Time will tell but I feel like $15 max 1x/day is too low. Drivers are already likely paying other tolls, expensive monthly parking in Manhattan, gas. Another $15/day is not likely to change behavior.
It will definitely affect a lot of people around the margins. Right now, if you commute from North Jersey, you might pay $250 a month in bridge tolls, $600 a month for parking and another $100 for gas (I’m assuming you commute 20 days a month). This will add another 300 bringing your total from $750 a month to $1050. Many people will commute by car anyway, but that is not an insubstantial increase.
Another way you can phrase that is that the lion share of the tax will be on wealthy people, so it's a progressive tax.
I've seen conflicting studies - but in general I don't think poor people living around Manhattan have cars or are parking in Manhattan. Less than half of all people in NYC have cars.
> Another way you can phrase that is that the lion share of the tax will be on wealthy people, so it's a progressive tax.
Thats not what a progressive tax means. I understand that you mean poor and middle income will drive less therefor pay less tax. But consider this: would it be a progressive tax if we had a 100% income tax rate on 0-$30,000? Same scenario - poor people would stop making anything therefore not pay taxes yet clearly this is a regressive, not progressive tax, right?
That is not plainly not a progressive tax. The average rich person and the average poor person each seeing their taxes go up the same dollar amount is the definition of a regressive tax.
That comparison doesn't apply here. The average rich person will pay more taxes due to congestion taxes than the average poor person.
I realize the concerns about poor people if they have a car and continue to drive but poor people with a car in southern Manhattan are the exception. Parking already costs $15+ an hour there so it's really just commercial vehicles, tourists, cabs, and wealthy people. Not to mention the policy already has exceptions (admittedly, maybe annoying to file for) for those making under 50k
It’s definitely a toll on the middle class. They’re also the ones more likely to be driving in to Manhattan on a daily basis rather than living there compared to the über wealthy.
Middle class folks that work in the city don't drive from NJ into NY, and for the few that do, they should get on a train because it will save them money today and after this goes into effect.
If you're a firefighter or most kinds of laborers that bring tools to work, you're usually dealing with equipment and/or chemicals that are not safe or even permitted on the NYC subway.
Not true at all. There's literally videos from FDNY chiefs circulating on the NYC news shows complaining about this problem and how it affects them because they're mad about not being exempted.
If Firefighter gear is covered in PFAS, and highly carcinogenic, and you don't want them bringing it on the subway, why would you want them to bring it to their homes? The easy, obvious solution is to install safe storage at the fire departments so that the children of firefighters don't have to inhale carcinogens.
I am skeptical there is a sizable amount of low-income people that were driving into lower Manhattan on a daily basis. You cannot find daily parking in this area of Manhattan for less than $30 either way.
There are also exemptions for people who make less than $50,000 a year
It's not as progressive of a tax as a progressive income tax, but it is definitely a tax which will help coordinate behavior and will disproportionately be levied on the wealthy. If any policy that wasn't perfectly progressive could not be implemented, we couldn't have car registration fees, subway tolls, or sales taxes either.
I live in Brooklyn and there are times I want or need to leave the city to Jersey or PA. I'm not trying to park or even be in Manhattan but adding an extra hour or two to a trip to avoid Manhattan is costly. It already costs me close to $30 to leave and come back if I head west.
Also, I live in a low-income neighborhood 1 mile from Manhattan. Many people have cars and use them for work and family. Transit can really suck the further out you are.
I'm pro-transit and am not a giant fan of cars. I use mine for transporting my work as well as some trips. Using Uber would maybe save me money if it was only me travelling short distances and the driver doesn't mind me loading paintings or sculptures in their car or SUV.
I don't even know if I disagree with the law but it's not going to stop the less wealthy from bearing the brunt of this. To act as if driving into Manhattan is purely an act of entertainment or easy choice is missing a million elements. What if your older disabled relative lives in Manhattan and can't take transit? Uber will cost more than the $15 even one way. What if you're unable to take transit and just want to visit someone in Manhattan? This is not a tax on the rich as the rich are maybe 1 in 10.
