here’s the facts.
1) we pay taxes, taxes are used for purposes of what??? you fill that in.
2) your decision to use public transportation is, FYI, your decision.
3) instead of selectively finger pointing on a band aid why not write a solution to the problem. your way, my way, or the high way.

any opinion you have should be followed with a well thought out solution. would you be responsible for the consequences as easily as you are so eager to promote the $8 dollar congestion fees for motorists?

FYI: during different times of the day congestion are due to
commercial vehicles
taxes and livery cabs

when is it congested? what times? where? have you been there at those times? I’m a New Yorker and travel into the city a lot and your speech is written with ignorance.

your not doing your homework…

think before you speak!

thnx
tom

And she would be affected by congestion pricing not at all. Well, another Brooklyn-Queens subway might eventually be put in that would eliminate the need for driving, but that wouldn’t be for a while. And there might be minimally less traffic to deal with. But the fee involved is for Manhattan, not Brooklyn or Queens.

Only about 35% of New York households (about 22% in Manhattan) own cars at all. So part of the issue in implementing congestion pricing is are the disadvantages to the elite few who own cars enough to offset the advantages to the majority, including better public transportation, less air pollution, fewer pedestrian deaths and injuries, and so on? Cars really aren’t suited to Manhattan anyway. There are too many people too close together for them to make any sense. Pedestrian death rates are ridiculously high. As it happens, I know two people who were killed by cars while either walking or biking and five others (that I can think of right off) who were injured by cars. In both deaths, the car involved came up onto the sidewalk or bike path. Neither driver so much as stopped to see how badly the person they had hit was. Probably didn’t even notice the bump. So excuse me if I don’t have a lot of sympathy for people whining about how horrible it is that Bloomberg might want to charge them for bringing their lethal weapons into a target rich environment. Only Cheney gets to hunt without a permit.

Additionally, it is a fact that so far the new trains conductor-free trains have resulted in decreased staffing of the subway; additionally, decreased staffing has continued apace irrespective of this new technology–booths have closed all over town in favor of turnstyle/metro-card machine set-ups. This to me is another safety issue which becomes very noticeable when you’re standing completely alone on a subway platform and missing the guy in the booth whom you at least might hope would be able to phone the police should someone attack you.

Also, not to pick on you, since I myself am a horrible speller/typist, but Harlem is with an “e” not an “a.”

I must admit I don’t know the formal evidence. The theory is that setting up a system where the trains can safely be put closer together and the driver reaction time is eliminated can allow more trains to travel on the same track more efficiently. It seems to work in Paris, where the worst part of the subway ride, in my experience, is getting through the crush of people to the turnstile. But that’s just anecdote. As far as the effect on MTA employees, I don’t see automation as really decreasing the need for subway personnel much. They’ll still be needed to control the crowds–this being NYC we’re talking about, people will still rush the doors–and if there are more trains they’ll need more crowd control people. On the other hand, that job is probably more stressful than actually running the train.

Even if one doesn’t want to automate the subways fully, there are obvious places where the subways are still using early 20th century technology that breaks frequently (i.e. the switches, control boards, etc). Even updating that to reasonably reliable late 20th century technology would decrease the number of subway breakdowns and so increase overall efficiency. While we’re on the subject, the MTA is doing a completely crappy job of making sure that the repairs and updates they are doing are being done safely. Workers keep getting killed in the subway tunnels because they aren’t being given adequate safety equipment, the train drivers aren’t being informed of their location, etc. And they won’t give their employees a decent raise. No wonder they struck a couple of years ago. This is at least partly because the MTA is under the control of the state government and upstaters have no interest in making life easier for people in NYC. We’re just a tax cash cow to them. It’s time for NYC to secede (from the state, not the country) and form its own state. See how the upstaters like having to pay for their own roads.

While we’re voting for new lines—Brooklyn crosstown! Extend the ‘S’ into a REAL subway! Coney Island to Williamsburg!

Warehousing? There used to be warehouses in SOHO, but they have long since been converted into apartments for Kennedys, fluxist poets, and other such riff-raff. If there are warehouses in NYC, they’re not in Manhattan and so anyone needing to drive to work there wouldn’t be affected by congestion pricing.

