It seems Barack Obama has good things to say about congestion pricing. Good for him. It'd be nice to have a President whose background is in representing an urban area and perhaps has a personal sense of the importance of these issues. Hasn't happened since John F. Kennedy, I believe.
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Big City Barack
28 Mar 2008 05:12 pm
Comments (39)
He is also a University of Chicago guy, and they love this stuff.
Agreed. It would be good to have someone in the White House who is thinking
FTFY
So if they charge motorists more to use bridges, etc. during peak hours, will they also lower prices for off-hours, i.e. the 3AM crowd?
AKBY,
Sure, if possible. Another possible option is to dedicate some of the revenues to public transit, which basically serves the same function (increasing the incentive to switch away from peak road usage by compensating those who make the switch).
Congestion pricing being, of course, Bloomberg's #1 policy agenda item at the moment as he tries to push it through Albany. (Why the hell some Senator from Utica gets to tell us here in NYC how best to solve our horrid traffic problem is beyond me, but there it is.)
Hey, just price the common folk out of getting into Manhattan. Way to go.
The $8 congestion fee will not be much of a bother--except for time if it takes any--for the BMW/Lexus/Mercedes crowd. For the plumber? Maybe can pass it on. For a student hoping to go to a museum? The elderly? The limited income?
If they can't afford it, they shouldn't want to go to the Big City.
Just get off his lawn!
The "common folk" aren't driving in from suburban New Jersey.
Hey, just price the common folk out of getting into Manhattan. Way to go.
The idea is to take mass transit into the city, dipshit. It's way cheaper than the tolls+gas+parking anyway.
People always raise the regressive aspects, which is why it is important to dedicate the revenues in a way that addresses those concerns (with public transit again being a popular option).
Are they going to give breaks to HOV commuters? There should be something done to give an alternative commuters who HAVE TO travel during peak hours, right?
Adding $8 to a trip you take a small number of times per year is fine ... people aren't price-sensitive when they go see the Yankees, or to Broadway, or even the museum.
The evidence is that most customer facing workers (plumbers, nannies, etc.) pass the cost to their customers.
There should be something done to give an alternative commuters who HAVE TO travel during peak hours, right?
I'd really love to hear a story of someone who HAS TO drive their car into lower Manhattan during peak hour on other than an occasional basis. There are plenty of park-and-ride type of opportunities if you don't happen to live near a subway or commuter rail station.
Honestly, I walk past the exit to the Lincoln Tunnel on my way to work every morning, and I see this long line of idiots driving in from New Jersey (idiots because they're driving in, not because they live in NJ) and they sit in traffic forever. I just don't understand their thinking.
I'd really love to hear a story of someone who HAS TO drive their car into lower Manhattan during peak hour on other than an occasional basis
I didn't necessarily mean Manhattan. If the congestion pricing is used in other cities, where commuters really do need to drive, how would this work? This what I am wondering...
AKBY,
I think the problem is distinguishing people who "have to" drive at peak hours from people who just really, really want to. There is also a term problem: eventually, the idea is to have people make long-term decisions in light of the externalities those decisions will impose as a result of congestion. So, in the short term, maybe you will have to pay the price, but in the long term, maybe you can find an alternative. But if we keep giving you a break in the short term, you will never internalize the problem, and you will never have a sufficient incentive to find the alternative.
I am currently working on congestion pricing issues and it is a more nuanced issue than either Matt's uber-urbanist ideology or the compulsory opposition suggests. While on the one hand it is great to reduce congestion and increase transit use and capital allocation--if that it what the money is actually being used for--it is important that we focus on who this hurts. In the past Matt has brought up the argument in favor of congestion pricing that poor people always get hurt so its ok. But urban dynamics are changing with the ever increasing inculcation of wealthy, well-educated professionals "reclaiming" the city and the concomitant out migration of less well-to-do folks to decaying suburbs. This can only work in certain cities with strong, existing transit systems and, most importantly, if the money is marked for transit upkeep and extension. In which case it would not be a regressive double tax on people coming from the suburbs to the city by car to work menial jobs.
