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In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
Sam from Wendover did a very good job explaining why Congestion Pricing is the best solution to address this particular problem, including arguments on why this is not a regressive tax when you analyze it closely.
Canonical YouTube link so you can use your favorite Invidious/Piped instance https://youtu.be/B2j-LgcA7Gk
Fixing traffic by... discouraging people from driving, lol. Well I'm not complaining.
This is great, should be implemented in all cities. Most people who can use public transport should.
Not all cities are equal. Many have large areas with no public transportation available.
That's also very easily fixable
I get suggested to drive for 11 minutes and ALSO take a lyft if I wanted to use public transportation to get to work.
In SF they allocated some extra carpool lanes (taken from the total number of highway lanes) and started calling them "express lanes" instead of carpool lanes. Everybody cheered-- because transit hipstering is a great thing for the people who it actually works well for in our mediocre system. I guess everytone else is SOL. In SF it started out that you could still use them for free if you had 2 people in the car. Now its 3 people minimum to ride free, and the prices crept higher. Now you'll very often see all non-express lanes stopped with traffic but the price for express lanes high and the express lanes clear of traffic-- that road throughput capacity underused. Its become a rich persons lane, at the cost of reducing capacity of the total system. When it got put in they said the max would be $8.00, shortly after they doubled that, with no max per day. Fees rack up since they charge over short distances. Now I've started seeing express lanes on main thoroughfares that arent highways.
Theres a patchwork of diconnected and not well thought out transit systems, with little hope of retrenching them to have usable coverage like NYC has. You'll end up using an uber or taxi to get to your final destination most of the time, and parking at transit stations is difficult, time consuming, and expensive.
This is not the solution you think it is. It just makes things better for the rich, and does nothing for the poor and middle class. This is like the "clear" lane at the airport security. Once its in, its not going away. Pricing is not in the control of people who have your best interests at heart. If you're poor, your time is not worth as much as a rich persons. They are commoditizing the hours of your life and many of you cheer for it. Without progressive pricing for this you're just getting fleeced.
The funds created arent going toward new projects . They are used for road maintenance, enforcement, and debt repayment in the county where the road is This simply frees up general funds that had been used for that before these went in, so no direct benefit in terms of transit projects is mandated.
As I understand it, poor and middle class people are already taking public transit. It's the rich people who are driving in New York. This is making it easier for deliveries, taxis, buses, and emergency vehicles to get through by getting all of the entitled rich people off the road.
As someone who takes public transit into SF every work day. It exists. It works. It's faster than driving
As long as that money is spent on public transit improvements, I think it's a great idea for many large cities.
Sorry best we can do is 80% to the police department.
Yeah, that's how we do it in Oslo. The road tolls mostly go towards funding transit and investments in bike and foot infra.
is spent on pubic transit
Hahahahahaha
Oh sorry, I thought you were joking. Of course they won't
is there any particular reason you’re saying that besides cynicism? I am having trouble finding specifics, but there’s a lot of reporting that the MTA is expecting to raise $15 billion from congestion tolling to fund public transportation repairs and improvements and pretty much all of the proposals for this in the past required all of the revenues to be earmarked for use by the MTA
inb4 the supreme court rules that congestion charging is unconstitutional and furthermore that public transport, too, is unconstitutional.
"Ladies and gentleman of the committee, I put it to you: thousands, perhaps millions, of American songwriters have written about missing their truck. How many have written about missing the bus? I rest my case."
See the Congestion Pricing Tracker for day by day measurements of the impact on congestion.