People pay attention to explicit costs. Sometimes irrationally so. e.g. Sales of Tesla Model S cars were predicted to decrease with gas prices. Even though a $500/year swing in fuel cost does not meaningfully change total cost of ownership on a $70,000 car.
Does it though? The congestion is a "tragedy of the commons" problem. Being stuck in traffic sucks for everybody regardless of income.
If rich people pay enough to keep driving on the roads frequently, funds (and maybe even space for buses/rail) can be reclaimed to make transit that much better. The rich people pay for the privilege of driving and transit riders get better service, a win/win.
NYC can't solve income inequality in the US. It's pretty much globally true that everything is better for rich people, everywhere.
$600 for parking is maybe if you work on the northern end of Midtown and higher.
I've seen rate quotes in Chelsea/West Village (which is where you'd be parking if you work at say Google or any Disney subsidiary) anywhere from $1200-2200/mo.
London's congestion charge is £15 (about $18) and has largely been a success. I suspect there's a difference in PPP though, so the Manhattan charge is potentially less impactful
Do you have a source for this? London is not known as a poor city. In addition, some people in both cities are wealthy but a lot more are not. I doubt someone living in the South Brox or Far Rockaway can afford a $15/day charge.
I'm talking about people who already have the means to drive into midtown manhattan as is, with all the tolls and gas and monthly parking bills they're already going to pay. For these people I'm saying I do not see an extra $15 1x/day being a difference maker.
Right, but it's exactly the same in London. The only people who are regularly driving into central London are either professional drivers (taxis, delivery vans, etc), for whom the charge is just an operating expense, or they're very wealthy. Just parking in central London is going to cost you a lot more than the £15/day congestion charge.
In addition to the central congestion charging zone, London also has an additional £12.50 low-emission zone (ULEZ) charge targeted at older, higher-polluting vehicles. The ULEZ has now expanded to cover all of Greater London.
You forget that America is a car culture outside of NYC so a typical tourist coming to NYC for the day will likely just eat the cost and drive anyway. The geography of NYC is also very challenging. A lot of the public transportation options don't even cover places like Staten Island properly so people drive instead. There won't be much of a difference in traffic imo. Taking the train is already pretty expensive.
I've lived in both rich(ish) and poor(ish) areas of London over the years. Clapham, Fulham/West Brompton, and Maida Vale in the "rich" west. Whitechapel, Poplar, and the Isle of Dogs in the "poor" east.
It is my general observation that the "rich" areas suffer more from traffic congestion and pollution, because more people own cars and more of those cars tend to be giant diesel Range Rovers and such. In the east it seems like while there are still a lot of parked cars everywhere, people don't actually drive them around as much, choosing the bus/train/bike/feet more often for everyday travel.
Also worth remembering that even the "poor" parts of London are still pretty rich by overall UK standards.
Median rent is also 2x London’s. Median pay is less than 3x. That’s not even counting the rest of cost of living changes
It’ll only affect working class people who commute by driving for whatever reason. As usual the actual rich won’t care. The majority of NYers don’t even own a car. So it’s mostly tourists and people from outside the city (plus ride share/taxis) who are driving.
Very, very small. Roughly similar to taxing driving below Wall Street or something.
There's no clean comparison of Manhattan to a portion of London, but just in terms of land area it's about 10% of NYC, and in terms of population it's around 20% (so maybe divide each by half to get the impact of this new rule). More importantly, almost every way to enter or exit the city by car is covered by this new toll. That's definitely not true in the case of the CoL congestion tax.
London is 600 square miles and has numerous routes into and out of the city. Manhattan is 23, and is an island with a handful of bridges and tunnels.
As a percentage of the whole, the City of London is trivial, whereas this "congestion district" is about half of Manhattan (even more if you account for central park).
Fair enough. I also think London doesn't really have a culture of driving into it. I could drive into London but with the sprawl; likely inability to find suitable parking; traffic and congestion charge, I never would. It's quicker for me to get the train (living about 50mi West of London). Though trains are becoming more expensive and less reliable by the day.