However, even in New York where the existing system is strong and most working class/poor people use subway/bus, congestion pricing for taxi cabs and black cars must bear some price for driving, these services are used by the wealthy. Currently the New York plan, which Matt is so excited about, does not adequately address many of these issues. In fact, wealthy people traveling from CT, NJ, and upstate New York can deduct the cost of the tolls they hit prior to the city from the Manhattan congestion tax, while people from Washington heights, harlem, and the bronx cannot. A clear problem.
Outside of well constructed transportation cities it can be very dangerous. Read this article to see why.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/16/AR2008031603085_pf.html
It's interesting to see the debate about having to pay a fee to get into Manhattan, but only during peak hours. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, you have to pay a $4 - $5 bridge toll at ANY time if you want to get into San Francisco, or even just to cross one of the 7 bridges for commuting between various parts of Bay. The Golden Gate Bridge Authority is considering raising the toll to enter San Francisco (it's free to exit)to $8 and part of the price of the toll does support the Authority's public transit functions. Between bridge toll, parking, and congestion (=time), it's now cheaper and almost as convenient to take public transit (train, ferry, or bus).
Who's been paying for all the bridges into Manhattan I always see in the movies?
Jeff, thanks for a sensible outline of the problem.
I worked in midtown for a while and had to drive in. My job ended about midnight, sometimes later.
If I took a train down to Penn Station and tried to catch the LIRR out to Long Island, I could be stuck at Penn for more than an hour waiting for the next train.
So, to be at work by 3 p.m. and take the train both ways, I'd have to leave my house by 1:15, drive or cab to the LIRR station, catch a train into midtown, which took more than an hour (no matter what the schedule said), and then walk or take a subway train to my job by 3 p.m. Reverse that--leave my job at midnight, walk or cab or take a subway to Penn and hope I hit the schedule just right or be prepared to wait a full hour for the next one, then spend at least an hour on that train, cab or drive home from the local station.
By the time I was done, it was more than a 12-hour day. It was also very expensive, which is one reason I don't do it anymore.
I lived in the city for a while and am very sympathetic to the traffic issue. The congestion pricing plan deserves a great deal of attention and thought. But it certainly hits middle-class and poorer people much harder than the rich, especially those clowns riding around in gigantic limos.
Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, you have to pay a $4 - $5 bridge toll at ANY time if you want to get into San Francisco
Really? San Francisco is an island? What if I'm just driving up from San Mateo?
For Manhattan, you have to pay a toll at most of the bridges and tunnels - all of them if you are crossing the Hudson. But the congestion charge is separate - it applies even if you are driving from 180th Street in Washington Heights down to 42nd Street in midtown and never have to cross a bridge at all.
The NYC congestion doesn't just hit rich ppl commuting from Jersey...it will affect people driving in from Queens, Brooklyn, and Harlem, right? I'd feel better about it if The Mayor would be more honest about his intentions, instead of cooking up BS justifications like "more kids are getting diagnosed with asthma in the Bronx, so we need to remodel the city in my image".
Bloomberg's plan, which he never mentioned in $150 million campaigning, is ridiculous. It is a fancy way of putting tolls on the East River bridges. Jersey drivers will get credit for their existing tolls, so the same lines will be at the Lincoln Tunnel. Must've sounded like a great idea at some charity dinner in London--a first in the US--what a great way to get national attention.
So you take something public, and you charge access fees, it is still sort of public, right?
Anyway, it'll be nice for his neighborhood.
"But it certainly hits middle-class and poorer people much harder than the rich, especially those clowns riding around in gigantic limos.
Posted by etaoin | March 28, 2008 7:02 PM"
Has anybody looked into the effect that charging different fees on different cars would have (doubling / tripling the toll for limos, high-end luxury cars, etc.)?
I guess everyone who objects to congestion pricing also objects to receiving a discount for off-peak cell phone use, for discounted movie matinees, and for airfares that are higher during holiday periods and weekends.
Just wanted to note that you can produce the effect desired by congestion tolls by considerably raising parking rates (or otherwise taxing private parking). You get the same benefit without the entirely new bureaucratic structure required by instituting a whole new toll.
