Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

Good luck New York.

In London it is now just a toll. It started off at just the busiest times but now you need to pay it 24/5, and even on Saturday and Sunday afternoons when there is no rush hour. Not only have the hours expanded, but so has the size of the zone. So now even right out in the suburbs you need to pay if you drive a diesel but I fully expect them to include petrol cars, then eventually all EVs too.

The prices are quite cheap too - the price is like 2 adults return tickets on the tube so you may as well just drive it since the price is the same but public transport is so utterly utterly awful and unreliable and slow and dirty and just terrible in London.

If they were serious about changing people's behaviour and serious about trying to prevent congestion and/or pollution they'd price it so that it is a real deterrent to usage (so instead of £15, it would be like £250/day or something). But if they did that then no one would pay so they'd not get the revenue. So they price it just right so that people pay.

They say all the proceeds are ring-fenced for reinvestment etc etc. This is disingenuous - it's not like transport suddenly gets 125% extra funding, they just set the budgets so the "extra" they get from congestion charging and cameras etc tops-off the budgets so things balance out at ~100% of what they'd get anyway and the difference just used for other vanity projects by TfL.

I've never understood what people mean when they say public transportation is "dirty". I've never had to sit or stand in or near muck or sick or anything like that. If there's a bit of grime in the corner or animals or something... Okay? I don't have to touch any of that. I care about as much as getting onto a slightly groady amusement park ride, or seeing bugs or squirrels in the park; it's not going to so traumatize me that I won't ride. Is it the people? I've had to sit next to one or two people who smelled in my hundreds of train and bus trips. Or is it an ethnic/class dogwhistle sort of thing?

Having lived in several European cities so far (Brussels, Rotterdam, Stuttgart, Berlin, Bucharest), London's (where I have lived since 10 years) public transportation is one of the best I've seen so far. It's not without its zonal imbalances, but calling it terrible, unreliable, etc. is something I do not subscribe to, and, I suspect, neither do many of its residents.

You might be right though: what is your commute/experience that made you describe it so? Am genuinely curious to understand in how much of a privileged bubble I might be in.

> public transport is so utterly utterly awful and unreliable and slow and dirty and just terrible in London.

I've lived here all my life, never owned a car, and I have no idea what you're talking about

> public transport is so utterly utterly awful and unreliable and slow and dirty and just terrible in London.

Completely disagree with this statement. Living in London for 4 years now and despite the occasional late train or "ghost" bus it is quite reliable and at reasonable speeds. Unsure what you mean about "dirty", the buses and tube rarely seem messy.

However I agree that the toll should be higher and applicable to all private vehicles.

> I've never understood what people mean when they say public transportation is "dirty".

They are forced to share air with obviously poor and non-white people and that is simply intolerable...

One of the biggest adjustments I went through in moving from SF to London was accepting that busses were a viable mode of transit for any time of day. In SF I would crawl over broken glass to avoid having to take a Muni bus while in London my wife and I have taken a bus in dinner jacket and couture dress to an event at a club. There will doubtless be people to chime in with examples of bus systems that are better, but TfL busses are not 'awful and unreliable and slow and dirty and just terrible' by any possible metric.

Responding to myself since multiple asked:

Slow: many many journeys via bus are usually at least 4 to 5x slower than driving. Typical example for me to go to the nearest large supermarket from where I live (approx 2 miles) is a 7 minute drive (so average 18mph) and pennies in fuel/energy costs or a 44 minute bus journey with a 9 minute walk at the end (each way) that requires changing buses half-way and costs £1.75 x 2 = £3.50 return unless you get a hopper fair. it's actually quicker to walk-tube-walk (38 minutes) but that is I think £4.20 return just for a quick shop at the big Tescos! It would only take 41 minutes to walk the whole way, so a bus is actually slower than walking.

Unreliable: just this week the tubes all stopped due to a "power blip" meaning I missed an appointment. This morning the train I was on changed it's destination after I got on it, meaning I had to get off and go back to a junction and get another train, which incidentally I had to wait 7 minutes for and it was packed. There is a joke about "TfL minutes" because the minutes they show on the countdown clocks at bus stations and tube stations are typically significantly longer than real minutes. There barely goes by a month without at least the threat of industrial action either, meaning you have to reschedule things just incase (and usually these are called off at the last minute meaning the union got what they wanted, TfL can say they avoided the strike, but you and I have already had to alter our plans or rebook meetings or pay for extra childcare etc already but because it is called off within 12-24 hours you are too late to cancel your own plans without penalties etc etc)

Dirty: look at your hands after getting the tube and holding onto a handrail. Or blow your nose. It's dirty. No one can deny this. The air in the tube is worse than the air on the street in terms of PM2.5 etc - there have been many studies on this

General awfulness: try getting on a rushhour train. If you can physically squeeze on to a train that is. And if you do, it's a pretty unpleasant, sweaty, gross, frottagy horror story.

People who think that it is this amazing nirvana are deluding themselves. Are there worse places? Sure. But let's not delude ourselves that it is by any regard "good". I guess if you are visiting from somewhere else on vacation then there is a novelty-factor, but if you have to do the 9-5 grind for decades at a time, if you have appointments to keep, a boss that yells at you if you are late, kids to collect on time from school (or they grass you up to social services because you can't answer the phone because you are trapped underground), or anything that requires a cheap and reliable service that you can count on then it sucks.