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this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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Climate
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The goal should be to improve public transit so it's more convenient than owning a vehicle.
Car travel is already bad, trying to make it even worse is a losing battle.
Congestion pricing tends to make it a lot better though, since people aren't stuck in traffic all the time.
There's a reason it tends to become quite popular a few months after implementation
The government has the power to make changes. When there are solutions available that benefit everyone, going with a punitive alternative that does not address the fundamental issue is bad policy.
The fundamental issue is too many cars. Congestion pricing reduces the number of cars, which gets at the root of the problem.
We should instead ask why people are choosing cars over public transport, then address those issues. The number of cars are only a symptom of the problem.
There are lots of answers to that, but the basic one is that we've allowed too many cars into a space which can't handle them. A congestion fee changes that, by actively discouraging them.
Congrats. Make it so poor people can't afford to drive, so public transport becomes "only for poors" and never gets the funding it needs.
That's not who is objecting; you can't afford to park on lower Manhattan if you're poor.
The proposal was to charge a fee for entering a zone in Manhattan, not parking.
If people are driving in circles in the already-super-congested Manhattan traffic instead of going somewhere and parking, then yes, they shouldn't be doing that.
This might surprise you but people who have lots of money still generally like to save money when they can. If mass transit is appealing enough people won't want to spend a lot of money to avoid it.
And in the process, you've now kicked the poors off the road.
I don't know what gives you the idea that poor people can afford to drive in New York City in the first place. Do you have any idea how expensive parking is?
That's fair. I suppose I was criticizing the concept more generally, not solely with NYC in mind.