Summary
New York City has become the first U.S. city to implement a congestion charge, with car drivers paying up to $9 daily to enter areas south of Central Park.
The scheme aims to reduce traffic and fund public transport but has faced opposition, including from Donald Trump, who has vowed to overturn it.
Fees vary by vehicle type, with trucks and buses paying higher rates.
Despite legal challenges, the initiative moves forward as New York remains the world’s most congested urban area, with peak traffic speeds averaging just 11 mph.
They see it as a tax. They don’t really like taxes.
And honestly there’s a fair amount of stuff in lower Manhattan that can’t be adequately serviced by public transportation. Large conventions, cruise traffic, hotels. People bring their cars to those things because they want to have more than just what they can carry with them, and when they return they don’t want to have to stand around for two to three hours to get enough trains through to disperse them back to Secaucus where they parked. (And God forbid there be a breakdown in the line right there)
If it doesn’t adequately reduce the congestion it’s just a tax. If it does adequately reduce the congestion, You’re going to put a hell of a lot of parking, hotels and convention out of business.
Congestion charges make sense when it’s congestion just for the sake of people wanting to drive, But it doesn’t solve the reasons people are driving. New York City public transportation doesn’t have the capacity to handle these big events.
I hate to be on Trump’s side with anything, but this issue needs some infrastructure changes along with the congestion tax where it’s going to be just a massive tax with no actual solution.
Skeptical hippo is skeptical. If people are going on a freakin’ cruise, staying at a Manhattan hotel, or attending a convention, I very much doubt another $9 is going to be a deciding factor.
ETA: Out of curiosity, I consulted Google Maps about driving to Manhattan. It helpfully alerts me that my route would pass through a congestion zone, but does not calculate that price for me, nor add it to the $54.28 of other tolls that I would have to pay along the way.
It’s not going to stop people driving in entirely. It’s just going to add a cost. So that people who deem the cost “worth it” can still drive in. Like those taking a cruise.
So it’s just a tax on those people for no reason. I can’t really say that I love it.
It’s a tax on the people who cause congestion during peak hours and make downtown miserable, yes
It’s like paying for an extra topping on your NY style pizza. Only those that want that topping will pay for it, not everyone else.
In countries where a having a car is considered a luxury, only those with one pay a “permission to circulate” (tax on driving) which goes to paying for road maintenance and the like. And how much you pay every year is prorated to the cost of your car. Sucks, but seems fair if you don’t have a car.
I think this congestion tax is similar, but it the same. You pay for what you use.
It’s a price increase to use a limited resource. That’s how markets work.
Doesn’t the congestion revenue explicitly help fund public transportation? Which would help mitigate a lot of the issues you bring up, there will for sure be growing pains but with smart decisions should adapt to the needs of traffic
Eh. Money’s perfectly fungible, except for restrictions the government puts on itself through the budget process. Theoretically, they could have simply decided to pay for the MTA with existing funds, and tie the future of street maintenance to the implementation of the congestion toll. Instead, they tied the MTA funding increase to the implementation of a congestion toll, for political reasons.
How much congestion tax would it take to add a new line to New Jersey to handle the offloading of big traffic?
Looking at the numbers to fix the infrastructure, the tax is a drop in the bucket.
Yet to the businesses in the area, it’ll severely lower their income.
I’d hate to see Comic-Con leave the Javits center to move to New Jersey.
Additional tunnels are already being built as part of the Gateway Program which will double train capacity.
So put the congestion charge in once they can handle the traffic…
The difference between taxes and fees is really just that the first is cheaper and goes to people who aren’t incentivized to pocket the money while providing the worst service they can get away with. If you push a libertarian to explain their story in detail, there always comes a point where they introduce government and taxes but try to call it something else.
It’s like they try to slow roll putting themselves in charge and expect you not to notice :)
I’m pretty sure a lot of them don’t even notice.
Wasn’t Gov. Hochul’s rationale for pausing it that it would keep Jerseyites from driving in to have lunch?
Could you imagine trying to drive in from someplace serviceable in New Jersey to have lunch and drive back out during peak? Lake Jersey can’t field reasonable restaurants ;)
Yes, it was incredibly, transparently dumb, but that was her stated reasoning.
How long are their lunch breaks? I work in a small rural town and driving somewhere for lunch still eats up about a quarter of my lunch break.