Congestion pricing - what are your thoughts
 

doink!

Didn't I tell U all this was coming about 3 years ago...I own a piece of a Company in the UK that does this kind of thing....

How many spoons tabs?

I am all for it in NYC.

We are hitting a crossroads here - choking on our own pollution and traffic and I would rather we be more like London and less like Bombay...

YES! Brilliant idea. NYC was bad enough 15 years ago when I lived there. I'm sure it's even worse now. $8? For New York? How about $50?

Of course, you can't expect all the finance guys to ride the subway, but they can pay the fee.

I'm for banning all cars except taxis, buses, delivery trucks, etc. in NYC. No personal cars. Open one north-south avenue for bikes (roller blades, skate boards, whatever) only. Add more subway trains. Build the 2nd avenue Subway.

That said, I'll settle for congestion pricing.

No big news ... that was in practice in Singapore in 1993!!!

To enter the Central Business District (CBD) you have to pay, of course being Singapore they devise a toll tag system to do so ... in 1993!!

The lack of vision continually astonishes me. They'll blather on for hours about trying to make such-and-such community "family friendly", "business friendly" or "a community with vision for the future" or whatever similar sound bite they want to use, then simultaneously treat their residences and constituent businesses like crap. So do they want to attract people or push people away? Which is it?

The most offensive aspect of this is that the government's failure to appropriate taxpayer dollars properly and construct/repair infrastructure to handle demand is now somehow everyone else's fault and they're going to make the people pay for it. Ridiculous. One of the roles of government is arguably to provide infrastructure that doesn't require people to pay $20 to sit in gridlock for three hours each day to go to work. But that's an outdated notion in the New Amerika I guess. . .

How about a POSITIVE incentive, like a tax break for businesses that implement flex time procedures? Like that'd ever happen, right? Lord knows the only plausible solutions from politicians are ones that require MORE taxation, not less.

Jeff, did you ever take any public policy or economics courses? Your posts remind me of how I talked in high school: "Well it just shouldn't be like that, it's not FAIR!"

I'm for it...Less traffic, better condition streets...wish they could make the Subway and Buses cleaner and faster.
I'll still ride my bike to work as much as I can.
Wonder how many drivers will be messing with the numbers on their license plates to try to trick the cameras?

Dan - not good for us exactly as we live outside of any proposed zone. All the suburbanites will be jamming up our roads and parking even worse. But I see it as a step forward of civilization. This city is ready to slip into a third world mess at any time. Next - start kicking out (or taxing the ***** out of) out of state licenced vehicles. Visiting a week or two is o.k. A livery car with North Carolina plates (tags) should be sent packing...

Uh Oh I have an out-of state licensed car! But don't think any suburbanites will be parking in my ghetto...NYC sure is an everchanging megalopolis, hopefully for the better. Otherwise back to Vermont or Japan. Been living here more than ten years now, it's a blackhole but definitley entertaining.

In Washington State, this would be an ignorant remark to make. Of course that doesn't stop some folks (are you there, Island?).

Our Department of Transportation has been the target of performance audits AD NAUSEUM. For ten years this has been happening. ALL the efficiences that can be found are probably found. Nobody except ignorant outsiders pretend that our DOT is inefficient or irresponsible.

Could it be, in some instances, despite popular mythology, that occasionally, perhaps, the proper government agencies are doing their job and that the problem is lack of funding? Could it sometimes be the case that voters are so out of touch with reality that they expect better services from gubmit while also enjoying tax cuts? Perhaps in some instances this might be a reasonable expectation. But is it reasonable to assume this is always the case everywhere because a state DOT is simply a thousand engineers who are ignorant and lazy? Nobody thinks that about WSDOT. Except of course, the folks who don't have any idea what's actually happening.

Roads and bridges are expensive, guys. And getting more expensive fast. China is building WAY faster than we are. And whining MUCH less.

So how exactly is it proper for the populace to continue to fund the failures of government to deliver expected services to the public? By penalizing the public or by penalizing the government that created the failure in the first place? That's my point. Anything we can do to cut down on the amount of government stupidity and inefficiency is a good thing, IMHO.

This is HARDLY an immature position as you imply - it's certainly more mature than simply saying "pass the problem onto our kids" or "just double-charge the users" as you're suggesting we do. Want to privatize roadways? Fine, there's a legitimate discussion that can be had about that. Toll roads are fine in certain contexts - we can certainly open that up for discussion, but for the city to say "gee whiz, we had untold BILLIONS of dollars (taxes, vehicle registrations, gas taxes, etc.) for roadway upkeep & repairs over the past 100 years and well, shoot. . . those roadways are overloaded and in disrepair so we'll just have to charge more to cover our failure to plan ahead" is grossly improper, IMO.

There's a great saying that I have taped up on my desk that you might have seen before, it reads "Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine". I think it applies rather nicely to this situation too.

If I were a business owner in the city and they were going to implement this, I'd be a bit ticked off too - a lot of people will forego travel on these kinds of roads.

In the case of NYC there are so many bridges, tunnels, roads, potholes, underground repairs that the roads are constantly being repaired. Bridges/overpasses get rusty and need to be completely rehabilitated every 20-30 years. So I'm not surprised that the city needs extra funds to cover the repairs. On the other hand I know that NY is sitting on 1 billion budget surplus. Not sure where that money is going?
A NYC policeman's starting pay is 25,000! Maybe they could use a raise?

Just the opposite. Many suburban kids jamming up roads at holiday times and bringing traffic to a stop. There are only so many streets in the big city - and I say you pay to use them - or ride the bus, subway or walk.

i don't see how this congestion thing would work in LA. too many roads they would have to cover and don't think it would be possible to put a toll booth on all of them.

NYC sound like it would be a piece of cake...Manhattan is an island after all and pretty easy to restrict auto access there.

No tolls.

It will use EZ Pass sensors and cameras recording licence plates in the designated "zone". (Note - the EZ Pass system cross references your plate with the radio tag at every tollbooth.)

If you dont have EZ Pass you go to a meter - punch in your licence plate and pay the fee. Dont pay and you get a ticket in the mail...

They could do it in LA - they NEED to do it in LA. But most likely wont.

I think you're missing my point. I wouldn't have a problem in the world with this if it was 100% funded by end-users, like a toll road is. My gripe with it is that gubmint bureaucrats are going to continue to collect all the taxes they do today, all the vehicle registration charges they do today, all the gasoline taxes (supposedly for road upkeep) that they do today, etc. and then charge the end users ON TOP OF that, because they can't make the numbers pencil out. Well schit, Jack, you seemed SOOOOOOOO sure the numbers would pencil out when you made the case to implement the tax hike on gasoline to cover those costs a few years back, weren't ya? That's my point. I have no problem with people paying for fair use, the problem is this is EVERYONE paying for something to be built, badly maintained by corrupt officials and agencies, and then the end users penalized with yet ANOTHER tax. It's a stinkload.

China doesn't worry about people in the way, let alone snail darters or spotted owls. If you are opposing a project, they simply run the bulldosers through your property.

Supe, my problem with this "tax" is that we've heard it all before. If we put a $.25 gas tax and use it to fund highways, we can pay for everything, everywhere. Then the money gets put into the general fund, or the highway fund is cut from the general fund by the ammount in the new "tax".