Ahh New York, let me tell you how Californians get around this without needing a “fake plate”:
* just take it off completely, who’s checking?
* thick black plastic license plate cover. Everybody’s got them.
* front plate optional!
* buy one of those “digital” license plates and just set it to show the car logo instead of ID. Teslas do it!
I’m just kidding by the way, California really needs to fix this problem too. The punishment for fake plates needs to be having the plate number ground on to your roof or something else permanent and embarrassing. Maybe welding a transponder to your engine block.
From what I've seen on twitter, all of these things are already present in New York, especially among the openly corrupt placard class, the people who purchase traffic law immunity from the NYPD.
Not that anyone was enforcing traffic or parking violations in the city anyway. They have a citizen reporting system, and many violations get marked "Completed" within minutes, despite nothing ever being done about it.
I feel I should point out that California has been installing license plate readers and using them for bulk surveillance databases for a long time.
A bit over a decade ago, I counted two to four such mandatory checkpoints on my commute depending on the route I took. So, somewhere in a government database, they have a log of when I went to and returned from work that year.
I’ve heard such databases go back decades and are widely used to blackmail politicians in the DC area. (Source, a rando that had had a few drinks claimed to work for the state dept. Even if they were full of it, the capability exists.)
"...$2.50 that will be charged to vehicles from ride-hailing platforms such as Uber..." One simple trick can save you $12.50.
NYC is out of control with taxes and regulations, but...
When I lived downtown, each morning, the glass of water on my nightstand would have a little oil slick of sorts atop it. When everything was shut down at the start of the pandemic, the constant stream of vehicles stopped. My water was then clean in the morning and the sticky feeling I'd get on my hands after a walk through the neighborhood stopped too.
I think some people are totally nuts for how much they hate cars. It's as if they don't understand life beyond the island. But it would be nice to reduce pollution there.
I doubt they will remove the tax if the day comes where all cars are electric.
> I think some people are totally nuts for how much they hate cars. It's as if they don't understand life beyond the island. But it would be nice to reduce pollution there.
Manhattan tbh does not need passenger cars at the scale it has. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to say, if you wanna come here leave your car outside of the city?
When those people start paying NYC income tax (which tops at around 4% of income) then I think we should cater more to them BUT they don't. The people who actually in the city and actually have to pay that tax should have their city catered to their likes. No one forces those people to work in NYC an no one forces them to drive. The vast majority of commuters outside of NYC take public transportation. People can either pay the toll or take public transportation.
We in NJ who work in NY already pay income taxes to NY state even if we don't reside in the boroughs.
Instead of charging me $15 more to visit, go have Adams ask Hotchul for money if you want to reach further into my pocket.
But you can't, because NYC can't elect competent representatives. De Blasio, really? Adams' recent scandal? Just have someone who can negotiate with their own goddamn party.
This seems like a great start, but unfortunately it will likely be so lucrative, it will make it even less politically acceptable to further reduce/ban cars in the future.
Because cars/parking still take up far to much space in dense city centers, making them more loud, dirty and dangerous than they would be without (most) cars.
No you’re right people rave about the car centric design of Los Angeles and it’s very efficient. Phoenix is a bastion of free movement and doesn’t demand everyone own a vehicle.
The public very much enjoys the convenience and speed of well funded public transit. Even if they don’t always enjoy the actual process if it isn’t well kept and clean.
Just like how lottery is supposed to increase funding for schools but the amount thay got brought in due to lottery was then subtracted from other sources so it was a wash.
I'm assuming this is going to be the same thing unless it's earmarked for public transportation by law instead of going into a general fund. Just like gas tax and car tabs in other states that goes to "fixing the roads by people that use it the most".
Congestion charges are not primarily about money. The desired effect is discouraging people from driving there. The income is a nice side effect, but not the goal.
If it was about discouraging why not total ban of all non-emergency vehicles? Or maybe allow busses and trucks, but absolutely nothing else? That would solve problem much more effectively.
Or maybe first come first serve system. If too many vehicles are inside border new ones have to wait until one leaves?