Now I've never lived in New York City, but can someone explain why congestion pricing would hurt poor people in Harlem, Queens, or Brooklyn? Can't they just take the subway in? Why in the world would you drive into Manhattan from another burroughs, especially if you are poor? I have to believe parking is expensive.
"I guess everyone who objects to congestion pricing also objects to receiving a discount for off-peak cell phone use, for discounted movie matinees, and for airfares that are higher during holiday periods and weekends."
Oh, I wasn't aware when public tax money started to be used for cell phone networks, movie theatres, and airlines.
Oh wait...shoot.
Actually, to be fair, congestion pricing limits the mobility of the poor and those with marginal incomes and allows wealthy people the (relatively) unfettered use of infrastructure that all of our tax dollars have created, and the competitive advantages that will come with that.
A few issues to address:
1)In terms of charging different fees for different vehicles: T
The issue has been discussed and many suggest, as I would, that people driving from outside of NYC should not be able to deduct toll fees from the Manhattan congestion pricing zone. Further, others have suggested that vehicles like limos, town cars, and taxis should pay more than the $1 or so they will pay under the current plan to exit New York. Keep in mind how much taxi traffic takes place in manhattan. However, as the link I posted shows, the financial incentives NYC is receiving from the DOT is predicated on ramming this issue down New Yorkers' throats without any time to digest the nuance of the issues. A problem.
2)To FreddieMac:
The point of my post on people from near Manhattan (bronx, harlem etc.)being negatively taxed is that drivers from NJ, CT and Westchester get to deduct the price of the congestion toll from tolls they already hit. So, hypothetically, if a wall street maven coming from New Jersey pays $5 dollars in tolls on his way to the city, he gets to deduct this from the $8 dollar toll in Manhattan, which presents very little disincentive for him to drive. He can afford it. But people from within the city, hypothetically from harlem, bronx or washington heights, who already pay taxes for the cities roadways, receive no such deduction and pay the $8 in full even though they live very close.
How many people drive from the bronx to Manhattan, I dont know. But they certainly should not pay full for taxes and congestion pricing while outsiders pay neither. These issues, among others, must be addressed by the congestion pricing crowd. Personally, I think congestion pricing would be good if truly targeted non city residents that use the roadways and ensured the money raised was properly spent on city residents that are too often left out of budgetary negotiations.
Jeff,
I know it is late and my reading comprehension skills are not as they were. But I still don't really understand why a poor person in the city of New York would drive to Manhattan. From a cursory examination of the MTA maps, all roads lead to Rome so to speak. That is if you live in the Bronx it is easiest to take the subway to Manhattan rather than to Queens. So it is reasonable to think that a poor person would rather drive from Queens to Brooklyn since there appears to be only one subway line connecting the two without going through Manhattan. But if the congestion pricing only affects tolls into Manhattan, it seems rather silly to buy a car, pay for gas, maintenance, and insurance and then add parking into the equation when the subway service seems to be, during rush hours when the tolls are in place, quite good. But I don't know, I don't live there. I am just not seeing it in Manhattan.
As far as people from New Jersey go, I guess I don't understand the full argument here. So it seems that the state of New Jersey would be subsidizing the congestion costs for a Jersey commuter to drive into Manhattan. Yes? So really it is the tax payers in New Jersey that are really being screwed since they subsidize roads that residents who work in Manhattan use and write off. Like I said, I don't really understand a lot of these negative arguments because they rest on these regional nuances that aren't articulated. I can definetly see the regessive nature of a congestion pricing mechanism in a place with no or little mass transit. But New York has the best mass transit in the country, probably in all of North America and certainly in the top 10 in the world. If congestion pricing can't work there, it really can't work anywhere can it?
INow I've never lived in New York City, but can someone explain why congestion pricing would hurt poor people in Harlem, Queens, or Brooklyn? Can't they just take the subway in? Why in the world would you drive into Manhattan from another burroughs, especially if you are poor? I have to believe parking is expensive.
