Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

https://archive.ph/NRCcg

As a long time NYC resident who moved out during Covid but commute to work in the city. I definitely noticed less traffic on the streets and less noise.

I see a lot of talk of other cities that don't have good public transportation. For example, between Flushing in Queens to 8th Ave in Brooklyn, there are privately run buses at affordable rate and get you there at half the time of trains. There are buses from a lot of residential areas in NJ that are closer to NYC that go to port authority (west side, 42nd st) very quickly. In fact, those buses are getting there faster and more comfortable than ever due to congestion pricing.

I'm curious, do other larger cities where commercial is concentrated into one area not have a private mini-bus(es)? I know public transportation would be great, but having a competitive environment for privately own bus services might be the answer to a lot of cities.

Hi from London:

The centre is much more pleasant to walk in, as are most places in the zone.

Pollution is much, much better: if you came to London and travelled on the underground you would have black snot when you blew your nose, this hasn't been the case for a few years now.

I hope NY gets the sake improvements.

I wonder if this will eventually lead to increased density and if that then leads to congested bike lanes. Will the cities of tomorrow regulate traffic between individual buildings?

Make no mistake, bikes are much, much, better for urban centers than cars. But the overall problem isn't cars, it's individual traffic in densely populated areas.

Certain policy here in Europe simply assumes that people stay in their surroundings ("15 minute city") and rarely, if ever, visit parts that are farther away individually.

Public transportation, however, is naturally biased. It can be much quicker to get 10km north-south than 5km east-west, or the other way around, depending on the city. And, of course, public transportation is often lacking quality compared to individual traffic. (Taking a bike across a bicycle road vs. getting into a crammed subway train in July, for instance.)

There was a time when there were no automobiles in New York City, but there was lots of public transportation. (Ok, there were horses and the consequent manure, and the population was way smaller then. But still...)

The increased speeds are excellent for those who can afford the toll. This is a universal benefit of toll roads for those people.

When can we have real-time price auctions for public roads?

I wonder if adding congestion pricing in small cities to certain intersections or stretches of road would work the same way. if people really want to go through the busiest intersections or areas, then they’re going to have to pay a little bit.

Then people question whether they are going to go through, or pay a little bit to keep up the infrastructure if they do.

I was living in London when congestion pricing was introduced and went into the West End the day before and the first day of and the difference was night and day. The difference along Oxford Street, Regent's Street, Green Street, etc was astounding.

And in the 20+ years the evidence seems to back up how much of a net positive it has been.

NYC congestion pricing took way too long because the New York Democratic Party sucks and, as usual, legal efforts were made to block it, much as how well-intentioned laws like CEQA (designed to protect the environment) are actually just weaponized to block development of any kind.

What's so bizarre to me is how many people have strong opinions on NYC congestion pricing who have never been and will never go to NYC. Americans love the slippery slope argument. It's like "well, if they make driving cars slightly more expensive in Lower Manhattan then next the government is going to take away my gas-guzzling truck in Idaho".

What's also surprising is how many people who live in outer Queens and Brooklyn chose to drive into Manhattan and were complaining how this changed their behavior. Um, that was the point. I honestly didn't know how many people like that there were.

What really needs to happen but probably never will is to get rid of free street parking below about 96th street or 110th.

Also, either ban or simply charge more for combustion vehicles. Go and look at how quiet Chinese cities are where the vehicles are predominantly electric now.

> Fewer cars. Faster travel. Less honking.

More expensive cars, also, probably.

Climate Town has an entertaining and informative video on this topic from last month: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEFBn0r53uQ

I thought Hochul ratfucked this initiative for no apparent reason. What was the reason she gave for not ratfucking it a second time?

Here’s hoping Trump doesn’t do away with this. It’s enactment has moved NYC up the list on my list of possible places to move to.

Seems to be working fine, I know the large city about 60 miles from me looked at this, and I am all for it. But its mass transit is a awful mess, at times walking is faster that taking a subway.

I wish they would start this, but its politics is such a mess nothing really gets done there. New Ideas there gets implemented far slower than then ideas in Roman Catholic Church.

It's nice that all those numbers are up, but it would be great also to see some metrics that attempted to measure the overall utility of the change. Something like avg time spent commuting, or really commute_time * dollars_spent_commuting^B where B is some parameter for the relative utility of time and money. Of course B is different for everyone but something like this could be attempted.

