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It's pretty well accepted these days that anything that improves traffic in the short term worsens traffic in the medium and long term. Better traffic flow in one area creates incentives to drive in that area, creates incentives to live outside the range of public transport and so on.

I'd personally prefer if we pinched a page from London and introduced a daily charge for any vehicle entering Manhattan, with the funds allocated to the MTA. Say $50 per day, and allow the taxis to bump their base fare by a dollar or two to recover that cost.

In 2015[1] ~2.6 million cars entered and left Manhattan daily over 47 toll-free bridges controlled by the NYC DOT, with another ~1.5 million entering and leaving via bridges and tunnels controlled by the MTA or the Port Authority. A total of 3.9 million cars crossing. Assuming we halve it, we wind up with ~1.95 million cars per day coming and going. Let's round it up to 2 million because I'm lazy.

2 million cars at $50 a pop represents $100 million per day, or $36.5 billion dollars. Let's assume that half of those people switch to public transport. Now it's "only" $18.25 billion per year.

The MTA's capital budget for 2016-2021 is $27 billion. And it took 2 years of haggling to get to that. It sounds like a lot, and it is, but it struggles to both expand the system and fix the creaky, unreliable existing systems.

There is, of course, a fatal flaw: it would require the cooperation of the Port Authority, the State of NY, the City of NY and the MTA to introduce the fee simultaneously and ensure the money actually gets spent on the MTA.

Good luck with that.

[1] http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/nyc-bridge-traffic...




Let's take my example with tunnels. By timing the lights for 20 streets before the tunnel to slow down traffic before the tunnel and speed up traffic after the tunnel, you reduce traffic in the tunnel. How is induced demand for the tunnel going to cause delays inside it then?

Congestion pricing is certainly an effective way to combat induced demand. Exceptions an be carved out for carpooling etc. and I have an app in the works for that.

I have come to realize that a lot of solutions can come without running for office in a political machine. You can just build new technology and apps and change the system. I think a Steve Jobs or Zuckerberg changed the world for the better more than a Bill Clinton or Bush.

Also, as far as I know, the main problem MTA has is with the pensions. It's why it took on so much debt and why the Verazzano Bridge is the most expensive bridge in the USA.


> How is induced demand for the tunnel going to cause delays inside it then?

There's no free lunch in dynamic systems. As I noted:

> Better traffic flow in one area creates incentives to drive in that area, creates incentives to live outside the range of public transport and so on.

If the tunnel gets faster, more people will pile up behind the clever traffic lights you propose. Net travel time between home and work will come out the same, or worse, depending on the exact paths in play.

Reducing driving by making it more attractive to drive hasn't proved out as a strategy. The only way to reduce traffic and keep it reduced is to make it less attractive to drive.


Maybe they will pile up behind the lights but the tunnel experience will still be fast and pleasant.




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