I do live there (live in Brooklyn, work in Manhattan). Many neighborhoods in the outer boroughs, particularly in further Queens and Brooklyn, are not well served by subways. This is even more true when you extend it out to Nassau County. There are quite few poor or at least working class to lower-middle families in the greater New York area who use cars rather than public transportation as their primary mode of transport.
This may not be obvious if you simply look at the MTA subway map, bc it's not drawn to geographic scale and therefore seems to overstate subway coverage. But if you look at a simple geographic map, you'll see that it's so, and that large parts of the city are very far away from convenient and/or frequent subway access.
But I still don't really understand why a poor person in the city of New York would drive to Manhattan.
Because that poor person may not live in a part of the city that has convenient subway access. Yes, NY has better subways than the rest of the country. But no, the subways do not go everywhere. In the outer boroughs, you can live quite far indeed from a subway stop.
So, Jeff is the big expert on congestion pricing here. And he claims that in the past, "Matt has brought up the argument in favor of congestion pricing that poor people always get hurt so its ok."
This tells me more about Jeff than it does about Matt. Another 'tell' on Jeff is that he doesn't know how many people drive from the Bronx to lower Manhattan. Amazingly, people have actually studied this and anyone who actually wanted to know (that is to say, anyone seriously studying the current proposals for Manhattan) could easily learn by looking around at streetsblog.org.
Typically, when we do study it, we find numbers like these- in one Queens congressional district, 3.8% of the people drive into the proposed pricing zone. In a Brooklyn Heights neighborhood, the average income of people driving into the zone is $168,000. I'm not a close student of this, these are just numbers that stuck in my mind while I watch from the sidelines.
There seems to be a sincere mix of confusion, ignorance, and duplicity among commenters on this subject. The actual situation is nowhere near as complicated as the reflection seen in the faces of the uninformed.
Congestion costs money- big money where real congestion exists. Tapped-out local governments are giving up on fixing it by building more roads. If you live in a congested area, you're going to see some kind of congestion pricing. It might be as simple as a tax on your time, the time you spend mired in traffic while buses pass you in the transit lanes.
If you don't live in NYC, the scheme you see will not resemble the scheme in NYC. In New York the revenues from pricing will go to expand the transit system, which already carries something like 90% of the people who move around in NY.
Around Seattle the revenues come from bridge tolling initially and will be spent rebuilding the tolled bridge. "Congestion pricing" is a broad term covering a wide spectrum of measures to raise revenue and reduce congestion.
As to whether congestion pricing can work, well, it's been a big success in other cities around the world that have imposed it.
And there's nothing really new about the idea. The wall around the medieval city was not generally to protect against armies, but to control and tax who entered the city, and control the "sprawl" tendency of the city. This was smart dense growth on the medieval scale and it worked very well indeed.
Wake up and smell the coffee, folks. The 21st century has arrived.
The other thing to keep in mind is that someone who can't afford to drive into the lower-manhattan congestion area has alternatives. Congestion pricing doesn't really work without them. Take someone who has to drive into Manhattan (because he doesn't live near a subway) but can't afford the congestion pricing. Well, that person can simply drive into Manhattan and park outside the congestion area before taking the subway to the final destination.
Those who need to drive into the congestion area to provide goods and services can pass on the charge to their customers.
Even if you don't live near a subway line in NYC, that doesn't mean you have to drive to Manhattan. You simply drive to a place that does have a subway stop. Even if you do have to pay for parking there, it won't even be close to what one would pay for parking in Manhattan.
My experience from practicing law in Manhattan is that absolutely none of the secretaries, even those who lived in remote parts of Queens and had to take two buses, drove in.
My uncle was the only person on a middle class salary who drove into Manhattan from Queens. However, he lived with his mother (no rent) and worked on the Upper East Side (outside the congestion area), where he rented a parking spot. It was very unusual.
Seriously, who are all these people driving into the congestion area of Manhattan for whom congestion pricing would be an offensive hardship because they have no other alternative? Can Jeff tell us?
As someone with family in New Jersey, the people I've heard complain about the potential for congestion pricing and higher tolls during congestion times are generally white-collar professionals who work in NJ but have occasional business in Manhattan and don't like the idea of paying more money to drive in. No one wants to pay more money for anything, but congestion pricing is still a good idea. Plus, there's an alternative in NJ: Park & Ride lots with plenty of empty spaces and frequent bus arrivals.
