←back to thread

Changes since congestion pricing started in New York

(www.nytimes.com)
437 points Vinnl | 5 comments | 13 May 25 10:43 UTC | HN request time: 1.005s | source
Show context
kazinator ◴[15 May 25 18:02 UTC] No.43997602[source]▶
> Evidence has mounted that the program so far is achieving its two main goals — reducing congestion

It's reducing congestion by removing the people who don't want to pay $9 to drive to town.

Paying to be there: what a lovely concept! It works wonders for reducing density, too. Fewer people live in a desirable area, and they are richer and more pleasant, what are the downsides?

Maybe it should not be linked to affordability; it should be a lottery, for fairness.

For instance, if your license plate ends with certain numbers or letters (changing daily, and known months in advance for any given day), you don't get to drive into town.

Knowing well in advance the days when your car is admissible into the city allows you to plan. E.g. reschedule certain appointments so they occur on an allowed day, or else make alternative transportation plans.

Imperfections in lottery systems:

- Not fair toward people who often have to drive to town for whatever reason: they drive everyday or many days out of the week or month. Still translates to an extra cost, like driving to some parking lot outside of the city core, paying for parking there, and then paying for transit into the city. This could be people who are not well off: they work some job in the city that is not well paid, and have to live far away. In America "have car" != "affluent".

- Unfair advantage enjoyed by people who own multiple vehicles; we have not entirely eliminated pay-to-drive-here.

replies(2): >>43997855 #>>43998036 #
toss1 ◴[15 May 25 18:46 UTC] No.43998036[source]▶
Operating as designed.

If you have a car, you can already afford purchase/lease, insurance, registration, fuel, maintenance, etc., so affording a reasonable and variable toll is not an issue. If your need to take that vehicle into that zone at that specific time is so great, a $9 toll will not be a deterrent, and if it is just convenience, then rearrange your schedule or transport mode to a time/mode that balances the cost and convenience.

Sure it sounds nice to have it done by lottery system (e.g., plates with the rightmost numeral = "3" are banned next Tuesday), but that is much harder to tune and could present a far more serious impediment.

Far easier to tune it with price: Tuesday mornings have an extra-high traffic spike, ok, "Fee increases to $11 Tuesdays 0:830-13:30". We want to get to 15% less traffic instead of 10%, now we need to say "plates with the rightmost numerals in the range '00'-'15' banned Tuesdays", etc. etc.. Every time they make a change, everyone must check... what a mess.

And for people who MUST be there at a specific time, e.g., your cancer treatment center has only a Tuesday 10:20 AM slot for you, being banned because of a license plate is a real hardship, whereas an extra $2 toll is a trivial inconvenience compared to the reason for the trip.

replies(1): >>43998242 #
kazinator ◴[15 May 25 19:06 UTC] No.43998242[source]▶
> If you have a car, ...

Sounds vaguely like, why are you begging, and why should I give you anything, if you can afford cigarettes?

A lot of low-income Americans drive cars, and would be way more fucked without them, because of the way things are.

> that is much harder to tune and could present a far more serious impediment.

What impediment, and how is it harder to tune?

In principle, you can tune the system to such a fine granularity that, for instance, one specific license plate is permitted to enter the city, every four years on February 29th. And that is no easier to declare than any other tuning, like alternating daily between two halves of the license plate space.

replies(1): >>43999413 #
toss1 ◴[15 May 25 21:16 UTC] No.43999413[source]▶
>>why are you begging, and why should I give you anything, if you can afford cigarettes?

The expense profile of a motor vehicle in the USA in 2025 is quite different than cigarettes. And yes, if you are buying two packs per day of cigarettes, at $11.96 NY State average [0] you can skip one to drive into the congestion zone in congestion time.

>> A lot of low-income Americans drive cars

Yup. It is near-absolutely critical to have a car in rural America. But that is a long drive from Manhattan. How many of them NEED to drive cars into Manhattan during congestion periods? When I lived in Manhattan long before congestion pricing, I sold my car because it was such a hassle to have while living there.

>>What impediment, and how is it harder to tune? In principle, you can tune the system to such a fine granularity that...

I already provided such an example. There are many types of appointments that are very difficult to get, and adding the hassle of being ILLEGAL to drive your car on that particular day will be a real hardship, not a mere inconvenience.

Sure, the city planners could tune any license plate scheme down to an individual vehicle, but only at the cost of a massive hassle to everyone involved. The general algo of "ya, it'll cost me to go during congestion times; oh woah, they just added $2 to the 11h-14h time slot" is waaay different from "I have a doctor appointment Tuesday, is the third character of my plate 4, 5, M, or N?...[runs out to look at plate]...damnit, I've got to change to... oh, no appointments for another seventeen weeks?... (real example from my own doctor)" The person who could have taken care of it for a $9 fee is now either seriously delayed or needs to pay $80 for an Uber.

