New York becomes first US city with congestion charge

This is great. People complaining on social media aren’t New Yorkers. We have the best mass transit in the nation. Fuck cars. What we want are more bike and footpaths and less time at the crosswalk.

This is great work by the city leadership. It's taken decades to get this system in place and the city sorely needs it.

Congestion charges work. It's not a new thing nor an untried approach to mitigating extreme congestion from unfettered use of the city streets.

The weird part about all of this, to me anyway, is that tools and congestion charges are very much an economic and Libertarian style solution, but strangely conservatives often fight them tooth and nail. Isn't their whole schtick that the market driven solutions are best? The city owns the streets. The use of the streets are in high demand. So, the city puts a price on a resource. That's just econ basics.

There is one downside that I don’t think people consider enough when discussing congestion pricing:

Trucks will now find alternate routes that will hurt poorer neighborhoods.

Example: In order to go between New Jersey and Long Island, some trucks traditionally take routes through Manhattan as it is geographically faster to go crosstown than to detour north or south.

In order to drive from New Jersey to Long Island, to avoid the new congestion pricing trucks will most likely take the George Washington Bridge, drive through the South Bronx, and come down into Queens via the Throggs Neck, Whitestone, or RFK Bridges.

The South Bronx is about to absorb a LOT more of that traffic. Anyone taking the Major Deegan or Bruckner during rush hour knows it’s already beyond fucked with traffic.

Now, the traditionally poorer residents of the South Bronx are about to experience more air pollution, more noise, more road repairs, and majorly slower travel time anywhere.

Congestion pricing doesn’t remove the traffic, it just re-routes it into poorer neighborhoods.

(NOTE: I am a NYC car owner and still for congestion pricing. NYC should be way more pedestrian and bike friendly and while this program has downsides, it is a step in the right direction.)

I will never understand why someone would rather drive into nyc vs a bus or train. The morning rush hour drive through the tunnel is one of the most insane things to waste your time doing.

I would not want to drive in New York.

Kansas City is nowhere near as dense as NYC, but I still get frustrated driving downtown around there, especially if there's construction.

Fees vary by vehicle type, with trucks and buses paying higher rates.

I would have thought that single occupant cars should be paying the higher fees, and mass transportation like busses should pay lower fees.

Personally I dont understand why they dont just remove all the street parking spots.

That and establish maximum parking spots per building. Building has legal occupancy for 2000 people? Max 1% parking spots means theyre not allowed to have more than 20 car parking spots for the entire building.

The point is to make cars the slowest, most expense, and most difficult mode of transport. Make it hell so that nobody would want to drive a car there because its miserable.

If you live in an RV or truck, you're screwed. But then if you drive a huge truck to deliver stuff, your company benefits more and destroys more than my driving my 1980 civic.

Counter point. If the congestion pricing extended all the way through The Bronx, Queens, and The Mt. Vernon or Mt. Hebron area, this wouldn't be an issue for any of the boroughs.

Replied to the wrong comment.

I wonder how this will affect elections. I figure Governor Hochul "indefinitely" paused the program last summer to avoid hurting Democrats in the 2024 election. The next mayoral election in NYC is in November of this year and the next election of the governor is in November 2026. Right now both the mayor and the governor are not popular and congestion pricing has a lot of opponents. Maybe people will get used to it before the elections, which is what Hochul is betting on, but there will almost certainly be a new mayor (for reasons unrelated to congestion pricing) and Hochul's chances of being reelected aren't great either.

With all that and opposition from Trump, I think there's a good chance that congestion pricing won't last very long. (I can't say I would be sad.) The congestion pricing hardware cost over $500 million to build, and the expected income from the toll would take over a year to cover that. The MTA's budget will be in big trouble if congestion pricing ends up not even paying for itself.

Congestion pricing only makes sense if they do something to mitigate the lack of public transit availability, punctuality, and affordability. If public transit were cheap and ubiquitous, then go right ahead.

Instead, busses and subways cost more and still smell like piss and now you get congestions pricing if you drive in.

PSA: Remember, everyone, not to be poor in those areas.

Edit: thanks everyone for the clarification.