I guess I now must respond to my detractors, most notably the grand guardian of urban progress, serial catowner (A disconcerting name, if i may say).
serial catowner:
Despite your snarky insistence that I was posing as an expert on the subject, I did no such thing. Instead, I mentioned I had been working on the issue and was familiar with the new york situation. In your "take down" of my humble opinion, you reveal your self importance through your insistence on being portrayed as the very expert you accuse me of, even saying "when we study it," demarcating the exclusivity of your turf.
But to the juicier parts of your forward thinking enterprise:
Matt has, in fact, discussed disenfranchisement of poor people as little consequence to pricing because they always get hurt. To wit:
"Of course the costs of congestion pricing would fall hard on people of modest means, but that's because the cost of anything falls hard on people of modest means."
-March 5, 2008
http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/03/everyone_pays.php
I was not arguing the merit or truth of this point, merely pointing it out. But, apparently, it "tells" you so much about me. Well, it is what he wrote. As far as your other "tell" on me, that I did not "know how many people drive from the Bronx.." Actually, it was a bit late last night and i was out drinking a bit and did not feel like looking up the numbers. I know, lazy. But as non-expert, i tend to spend my time buried in other matters. However, I fear you may be right. I do not read streetsblog. Again, as non enlightened urbanist, I relied on the NYSDOT Congestion Mitigation's final recommendation report and the minority report. Both of which, if I may, find a bit light in the argument part. Nonetheless, on the minority side, I think they raise a few legitimate questions.
First, that the zone will do little to deter "commuters" to the zone who 1)are more equipped to pay the flat fee and 2) able to deduct the price of the zone's toll from what they may previously incur--reducing any inhibition to wealthy CT, NJ and Westchester drivers from choosing another means of transportation. Something you do not address
Second, as you never mentioned, why shouldnt taxis and black cars pay their fair share. The current plan largely exempts them from the tax even though they are exclusively used by people of wealth. Taxi traffic is a huge part of the congestion problem, is it too not worthy of
Third, I believe the report correctly addresses the concern that transit improvements must be made prior to the imposition of the tax.
Fourth, traffic may increase terribly in outer boroughs as people use an area like the bronx as a parking lot, increasing congestion and possibly concentrating urban health issues like air quality in neighborhoods currently unequipped.
Finally, the Mayor's plan has been pushed down people's throats in swift fashion in order to gain the federal funds from the DOT's Urban Partnership program. Issues of transparency, dedication of revenues, and whom is hurt exist must be addressed.
In sum, contrary to your ideological conviction, it is not quite so simple. The devil is in the details and they must be better articulated.
However, I agree that New York could very much use congestion pricing, but it must be done in a fashion that distributes costs in a progressive fashion.
More importantly, your conclusion that congestion pricing can be applied to other areas as easily is absurd. Absent transportation alternatives, congestion pricing would be a true regressive tax with workers of all stripes using auto. It must come with a dedication to alternative transportation, otherwise its an unfair double tax
on commuters, creating further stratification. In fact, the congestion pricing currently being offered to many locales is through PPP's that include non-exempt clauses that actually legally restrict communities from building alternatives to highway traffic: an effort to inflate revenues for private companies. See the Orange County congestion pricing experiment.
All in all, I think your insistence that congestion pricing is so simple and straightforward--along with your rhetoric, "The 21st century has arrived--is indicative of the hubris that has always colored American urban "advocates," assured in their pursuit of "progress" with little regard for the effects. Its the mindset that built sprawl, created vertically aggregated ghetto's, and now suggests that the market can now save us through highway commodification.
But yeah, I do appreciate your expertise and your ad hominem.
PS: i never included a number on the commuters from the bronx, harlem etc because the numbers offered by the NYSDOT are terribly constructed by their narrow construct of "commuters" and thus seem unreliable.
