gallon or so and one could easily burn an unneeded 2 gallons in traffic. Reducing the traffic means a $6 gain there. Add in the decreased need for antacids, anxiolytics, and antidepressants, and the extra $2 is gone. Besides which, one can work the hour or so one would otherwise spend in traffic, meaning an extra $7 for the cleaning lady or $50 for the construction worker.
The whole transportation situation in NYC is a big conundrum…in New York the Manhattan subway lines are operating past capacity as it is. (And by that, I mean both that individual cars are packed and that there are as many cars on the tracks as the tracks can sustain.)
There are a number of things we could do about the transportation situation in NYC, particularly Manhattan if the money and political will were available.
1. Build more subway lines. The 2nd Avenue line is a running joke but it shouldn’t be. It should have been completed years ago and probably would have been if the politicians weren’t so sensitive to the feelings of the drivers whose commute would be disrupted by the work and if our tax money wasn’t being diverted to pay for more roads upstate. Besides the 2nd Avenue line, more crosstown lines are needed (and they need to go all the way cross town), better connections to Queens and Brooklyn, probably a couple of lines parallel to the really busy outer burough lines (i.e. the 7 and E lines.)
2. Automate the subways. That would allow more trains on each line, in greater safety. Add signs telling people when the next subway would appear and they might be less inclined to rush the current one and delay it.
3. Add designated bus lanes and isolated platforms (so that people could pay when they get on the platform rather than on the bus, which could speed loading enormously). Alternately, bus/bike lanes like they have in Paris seem to work reasonably well.
4. On a related note, more bike lanes. There is a bike path almost all the way around the west side of Manhattan, but the east side is lacking, as is much of Harlam. Biking is often the fastest way to get around in Manhattan, but it is dangerous due to cars and frustrated drivers who take their frustations out on bikers. Designated bike lanes could change that. Or, if you really think that cars need the space so badly, bike/bus lanes. Also better enforcement of existing bike lanes. Tow and confiscate any car parked in a bike lane and I bet the number of people parking in bike lanes would go down percipitously.
5. Red light and speeding cameras. This is one form of surveillance where it really is only the guilty who need to be afraid.
6. Isolate cars as much as possible. Maybe dig some tunnels under Manhattan so the people traveling from NJ to LI don’t ever actually have to go through Manhattan’s streets. Make downtown a ped zone. Ban on street parking (leaving more room for bike and bus lanes and maybe even expanded sidewalks).
Just the first few ideas that came to my mind. Some of them are, no doubt, impractical. But if I can think them up, then anyone can. So there’s no need to declare Manhattan’s traffic situation simply hopeless and give up.
BTW: Sorry about the multiple post effect. I’m posting from the BRD at the moment and so am posting at what is for most posters the middle of the night.
It’s worth noting that the plan propoosed by the governor has many aspects beyond the congestion pricing. Who knows what will actually get implemented, but the plan does, for instance, include subway lines to under-served areas.
You know, I’m just so tired of being told, “You don’t need a car in nyc,” when I live in a not-so-good neighborhood that is underserved by mass transit, and *do* need a car to *keep my fucking job.* Sure, congestion pricing might generate the revenue to build the mass transit systems that New York needs, but if the transportation improvements promised in Bloomberg’s PlaNYC 2030 environmental proposal don’t come before the tolls, it’s going to be toughest on those of us who really can’t afford it. My EITC only goes so fucking far.
There are warehouses on the far west side, west of 11th Ave. Lots of parking lots around there, too.
Where’s the evidence that automating subways will increase capacity? Is any of it based on the real life performance latest round of new cars that dont have conductors? I’m curious if there are benefits to automation in practice; the downsides for subway workers (and safety) are obvious.
While we’re voting for new lines—Brooklyn crosstown! Extend the ‘S’ into a REAL subway! Coney Island to Williamsburg!
Kitty: What neighborhood are you talking about? I live in Harlam, a notoriously bad neighborhood. The public transit is great. At one point I was looking at a job in the Bronx. I could have gotten there with public transit with no problem. I did work in one of the sleezier neighborhoods in Brooklyn at one point. No transportation problem. (Walking to the subway had its scary moments, but driving through the neighborhood would have been far scarier: a car is a target in a way that a random person is not.) I’ve travelled to outer Queens with public transit with no problems several times. (Once, in fact, I got a ride with someone who was driving that direction. It took longer and I was late.) I’m not saying you’re wrong about your own situation, of course: you unquestionably know it better than I do, but I question the generalizability of your situation.
Where’s the evidence that automating subways will increase capacity?
I must admit I don’t know the formal evidence. The theory is that setting up a system where the trains can safely be put closer together and the driver reaction time is eliminated can allow more trains to travel on the same track more efficiently. It seems to work in Paris, where the worst part of the subway ride, in my experience, is getting through the crush of people to the turnstile. But that’s just anecdote. As far as the effect on MTA employees, I don’t see automation as really decreasing the need for subway personnel much. They’ll still be needed to control the crowds–this being NYC we’re talking about, people will still rush the doors–and if there are more trains they’ll need more crowd control people. On the other hand, that job is probably more stressful than actually running the train.
