And, by the way, if we want to talk about places where "Democrats have lost touch with the common man", congestion pricing would likely be a prime example of that.
And, by the way, if we want to talk about places where "Democrats have lost touch with the common man", congestion pricing would likely be a prime example of that.
It goes a little something like this, "Hi common man/woman, I'm a member of the city council. As far as you can tell, my main job seems to be standing on steps somewhere with 10 angry people behind me, grandstanding about problems. Good news, I've just voted in congestion pricing. Which means that for the privilege of getting up at 5:30 am to commute in terrible traffic to your crap job that doesn't pay you enough, you'll have to give the MTA fat cats $15 a day so that they can waste it like they waste billions of dollars a year. You're welcome, thank your local Democrat."
I would personally consider it pretty nuts to drive to work in NYC but I'm located close to the Metro North line. I found a statistics which says that the average income of a car owner in the city is $90,000. Not exactly Richie Rich.
It's not even all of NYC, it covers Manhattan below Central Park.
I don't know the transit habits of most of NYC, but I'd expect that most "common" people that work in Manhattan are taking public transit. I tried to find some statistics but the only NYC commuting data I found in my quick search explicitly did not cover Manhattan.
There's also a lot of traffic to justify this so by simple deduction there also has to be a large pile of people that do drive as their commute, but throughput is going to be the limiting factor here.
My guess? The people most affected by this won't be New Yorkers: it'll be people from New Jersey that don't have good access to public transit into Manhattan.
Fair or not it very likely will be a bit unpopular at first. Most good policies that deal with limited resources (road space in this instance) are unpopular at first. That's a natural result as they need to reapportion that limited resource in a way that results in better utilization for society and inevitably causes some people to need to change their default behaviors. Once the policy settles in it becomes popular or at least accepted.
This is a good policy that might hurt a bit in the short term but will cause less hurt in the long term if we keep it.
Other cities often exempt vehicles with two or more people from road tolls or congestion-traffic charges. When you in addition have access to car-pool and can get to work or your destination faster, thatтАЩs an inspiration тАУ and it reduces the number of vehicles on the road. Many places it doesnтАЩt take much reduction to greatly improve the traffic flow.
I know little about how NYC is considering congestion charges, but will it include such ideas?
As far as I am aware, there is no provision for car pools. There are low income exemptions (and I'm sure cops and certain other blessed city workers will be able to get around it).
It's very difficult to believe that this would do much to actually make the subways better (billions upon billions are already spent and they are getting worse) and plenty of common people drive.
Boston's T was doing quite horribly as recently as last year. It still cost billions upon billions of dollars to function even at that unimpressive level. It needed even more funding. It got a partial infusion of funding to catch up on decades of lapsed maintenance тАФ and new leadership, which was absolutely critical тАФ and the system is doing far better right now, with further improvements planned through 2027 if the funding can be maintained to enable those improvements (not certain).
NYC's subway needs are far greater than Boston's and will consequently cost far more too. I wouldn't be shocked if the MTA could seriously benefit from a change in leadership, but often insufficient funding is the core issue facing these kinds of systems.
I mean, your last paragraph is the issue. The MTA needs reform, but it isn't going to get it, so people feel like they are paying a lot of money for nothing. It's not going to be popular with them. That's it. Like everything, we'll see how that negatively affects us politically.
Completely disagree. It's wealthy New Jersyites bitching the most about contesting pricing. Modernizing NYC public transit helps the working class/working poor the most.
Not that I much trust position polls (they clearly make it look like voters are more liberal than they are) but they showed that the pause of the implication was about twice as popular as continuing forward with implementation. My pretty strong feeling is that this will be pretty unpopular in general with NY and NJ voters. Again, most folks would reasonably expect that this cost won't improve service much, as the MTA is deeply incompetent. We'd all better hope the MTA changes.
And, by the way, if we want to talk about places where "Democrats have lost touch with the common man", congestion pricing would likely be a prime example of that.
Explain please?