This really is another bite at the East River tolls that Bloomberg and his evil twin Dan Doctoroff tried to impose on us poor Brooklynites (and Queensers) right at the beginning of their reign. Sure, tax the poor, not the employers, that has been Bloomberg's route all along.
(And this from the man who wanted to BUILD a STADIUM in the Manhattan zone, and went all out to bring the Olympics here.... And now he is worried about 'emissions'; guess he got religion.)
A couple of random thoughts, since most bases were already covered here. London's zone has very few residents, unlike the area to be covered in NYC. The London system also loves its fines, which make up a good portion of its revenue.
The pricing in Stockholm is variable and the MAXIMUM is about 3 plus dollars, going down to about a dollar. (Plus, Stockholm (pop. approx. 3/4 of a MILLION, & where i've lived, has fabulous public transport & a minuscule number of poor people. It's socialism!)
This plan is strangely in line with the civil liberties-fearing police commissioner Ray Kelly's stated aim to vastly increase the number of surveillance cameras in the city.
There will be no way to test the efficacy of this system when instituted, since we are in a recession that will only get worse and that would inevitably led to a drop in the number of vehicles entering the business zone without pricing.
Most of the propaganda for the plan has involved emission control, but if so there should then be differential pricing for low-emissions vehicles, but strangely, when that comes up, the discussion shifts to space taken up by vehicles.
This is a straightforwardly neoliberal scheme yet it is signed onto without much thought for alternatives by people who should be sniffing for rats.
Aren't you worried that Obama may find the virtuous mayor Mike Bloomberg too good to leave off his ticket as veep? Horrors! There goes civili liberties!
Anyone remember what the promises were for the NY State lottery: that the money would go to education? And they said it with a straight face. Now they say the congestion pricing money will go to MTA 'improvements." With no guarantees.
I live in Brooklyn and do not drive into Manhattan. But i have to take 3 separate subway lines (one of them the joke of the whole system, the G train) or a bus and 2 subway changes. Sometimes I HAVE to drive to my job in NJ, which would put me into the zone to get to the Holland Tunnel... there is simply no other choice, since they put reverse tolls long ago on the Staten island crossing to please the residents...
Let's assume for a minute congestion pricing is brought in for all the right reasons--congestion, pollution, whatever--are all the supporters still on board if the toll collection is privatized?
Across the the Hudson, New Jersey has been actively conidering selling toll roads to investors for lump sums to ease budget problems. The Bush Dept of Transportation, which has been pushing the congestion plan with Bloomberg, would be thrilled if private operators took control. Why is Mary Peters (Sec'y Transportation) so eager to help NY? It isn't because of congestion, that's for sure. She believes private investment in roads is a good thing. Is everybody else on board for that?
Jeff, I have no "idealogical conviction" and what I said was the exact opposite of it "being simple".
What I said was that "congestion pricing" would be intensely local in nature and, if you don't live in NYC, the "congestion pricing" you see probably won't resemble New York. IOW, hugely complicated local problem solving involving constituencies and agencies at the municipal, county, state, and federal levels working out 30-year plans in a rapidly changing environment of transportation. About as far from simple as you can get on planet Earth.
Jeff is absolutely right to imagine "congestion pricing" will be hijacked by the so-called PPP initiatives. I live west of the now-doubled and semi-privatized Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington State- a bridge that none of us west of Puget Sound wanted to see built. If you're not careful, you'll see one of these tolled bottlenecks in your region, soon.
However, in relying on a DOT report and minority report, Jeff puts himself in the position of a man who buys a saddle for a horse and tries to use it to ride a camel.
My point, however, was that the show you're seeing in NY is not the show coming soon to a place near you. This country has about $3 trillion in needed repairs to our bridges, highways, etc, and we're going to be spending the money on something as the roads crumble and the age of oil draws to a close.
This topic is hot in the Seattle area now because what we call the 520 Bridge will probably only be replaced (yup, it's 40 years old and completely worn out) when SOV drivers can be tolled for using it.
And I agree- I sound like Thurber's 'Get Ready' man. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
Comments closed April 11, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Agreed. It would be good to have someone in the White House who is thinking along these lines.
Posted by Alex Szczech | March 28, 2008 5:29 PM