Stated another way, if they made congestion pricing $1000 instead of $15 or whatever it is, all those numbers mentioned in the article would go way way up and it would look like a smashing success. The article doesn't make any attempt to measure anything that could potentially be a downside.

Impressive how cars are harmful to society. This is just a small example. We should be more radical in preventing the use of individual automobiles.

If it works in a country where the auto is so ingrained in the culture and lifestyle, it can work anywhere.

Wouldn't it be nice if policy changes were accompanied by an A/B testing plan to evaluate their impact? I have always thought so. I have also seen a major pitfall of A/B testing that real humans can hand-pick and slice data to make it sound as positive or negative as wanted. Nonetheless, the more data the better.

Awesome. But congestion pricing still doesn't charge rideshare vehicles for loitering on the streets; it only charges per ride.

Now ban AirBnb, Lyft and Uber. Basically anything funded by YC.

Congestion isn't limited to cars.

My pregnant wife was hit yesterday in SoHo in broad daylight by a delivery driver on an e-bike. He ran a redlight. He hit her in a crosswalk. She was wearing a bright orange dress. She was not on a phone or listening to music. She went flying ass over teakettle. We spent 6 hours in the ER yesterday evening to make sure our unborn baby was okay. Fortunately, everyone is OK despite her being banged up.

The goddamn lawlessness of electric bikes is a consequence of NYC implicitly encouraging their illegal use. Meanwhile, I get to pay $9 MORE to drive my licensed, registered, insured vehicle on increasingly narrow roads filled with increasingly negligent 2-wheeled asshats because it's the preferred business model.

Not sure I'm happy with turning NYC into a playground for us rich folk.

This is one of those things that I struggle to have a strong opinion on from a personal experience standpoint as I can't imagine wanting to drive in Manhattan...

I find transit and traffic to be a complex topic and sometime I see changes to a road locally and "yeah that makes sense to do taht there" but the next street over "no way". The New York City dynamic, I've zero clue how that plays out...

In my opinion, a democratic way to make such changes would be:

1) make a dedicated lane for public transport on every street so that traffic jams do not affect it

2) let car owners vote if they want to pay for entering the city or would rather spend some more time in traffic jams but save the money

The downsides are all dismissed one way or the other ...

  Restaurants, Broadway     Holding up
  Pollution                 Too soon to say
  Lower-income commuters    Too soon to say
  Public opinion            Not great, but improving

The reporters sought information from everyone they could think of, including the M.T.A., the Fire Department, restaurant-booking platforms, researchers and one yellow school bus company.

How about from low-income commuters?

Not to settle on "It's bad" but their so called "results" seems completely obvious.

The congestion policy is disincentivizing/suppressing people's preferred method by making it unaffordable to some, and unappealing to some. We already know that we can use policy to push people away from their preferred to a less preferred method. The items listed in green are mostly obvious as people seek alternatives. It's like highlighting how many fewer chicken deaths would occur if we created an omnivore or meat tax.

IMO what they should be keeping a careful eye on and tracking is how many fewer trips happen to businesses in those areas. How much fewer social interaction is happening across the distances that those car based trips used to occur. And how much harder is it to get goods into the areas. Is less economic activity happening.

In the long run, yes, maybe things will be net better for all, when the $45M per year has had a chance to make alternative transportation methods to be not just policy enforced, but truly _preferred_ option.

Completely biased article that omits so many negative pieces of information. What a joke for this to even be on HN.

My problem with congestion pricing is that it still doesn't provide great incentives for cities to improve walkability and public transit.

"What do you mean our transit is bad, look, our ridership numbers are 3x higher than all our neighbors combined!" *Does not mention the fact that congestion pricing in neighboring cities is 3x lower.*

In the worst cases, it could even become a regressive tax of sorts. If your city has safe districts with good transit where rich people live, and unsafe districts with terrible transit where poor people live, congestion pricing will allow rich people to choose between the convenience of taking a car with no traffic jams versus the cheapness of transit, while forcing poor people to choose between a car they can't afford versus walking down a street where they may be assaulted.

It's even worse if you have rich people living in the city center where they work, and poor people who also work there living in towns much further away. Then, only the rich are able to vote on congestion pricing.

This probably doesn't apply to New York specifically (not an American, have never been), but it's definitely something to have in mind in general.