Meanwhile, you want to add all that burden to everyone to accommodate a population of low income people, near Manhattan, who want to drive their cars into the city on a regular basis. But they will NOT be able to do this to get to their job daily, so will still need to make other arrangements initially every other day anyway.

This convinces me there is even less of a case for lottery allocation than even the first post.

edit: add LF for formatting

[0] https://boxprintify.com/how-much-do-cigarettes-cost/

replies(1): >>44000830 #
kazinator ◴[16 May 25 00:56 UTC] No.44000830[source]▶
You're not trying to argue that random selection for a benefit is unfair, compared to selecting for people who are willing to pay?

About appointments, there could be a very simple website where you punch in your license plate, hit Enter, and see a calendar with all your days highlighted, for the next 6 to 12 months.

There could be some flexibility in the system. Everyone gets a small number of tokens (which expire: must be used in a year or something) that provide a free pass on any day whatsoever. You use those for those situations like getting a sudden appointment that couldn't be planned around the regular system (e.g. someone canceled and you were next on the waitlist, and the time is the time).

The token system could be automatic in fact. You just drive to the city on an off day when you aren't supposed to, and your "ding count" increments by one. On the same website where you punch in your plate number to get a schedule, you can see the number of dings against your license plate. (The system wouldn't have to track all license; just ones that triggered a ding.) (Not sure about the privacy implications. Someone who enters your plate number and sees a ding count knows that your car has been to the city sometime in the past few months on an unassigned day. If that's something you need to hide from someone, then maybe just don't go by car on those days.)

replies(1): >>44005521 #
toss1 ◴[16 May 25 13:50 UTC] No.44005521[source]▶
I agree adding exemption tokens or 'ding count' is a good idea. But YES, I am arguing:

1) random selection creates both substantial unfairness and cost on people who through no fault of their own have schedule issues, when compared to a modest congestion toll,

2) random selection creates widespread inconvenience for everyone especially when changes are made to 'tune' the amount of traffic; everyone needs to check if the new lottery numbers match their plates, vs just increasing prices at specific which will at most cost someone a few dollars extra if they don't check in advance, instead of a costly ticket

3) The lottery system would not help anyone who wants to commute in everyday, since they would be banned on whatever days they are banned. In contrast, the cost system is trivial for one-off trips, but a significant cumulative cost to people who want to use cars in the congested zone every day. The one-off trips are not the problem, the GOAL is to reduce habitual trips. The toll system addresses that most specifically and gives no advantage to two-car households, whereas a lottery is basically a free pass to two-car households to continue congesting.

Having a lottery system with ~4 free passes per month may solve some of these, but at the cost of a lot of additional tracking and overhead. Still thinking basic economics is a good solution here. More ideal in some ways would be a sliding per-visit scale (e.g., scaling by some exponent per visit per month...), but again likely not worth the overhead.

replies(1): >>44008441 #
kazinator ◴[16 May 25 18:26 UTC] No.44008441[source]▶
This overhead is relative to doing nothing, or relative to imposing tolls?

Does not the congestion pricing setup in N.Y. rely on license plate cameras?

Under the lottery model, the same cameras are used. When a license is scanned which is permitted on that day, no further tracking is required. The event contributes to statistics, but otherwise can be dropped.

When a license is scanned which is not permitted that day, it added to a local database with a count of 1, or else has its count incremented if already recorded. Further processing deeper in the system is only applied to licenses which are over a threshold. The counts are periodically aged down, and records which hit zero are deleted.

replies(1): >>44010597 #
1. toss1 ◴[16 May 25 23:06 UTC] No.44010597[source]▶
Of course everything can be computed.

I'm talking more of the overhead for every single person who might want to come into the city on a given day — they will need to check and work their schedules around 1) being sure to check the current permitted/denied license plate character pattern and 2) work their schedules around that.

As we've already seen, we already need substantial work-arounds for critical can't move medical appointments. Events can be even worse; working in a business displaying at the biggest trade show for their industry all year, they've got to come in all four days, using their personal cars. Oops, nope, banned two of those days... etc. It is bullshit. Whereas with congestion tolls, it's just a trivial expense part of doing the show. We can think of thousands of such examples where a toll is simply a trivial inconvenience whereas a traffic violation is not. Of course, for each one, we can find a work-around ("just add another layer of indirection...."). And each one of those work-arounds adds to the workload of everyone who might come into the zone.

In contrast, the congestion toll workload is always simple: "Is it worth the extra $X to go in during the busy time, or can I go in a different time?"

And, traffic violations — especially accumulating traffic violations — are a LOT worse for low-income people, as the consequences tend to compound.

