by opportune on 9/12/23, 1:15 AM
I don’t understand this criticism. It seems completely normal for a large MTA to use debt financing to fund big projects and not unreasonable at all for 20% of recovered fares to go to paying that debt. I’m sure most of that debt was incurred before the recent spike in rates too so there should be no rush to pay it.
Also, I think there’s some fallacious reasoning going on here as if congestion pricing by itself will not help unless timed to exactly coincide with other projects completing. It can as long there’s slack in the system (there is) and it doesn’t need those other projects to be done before it starts helping.
The MTA certainly overpays for projects but that is a much easier problem to point out than to fix. It ties into a huge and longstanding corruption/graft scheme, that has in practice a lot of public support, that you can’t just fix overnight.
by bradleyjg on 9/12/23, 1:15 AM
The article didn’t address one of the biggest issues: rampant evasion. Ever since automated toll collection and especially red light/speed cameras went in, fewer and fewer cars have legible, real license plates. Just like with mopeds, Adams’ NYPD doesn’t seem to care at all.
by satvikpendem on 9/12/23, 1:22 AM
Sometimes I think, we should ban private vehicles (excludes emergency vehicles, taxis, possibly Ubers, etc) inside cities. Of course, you'd need good public transport first, but often to get that, you'd need to force the issue such as by banning cars.
Having been to Asia where you could get anywhere with public transport, it's wild to see the dichotomy in many western countries.
by londgine on 9/12/23, 3:42 AM
I was in London recently, and I noticed that there weren't too many vehicles, and even though roads had only one or two lanes per direction, there wasn't any traffic in the city center. I asked some locals why that was, and they said that the tube from the suburbs was fast and frequent, and it was expensive to bring your car into the city.
I hope the streets of NY will calm down, and then they can even start closing lanes and turning them into larger sideways, bike lanes, or trees.
by rgmerk on 9/12/23, 1:31 AM
Even if not a single transit project is built, congestion charging in a place like Manhattan is a net win.
by keyle on 9/12/23, 1:12 AM
Living in big cities is becoming more and more the case of boiling frogs. If all these things came up at once, none of it would fly. But because year after year, it slowly gets worse, people just go along with it pretending it's fine.
It wouldn't be surprising in a few years that they'll charge by the streets you entered, or the calculated emissions produced by your vehicle.
(Note I have never visited NYC, on the bucket list)
by jlund-molfese on 9/12/23, 1:39 AM
If NYC, which has the highest tax base and one of the highest public transit usage rates in North America can't get the MTA right, what hope is there for smaller, less dense cities in the US?
by TowerTall on 9/12/23, 1:28 AM
by couchand on 9/12/23, 1:15 AM
Lots of bombast, little substance to this article. American infrastructure projects are behind timeline and over budget? Yawn.
by matt3210 on 9/12/23, 1:16 AM
This is going to eventually lead to general driving tax within the city.
Also note that this only effects poor people in any significant way.
by isykt on 9/12/23, 12:25 PM
> It is akin to someone knee deep in credit card debt taking a second job only to use the new income to open another credit card account and load it up with more debt
Any time an article compares government financing to your household finances, you can stop reading. The author is either misinformed, being disingenuous, or both.
by philip1209 on 9/12/23, 1:31 AM
Sounds like a "feature factory" in tech teams - where they celebrate the launch rather than the impact.
by resuresu on 9/12/23, 7:57 PM
Gotta pay the troll toll to get in.
by cagenut on 9/12/23, 1:13 AM
done listening to "i would normally support this drastically overdue and necessary environmental policy but they're not doing it just right in my opinion so i can't"
by angmarsbane on 9/12/23, 1:47 AM
Another cost to RTO. Too expensive to live close to the office, and increasingly expensive to live far from the office and commute in.