There are warehouses on the far west side, west of 11th Ave. Lots of parking lots around there, too.

There are a number of things we could do about the transportation situation in NYC, particularly Manhattan if the money and political will were available.

1. Build more subway lines. The 2nd Avenue line is a running joke but it shouldn’t be. It should have been completed years ago and probably would have been if the politicians weren’t so sensitive to the feelings of the drivers whose commute would be disrupted by the work and if our tax money wasn’t being diverted to pay for more roads upstate. Besides the 2nd Avenue line, more crosstown lines are needed (and they need to go all the way cross town), better connections to Queens and Brooklyn, probably a couple of lines parallel to the really busy outer burough lines (i.e. the 7 and E lines.)

2. Automate the subways. That would allow more trains on each line, in greater safety. Add signs telling people when the next subway would appear and they might be less inclined to rush the current one and delay it.

3. Add designated bus lanes and isolated platforms (so that people could pay when they get on the platform rather than on the bus, which could speed loading enormously). Alternately, bus/bike lanes like they have in Paris seem to work reasonably well.

4. On a related note, more bike lanes. There is a bike path almost all the way around the west side of Manhattan, but the east side is lacking, as is much of Harlam. Biking is often the fastest way to get around in Manhattan, but it is dangerous due to cars and frustrated drivers who take their frustations out on bikers. Designated bike lanes could change that. Or, if you really think that cars need the space so badly, bike/bus lanes. Also better enforcement of existing bike lanes. Tow and confiscate any car parked in a bike lane and I bet the number of people parking in bike lanes would go down percipitously.

5. Red light and speeding cameras. This is one form of surveillance where it really is only the guilty who need to be afraid.

6. Isolate cars as much as possible. Maybe dig some tunnels under Manhattan so the people traveling from NJ to LI don’t ever actually have to go through Manhattan’s streets. Make downtown a ped zone. Ban on street parking (leaving more room for bike and bus lanes and maybe even expanded sidewalks).

Just the first few ideas that came to my mind. Some of them are, no doubt, impractical. But if I can think them up, then anyone can. So there’s no need to declare Manhattan’s traffic situation simply hopeless and give up.

BTW: Sorry about the multiple post effect. I’m posting from the BRD at the moment and so am posting at what is for most posters the middle of the night.

Alice the cleaning lady takes the E train or the 7 from Queens. However, Robert’s got a good point: a set fee is an undue burden on the poor. Why not go with a sliding scale fee based on, say, the cost of the car being driven, its probable effect on air quality and road integrity (i.e. size and gas mileage), and age of the car. That would be a lot more equitable.

On the whole, though, I’m not sure that an $8 fee would be much of a loss in the end. Gas is $3 a gallon or so and one could easily burn an unneeded 2 gallons in traffic. Reducing the traffic means a $6 gain there. Add in the decreased need for antacids, anxiolytics, and antidepressants, and the extra $2 is gone. Besides which, one can work the hour or so one would otherwise spend in traffic, meaning an extra $7 for the cleaning lady or $50 for the construction worker.

If it had been retail and the service industry, you might have had a point. As it stands…

Warehousing? There used to be warehouses in SOHO, but they have long since been converted into apartments for Kennedys, fluxist poets, and other such riff-raff. If there are warehouses in NYC, they’re not in Manhattan and so anyone needing to drive to work there wouldn’t be affected by congestion pricing. Transportation, likewise, if you mean MTA employees, they probably start work at the distant lots and also wouldn’t be affected (though the idea of MTA employees who don’t or can’t use the MTA to get to work is disturbing). On the other hand, it’s hard to imagine that people working at Penn Station or GCS don’t have access to public transportation to get to work. At least on the work end. Maybe they need park and ride access. I’m afraid I’m going to have to admit entire ignorance on the issue of utilities.

