Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

>The increased speeds are excellent for those who can afford the toll. This is a universal benefit of toll roads for those people.

Anecdotally that seems to be the case. The largest burden of this tax is falling on low income commuters who live off the train lines and have to drive into Manhattan, yet all of the money is going to... the train lines (MTA). Understandably they're not too happy.

Those people simply don't drive into Manhattan, parking is already $30-$40 a day, driving from Jersey means you are already paying at least a $15 toll (you can drive from Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx without paying a toll). An extra $9 simply doesn't matter.

Already 85% of commuters to lower Manhattan take public transit. Of the remaining 15%. An analysis found that only 2% of working poor New Yorkers would pay the charge. Otherwise low income New Yorkers would overwhelmingly benefit from the better transit funding

https://www.nrdc.org/bio/eric-goldstein/busting-myths-new-yo...

While I am sympathetic to the general gist of the "poors aren't the subject of this tax" argument but the change in denominator "85% in this zone" to "2% of the city's working poor" is obvious and it's kind of concerning that with the huge efforts that went into quantifying this they couldn't come up with something more precise.

It's not like NYC doesn't have cameras everywhere and couldn't probably figure it pretty easily in an afternoon by crossing the ALPR DB with the tax DB (after spending 48mo of political wrangling to allow that to happen).

> I am sympathetic to the general gist of the "poors aren't the subject of this tax" argument but the change in denominator "85% in this zone" to "2% of the city's working poor" is obvious and it's kind of concerning

Why? Do you want to know something other than the second statistic?

Why the heck wouldn't I want to know what fraction of people actually subject to the new policy fall with in the group of interest?. There's nothing that says the 2% of the overall group aren't the same 15% who will be taxes. Now, obviously we know from common sense and observable reality that that's not the case but it still begs the question what the number is. Saying "85% of people in the affected area are not subject" and then "2% of the interest group city wide is subject to the policy" implies some upper and lower bound but it doesn't actually say much about what percent of those subject to the tax are subject to it.

Like, it's 20-goddamn-25, everyone with an IQ above room temperature should be instantly red flagging these sorts of minor but potentially very meaningful omissions.

Like maybe the number is 10% of something instead of 2%, IDK, but with the surveillance dragnet and statistics firehose NYC policymakers have access to it's hella sus that they didn't just give an outright or more preciously bounded answer.

Again, anecdotally. This point came from a bartender in the east village, who has indeed driven into the city every day for years. Longtime locals who know where to park are not paying $30-40 (in fact that is at the high end of anywhere I've seen in Manhattan).

> Anecdotally that seems to be the case. The largest burden of this tax is falling on low income commuters who live off the train lines and have to drive into Manhattan, yet all of the money is going to... the train lines (MTA). Understandably they're not too happy.

This is factually inaccurate on so many counts. People who drive into the congestion pricing zone have a higher income than the median in the city. Not only is the number of low-income people who commute by car into the zone is incredibly small, but those people are already eligible for a waiver, so they wouldn't have to pay it anyway.

On top of that, the money is all going to the MTA, but that is not synonymous with "the train lines", because the MTA is also responsible for the robust bus network throughout the five boroughs, and the money raised from congestion pricing has already been earmarked for a whole number of projects, several of which would apply to people who are reliant on buses.

> Again, anecdotally. This point came from a bartender in the east village, who has indeed driven into the city every day for years.

To be clear: you're basing your understanding of the effects of public policy from an offhand conversation with a person who has no reason to know any of the actual details of the policy, and who has a vested personal stake in the matter, rather than on any of the many numerous objective sources of data, whether that be the 4000 page report that was issued last year before the policy took effect, or any of the many studies and analyses that have come out since?

Yes, I'm sure that some bartender told you that he is unhappy with it. But that doesn't mean that anything he's saying is based in reality. Congestion pricing opponents have routinely repeated talking points that are verifiably counterfactual or even nonsensical, and it's silly to take them at their word when the objective facts are so readily available.