It is just another killing the hen attempt to desperately cover NYC fiscal sinkhole. And bunch of people who celebrate this just have little understanding about NYC's traffic pattern.
I did not know any people in NYC go to Manhattan using personal cars more than 5 times a year. Almost all people driving there have to drive there for the business reasons. And if they have to pay the tax it is just falls on all the people using the city's services, regardless if you drive or not. Also because of this, it will not improve the air quality because they still have to drive, and to send vital goods, providing service to the people never drives in the city. So the net effect is using tax payer's money to fund disastrous city fiscal condition which the result of corruption. BTW, we all know wandering Uber/Lyft cars are the most polluting factor these years, but the city does not want to do anything about it.
Let me know when the congestion toll is actually being applied. How long ago did Congress approve of removing DST? (we still have DST) I feel like I've read these "NYC approves of congestion tolls" articles 10 times in the past 4 years. Constant deja vu
If the issue is primarily the presence of the vehicles themselves, it makes sense that larger vehicles take more space and cause more congestion.
If “congestion” also factors in pedestrians, then those larger vehicles are increasing congestion at a higher rate than smaller vehicles, both in terms of space taken by the vehicle, and number of humans entering the area.
I get what you’re saying, but I think there are a number of ways to make it make sense depending on what behavior they’re trying to alter.
The problem they are addressing is the MTA not having enough money. The solution is finding a politically acceptable way to address that. They’ve already raised subway fares.
If you want to maximize passengers per 'vehicle space' this is the pricing you use. While the van costs more, the per-passenger price is less at capacity. The only other option is to charge based on actual passenger count (with the price being lower per-passenger as you have more passengers).
If they were to charge less for larger vehicles, people would buy larger vehicles just for carting themselves around regardless of number of passengers, which would increase overall congestion.
They should charge like $100 / number of passengers, with cheaper exceptions for very small cars and motorbikes. Then if you fill a four passenger car, it’s only $25 for the car, but a dude in a sports car by himself pays the full charge. Busses and bigger vans are pretty much free. Delivery vehicles can afford to pay the full cost of doing business. Even better if you charge by car class, so larger vehicles are more expensive.
The infrastructure to count passengers would be either a security nightmare because of the surveillance requirements or a inefficient mess where you have to stop for some person to manually see how many people are in the car.
Fwiw,
California's new toll expressways do this - counts people in the car at speed, and charges different rates based on that - so the technology already exists.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, they require toll transponders, some having a switch saying whether you have one, two, or three or more occupants. I don’t know how they would catch cheaters, if at all.
Edit: Apparently the highway patrol is notified of carpools they should watch in passing.
California's system only cares about 1, 2, or 3+ passengers. The counting is primarily done with a transponder that is set by the driver (and a display is shown so the highway patrol can catch violators). At toll booths, they also snap photographs from the sides to catch violators. It is not only far from perfect, but wouldn't be useful if you actually need to know the exact number of passengers in (say) a van or bus.
In London, we have a inner congestion zone, which is surrounded by a ultra low emission zone. The low emission zone only requires your car to be a few years old, though it has a bigger impact on vans and lorries.
You seem oblivious to the irony here—owning a car already puts you in the upper tier of wealth in the world.
Talking about Manhattan specifically, this is already about the most expensive place in the world and the only place in the US with this scheme in place, adding more traffic isn’t going to change that so no point in using it as an example of anything.
Plenty of countries that are not so car dependent have pedestrian zones in less affluent cities.
In my country millions of poor people drive 18 years old cars with average resale value of 500 USD. Maybe that's still a lot compared to people who starve in Africa, but we are not in Africa.
Something of a Simpson's paradox there that one of the boroughs with some of the country's wealthiest households (Chelsea), maintains one of the lower levels of car ownership (35%).
Petrol cars that meet the ULEZ standards are generally those first registered as new with the DVLA after 2005, although cars that meet the standards have been available since 2001
Diesel cars that meet the standards are generally those first registered with the DVLA as new after September 2015
That's not my experience in London tbh; you can get away with a 7 year old diesel car, for example. Also, this is being done where the public transport is second to none, so everyone has an option for local transport 20 hours or so a day.
