Great article! I love your choice of zones and would throw two more things out there:
1. LIC would be the only other zone I would consider. An upper Manhattan toll could accomplish the same thing with easier politics though, so agree probably not.
2. Putting a very small toll (50 cents? 1 dollar?) on the BQE, WSH, and FDR makes sense to me.
This article has a false information and honestly it’s a bad idea. Uber/lyft drivers pay 2.75 per trip out of pocket to operate above 96th street to support congestion pricing. Secondly, they have been paying this fee since before the pandemic. The average driver may take about 20 trips per day. That comes out to about $55 a day per driver out-of-pocket. Times that by 100,000 or so uber/lyft drivers that’s 5,500,000 million dollars per day just off uber/lyft drivers. Then to extend congestion to other parts of the city where people live paid to paycheck in those cases is ridiculous. The NTA is making $5.5 million per day off of Uber and Lyft drivers paid out of their own pocket that does not come out from the passengers.
I agree with the need to address congestion beyond the CBD, but I think there are better and less politically fraught ways of doing that. Take a look at the original congestion relief plan from PlaNYC, release in 2007. Among other ideas lost in the current discourse about congestion pricing is the need to quickly provide carrots to drivers of improved transit options especially for bus service, partly inspired by the London experience. Starts on page 75 here https://climate.cityofnewyork.us/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/PlaNYC-full_report_2007.pdf While the congestion charge was blocked by the state legislature, a forgotten lesson is that solutions need to appeal beyond the 5 boroughs if we want sustained improvement and broader support for transit. Too little of the rest of the plan was implemented, which is one reason why outer borough politicians can complain nearly 2 decades later that transit doesn’t work for their car dependent constituents. Today we need strategies that not only provide quick congestion relief but also show foresight (like the QueensLink https://thequeenslink.org) so that more residents across the city have great transit options and fewer are dependent on driving or slow bus service.
Great article! I love your choice of zones and would throw two more things out there:
1. LIC would be the only other zone I would consider. An upper Manhattan toll could accomplish the same thing with easier politics though, so agree probably not.
2. Putting a very small toll (50 cents? 1 dollar?) on the BQE, WSH, and FDR makes sense to me.
This article has a false information and honestly it’s a bad idea. Uber/lyft drivers pay 2.75 per trip out of pocket to operate above 96th street to support congestion pricing. Secondly, they have been paying this fee since before the pandemic. The average driver may take about 20 trips per day. That comes out to about $55 a day per driver out-of-pocket. Times that by 100,000 or so uber/lyft drivers that’s 5,500,000 million dollars per day just off uber/lyft drivers. Then to extend congestion to other parts of the city where people live paid to paycheck in those cases is ridiculous. The NTA is making $5.5 million per day off of Uber and Lyft drivers paid out of their own pocket that does not come out from the passengers.
I agree with the need to address congestion beyond the CBD, but I think there are better and less politically fraught ways of doing that. Take a look at the original congestion relief plan from PlaNYC, release in 2007. Among other ideas lost in the current discourse about congestion pricing is the need to quickly provide carrots to drivers of improved transit options especially for bus service, partly inspired by the London experience. Starts on page 75 here https://climate.cityofnewyork.us/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/PlaNYC-full_report_2007.pdf While the congestion charge was blocked by the state legislature, a forgotten lesson is that solutions need to appeal beyond the 5 boroughs if we want sustained improvement and broader support for transit. Too little of the rest of the plan was implemented, which is one reason why outer borough politicians can complain nearly 2 decades later that transit doesn’t work for their car dependent constituents. Today we need strategies that not only provide quick congestion relief but also show foresight (like the QueensLink https://thequeenslink.org) so that more residents across the city have great transit options and fewer are dependent on driving or slow bus service.