alt Hacker NewsI'm fundamentally against any measure that intentionally increases the cost at use of any form of transportation service whatsoever. Public transit? Free. Gas tax? Kill it.
I grew up on a goddamn island, I've seen what an inability for people to travel easily or when the cost of doing so has to be seriously weighed does to an economy and it's not good for anyone or anything except a very select lucky few who are well positioned to take advantage.
While the NY government can probably extract this rent from this area without damaging anything serious but it is not something that should be allowed to proliferate.
INB4 environment/pollution, the richer we all are the better custodians we will be of the environment. Nobody cares if their energy is clean when they can barely make ends meet.
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I’m in the side of transit should be free, but as I understand it, the fare is often a pretense to more easily enforce problematic behavior on the train. Fare evasion and other antisocial behavior often come together.
California has quite the gas tax, but it seems to do little to change behavior. Likely because the alternatives to driving are generally not great, but rolling the taxes back shouldn’t be the solution.
IMO fuel taxes should be higher if it means more people and companies buy hybrids and EVs.
This is a curious form of fundamentalism. "All motion is good, and damn any effort to coordinate it."
Time is a cost though. You're looking only at monetary cost.
> I grew up on a goddamn island
Growing up on a remote island is basically the opposite of New York in all regards except that Manhattan is technically also an island.
Excessive car use lowers mobility for EVERYONE. Restrictions to car use, lower speeds via traffic calming, removing car lanes and adding bike and bus lanes, all of this IMPROVES transportation times including for cars!
Gas taxes (partially) pay for the roads. Get rid of those and you've just decreased your tax base, which means you're going to have to pay for it from another tax. It's just shifting the tax burden. We can argue about what's a better tax policy, if a certain tax is progressive or regressive and so on but wherever the money comes, somebody needs to pay for the roads.
NYC is one of about 2 places in the US that actually has usable public transit, barring certain outer boroughs where car ownership dominates. It's largely a hub and spoke model though so it's good for going into and out of Manhattan but not so good for, say, getting from Red Hook to Flushing so driving will dominate that kind of travel.
But that's why congestion pricing is targeted at Lower Manhattan and can't really spread beyond it. Like see how far you get trying congestion pricing in Houston or Dallas, let alone Bakersfield, Boise or Lexington (KY).
Economic incentives work. They're probably most responsible for the drop in smoking. Congestion pricing consistently changes people's behavior and every metric shows it. Some bus lines in NYC now move nearly 30% faster.
I don't know what island you're talking about and what happened but will generally agree that people are struggling all over. It's well-known that real wages have largely been stagnant for 40-50 years.
But that's not a problem caused by gas taxes. It's caused by capitalism.
I’m impressed. This is one of the strangest opinions I’ve ever seen. What is special about “at use”? Presumably because it lets you avoid the question of whether everyone should get a free car. Does a monthly car payment count as “at use”? Why not if a monthly transit pass does?
The other replies point out that different forms of transit compete with each other, so the more cars we have, the fewer bikes and trains.