Yes, this is literally what they’re achieving. It’s incredible that so many people on here don’t see it, but my guess is cause they’ve never actually looked into the people they’re displacing and negatively affecting.
Aaron Gordon over at Vice says that NYC is going to screw up congestion pricing due to these capital projects that aren't going to be realized for years and it's basically a way to make money plus make up the debt load in the short term. https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy343y/new-york-city-is-abou...
For those wanting to get from Long Island to points west without paying the extra toll… Good luck on those already congested Bronx and Staten Island highways.
Keep an eye on this, because this will do nothing to lower congestion in NYC. It's purely a money grab.
The drop in traffic that experts are expecting already happened during the Bloomberg administration, when they made most areas in Lower and Midtown Manhattan "no parking" zones, and jacked up the taxes on parking garages.
No one drives into Manhattan unless they have to, and congestion pricing won't change the situation for those people who don't have a choice.
You know what else would help with congestion? Not devoting entire lanes of half the roads to people still living in March 2020 who want to go to restaurants but not actually have to go inside the restaurants.
With those prices, why not just turn Manhattan into an amusement park? Looks like Disney won't be competition for much longer, so now is the time for action.
As a Manhattan resident, I’m excited. There should be at least one city in the USA built for people instead of cars. I understand it’s not for everybody, but 75% of the residential space in the county is only zoned for insipid, paved single-family home suburban hellscapes. Leave one city for people who want a European-style walkable city.
NYC is very car centric. Just because you don't need a car to go see your friends or run errands doesn't change that. The streets are lined with cars, sometimes double parked, and collisions with pedestrians are plentiful.
You must be joking. Since tyrant Robert Moses, NYC is undeniably built for cars. Maybe if anything had changed since then you would have a point, but the fact is American society is wholly incapable of even maintaining, much leas building, public infrastructure due to its demented obsession with privatization and profit, so NYC's transit system is a clusterfuck of rot and in no way something to be proud of.
>public infrastructure due to its demented obsession with privatization and profit
It's not privatisation that created laws forcing a minimum number of parking spaces. You can bet if there were no zoning laws or mandatory parking space requirements US cities would be a lot more walkable, like Asian cities.
>It's not privatisation that created laws forcing a minimum number of parking spaces.
It is privatization that renders the government only capable of punitive solutions (regressive fees, etc.) rather than constructive ones (public infrastructure upgrades, etc.). Realize the revenue from these fees will be 99% laundered and swallowed up by private contractors. That ink is already dry.
>You can bet if there were no zoning laws or mandatory parking space requirements
Nonsense. This is the demented obsession I described above. You aren't making any sense at all. Working people aren't lobbying for parking space requirements; petty business owners are.
No, it's a scam that will backfire and ultimately end in regression. You can't just get rid of cars. You have to replace them with something. Working people will feel the pain of this because the trains are already way too overcrowded.
Punitive measures in the absence of constructive measures will absolutely fail. This isn't complicated.
This would be a more reasonable argument if we were talking about a city like Dallas. Manhattan is one the most transit oriented cities in the US. Bus, ferry, and train service already exist. All that require would be an increase in frequency as people leave their cars.
The growth of fines, licenses and taxes in the USA is substantial over the last 100 years.
Very few things do not require fees these days (even visiting public lands).
It seems we have dialed down corporate taxes and taxes on the extremely wealthy. In their place (because these things don't pay for themselves) we have shifted the tax burden elsewhere.
If I don't go to National Parks why should my taxes pay for them? Make the visitors pay to enter.
Now that's some gaslighting there. Congestion as in there is too many poor entering the Manhattan, so they set the fee so only those who can afford $15 can enter.
If it was about actual congestion then the fee would be proportional to one's affluence, otherwise the rich will just come in as if nothing was imposed.