You are definitely convincing me even more strongly that congestion tolls are the better idea and lotteries are both far more inconvenient and more unfair.

replies(1): >>44011005 #
2. kazinator ◴[17 May 25 00:22 UTC] No.44011005[source]▶
I think that if the license plate appears as a URL parameter, you could just save a browser bookmark. Click on it, and there is your schedule for the next umpteen months.

Ideally, they wouldn't change it more than, say, nine months out. I.e it is set in stone for three quarters of a year. A month is added each month. No "tuning" anything closer than 9 months.

> we already need substantial work-arounds for critical can't move medical appointments.

Trivial workaround of free passes associated with counters tied to license plates, together with the stability of the schedule being set in stone for months into the future.

> And, traffic violations — especially accumulating traffic violations — are a LOT worse for low-income people, as the consequences tend to compound.

What's the difference? Low-income people will just drive past the cameras and get a shocking bill in the mail. Isn't that how it works?

It's not a "violation" because you called it a "toll": word semantics.

I think, go easy on the violations under the lottery system. E.g. send a warning to first time abusers and whatnot.

replies(1): >>44015093 #
3. toss1 ◴[17 May 25 15:43 UTC] No.44015093[source]▶
>>Ideally, they wouldn't change it more than, say, nine months out

So, the system is highly unresponsive compared to adjusting a toll +/- a small amount for changing conditions

The system is also completely unresponsive to time-of-day issues, so e.g., if they want to dampen traffic in 11:30-15:30...

>> free passes associated with counters tied to license plates Right, another entire kludge system to attempt to accommodate a weakness, and then it only works for one-offs. Nevermind the week-long events that often bring people into the city, which now need yet another work-around...

>>traffic violations ...What's the difference?

The difference is a bill for a $9 toll vs a $150 violation for driving in the congestion zone on a forbidden day.

Yes, a toll is different from a violation. OFC, if you fail to pay the toll, it can turn into a violation, but that is NOT the same thing

>>go easy Right, which reduces the effectiveness of the entire system because the abusers will game it even more to take advantage while the poor people will get hammered even more.

I love technology, but I also know that adding ever more complex tech to "solve" a problem is often a bad solution. In this case, it will literally not even help the poor people, and will help significantly the people with two cars.

If you want to work better for low-income people, just scale the congestion tolls to the value of the cars; those are already only one lookup away from the license plates. E.g., the basic toll is $9, but for cars over $100K value, it scales proportionally.

Now you aren't handing out traffic ticket violations to people who must come in on the 'wrong' day.

replies(1): >>44015348 #
4. kazinator ◴[17 May 25 16:24 UTC] No.44015348{3}[source]▶
> I love technology, but I also know that adding ever more complex tech

Says the person who wants to adjust prices by the hour in response to real-time data, LOL.

Why would we care about fine tuning by the hour, when we can just make 75% of the cars disappear, all day long.

I would apply the ban 24 hours a day. If your car is not allowed tomorrow and you don't want to use a free pass, and you must absolutely drive, then get there before midnight tonight and sleep in your car.

replies(1): >>44018527 #
5. toss1 ◴[18 May 25 02:30 UTC] No.44018527{4}[source]▶
Umm, the simplest tech to actually do the job. I wasn't talking about adjusting prices by the hour, more like by the week or month, but as you point out, with a toll system, it would be straightforward to do real-time updates. So, zoom out a bit.

The point is to use the simplest practical system that does the job, in this case managing traffic congestion.

With no system, the costs of making extra traffic are externalized from each driver onto every other driver and city resident.

A congestion toll puts back on every driver coming into the zone a small fraction of those externalized costs. The toll costs are small, typically a fraction of what it would cost to even park for any time in the zone, or buy fuel. This system allows EACH INDIVIDUAL to freely, for themselves, decide if it is worthwhile to bear that fractional cost. And the system is paid for largely by the drivers making the congestion.

In contrast, a lottery system is a government agency controlling everything with an extremely blunt instrument (or, if it is tunable, a blunt instrument with a kludged-on rat's nest of spaghetti-code to handle every fairness exception).

The entire burden is on the city and the NON-driving residents to foot the cost of implementing it. It costs the drivers massive inconvenience (as discussed earlier), gives a free pass to multi-car households, and people who need to come in on "off" days are penalized with moving traffic violations, which have a much higher cost, especially for low-income people.

Lotteries are even worse for your dude wanting to drive in and sleep in his car to avoid the 24hr ban; with a lottery, he still cannot drive anywhere the entire next 24hr day, but to avoid the toll, he needs only come in before the congestion time and park until the congestion time ends.

Seriously, this discussion has clarified that a lottery is worse in every way, for the drivers, including the low-income drivers, overhead for the city and it's residents, and for the system itself which will work much less well.