alt Hacker NewsNYC is an extreme outlier. The city itself is older than America, older than the British colonies even. It was built by the Dutch. It's infrastructure is closer to Tokyo's[0] than any other American city. Congestion charge works in NYC because anyone driving solo into Manhattan is either an idiot or a cop[1].
In any other city, congestion charge would be an effective tax on mobility, because every other city is so comically car-dependent. You might as well just raise the gas tax. Most cities don't even have a downtown to protect from cars, they're just suburban sprawl forever.
The actually radical solution for places outside the Tri-State Area is as follows:
- Ban mixed streets and highways ("stroads"). That is, any road in the network must either be built to exclusively service local properties, or carry high-speed thru traffic, not both. Existing stroads must be segmented into feeder streets and high-speed roads with ramp lanes on and off.
- Level the zoning code. Allow mixed commercial everywhere, get rid of lawn setbacks, and allow up to four story buildings basically anywhere the soil won't collapse from it. The only limitations to this policy should be to prevent existing tenants from being renovicted immediately.
- Require all new streets above the speed limit for (formerly) residential zoned streets have dedicated lanes for bikes and transit vehicles. The lanes must be segmented for safety. The transit lanes can start off as BRT and then get upgraded to LRT cheaply. If you don't want to run a BRT system then rent the lanes to private transit companies.
I'm not sure how any of this would play in the motosexual parts of America, though. Even nominally blue states like California would shit themselves if you tried to even slightly inconvenience car owners.
[0] To be clear, Tokyo as we know it today was basically rebuilt by America after we leveled it with firebombs. It was specifically built in the image of Manhattan.
[1] I can imagine several reasons why NYPD cops might not want to take public transit which I won't elaborate further on here.
Replies
> In any other city, congestion charge would be an effective tax on mobility, because every other city is so comically car-dependent. You might as well just raise the gas tax. Most cities don't even have a downtown to protect from cars, they're just suburban sprawl forever.
Nah. Almost any city built pre-motor-car has a decent downtown that can make for a starting point. And these things grow when policy supports them.
> Existing stroads must be segmented into feeder streets and high-speed roads with ramp lanes on and off.
Nah, this would just result in a wave of urban highway building that also drained transit budgets.
The way forward is to make street parking permit-only, give permits to existing but not new residents, and allow development. Do that and the rest will sort itself out.
> - Require all new streets above the speed limit for (formerly) residential zoned streets have dedicated lanes for bikes and transit vehicles. The lanes must be segmented for safety. The transit lanes can start off as BRT and then get upgraded to LRT cheaply. If you don't want to run a BRT system then rent the lanes to private transit companies.
BRT is a spook that has never worked (or rather it's worked very well in diverting transit efforts and stopping effective transit).
> Most cities don't even have a downtown to protect from cars, they're just suburban sprawl forever.
This is completely untrue.
This aligns perfectly with what I’d like to see every city and town in America do. Very well stated.