I'm sorry but this isn't indicative of the reality of driving in NYC. If you drive into NYC, you will have to park. When you park you'll need to pay for a lot or a garage. Daily parking in NYC can cost $50-100, monthly subscriptions can easily run over $500. Even if the unlikely happens and you find a parking meter those are $10 an hour. Poor people aren't driving into NYC, they're commuting on trains like everyone else. It should also be noted the congestion fee is for driving into Manhattan, not around.
Not sure how this is relevant. There is a point where $100+$15 is too much and simply people can't afford more than that.
So this is about pricing people out of coming in. It doesn't matter WHY they need to be there. If you have no money? GTFO.
Then if you say this has nothing to do with the poverty, then in that case, how is it going to reduce the congestion?
"Congestion as in there is too many poor entering the Manhattan, so they set the fee so only those who can afford $15 can enter."
You said that will adversely affect the poor but that's not true, what poor person is spending $100 a day on parking? Poor people use trains like nearly everyone else does. The extra $15 will discourage people from making unnecessary trips into the city thus reducing traffic/congestion and improving quality of life for people who live in the city.
For instance if someone live in Brooklyn and needs to make a trip to lower Manhattan they'll be more likely to use public transportation.
Poverty is relative. Someone may be compensated well enough to afford rent, parking and all that, but after paying everything they have little money left for themselves. That $15 may eat into this meaning you may reconsider whatever arrangement you have - effectively pricing you out.
> The extra $15 will discourage people from making unnecessary trips into the city thus reducing traffic/congestion and improving quality of life for people who live in the city.
How is that going to do that? If someone is affluent, I don't think they are going to think twice about spending $15 extra. It will discourage people who cannot afford it.
> For instance if someone live in Brooklyn and needs to make a trip to lower Manhattan they'll be more likely to use public transportation.
Yes, people who can't afford spending $15. Anyone else will continue as they do, as private transport is safer, quicker and more convenient - plus there will be better traffic, as the poor will be taken off the road.
> Yes, people who can't afford spending $15. Anyone else will continue as they do, as private transport is safer, quicker and more convenient - plus there will be better traffic, as the poor will be taken off the road.
This isn't true most of the time is quicker to take public transportation due to the congestion issues. Cars don't scale.
> How is that going to do that? If someone is affluent, I don't think they are going to think twice about spending $15 extra. It will discourage people who cannot afford it.
Yes the point is to discourage people from driving into Lower Manhattan. Lower Manhattan is easily accessible by public transportation.
> Poverty is relative. Someone may be compensated well enough to afford rent, parking and all that, but after paying everything they have little money left for themselves. That $15 may eat into this meaning you may reconsider whatever arrangement you have - effectively pricing you out.
The poverty rate for NYC is $35,000 if someone can afford to pay $24,000 yearly in parking I doubt they're in poverty, especially when public transportation is available and is quicker due to the high congestion. This wouldn't be implemented if there wasn't an alternative.
If you know who parks there, they are either at least earning > 2M annually who likely to be benefit from such pricing (gods know who will receive the contract that city awarded from the revenue of congestion pricing), or they are the people has to conduct services in the city. These cost just is going to added the money to normal people like you (assume you are not not owning a penthouse in Manhattan).
This simply isn't true, where is there free parking in Lower Manhattan, on a day other than Sunday? And also you're telling me the poor people are small business owners in NYC?
Out of all of parking in Lower Manhattan maybe 5% is free. And it's still very difficult to get that parking.
It sounds like you’ve never tried to park downtown. I drove, lived and parked daily for free in Manhattan for 6 years
The entire length of Manhattan from below 14th street/above Houston on every single street has free street parking as long as you can comply with the 1.5 hours twice a week that you can not park there. It’s a few choice streets and aves that are the exception to this.
Business owners and employees park in those spots daily because street cleaning hours take place typically before 11AM, so they just drive in and hang out for 10 mins before getting free parking all day.
Ya buddy, go run the numbers on a wash and fold service or any small business with 6-7% cash on cash returns and lmk how much is left at the end of the month to pay $450 for congestion fees.