It goes a little something like this, "Hi common man/woman, I'm a member of the city council. As far as you can tell, my main job seems to be standing on steps somewhere with 10 angry people behind me, grandstanding about problems. Good news, I've just voted in congestion pricing. Which means that for the privilege of getting up at 5:30 am to commute in terrible traffic to your crap job that doesn't pay you enough, you'll have to give the MTA fat cats $15 a day so that they can waste it like they waste billions of dollars a year. You're welcome, thank your local Democrat."
"Oh, I'll also, the congestion pricing won't actually make congestion much better and we'll need to raise the rates real soon. Again, you're welcome."
I'm not an expert on NYC, live very far away, but does the "common man" drive to work if they work in NYC?
I would personally consider it pretty nuts to drive to work in NYC but I'm located close to the Metro North line. I found a statistics which says that the average income of a car owner in the city is $90,000. Not exactly Richie Rich.
It's not even all of NYC, it covers Manhattan below Central Park.
I don't know the transit habits of most of NYC, but I'd expect that most "common" people that work in Manhattan are taking public transit. I tried to find some statistics but the only NYC commuting data I found in my quick search explicitly did not cover Manhattan.
There's also a lot of traffic to justify this so by simple deduction there also has to be a large pile of people that do drive as their commute, but throughput is going to be the limiting factor here.
My guess? The people most affected by this won't be New Yorkers: it'll be people from New Jersey that don't have good access to public transit into Manhattan.
Fair or not it very likely will be a bit unpopular at first. Most good policies that deal with limited resources (road space in this instance) are unpopular at first. That's a natural result as they need to reapportion that limited resource in a way that results in better utilization for society and inevitably causes some people to need to change their default behaviors. Once the policy settles in it becomes popular or at least accepted.
This is a good policy that might hurt a bit in the short term but will cause less hurt in the long term if we keep it.
Other cities often exempt vehicles with two or more people from road tolls or congestion-traffic charges. When you in addition have access to car-pool and can get to work or your destination faster, thatтАЩs an inspiration тАУ and it reduces the number of vehicles on the road. Many places it doesnтАЩt take much reduction to greatly improve the traffic flow.
I know little about how NYC is considering congestion charges, but will it include such ideas?
As far as I am aware, there is no provision for car pools. There are low income exemptions (and I'm sure cops and certain other blessed city workers will be able to get around it).
I think that the common man takes the subway, bus, and/or train and would like them to run more efficiently.
Which is in large part what the congestion pricing would pay for
Or, it could just be another way for the folks who run the MTA to turn their 45 billion in unsustainable debt into 60 billion in unsustainable debt.
It's very difficult to believe that this would do much to actually make the subways better (billions upon billions are already spent and they are getting worse) and plenty of common people drive.
Public transit is expensive.
Boston's T was doing quite horribly as recently as last year. It still cost billions upon billions of dollars to function even at that unimpressive level. It needed even more funding. It got a partial infusion of funding to catch up on decades of lapsed maintenance тАФ and new leadership, which was absolutely critical тАФ and the system is doing far better right now, with further improvements planned through 2027 if the funding can be maintained to enable those improvements (not certain).
NYC's subway needs are far greater than Boston's and will consequently cost far more too. I wouldn't be shocked if the MTA could seriously benefit from a change in leadership, but often insufficient funding is the core issue facing these kinds of systems.
I mean, your last paragraph is the issue. The MTA needs reform, but it isn't going to get it, so people feel like they are paying a lot of money for nothing. It's not going to be popular with them. That's it. Like everything, we'll see how that negatively affects us politically.
Completely disagree. It's wealthy New Jersyites bitching the most about contesting pricing. Modernizing NYC public transit helps the working class/working poor the most.
Not that I much trust position polls (they clearly make it look like voters are more liberal than they are) but they showed that the pause of the implication was about twice as popular as continuing forward with implementation. My pretty strong feeling is that this will be pretty unpopular in general with NY and NJ voters. Again, most folks would reasonably expect that this cost won't improve service much, as the MTA is deeply incompetent. We'd all better hope the MTA changes.