HN Reader

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.

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

How are people on lower incomes who need their cars for a living dealing with this?

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.

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.

Car speed in the zone.. that graph is really telling, showing that in NYC cars never really travel faster than even the slowest bicyclist, and slower than a modest runner.

That alone tells you this is the right path. All that infrastructure and work for cars to not actually allow anyone to travel fast.

9mph is very very slow even for the weakest/most timid cyclist.

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

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

The cool thing about congestion pricing is that you can still keep a car in Manhattan for free as long as you don’t leave the congestion zone.

Keeping a car in Manhattan is the closest thing to having superpowers most will ever experience - and I’m sure with congestion pricing the equation is even better.

> Fewer cars. Faster travel. Less honking.

More expensive cars, also, probably.

The only issue with this tax is that I doubt MTA is capable of putting new revenue to good use.

Effectively we added a barrier to travel (this IS a tax), with some positive externalities for some people (including me), but whether that tax revenue will be deployed well is doubtful given MTA track record.

(Yes, it was/is underfunded; but also somehow everything is 10x of what it “supposed” to cost)

This article reminds me of the 1990s because it was a time when you believed that America was getting better all the time and that we had reason to feel hopeful.

Everything tends to optimize to benefit the rich. Just like tax incentives on expensive electric vehicles.

Of course every other metric section is beaming but the one about affecting lower income is "it's too early to tell".

It's not fair economics or policy making if it always skews one way. It's like "carbon tax to force people not to fly or move, while elite private planes are essential".

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.

What about crime on the subway, did congestion pricing affect that since more people will take the subway?

Good luck New York.

In London it is now just a toll. It started off at just the busiest times but now you need to pay it 24/5, and even on Saturday and Sunday afternoons when there is no rush hour. Not only have the hours expanded, but so has the size of the zone. So now even right out in the suburbs you need to pay if you drive a diesel but I fully expect them to include petrol cars, then eventually all EVs too.

The prices are quite cheap too - the price is like 2 adults return tickets on the tube so you may as well just drive it since the price is the same but public transport is so utterly utterly awful and unreliable and slow and dirty and just terrible in London.

If they were serious about changing people's behaviour and serious about trying to prevent congestion and/or pollution they'd price it so that it is a real deterrent to usage (so instead of £15, it would be like £250/day or something). But if they did that then no one would pay so they'd not get the revenue. So they price it just right so that people pay.

They say all the proceeds are ring-fenced for reinvestment etc etc. This is disingenuous - it's not like transport suddenly gets 125% extra funding, they just set the budgets so the "extra" they get from congestion charging and cameras etc tops-off the budgets so things balance out at ~100% of what they'd get anyway and the difference just used for other vanity projects by TfL.

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...)

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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

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.

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

Less GWB traffic going down the Turnpike as well, even on weekends. It was horrendous before the congestion pricing and now it's just ridiculous.

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...

> Evidence has mounted that the program so far is achieving its two main goals — reducing congestion

It's reducing congestion by removing the people who don't want to pay $9 to drive to town.

Paying to be there: what a lovely concept! It works wonders for reducing density, too. Fewer people live in a desirable area, and they are richer and more pleasant, what are the downsides?

Maybe it should not be linked to affordability; it should be a lottery, for fairness.

For instance, if your license plate ends with certain numbers or letters (changing daily, and known months in advance for any given day), you don't get to drive into town.

Knowing well in advance the days when your car is admissible into the city allows you to plan. E.g. reschedule certain appointments so they occur on an allowed day, or else make alternative transportation plans.

Imperfections in lottery systems:

- Not fair toward people who often have to drive to town for whatever reason: they drive everyday or many days out of the week or month. Still translates to an extra cost, like driving to some parking lot outside of the city core, paying for parking there, and then paying for transit into the city. This could be people who are not well off: they work some job in the city that is not well paid, and have to live far away. In America "have car" != "affluent".

- Unfair advantage enjoyed by people who own multiple vehicles; we have not entirely eliminated pay-to-drive-here.

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.

I was in traffic the past two days. Has something changed?

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

I think highly of the NYT, but this is a fan's article. At the top they say,

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?

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.

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.

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.