Why not just run daily lottery in previous day? With non-transferable licenses to enter. Win one and you get in, don't win one and you are barred from entering?
we can either "just" have ppl pay $15, a nice simple free market solution that doesn't limit anyone.
or we can run a daily lottery and create a port of call just outside NYC for people to wait until they win the daily lottery. and administer the daily lottery. and somehow communicate daily to the winners. and really set a hard cap on entrants.
"just" does seem to apply to one of those options to me, but not the second
Because 15 is clearly unfair price for the poor people. This only benefit the rich who already are cause for majority of emissions. Lottery is absolutely fair for everyone.
OCR at borders would be easy to implement. Just have a gate and diversion lines back to where car entering came from. And simple online sing-up system and rng run every night is extremely simple software project.
Or if car without daily lottery tickets enters without permission, just make it so that it is permanently forfeit and destroyed. Thus removing it's future emissions.
I grew up poor -- thank you FAANG, am not anymore -- but sometimes I still feel the same icky anger I used to feel when people would make abstract arguments that presumed being poor is pure destitution, just to keep things interesting for some argument.
Ya, you just described any low margin business in downtown Manhattan. Maybe they can “afford” it but swiping $450/month from them is bs when they’re literally running the city.
When you frame it that was ($450/month) I'm more amenable, but then I check myself: am I reacting emotionally to "low margin" and the bitterness, and maybe I'm just amenable to that?
Double checking myself, the person we're looking for:
- [works at / owns] a low margin business in downtown
manhattan
- has a car
- needs their car in Manhattan
- has to take their car out of Manhattan at some point
- can afford to wait N days to enter Manhattan
Looking at that...yeah I do still think that's a null set.
If you're gesturing at the more general "it sucks people gotta pay $450/month", yeah, I can imagine this being a substantial addition to a pizza place's budget if they were relying on workers driving their own cars in from Queens.
Yeah, no. Your solution is significantly more complicated. A $15 surcharge to enter the richest and most congested area of NYC is hardly an unfair tax on the poor. By your logic, charging for any parking in any city is an unfair tax on the poor.
I still don't see what is wrong, it prevents congestion, it is fair and equal for everyone. And if they can charge based on license number, it is no more difficult to implement.
Isn't the goal here to have less cars in the zone? Thus goal is preventing them from entering. And giving everyone equal chance to win right of entry is fairest model.
Shooting and killing a random 1% of drivers every day would also prevent congestion, and is fair and equal to everyone. There are other considerations though.
China has an odd-even solution to this - on even days, cars with even numbered plates can drive in the city and the same for odd days. They did this for gasoline rationing in the US back in the 70's as well.
It seems to me that NYC has really decided they want to collapse and aren't imploding fast enough.
There is no sane reason to deliberately devalue an urban core like this. They already face property tax collapse due to an occupancy crisis. It'll be like Gary, Indiana (just east of me) before you know it.
If they want to encourage use of mass transit, they should to address that issue directly, rather than this self-sabotage.
This will actually make living here more attractive. Most people who actually live in the city do not drive, we take public transportation. I don't want to sound condescending but we'd prefer our city to be catered to people who actually live here instead of people who are just visiting. Hopefully this will free up more space for pedestrian zones and bike lanes.
NYC is currently optimized for extreme density, with a huge flow of commuters into offices that now are mostly empty. If you want it to turn back into lower density housing, you'll have to find a way to trim back expenses to the point where the debt loads of the city are sustainable.
Without the tax income from all those offices, and the surrounding shops, etc., NYC is unsustainable. It's been that way for a while, reality is catching up.
The vast majority of workers commute on public transportation. NYC is extremely accessible via public transportation. Catering the city to cars isn't scalable.
I would've preferred an auction; institute a cap of x entrances/day, and run an auction the day before to efficiently allocate the limited slots to those who are most willing to pay for it. Last-minute entrants who will need to get in for whatever reason and missed the auction will pay large premium above the market clearing price.
