by edward on 6/20/25, 2:26 PM with 516 comments
by righthand on 6/20/25, 4:13 PM
by taeric on 6/20/25, 4:29 PM
by Tangurena2 on 6/20/25, 3:47 PM
by time4tea on 6/20/25, 7:40 PM
Just worth bearing mind when people talk about streets being emptier - just emptier of cars
by ks2048 on 6/20/25, 6:34 PM
I guess it is near a critical point where a relatively small change in traffic results in a large change in travel times, traffic jams, etc.?
by mattlondon on 6/20/25, 8:53 PM
Unless they really price it to deter people, they'll just drive. In London it's cheaper to pay the £15 charge than to get two adults return tickets on the tube from the outer suburbs. Once you factor in comfort, convenience, reliability and practicality of your private car Vs London's public transport it's obvious why more and more people just pay the fee to drive.
If they really wanted to stop congestion they'd increase the fee from £15 to something like £150-250 a day. But they won't do that because then hardly anyone would pay it and they'd lose the revenue.
by djaychela on 6/20/25, 5:16 PM
by agentultra on 6/20/25, 4:36 PM
Maybe we don’t need to burn the planet to “achieve AGI,” in order to “solve climate change,” and, “make cities livable.” It’s not like that tech, even is possible, is going to stop hurricanes or take cars off the streets.
Hope more cities in North America will follow suit. It’s sad how many have been doing the exact opposite of good ideas for so long.
by amai on 6/21/25, 11:56 AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congestion_pricing_in_New_York...
by tmaly on 6/20/25, 9:43 PM
But the tolls on the tunnels are super expensive.
by amazingamazing on 6/20/25, 4:58 PM
by EasyMark on 6/21/25, 3:06 AM
by throw7 on 6/20/25, 4:02 PM
That makes it seem like Trump was pro-congestion pricing... he was not. I remember reading there was a threat and attempt by him to reverse it. Lest it seem like I am a Trump hater, I am very much not impressed by Hochul's delaying which was certainly because of her special interests.
by newyankee on 6/20/25, 4:38 PM
by wakawaka28 on 6/20/25, 4:43 PM
by EGreg on 6/20/25, 3:46 PM
Yet they stay true to economics principles even when they are more lefty and collectively enforced :)
Now imagine what else Pigovian Taxes can do to help solve collective action problems, if we had a UBI and local city currencies: https://community.intercoin.app/t/rolling-out-voluntary-basi...
To quote: Finally, as taxes and fees are introduced in the local economy, the community can start to issue a Universal Basic Income in its own currency, without causing inflation.
Various taxes can be organically introduced, including sales taxes, land taxes 1, and pigovian taxes 3 on things like pollution, fossil fuels, meat or cigarettes. By redistributing taxed money equally to everyone, this can align public incentives with taxing these negative externalities, and avoid them falling disproportionately on the working class, as happened with the yellow vest protests in France.
As demand for the local currency (and thus local real estate and services) grows, so does the town’s ability to tax various transactions. The town’s citizens could be given the ability to democratically vote on the level of taxes, and thus the level of UBI, they want to receive.
Thus the town can have both sound money and true democratic control of its fiscal and monetary policies, all the while becoming more self-sufficient and stronger. Any town will be able to introduce a local UBI to end food insecurity, improve health outcomes, reduce dependence on means-tested welfare programs, and so on.
PS: Why all the downvotes? Why always silent with no reason?
by timr on 6/20/25, 4:10 PM
1) It's a regressive tax on everyone living here -- even if you never use a car. Literally everything we buy and use in the city gets more expensive because of this law.
2) That same regressive tax is used to provide a lifeline for an exceptionally wasteful public organization (the MTA) that needs budget discipline, not additional funding. The MTA rivals Tammany Hall in terms of waste and fraud, and the talks of budget cuts were political crocodile tears.
3) (more minor) By definition, the point of this tax is to make it so that only rich people can drive. As the article notes, of course this is great if you're rich enough to afford it...but the article doesn't quote the people who can't now.
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Edit: I'm just going to respond to the single point that everyone is making in one place, instead of repeating it: you don't just get to assert that the hypothesized "reduction in transit time" offsets the costs. You have to prove that argument.
You're the one arguing in favor of a new tax. It's not my job to prove the negative.
Ultimately, congestion was itself a cost, but it was a dynamic cost, increasing and decreasing with the amount of congestion to maximize utility of the roads. What the state has done here, effectively, is set the price of driving higher than the market at all times in order to guarantee a marginal reduction in demand.
by lysace on 6/20/25, 3:55 PM
See also: Singapore. When I first visited I was amazed at how little traffic there was. Turns out they had imposed so severe costs on car ownership that the vast majority can’t afford to own one.
Why Driving in Singapore Is Like 'Wearing a Rolex'
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/24/world/asia/car-certificat...