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.

And the investments in public transit and bike paths are excellent for those who can't. Such unalloyed win-wins are hard to find.

I lived in Manhattan, and was very well paid. I did not own a car, and loved it. This would have been great for me as well.

Did you have children or did you live alone?

As someone with children, I can not imagine the bliss of living in Manhattan and being able to do things without needing a car.

Car-centric urban planning is hell with kids. You have to load them up into the car for any small trip. You can't walk or bike anywhere because cars make it so dangerous.

My only regret about living in the US is this car hellscape that is so hard to avoid. It's mandated by law, not chosen by the market.

You can live in an urban neighborhood and only use your car a few times a week (mostly on weekends and for yearly kid doctor visits). Its not just Manhattan, Seattle supports this as well (well, you still "need" a car, but you can get away with not driving it very often). You need to be strategic about where you live (e.g. buying the house 7 minutes away from your kid's K-8 and 10 minutes away from his future 9-12, with grocery stores and dentists nearby).

s/strategic/wealthy/

I agree there are places in Seattle one can do this, but boy one certainly needs the paper to do this.

Seattle is weird in that drive til you qualify is not a thing unless you start getting really far out. Some inner ring neighborhoods and suburbs are comparable or more expensive than the core.

If you want to head straight south or straight north you won’t have to go further out than 1 hour before rents and property values fall significantly from city center Seattle. Tacoma is 30 minutes away without traffic and has a median home price 40% less than Seattle. Drive till you qualify is real.

If you want to head east, you’re running into the real estate aftermath of Microsoft making tens of thousands of millionaires in the 90s and 00s. You won’t save much money there.

Yeah, the Eastside is a real estate hellscape. Everything east of Lake Washington till highway 203/18 is genuinely quite bad. I had cheaper rent on top of Queen Anne, 1 block from the Trader Joe's, than any place of comparable walk/transit on the east side ($2065/month for a 2 bedroom 1.75 bathroom apartment+1 parking place, ~950sq/ft).