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.

The best decision would be to completely forbid individual transport. Now the common space dedicated to streets is for who can pay extra. Forbid individual transport and create some parks and pedestrian streets.

Extremes rarely work out well. The people paying for the luxury are funding improvements for everyone.

It works really well in quite a few other cities, actually.

Car infrastructure takes up a huge amount of space and is incredibly hostile to any kind of mixed use. Having near-zero cars means there is suddenly space available for an order of magnitude more pedestrians. It's why reducing car traffic almost always results in a significant increase in revenue for local shops and restaurants - which means more taxes are being paid.

Converting all of NYC into a huge pedestrian-only zone obviously isn't going to work, but having a few pedestrianized superblocks could greatly improve the quality-of-life.

> Converting all of NYC into a huge pedestrian-only zone obviously isn't going to work

The dreamer in me immediately asks “why not?” and while I agree it will never happen, it felt good to imagine it.

How do you get all the food in? Manhattan is an island. Without constant food deliveries by truck it will die. This food is delivered to countless restaurants and grocery stores, not to some central warehouse, so delivery by train doesn't work.