Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

Hi from London:

The centre is much more pleasant to walk in, as are most places in the zone.

Pollution is much, much better: if you came to London and travelled on the underground you would have black snot when you blew your nose, this hasn't been the case for a few years now.

I hope NY gets the sake improvements.

London has changed for the better for sure but black snot on the tube hasn't changed at all. I get it from 20 minutes on any deep line like the Victoria. It's from train brake dust, nothing to do with vehicle emissions.

The Tube has a real ventilation issue - not just the brake dust, but also temps and staleness. Some of those lines, it’s like a 24/7 sauna!

I think I read that the warmth from people and braking has baked some of the clay earth around the tunnels, making them even more insulative!

Victoria might be one of the worst for this. You can hear the wheels screaming the abrasion off for long sections of it. It’ll be interesting to see whether the Piccadilly gets better for you when the new trains arrive over the next couple of years.

Because of how old they are there is some really interesting long term data as the earth itself around the tunnels reaches a new thermal equilibrium. In looking for a source, i found a good wikipedia article on tube temp in general.

These comments and the article made me see how much of it is/was due to braking. TIL.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_cooling

I think the screeching is because the section from Highbury to Blackhorse is one massive right hook that the trains take at an uncompromising speed.

Ha, I happened upon an interesting video earlier today on this topic! https://youtu.be/4MzHt_YLnjw

Travel of low-income people also declined significantly while high-income travel did not. So quite literally the London congestion pricing got the poor off the zones.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03611981221138801

From the report: "the highest income earners contributed to more of the revenue than the lowest income earners, making the scheme progressive in the scale of its equity impact"

It is quite likely that the lower income users are mostly retired people, and students, and they shouldn't be crowding the system at peak times unless willing to pay.

If you price out low-income people, you do get relatively more revenue from high-income earners. But the low-income people also get less service.

The non-charge eligible trips of the low earners declined as well. The paper did not differentiate between sources of income, and I'm not sure how relevant that is.

So the "poor off the zones" stands. Of course it's a matter of opinion whether this is desirable or not.

The paper is available without paywall here: https://www.mit.edu/~hamsa/pubs/Craik-Balakrishnan-TRR2022.p...

A retired millionaire living off savings will be counted as a “low income” person unlike than a working person on 50k paying 20k a year in rent.

I treat “income” with a healthy dose of salt

How would limiting access by adding a cost not obviously impact people differently based on their income? I'm struggling to see why this would even need to be verified by research.

What's not obvious is how strong the impact is, does it cause substitution of travel modes or just decrease in travel, how does it change when travel takes place, what share of people are those who still have to drive etc.

In general cost, travel time, difficulty of parking, etc. all affect optional travel. (And, also, just age and inclination.) I know I'm way less inclined to go into Boston/Cambridge for something in the evening for some combination of those reasons than I used to be. I can take commuter rail in for a day event but it's pretty much a non-starter for something in the evening.