{"id":3591,"date":"2007-08-20T14:35:28","date_gmt":"2007-08-20T21:55:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2007\/08\/20\/congestion-pricing-in-new-york-city\/"},"modified":"2007-08-20T14:35:28","modified_gmt":"2007-08-20T21:55:16","slug":"congestion-pricing-in-new-york-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=3591","title":{"rendered":"Congestion Pricing in New York City"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u00a0(For those unfamiliar with New York, we’re talking downtown where all the big skyscrapers are.).\u00a0 The fee was called congestion pricing<\/a>, and it is designed to reduce pollution and traffic congestion in the city of New York.\u00a0 The fee would only be charged once a day, and\u00a0tolls\u00a0coming into the city could be deducted from the fee.\u00a0 Many were complaining that this is an undue burden on middle and working class people.\u00a0 Some said it would harm businesses, and others felt it would not reduce traffic.\u00a0 Some suburbanites are up in arms <\/a>because this will make their commute much more expensive.<\/p>\n

I have to be honest, while I’m sure this is a burden on some middle class people, I feel that many people\u00a0are being really whiny about this and\u00a0they are\u00a0refusing to take the financial hit that many of us in the New York metro area already take.\u00a0\u00a0I don’t even drive into Manhattan, and I have to pay $8 a day in tolls.\u00a0 I travel from Westchester to Long Island and route that is basically inaccessible via public transportation.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 People who drive into Manhattan at least have the chance to take reliable public transportation.\u00a0 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,\u00a0are not going to have to pay a premium to do so.\u00a0 To me this seems absolutely backwards.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 I also know this is hard to understand for people who haven’t lived in the NYC metro area.\u00a0 This area has horrible traffic, and the geography does nothing to help.\u00a0 Manhattan is an island, and Queens and Brooklyn are part of another island (Long Island).\u00a0 You also have Staten Island, which is obviously an island.\u00a0 The only borough that is not an island is the Bronx.\u00a0 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.).\u00a0 The bridges are often bottle necks for traffic, and an accident on a bridge can cause major\u00a0delays (sometimes hours)\u00a0The good news is that even though traffic is really bad, public transportation is well developed, especially in Manhattan.\u00a0 There are some weak spots for public transportation–traveling from suburban area to suburban ares is generally not\u00a0easy via public transportation.<\/p>\n

However, in the long run we are going to have to make some sacrifices.\u00a0 If I can already pay $8 a day to travel from suburb to suburb, my neighbors can pay the $8 to go into Manhattan.\u00a0 We need to reduce air pollution in New York, and cutting down on car traffic is one way to do that.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u00a0(For those unfamiliar with New York, we’re talking … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whatever"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3591\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}