Even Michael Bloomberg is in favor of NYC congestion pricing

This is a good, and quite common, question regarding congestion pricing. The fact of the matter is those with less means often cannot afford a car. It's usually not their car if they're driving into a city (e.g. a work truck).

But let's say we have low-income people who do have a car and need to drive for whatever reason. There's programs for that. Two of them.

• If you're a low-income car owner, you get reduced congestion pricing. It's 50% off the normal fare. They can drive in and pay less than affluent drivers.
• If you're low-income, you would qualify for the Fair Fares program. It too is 50% off for subways and busses. That prices trips to well below the cost of fueling a car into NYC.

Congestion pricing is also funneling money into metro services, meaning the affluent drivers are actually making low-income access to transportation cheaper while also improving reliability and service levels to those riding transit.

Low-income residents stand to win the most with congestion pricing. Personally, I would focus more on how to better help businesses with legitimate car needs, like dog groomers, mobile mechanics, delivery workers, etc. For example, zero fare for businesses licenses at nighttime periods (to encourage shifting delivery schedules). Programs like that could help small business, which in turn helps boost the income of low-income employees.

Poor people don't drive into Manhattan, they take transit. Congestion pricing hugely benefits them by decongesting the streets making buses run more efficiently, along with providing revenue to invest more into a better transit system.

It is a very dense urban city with a robust transit system where drivers are almost always wealthier. There are also a lot of drivers coming from New Jersey who are using but not paying for the roads. In addition to reducing car traffic, the congestion pricing is also funding transit improvements/expansions and has significantly reduced the number of car crashes already.

Your point may hold for a sprawling suburb where everybody is forced to own a car. However, in New York a car is a luxury that the majority of people do not own.

As someone who lived in Chicago and sold his car - it’s probably just as fast or faster to take public transit. Outside of medical reasons, nearly no one needs to take a car anywhere in Manhattan unless you’re leaving the city. It’s highly unlikely those with less means are taking a car in the first place.

AFAIK, it only applies to a relatively small section of Manhattan, in which traffic makes driving fairly difficult anyway, and most less well off people take public transit. I have heard people from new jersey who have to drive in complaining about it though. It does may be somewhat regressive.

What it is certainly not is whatever people on the right are trying to call it. I might be wrong about any of this though, I'm not a new yorker.

I would think it could be best implemented as a progressive fine based on income. You love to hear about rich people getting a 100k speeding ticket in a Lamborghini in northern Europe.