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Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

(www.nytimes.com)
437 points Vinnl | 2 comments | 13 May 25 10:43 UTC | HN request time: 0.408s | source
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philipallstar ◴[14 May 25 14:36 UTC] No.43985073[source]▶
The increased speeds are excellent for those who can afford the toll. This is a universal benefit of toll roads for those people.
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ramesh31 ◴[14 May 25 14:59 UTC] No.43985330[source]▶
>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.

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paddy_m ◴[14 May 25 21:15 UTC] No.43989308[source]▶
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...

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potato3732842 ◴[14 May 25 23:05 UTC] No.43990112[source]▶
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).

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1. thaumasiotes ◴[15 May 25 01:55 UTC] No.43991112[source]▶
> 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?

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2. potato3732842 ◴[15 May 25 10:02 UTC] No.43993452[source]▶
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.