Given that vehicle traffic is non-uniform throughout the day, maybe it would make sense to have separate prices per hour, but there reaches a point where the marginal increase in complexity does not drive marginal improvements in allocation.
What you're suggesting has a known solution: dynamic (i.e. surge) pricing.
There are many variations: you can do dynamic spot pricing (which is determined in real time, like Uber/Lyft surges), or reserved pricing (which is dynamic but can be locked in ahead of time, like the wholesale day-ahead electricity market which is priced by the hour or hotels/airplane tickets). Or some combination of the above.
An auction would optimize pricing, but at the cost of extra friction on drivers. Who wants to have to think about bidding on a toll everyday?
Another way to do it would be to look at historical data and predict demand in advance. You could then do custom prices by day, but scheduled a month in advance or more. You could also split the day into two or three periods with different pricing.
1. The overwhelming majority of outerboro working class people are not driving in NYC.
Only about 30% of NYCers even own cars.
2. This only impacts a small part of Manhattan and for certain hours in the day. The only thing it does is encourages those who can move their travel away from peak hours to do so. This will greatly help all the people driving in as well.
3. This will greatly save many lives through reduced pollution and reduced car crashes.
4. This will help bus services etc which service far more working class people from the outer boros than private cars.
5. Congestion pricing has worked very well and been expanded everywhere it’s tried. There’s no evidence of it hurting working class people anywhere. And the parts of Manhattan this affects might be the most densely populated in terms of public transport.
2. This is no longer true, the plan is tolling individuals driving into that area 24 hours a day, and from 5AM-9PM at the full rate.
5. Just because Manhattan has public transit doesn’t mean they’re coming from a neighborhood with accessible public transit. Converting a short drive into a 2 hour each way trip is wrong no matter how poor the person.
> There will also be discounts for low-incomes motorists (below $50,000 per year) who need the car to get around. However, as a 2022 study pointed out, most drivers who enter Manhattan have medium or high incomes, meaning only 4% of drivers will receive a discount
I read this as "96% of drivers will be fine." Do you have other information to add here? Would be interested if so.
Doesn't car ownership in NYC break households, between massive parking costs, high insurance, gas, idling in traffic, plus normal maintenance? I'm curious where using a car actually becomes a better deal given the transit options here. I'm sure there's instances, but it's hard to envision. Living way on the edge of an outer borough but working in the middle of Manhattan?
Simple, don't drive to Manhattan. If you're truly working class you won't have a car anyway you'll be taking the excellent public transit infrastructure.
They should jack the price to >$50. Anyone paying $8000/no for a 1bd in Manhattan can afford an extra 50*30=$1500 for the privilege of congesting everyone else's roads.
You're right about the majority of people who live in outer boroughs.
But my mind went to one demographic in particular -- Halal food carts. Those folks usually live in Queens and they have to haul their carts into Manhattan (unless I'm wrong about that).
My alternative are things that, unfortunately, would never fly politically:
1) Regulate urban business density in coastal cities and cities more generally limited by water.
2) More multi-core metropolises where the highest <edit: business> density is either spread out entirely, or spread to multiple districts sufficiently far away from each other.
Edit: The comment by hamandcheese showed I had forgotten this important modifier for point 2.
Urban density doesn't cause the issue of traffic. The issue of traffic is caused by cars. Urban density allows public transportation, the only current viable alternative, to be financially sound on a large scale.
Yes lived, parked and drove in downtown NYC for 6 years. 4/5 people parking on the streets own or work in local businesses. Throwing a $350-$450/mo congestion tax their way is bs. They’re keeping the city running with their vehicles, not hurting it.
* just take it off completely, who’s checking?
* thick black plastic license plate cover. Everybody’s got them.
* front plate optional!
* buy one of those “digital” license plates and just set it to show the car logo instead of ID. Teslas do it!
I’m just kidding by the way, California really needs to fix this problem too. The punishment for fake plates needs to be having the plate number ground on to your roof or something else permanent and embarrassing. Maybe welding a transponder to your engine block.