• lazynooblet@lazysoci.al
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      1 month ago

      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?

      • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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        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.

        • vulture_god@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 month ago

          The other concern I’ve heard, and has not been brought up in this thread yet, is the lobbying influence from rideshare companies to pass the congestion laws.

          It’s arguable that ride share vehicles are a better traffic density alternative to single rider personal vehicles, but there are pretty clear downsides to consider as well.

          Source:

          https://nypost.com/2025/01/04/us-news/uber-lyft-spent-millions-pushing-for-nyc-congestion-pricing-and-stand-to-make-killing/

          • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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            1 month ago

            You can be self interested and still accidentally be on the right side of an issue. It doesn’t spark joy, but I’m not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater on this. It’s still a win, imo.

        • Hawke@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          They should be offered exceptions if walking or mass transit are unrealistic options.

          No they shouldn’t. That’s how you let rich people skirt the law.

          Tradespeople should just treat it like any other business expense. Eat it or raise your rates a little bit.

          • Railing5132@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            eat it

            They never do

            a little bit

            It’s never a little, and we all bitch about inflation.

            There’s never a simple solution.

            • Hawke@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              They sometimes do, at least temporarily. But yes on the whole I agree. I can almost guarantee that it’s a net benefit, that the time saved by traffic reduction makes up for the additional cost in congestion charges

        • Billiam@lemmy.world
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          The only legitimate concerns I’ve read are from contractors with tools and small businesses who deliver.

          Maybe, but anecdotally the lighter traffic allows contractors to accomplish more jobs per day because they spend less time in traffic, which more than offsets the congestion charge.

          Going from three hours per day in traffic down to even just two means there’s an extra hour a contractor has available to make money each day.

        • Justin@lemmy.jlh.name
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          1 month ago

          sure, but you can also deliver those with lighter vehicles that don’t cause traffic. Congestion is congestion.

          • lewdian69@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            I’m confused. How will I deliver 15 pounds of Trump skirt Steaks if I can’t drive my lifted Ram 3500 Heavy Duty with the high-output Cummins Turbo Diesel engine in downtown Manhattan?

        • nandeEbisu@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Construction firms make a ton of money in NYC, they can handle it, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone delivering food from a car in the city, they all use bikes.

            • nandeEbisu@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              We’ll see how it plays out. I could see less traffic meaning you can make more deliveries in a day, I figure one extra commercial delivery more than makes up for $10 extra.

              • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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                1 month ago

                Possibly. It may disproportionately impact eateries with more diverse menus or foods with shorter shelf life. Time will tell.

                • nandeEbisu@lemmy.world
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                  Eh, it’s NYC food is already super diverse. There’s fairly established infrastructure for niche food products. If that truck needs a single restaurant to eat that $10, they were probably already paying an arm and a leg for that delivery.

      • IndescribablySad@threads.net@sh.itjust.works
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        1 month ago

        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

      • Dogiedog64@lemmy.world
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        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.

      • nandeEbisu@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        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.

  • thr0w4w4y2@sh.itjust.works
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    1 month ago

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

  • irotsoma@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

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

  • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

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

    Real solution: Ban cars in parts of NYC.

    • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
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      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.

        • ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          Cut to me dramatically removing my “fuck cars” jacket like a Yakuza character to reveal a “fuck private property” t-shirt

      • Ulrich@feddit.org
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        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.

        • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
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          Of course you can. I’m using “step one” as a figure of speech to express importance.

          Controlling vehicle numbers is a very “low hanging fruit” that can do a lot to improve things for a very low cost.

    • edric@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      What was that saying again, something along the lines of: A great city is not where the poor own and drive cars, but the rich take public transportation.

      • regul@lemm.ee
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        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

      • sem
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        1 month ago

        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

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      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.

    • OmegaLemmy@discuss.online
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      1 month ago

      Banning cars actually works really well if you can prepare parking spaces or fully focus public transport

      Source: Taksim Street

        • OmegaLemmy@discuss.online
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          Multistory and underground parking spaces with a toll on how long a car stays, turkey has İSPARK which maintains this

          This’ll both allow people with cars to travel here, and will also lead to people preferring to walk or use public transport

          • nandeEbisu@lemmy.world
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            The profit incentive to build parking is through the roof in NYC, they can charge a ton for parking, and there’s still not enough.

    • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.netOP
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      This is an incredible resource. Love stuff like this And I pin this comment if I had that power.

  • nifty@lemmy.world
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    This is great, should be implemented in all cities. Most people who can use public transport should.

    • kreskin@lemmy.world
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      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.

      • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        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.

        • kreskin@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          It works.

          It works for you in your current situation. But this policy affects people who are not in your exact situation as well, and it DOESNT work for them. I know you want to do something, anything, but we need it to be more than this.

  • trufiassociation@lemmy.ml
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    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.

  • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
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    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.

  • danc4498@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

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

    • nandeEbisu@lemmy.world
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      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.

      • prole
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        That sounds pretty reasonable actually.

    • Peri@lemmy.world
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      $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.

      • danc4498@lemmy.world
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        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.

      • sem
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        Could they make it more expensive for cars that enter the zone once and drive around all day (Uber)

        • Peri@lemmy.world
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          They actually made it cost less for them. They can either pay the $9 each day or choose $1.50 for each trip (passenger pickup/dropoff) they make within the zone

          • sem
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            So they carved out a protected class for the capitalists. Great.

  • BakedCatboy@lemmy.ml
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    1 month ago

    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”

  • ddash@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 month ago

    …if it isn’t the bridge I said I’d cross… Wait, not going to pay that congestion charge.

  • kreskin@lemmy.world
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    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.

  • dx1@lemmy.world
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    Fixing traffic by… discouraging people from driving, lol. Well I’m not complaining.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    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.

  • Ulrich@feddit.org
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    I mean you’re just making efficient transportation something that wealthy people can just buy…