Very few poor people drive into lower Manhattan. And people whose work requires them to drive in that area (delivery drivers, plumbers, etc.) come out ahead. One of the first NYT stories after congestion pricing was rolled out had multiple quotes from tradesmen reporting that they're saving an hour or more a day and prefer the new system.
There was also an endless parade of NY Post stories about how Manhattan restaurants would suffer because their customers couldn't just drive in from Long Island and New Jersey.
The question becomes how critical is X and is there a close alternative. In this case I'd say for 95% of people yes driving is easily substituted by NYC's public transit options.
Im not sure this fits, they saw a much larger drop (18%) in heavy duty trucks entering the city, and a smaller drop (9%) in passenger cars. I am not sure the public transit options are close alternatives for heavy duty trucks.
I suspect that this is due to the elimination of toll shopping/avoidance. Per [0] and [1], the only way to avoid a toll entirely is to drive from the West Side Highway or FDR Drive to the Brooklyn Bridge, but commercial vehicles are prohibited on FDR Drive and the Brooklyn Bridge has weight restrictions [2], so heavy trucks don't have a legal way to dodge the tolls anymore.
If you need to reach Long Island, the incentive to avoid the (tolled) Throgs Neck, Whitestone, Verrazzano, and RFK bridges are gone; now you're paying for the privilege of sitting in Manhattan traffic.
Do we know that those heavy duty trucks were formerly used to do things you need heavy duty trucks for? It seems more likely that 18% (or more!) of the usage was by people who think heavy duty trucks look cool and wanted to show off theirs.
That's the difficulty with the Light/Medium/Heavy Duty categories. It doesn't tell you a huge amount about what the vehicle is being used for but most of them heavy duty mean commercial or utility. There are a handful of popular models that tip into the Heavy duty class and those are usually 3/4 ton pickups. Not sure how popular those are in NYC though.
For many people, the thing being substituted for an alternative is not "transportation into Manhattan", but more broadly "engaging in commerce in Manhattan"
What business or shopping trip into Manhattan is small enough that 9 dollars is a significant hurdle or increase in cost? It's there to disincentivize taking a car for no reason when you can use transit while being small enough to absorb if you have a reason to actually use a car.
What percentage of the road traffic do you think they constitute? How much of the value of the truck full of expensive seafood do you think the congestion charge represents? How many extra deliveries can a single driver make when they spend less time stuck in congestion?
Reducing the number of cars on the road helps everyone: we tend to focus on the enormous quality of life and health benefits to residents but it also helps everyone who doesn’t have the option of not driving, too. Ambulances getting stuck in congestion less is a win. Deliveries which can’t be done using cargo bikes similarly benefit from reducing the single greatest source of delay: cars.
Can they not afford to pay $9 per truck per day? Seems like a bad business plan that can't manage to pay such a minor fee. That's the design of the congestion charge it disincentivizes optional trips but is small enough for any money making business to absorb.
With reduced congestion, delivery companies will find marginally increased productivity (maybe 1 more delivery stop is possible per shift, for instance) that will likely make the fee worth it
Even without congestion pricing, the poor are the least likely to drive. Spending public money to subsidize driving (which we’re still doing on balance, even in Manhattan) disproportionately helps the wealthy.
IMO it would be even better if was an auction based system, maybe 24/7. That way if someone has an <= $8.99 threshold/need to drive, and they find a slot, they will. I think the static pricing will create a distortion in the usage, maybe having dynamic pricing (with a ceiling) would be smarter?
Yes, but also it's just annoying to have a car in NYC. For many routes the subway is going to be faster than driving and sitting in traffic, unless you're traveling between outer borough neighborhoods that only have a connection in Manhattan. If you're making that commute often (say, Bushwick to East Flatbush, or Flushing to Canarsie), a car might make sense, but then this whole congestion pricing thing doesn't apply to you.
Transit is $3/ride (in a few weeks), 24 hours, and all over the city. It's not perfect, but for the vast majority of cases owning a car in NYC is just not really worth it. If you need one because you have a weekend home out in Long Island or up in the Hudson Valley, you can afford the $9 toll.
It's economically infeasible for a large percentage of people to drive in a dense urban area, period.
That's true even without congestion pricing. A city would go broke and bulldoze itself trying to add enough stacked lane, highways, and parking to handle everyone who would prefer to drive in or through if the capacity existed.
is it? i dont see the relevant other studies, and my initial assumptions would be that the median subway user is lower income than the median car driver in NYC, so transfering funds from car drivers to subway improvements would be progressive.
However NYC's transit is notoriously bad at spending, so not sure it would achive that. Which studies linked in this thread are you refering to? I cant see them.
Regular driving in large working cities is usually only done out of professional necesscity and people who drive for a living tend to be in lower socioeconomic bands.
How many people on Wallstreet do you know that drive to work?
> How many people on Wallstreet do you know that drive to work?
A lot. Also white-shoe lawyers. They live in Greenwich, Westchester or Westport and drive into the city. (And still, they often park uptown because driving in the congestion zone is annoying and expensive.)
The poor in New York don't drive. If they do, they do so to earn an income. Less congestion helps with that.
I'm not so confident in that first claim, and my anecdotal evidence doesn't support your theory.
However you did mention some other studies on this thread that support your claim this is a regressive tax, I'm worried I missed them, can you share the links?
Regressive taxes aren't bad inherently bad. Regressive spending is bad.
In this case, you have a regressive tax with a huge positive side effect due to taxing an externality. If the funds are also spread into progressive services it can be a net positive for all income brackets.
I wish as a society we'd use this form of taxation more, and widely applied taxes less. In theory insurance is supposed to have the actuarial people who figure it out and properly price the choices in, but it's also surprising how crude they can be-- lumping very distinct situations as "the same". eg aggressive drivers are only penalized after they hurt someone, like the phrase "no harm no foul" (until there is harm). It'd be better if telemetry was collected and penalized in realtime.
They can also have their own significant externalities and introduce perverse incentives (in this case...) for revenue-seeking infrastructure governance.
Of course they work. If the government manipulates the equation to make something unaffordable, the poor can no longer afford it. That’s not the point.
