Well well well

Outstanding move on NYC's part.

Prior to this going live there was a lot of talk about how congestion will simply move from one place to another. I don't know new york so can't name places but it was regarding commuters using a street or bridge that is now under congestion charge so they will flow an alternative route through roads that aren't designed for the additional traffic.
Is that now the case?
- Some people may be inclined to go up and over Central Park to get to the other side without paying the $9. That likely only affects uptown residents. I can’t imagine anyone driving around the park from midtown to avoid the fee.
  The only legitimate concerns I’ve read are from contractors with tools and small businesses who deliver. They should be offered exceptions if walking or mass transit are unrealistic options. You’re not riding the subway with acetylene tanks or delivering fresh meat on Metro North. Other than that, I love it.
- Of all the things on Reddit, I miss remindmebot the most. They tried to kill it numerous times but it survived like a roach in radiation. On lemmy, I find an interesting question and have to set a timer for myself. This is the most first-world of problems, but I’m still moderately upset every time
- The other location would be the Subways and buses in this case. I went home at 5 yesterday, right in the heart of rush hour, and it seemed like a normally packed subway not an especially congested one.
- Unsure, I don't live in NYC. However, I can say that this will encourage many more people to take transit, which is good. Plus, I don't doubt that the tolled routes will still see active use by millions as they're still the fastest way to and from work.

inb4 the supreme court rules that congestion charging is unconstitutional and furthermore that public transport, too, is unconstitutional.

Congestion pricing bad, private tolls good
- Thanks Lars.
If the founding fathers didn’t explicitly mention it in the Constitution then clearly it’s unconstitutional.
- Pooping is unconstitutional.
- Strangely, they did mention it!
Exhaust Now Vents Directly Into Cab: EPA says, "For your health!"
"Ladies and gentleman of the committee, I put it to you: thousands, perhaps millions, of American songwriters have written about missing their truck. How many have written about missing the bus? I rest my case."
- Counterpoint, "the wheels on the bus in fact, go round and round."
- I'd like to enter into evidence "skankin pickle" CW:ska https://youtu.be/FBtFbxhpmfc?si=6MBEF0r13GjUTprz

As long as that money is spent on public transit improvements, I think it's a great idea for many large cities.

Sorry best we can do is 80% to the police department.
But we need more cops
- And those cops need tanks.
Yeah, that's how we do it in Oslo. The road tolls mostly go towards funding transit and investments in bike and foot infra.

Nice. Now cars are only for the rich like they should be.

Real solution: Ban cars in parts of NYC.

Right because everyone needing a car means everyone who can't afford one just automatically gets one.
Step one of reducing car-dependency is to reduce their number on the road. Then you can start bulding shit that accommodates the poor through actually nice-to-use public transit, bicycle paths, and walking routes.
Charge the rich. Build for the poor. Better yet, charge the rich, build for everyone. Not just cars. Because not everyone has cars.
Like FFS "good job now the poor can't drive" is hardly a comeback when it's like the most expensive mode of transit, massively subsidized with taxpayer money, just to kind of make it work. It wasn't something that could be made affordable or even efficient enough for everyone to use on a daily basis to begin with.
- Zippity zoppity let's redistribute some property
- Step one of reducing car-dependency is to reduce their number on the road. Then you can start bulding shit that accommodates the poor through actually nice-to-use public transit, bicycle paths, and walking routes.
  Why can't you start building shit before reducing their numbers? I don't see what one has to do with the other.
- A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation.
  Gustavo Petro, current president of Colombia, former mayor of Bogota
- I feel like what this good intentioned quote misses is that the poor are priced out of the city core entirely and pushed into banlieus
Now cars are only for the rich
More that roads are for high occupancy or professional vehicles - buses, ambulances, construction vehicles, commercial trucks - that still need access to Manhattan but can't be placed on a train.
- Buses --> tram
  Ambulances --> single lane road/biking path
  Construction vehicles, commercial trucks --> single lane road
  Problem solved, no need for cars inside the city
- What does that have to do with the OP?
Banning cars actually works really well if you can prepare parking spaces or fully focus public transport
Source: Taksim Street
- Please elaborate the "if you can prepare parking spaces" part.
True wealth is not needing to drive a car at all.