Even if one doesn’t want to automate the subways fully, there are obvious places where the subways are still using early 20th century technology that breaks frequently (i.e. the switches, control boards, etc). Even updating that to reasonably reliable late 20th century technology would decrease the number of subway breakdowns and so increase overall efficiency. While we’re on the subject, the MTA is doing a completely crappy job of making sure that the repairs and updates they are doing are being done safely. Workers keep getting killed in the subway tunnels because they aren’t being given adequate safety equipment, the train drivers aren’t being informed of their location, etc. And they won’t give their employees a decent raise. No wonder they struck a couple of years ago. This is at least partly because the MTA is under the control of the state government and upstaters have no interest in making life easier for people in NYC. We’re just a tax cash cow to them. It’s time for NYC to secede (from the state, not the country) and form its own state. See how the upstaters like having to pay for their own roads.
Nothing about automation as its been practiced thus far implies replacing the “20th century” switches and control rooms that keep dramatically breaking down–thats partly why I trust subway workers with experience more than the automatic conductors on the new trains that are fairly frequently “off” by 10 stops or so.
Additionally, it is a fact that so far the new trains conductor-free trains have resulted in decreased staffing of the subway; additionally, decreased staffing has continued apace irrespective of this new technology–booths have closed all over town in favor of turnstyle/metro-card machine set-ups. This to me is another safety issue which becomes very noticeable when you’re standing completely alone on a subway platform and missing the guy in the booth whom you at least might hope would be able to phone the police should someone attack you.
Also, not to pick on you, since I myself am a horrible speller/typist, but Harlem is with an “e” not an “a.”
Not about Manhattan per se, but because of the poor public transportation between Queens and Brooklyn, we are now a two-car family living in a part of Queens where it’s a pain in the ass to have one car. In order for my wife to take public transportation to her job in Brooklyn, she would have had to commute two hours each way. By car, it takes her twenty minutes. I would assume that there are people living elsewhere in the five boroughs who have similar difficulties and I would not be surprised to find that some significant portion of them live and/or work somewhere in Manhattan.
In order for my wife to take public transportation to her job in Brooklyn, she would have had to commute two hours each way. By car, it takes her twenty minutes.
And she would be affected by congestion pricing not at all. Well, another Brooklyn-Queens subway might eventually be put in that would eliminate the need for driving, but that wouldn’t be for a while. And there might be minimally less traffic to deal with. But the fee involved is for Manhattan, not Brooklyn or Queens.
Only about 35% of New York households (about 22% in Manhattan) own cars at all. So part of the issue in implementing congestion pricing is are the disadvantages to the elite few who own cars enough to offset the advantages to the majority, including better public transportation, less air pollution, fewer pedestrian deaths and injuries, and so on? Cars really aren’t suited to Manhattan anyway. There are too many people too close together for them to make any sense. Pedestrian death rates are ridiculously high. As it happens, I know two people who were killed by cars while either walking or biking and five others (that I can think of right off) who were injured by cars. In both deaths, the car involved came up onto the sidewalk or bike path. Neither driver so much as stopped to see how badly the person they had hit was. Probably didn’t even notice the bump. So excuse me if I don’t have a lot of sympathy for people whining about how horrible it is that Bloomberg might want to charge them for bringing their lethal weapons into a target rich environment. Only Cheney gets to hunt without a permit.
I think they needs to have an outboroughs subway line to address the problem Richard is talking about. While Manhattan is bad, I think Brooklyn and Queens are horrible. I don’t even go to Brooklyn often because it takes about 1.5 hours to get there in good traffic. It would be nice to have a train connecting Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. It could run in a semi circle through those boroughs.
i read your argument with regards to congestion tolls and public transportation. I’m unsure if you have a vehicle but I’ll assume you understand gas, parking, and yearly maintenance isn’t free.
i’d rather not waste time with sugarcoating.
here’s the facts.
1) we pay taxes, taxes are used for purposes of what??? you fill that in.
2) your decision to use public transportation is, FYI, your decision.
3) instead of selectively finger pointing on a band aid why not write a solution to the problem. your way, my way, or the high way.
any opinion you have should be followed with a well thought out solution. would you be responsible for the consequences as easily as you are so eager to promote the $8 dollar congestion fees for motorists?
FYI: during different times of the day congestion are due to
commercial vehicles
taxes and livery cabs
when is it congested? what times? where? have you been there at those times? I’m a New Yorker and travel into the city a lot and your speech is written with ignorance.
your not doing your homework…
think before you speak!
thnx
tom
But I do think that it would be important to address the needs of those people in under-served Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods who will be hurt the most.