In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

I'm curious how congestion pricing became a national issue. The strength of conviction people have about this policy–almost either way, but certainly among those against–seems to scale with distance from the city.

Nobody in Idaho gets uppity about New Jersey's tolls. But they have strong, knowledge-free, almost identity-defining opinions about congestion charges.

Is it because it's a policy that's worked in Europe and Asia and is thus seen as foreign? Or because it's New York doing it, so it's branded as a tax, versus market-rate access or whatever we'd be calling it if this were done in Miami?

I think it's because it disproportionately impacts the people who can least afford it. It allows the wealthy to continue to enjoy the convenience (relative to alternatives) of driving into the city while polluting and causing traffic at a price that has zero impact on their lives while it punishes those who already have much less and whose lives will be impacted by the fines and the often significant amounts of time they'll have to spend arranging and taking alternative modes of transportation.

That's a very hard sell when people all around the country are feeling continuous downward pressure on their lifestyle and financial security while billionaires are seen getting massive tax breaks and pillaging everything they want while escaping accountability for the harms they cause everyone else. Taking a basic task like driving into the city, something many people are forced to do for work, and punishing them for it while once again giving the wealthy a pass was certain to upset people. in fact, by forcing more of the peasant class off the roads it makes driving into the city much more pleasant for the people with enough money to not care about the extra expense. Taking from the poor to improve things for the wealthy resonates with a lot of people.

It also doesn't help that in other contexts, congestion pricing has already hit people's wallets and is seen as an exploitative business model designed to extract as much money from the public as possible. The last thing most people want is seeing congestion pricing and other price-fuckery infesting another aspect of their daily lives, which is why the pushback against wendy's implementing it was so swift and severe that the company had to backpedal even after spending a small fortune on the digital menu boards they needed to enable it.

I think this comment is a great example of what the OP is talking about. Your comment is completely divorced from the context of congestion pricing in New York City. For example:

> Taking a basic task like driving into the city, something many people are forced to do for work

That is simply not the case in NYC. Very, very few people must drive into the center of Manhattan to work. It was already unaffordable to do so anyway because parking is incredibly expensive. People take the subway. Car ownership is already disproportionately preserved for the rich.

NYC is different from much of the country. I'm not going to make an argument that it's any better or any worse, but it is different. NYC congestion pricing as a national debate is missing the forest for the trees.