It’s Manhattan below 60th, not all of Manhattan, so maybe half the island, and it doesn’t include the FDR. Most of the ways to get to Queens, Brooklyn or Staten Island by car won’t be affected — same for the Bronx obviously.
> Most of the ways to get to Queens, Brooklyn or Staten Island by car won’t be affected — same for the Bronx obviously.
That's incorrect. All of the bridges and tunnels other than GW and Randall's Island (RFK) enter or exit from this new zone. With this new plan, literally all of the ways to get to Manhattan by vehicle will now have a toll. Some will have two.
I suppose if you're willing to take the tiny bridges from the Bronx into Harlem you can still get around tolls, but good luck with that.
Not sure why you’re fighting this so hard, but: GW, Triboro, Whitestone, Throgs Neck, Goethals, Outerbridge, Holland Tunnel, Lincoln Tunnel. Only the last two land in the toll zone. So yes, “most,” and it’s not especially close.
I’m not counting the Brooklyn Bridge, etc, because I was replying to your “ways to enter the city.” The topic as I understood it was “will you pay this toll if your final destination isn’t Manhattan,” and the answer is “Not unless you’re coming from certain parts of New Jersey, and even then you’ve got choices.”
You’re right. It’s lower and midtown Manhattan. That said, it doesn’t include most of Manhattan let alone New York City.
The core question is what someone who won’t pay $15 and refuses to not drive into the city during its most congested hours is bringing to the table. That is harsh. But it is a trade-off a city must make with its limited resources.
The "rich person driving into the city" is a scapegoat. Get rid of those people (whom I absolutely do not care about taxing; it's fine, whatever), and the streets will still be crammed with the traffic supporting all the people who live here. And under this plan, those trucks, buses, taxis, etc. will be taxed to the tune of billions of dollars a year.
As someone who hasn't owned a car in well over a decade, but lives in NYC and pays for things here -- and yes, even takes the occasional taxi when the MTA sucks -- this is what I resent. Setting aside the corruption and incompetence of the MTA (which we should absolutely not set aside), this is little more than a regressive tax on the people who live here, dressed up like anti-car activism.
I'm unclear on how that's supposed to work, though. There are a lot of avenues crossing 61st. Are they going to put tolls on all of them?
I guess that could work, since it's all EZ-Pass anyway. But it does imply that there are going to be some people who take the Queensboro Bridge (paying the Central Business District Toll), but head to the Upper East Side. Then when they leave, they'll have to pay the toll to enter the CBD again to take the bridge home.
You are correct. Most people haven't looked at a London map too closely, so there is a limited understanding of what the City of London is.
> The City of London, London's ancient core and financial centre − an area of just 1.12 square miles (2.9 km2) and colloquially known as the Square Mile − retains boundaries that closely follow its medieval limits.
Greater London, in total, is larger than Los Angeles.
The city of London is irrelevant to this discussion. The London congestion charge covers a much larger area, roughly the same size as the one proposed in New York.
timr is not correct, he is confidently wrong even if he makes the same claim several times in the discussion.
> The London congestion charge covers a much larger area, roughly the same size as the one proposed in New York. timr is not correct, he is confidently wrong even if he makes the same claim several times in the discussion.
And you keep forgetting to say that London is 600 square miles, and Manhattan is about 20. They're also vastly different in terms of their connectivity to the outside world. The "London congestion area" is a tiny section of the middle of London. This covers almost every major ingress/egress into the island of Manhattan.
I'm not sure what's being debated here, but I just want to point out Manhattan is less than 20% of NYC's land area. And as you point out this is only about half of Manhattan. So 10% of the total city?
The issue was comparing the City of London to half of Manhattan, for purposes of comparison. I felt like some clarity on the sizing would be helpful. I think you're correct in the 10%. Also, I should have compared Half of Manhattan to the City of London, but I couldn't find a good illustration of that. Hopefully, the links are found to be useful.