See the Congestion Pricing Tracker for day by day measurements of the impact on congestion.

This is an incredible resource. Love stuff like this And I pin this comment if I had that power.

This is great, should be implemented in all cities. Most people who can use public transport should.

In SF they allocated some extra carpool lanes (taken from the total number of highway lanes) and started calling them "express lanes" instead of carpool lanes. Everybody cheered-- because transit hipstering is a great thing for the people who it actually works well for in our mediocre system. I guess everytone else is SOL. In SF it started out that you could still use them for free if you had 2 people in the car. Now its 3 people minimum to ride free, and the prices crept higher. Now you'll very often see all non-express lanes stopped with traffic but the price for express lanes high and the express lanes clear of traffic-- that road throughput capacity underused. Its become a rich persons lane, at the cost of reducing capacity of the total system. When it got put in they said the max would be $8.00, shortly after they doubled that, with no max per day. Fees rack up since they charge over short distances. Now I've started seeing express lanes on main thoroughfares that arent highways.
Theres a patchwork of diconnected and not well thought out transit systems, with little hope of retrenching them to have usable coverage like NYC has. You'll end up using an uber or taxi to get to your final destination most of the time, and parking at transit stations is difficult, time consuming, and expensive.
This is not the solution you think it is. It just makes things better for the rich, and does nothing for the poor and middle class. This is like the "clear" lane at the airport security. Once its in, its not going away. Pricing is not in the control of people who have your best interests at heart. If you're poor, your time is not worth as much as a rich persons. They are commoditizing the hours of your life and many of you cheer for it. Without progressive pricing for this you're just getting fleeced.
The funds created arent going toward new projects . They are used for road maintenance, enforcement, and debt repayment in the county where the road is This simply frees up general funds that had been used for that before these went in, so no direct benefit in terms of transit projects is mandated.
- As I understand it, poor and middle class people are already taking public transit. It's the rich people who are driving in New York. This is making it easier for deliveries, taxis, buses, and emergency vehicles to get through by getting all of the entitled rich people off the road.
- As someone who takes public transit into SF every work day. It exists. It works. It's faster than driving

We've been seeing a lot of anecdotal posting on Xitter of people who were skeptics or in opposition to this suddenly realizing that they just gained an hour or more per day because the traffic has been significantly reduced. So even some regular people (i.e. not the wealthy) who have to drive in NYC because of their job are realizing that there's a cost benefit even if they do pay for the congestion pricing.

Less cars is the answer! And in what transit is concerned I would say that convenience is very important. Like in Netherlands they got bike locking stations. Not simply a tube that you lock your bike into which is screwed to the front door of a building and fits 3 bikes. I'm talking massive building with an automated system that keeps your bike secure for when you get out of work after the train ride. And restrooms... With cleaning.

Can anybody tell me how much a drive through the congestion priced road would cost? Like a straight line?

It's not so much a congestion prices road, it's a zone. So anytime you enter that zone you pay $9 unless you make less than like $60 k then it's like $4-5, and emergency vehicles are free.
- That sounds pretty reasonable actually.
$9 for cars, no matter if you go one block in or all the way through. And no daily charge for staying there multiple days, only charged when you enter.
- That’s super reasonable, and if it actually helps it’s probably fantastic. I wonder if things like emergency response times will significantly improve as a result.
- Could they make it more expensive for cars that enter the zone once and drive around all day (Uber)
- Kinda unfair tbh
It's like $9

Does anyone have a good before screenshot of the same map view / area? I want to stitch together a before shot before I share so that people not from the area can get an idea of the change and not just immediately think "oh well my small town has traffic and it looks like that so what's the big deal"

not exactly but with Google Maps you can setup a route with a start time set in the past and look at the congestion at that moment:
- Gotcha, I found that on desktop you can do "average traffic" for a day of the week and time for the whole map without putting in a destination so I picked an average Monday at 5:30:
- Lmfao, that's the same distance as my commute to work, and I can bike that in 17-20 minutes
- Half an hour to cross that bridge isn't even that bad.
Make sure you compare apples to apples. The day that images was taken may have been the snowstorm... No one was going to drive in anyhow.

