[clay_the_ripper]

I disagree. Pretty much any economist will tell you that the best way to reduce consumption of a good is to increase its price.

By implementing congestion charges only those with a good enough reason to drive will do so, and give an incentive to use alternatives.

Will this disproportionally affect people with less money? Yeah, in the same way that everything that gets more expensive affects people with less money. People with less money have less of it to spend on things. They are now incentivized to find alternatives, creating demand for alternatives, therefore creating supply of alternatives.

If people still decide they want to burn more of their money driving, they are welcome to do so. No one is telling anyone how to spend their money. We are simply adjusting the price of a good to price in things that aren’t taken into account (traffic).

People arguing that congestion charges dispropropprtioanlly affect the poor often also support pricing in the true cost of other things, like carbon emissions and plastic bags. Are you saying you wouldn’t support a tax on plastic? Or emissions? Cap and trade? Those things also increase the prices of things we want to discourage the consumption of and also probably affect people with lower incomes disproportiaonately. You can’t have it both ways.

[btrettel]

> They are now incentivized to find alternatives, creating demand for alternatives, therefore creating supply of alternatives.

As a cyclist, I'm interested in how much congestion pricing (and related ideas like eliminating free parking) would promote cycling.

For a while when I lived in the DC area, I would use a paid bike parking service. I parked in a parking garage that charged something like $10/day for car parking. If I recall correctly, I ended up paying $0.53/day, which seemed very fair to me. I wouldn't mind more paid bike parking if it were good quality like this was. I didn't have to worry about theft. I parked in a cage that took up roughly 5 car parking spots, yet could fit roughly an order of magnitude more bikes.

[int_19h]

> Will this disproportionally affect people with less money? Yeah, in the same way that everything that gets more expensive affects people with less money. People with less money have less of it to spend on things. They are now incentivized to find alternatives, creating demand for alternatives, therefore creating supply of alternatives.

This is all very well in the abstract, but what exactly are those people supposed to do in the meantime - you know, while the public transit that they demand actually gets built?

[clay_the_ripper]

True enough. I think the point here is to reduce that marginal car. When the decision is to drive or not drive and there is a viable alternative (which in NY there is, unlike, say LA), then this takes that marginal car off the road when people say, ah screw it its not worth the extra couple bucks.

[jakelarkin]

Congestion pricing is great, but I am pointing out the underlying politics, its just being used to prolong the car first status quo in these cities. theres not really an earnest follow through for road/parking diets, protected bike lanes and 2x, 3x public transit that are actually needed.