Again, the City of London (1 sq mile) is not London and the UK has a rather convoluted municipal system. The comparable region would be a borough, like Manhattan.
I used the term Greater London to try to make the distinction. I failed you.
Since the toll and comparative congestion pricing are municipal concepts, the arbitrary sizes matter for the purposes of figuring out consequence. The post was not very illustrative, since I compared LA to London, as opposed to NYC to London. The greater LA area just happens to share arbitrary terminology to my choice of description, rather than specific relevancy.
I think they want the revenues more than they want to change behavior. They want it to be low enough to keep the cars and the tolls flowing, but high enough to generate revenue.
they should privatize like Japan did. setup the correct insentives like Japan did and it seems to work. train companies own hotels, malls, grocery stores, office building, and apartments at and near their stations. This creates a virtuous cycle where the better the train service the more people patronize their other services and visa versa
is round-trip bus or train fare into the city higher or lower than $15/day? it seems like if they can just make the car a higher marginal cost per day than transit, that should do a lot.
Yes, round-trip bus and train fare work out to lower than $15 per day by a pretty large margin. If you were to only go into the city and out via subway/train i.e. two rides a day it would work out closer to around $6 per day which is already lower than the $15 cost which also doesn't include cost of gas and parking making it likely much higher of a cost for cars. Of course many people take the train many more times than that per week but thats where OMNY comes in with a per week maximum cost for using transit.
If you use OMNY there is a max you can be charged per week. Essentially all rides are free after your 12th ride per 7 day period. Since the cost of a ride on busses or subway is $2.90 that works out to a max of ~$35 per week for unlimited rides all over the city via train or bus.
I don't live in NYC anymore, but when I did I could never imagine owning a car given the financial burden not being justifiable, but obviously those that do have one are likely in a much higher tax bracket than I am, or are going there for business purposes.
Thats true, there is a very large population of people who commute into the city from other areas where these same prices may not apply. But I still think the cost of parking alone would likely be larger than the cost of transit.
Where are you getting round trip tickets for $6/day from locations which would normally drive in?
Taking NJT one way is $6.75 for me. I also need to take a subway into the office (@$2.75/ride) to make it in on time so $19/day. One could buy a monthly pass at $184/mo or move to somewhere with PATH but for most people dropping $184/month is a lot of money for train tickets and most people who live in NJ need a car for life in NJ.
I don't think this is a good state of things. It would be great if we had plans to expand PATH or increase service times of NJT or build more housing next to NJT/PATH that normal people could afford but all of these seem very unlikely.
> and most people who live in NJ need a car for life in NJ
As someone who lives in NJ, I'd very much like to see this change. There's a ton of things within easy biking distance of my house, but no safe way to get there. Some decent bike infrastructure would go a long way.
You are correct, I was talking about people who live in the city whereas most who may consider a car don't. But I literally did know a few people who lived in the city and drove a car.
I do still think that for most others near public transit it would still net less costly to use that than to drive given cost of parking and gas on top of these new fees.
Driving is already likely a lot more expensive, so yeah I'm suggesting that if drivers have already made that decision as is I don't see another $15/day being a huge difference maker.
Monthly garage parking in midtown is like $800/month.
It’s like $5.80 (2.90 each way iirc) assuming you don’t have to leave one station to get to another. As long as you’re behind the turnstiles you don’t have to pay again (for trains)
So one of the big things this will do is encourage mass transit from the eastern new york / Manhattan river crossings. It has never been (and will continue to not be) a level playing field for commuters. Coming in from Brooklyn or Queens there are a lot of commuters that drive into lower Manhattan which until now was entirely un-tolled. This, combined with the rebate for people taking the existing tolled entrances will be a first step in equity.
People normally react with disgust, not rational calculation, to tolls. They'll drive in ways that not only discounts any value to their time, bu lt also in ways where the additional mileage costs more than the toll they're avoiding.
So, give it a chance and then ratchet up. $15 would certainly upset me.