Government workers, now there’s a scam. Government employees drive more often because they often have free parking as a perk of employment. The only bit that’s half way justified is the police and fire personnel who may have to come in at weird hours and in emergencies. But they are unlikely to be affected by congestion pricing (which would be in effect only when congestion exists) and if they had to come in in an emergency, less congested streets would be extremely helpful. Anyone who has ever lived in NYC has seen emergency vehicles caught in traffic jams, unable to get through the mess, and probably wondered if anyone was burning to death, being murdered, or dying of a heart attack because the firefighters, police, or EMS couldn’t get to them. Emergency workers on their way to work might reasonably be exempted from congestion pricing. The mayor, on the other hand, who uses the subway to get to work as he promised in his campaign, but drives to the subway, needs to pay the extra $8 if he wants to avoid the long, arduous walk.

Construction workers again may use cars because of odd shifts. In which case, they wouldn’t be affected. Even if not, construction work pays reasonably well–as it should, of course. But they can afford the $8. Just because they work with their hands doesn’t make them the oppressed prolitariate. Many people in finance and professional services (depending on how that is defined) make far less.

Well, apart from their poor performance in safety testing. They are also so large that it is hard for drivers to see the road in front of them properly, leading to an excess of pedestrian deaths. Anecdotally, an incident occcurred at the gas station a block from where I live: A bunch of cars were in line for the pump, with the line crossing the sidewalk. People continued to use the sidewalk, of course. The line moved just as a woman with an infant was crossing in front of it. The SUV driver sitting immediately in front of the sidewalk either didn’t see the woman or didn’t care and ran over her, killing the child. I do hope that the driver feels some remorse, but given the way most SUV drivers behave, I’m not at all sure. Pseudo-safety for the driver at the expense of real safety for everyone else? How American.

They also seem to think that they will handle better in inclement weather (especially those with 4-wheel drive) and will be safer in that respect.

I don’t know about that. The tipping on emergency handling tests suggests otherwise, but that aside, how often are people expecting to have to barrel through blizzards on the streets of NYC? It’s not exactly back country driving and when the weather’s really bad everything closes up and people are told to stay home until the snow plows can get through (it’s happened maybe twice in the 10 years I’ve lived in NYC.)

The whole transportation situation in NYC is a big conundrum. In most American cities, the solution to congestion problems is to get more people to take public transit, but in New York the Manhattan subway lines are operating past capacity as it is. (And by that, I mean both that individual cars are packed and that there are as many cars on the tracks as the tracks can sustain.) Maybe in ten years everyone will telecommute, and people won’t need to come into Manhattan at all. But I doubt it.

Would poor people use the roads less? Hard to say because, as Robert notes, both the price and the quality are changing: Drivers give an extra $8, but drivers get less congested roads.

Who wins? I’d guess those who move around a lot. If you merely go to an office in the morning and go home at night, you’re probably a loser in this deal. If you make lots of stops throughout the day, you may well be a winner. So, which social class parks their pasty white asses behind a desk all day, and which social class hauls their asses all around town all day?

If Alice can pack in an extra cleaning job now that she can get across town faster, the extra $8 is tax-deductible peanuts.

This type of program modifies the marketplace in road space. Right now, the availability of the road for transport is rationed on the basis of time. The more people who use the roads, the slower they become, and the higher the price that users pay, in terms of their time spent on the road.

Adding a toll fee adds a monetary cost to the transaction. When you raise costs, usage goes down. The people who are more likely to avoid the roads now that it costs $8 are those for whom $8 is a substantial sum. Donald Trump won’t care or notice, you feel it as a real cost but manage to pay it, for Alice the cleaning lady it’s more than she can manage. Which of the three of you finds another way to work?

Now there are fewer people on the road, and more of them as a proportion are wealthy than were before. The road now moves more quickly, since there are fewer users, so the time cost for using the road diminishes. The 40 minute trip becomes a 35 minute trip, for example.

So the program ends up making the trip faster for rich people (which adds to their wealth, since time has value far in excess of the fees for the wealthy) and more difficult/expensive for poor people (diminishing their wealth). The toll drives out the undesirable poor to make life better for the pampered rich.

Which, as a good Republican, I am all in favor of, but it’s odd to see you on this particular yacht.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1495201511100893364&q=Japanese crosswalk&total=48&start=10&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=4