Regressive tax. Yet another kick in the face of the lower class. Why not a progressive tax based on personal income? It works pretty well for speeding tickets in northern Europe.

I'm all for reducing traffic, but yeah, how is this not at least partially regressive? Folks who can only afford to live in New Jersey but then have to work in NYC now have yet another new expense.
But maybe I'm not aware of just how ubiquitous subway stations are in New Jersey that go into NYC. Would it be an easy transition?
- It's my understanding that poor people in NYC already take public transit. It's just the rich people who drive.
  Besides, less traffic in NYC probably means cheaper parking, so people who have to drive will probably see their cost unchanged.
- Looks like a significant chunk of the New Jersey riverside on the Hudson is basically just NYC public transit.
This tax hits the rich more, which is good. Now there is more tax money to help the poor. Stop Advocating for making the rich richer

Fixing traffic by... discouraging people from driving, lol. Well I'm not complaining.

Now do the Van Wyck. Disincentivizing cabs, livery, rideshare, car service, whatever else constantly clogs that that few miles of road that takes 25-30 minutes could be done in five.

Hilarious, a move that was proven to work in Istanbul was avoided... Because..?

Republicans.
- According to NPR the other day, apparently NJ's (Democrat) Governor Murphy is against it. I'm not exactly sure why (I missed that part). It may have had something to do with revenue sharing, and NJ taking in much less than they did before?
  I don't know and not sure if I care enough to look into it... But yeah, apparently not just Republicans.
What move?
Widening roads makes money and adds more cars that also makes more money. If you fix the problem, how are you gonna keep milking it?
Your silly trains, busses and bikes aren't going to pay for the yacht.

I mean you're just making efficient transportation something that wealthy people can just buy...

Private vehicles aren't efficient, they're convenient.
- All those green lines aren't supposed to be an example of efficient transportation? Is that not exactly what the author is trying to convey?
- Your comment presumes that everyone has access to public transit that suits their needs. Many people do not.

Good.

This one was taken at 10:30 AM Eastern Time if that helps.

Sam from Wendover did a very good job explaining why Congestion Pricing is the best solution to address this particular problem, including arguments on why this is not a regressive tax when you analyze it closely.

Canonical YouTube link so you can use your favorite Invidious/Piped instance https://youtu.be/B2j-LgcA7Gk

And same on nebula: https://nebula.tv/videos/wendover-the-battle-over-nyc-congestion-pricing/

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know the average fare of getting from NJ to NYC by train?

Hoboken to Manhattan on the PATH is 2.75$.
- Hoboken
  Isn't that a street fighter move?
- For real? I didn't know it was that cheap...
Depends on where you're starting from. From my town, it's about $8.50 each way to/from Penn Station, and it's usually a 35-40m ride (edit: assuming NJTransit is on time, lol), with roughly hourly trains on weekdays and every 2h (plus a transfer) on weekends.
If you're starting from down in (e.g.) Princeton, though, it's going to be more like $19.
- Is there some kind of monthly transit pass you can buy to make it cheaper overall for regular users?
- My tiny rural japanese train has hourly trains (and like 6 running about 10min apart during rush hour). That's nuts to me.

What's the situation in NYC with regards to the Return to Office bullshit? Surely this development will give clear heads another logical argument for continued working from home, right?

Wonderful news for people with porches or flexible schedules.

Hey! I'm woahkin hee-ah!

Is this the least full Times Square has been after COVID? Cam