This isn’t exactly true. Rich people have the resources to live closer to where they work, they are more likely to WFH, they can ride a bike to work often, or maybe even walk. Poor people often live farther away from their jobs, they have worse commutes, and the likelihood of accomplishing that long commute by mass transit in many American isn’t that great.
Anecdotally, we are well to do, chose our house location to minimize our commute and make it easy by bus (and ensure we can go to the grocery store by foot). Then I got the opportunity to work from home, my wife has a straight shot from bus to her office downtown, the kid’s schools (even high school) are all within walking distance. There is no way we could have set all that up without money.
I didn’t make a quantitative claim, just a qualitative one based on anecdotal evidence. I put about 1000 miles a year on my car, but I paid a lot of money to get to the point that I could do feasibly that. I’m not unusual in this either, a lot of rich techies go for urban car-light lifestyles if they can afford it.
The above studies seem to only focus on the poorest of the poor, and not the lower middle class. Congestion charges are going to hit people who are rich enough to drive but not rich enough to live in convenient places the most. There isn’t a binary distinction between rich and poor after all. Those links are pretty embarrassing actually, surely there are better arguments that this will impact rich the most than using the poorest of the poor as an example?
I mean, the answer is that this is New York City, not Seattle, where parking is going to cost you $30+ in the areas affected by the congestion charge. So we've already limited the discussion to the pretty well-off.
Per the article itself: "But out of a region of 28 million people, just an estimated 16,100 low-income people commute to work via car in Lower Manhattan, according to the MTA."
Probably easier to find a way to meet the needs of 16k exceptions. And having a safe fast public transit system, which the connection charge funds, is part of that.
I did an internship at IBM Hawthorn so I’m familiar with parking in the city. It’s actually doable (or was doable?) in midtown near Columbia, and it actually made sense for my girlfriend at the time. The public transit system isn’t that great when you are commuting between West Chester county. And traffic in NYC is weird. Like, going into the city isn’t a problem, especially if you are going in at night. But take one step out to Long Island…and you are snarled in traffic for hours.
My comment about poorer people being more affected I believe is still valid even if it’s the right thing to do. The people who are forced to commute by car generally don’t have better options.
It would be much worse if they tried this in Seattle, but we also need it as well, it just won’t be something only the rich are suffering (like in NYC).
Yeah, but - the proposed congestion charge is only below 60th, and Columbia is up around 116th and higher. Much much easier to park near Columbia. Maybe a little more risk of having your car stolen, too. :)
Also (adding this a few minutes later), the evidence is clear that public transit is seriously beneficial for people with lower incomes - and the elderly and folks with disabilities that prevent them from driving.
So we may be taking about something that harms 16k people and benefits about three million other low-income New Yorkers.
Again, I’m not against congestion charging, I’m against the thinking that most of the immediate downsides are born by the rich. It is politically naive to think like this given that plenty of people who are taking advantage of driving (for better or worse) are not people who would be considered rich. Actually it’s worse than that since rich people aren’t going to think much about a $5 or $10, $20 fee while poorer drivers definitely are.
As for it not encompassing midtown, that sounds a bit weird to me, but ok. I’m not sure it will have much impact on overall region traffic since most trips probably don’t involve that area in the first place.
I was poor, I took the bus to college and work (there were times I'd have to add 30 minutes where I knew I'd have to leg it). It was an hour and a half with transfers. It's doable --you get used to it, just like tech workers get used to driving in from the East Bay into the Peninsula. It's no biggie. On the way home, sometimes you get off at a different stop to pick up groceries and then you're the one walking home with two plastic bags -at first your arms ache. Again, you get used to it.
There are multiple levels of poor, like there are multiple levels of rich. Plenty of people are rich enough to drive, but not rich enough to live in convenient locations. It’s weird that, when I was going to university, many people would save money by living far off campus and driving to pay $5 for parking. The richer kids were living on or next to campus, and didn’t even need cars. Housing is expensive, and the American system has made driving unnaturally cheap.
> Plenty of people are rich enough to drive, but not rich enough to live in convenient locations.
Now they're not rich enough to drive, they're become poor enough to use public transportation. Maybe their votes will improve the convenience of public transportation.
To somebody who can afford to live in Manhattan, you'd have to charge $200 a trip to bother them. Just tax them, and use that money to build out public transportation.
Very weird to crusade for the right of people who can barely afford their cars to be better than those who can't afford cars.
A resident of NY is already one of most, if not the most taxed citizen in the country. You pay fed, state, city, and/or borough tax. Relative to the rest of the country, you pay the most for rent, mortgages, food, electricity, natgas, internet, tolls, and even toiletries.
And you want to tax these residents more, and dump the money into the black hole of state-run public transportation projects that take 10x the budget and 10x the time of any where else on planet earth? ...and that is with no guarantee that project would a) get finished b) not be a total clusterfuck like all the others.
That sucks more than having a car does by far. Even the last part about "your arms ache but you get used to it" - how is that for disabled people? How is it for the elderly? An extra hour and a half - what about if you have kids at home?
Honestly that... Blows?
If the options are to destroy the environment or to have to take an extra three hours daily to commute, I choose destroy the environment - smart people will probably fix it with science.
I thought about it - why would I rather destroy the environment than reduce cars? Because it's a lie - there's clearly no shared burden. Like as soon as humanity bans all privat jets, the entire cruise industry, etc, then maybe I'd consider it. But as it is, it's just one more "eh the poors will get used to it" - meanwhile we don't ban major contributions from sources that are rich people's enjoyment or profits.
3 hours commutes or destroying the environment aren't the only two options. By changing the way we build cities, and by retrofitting the ones we've already built, we can make places where the walked/biked commute is less than a half hour and the environmental impact is slashed dramatically.
A lot of problems can be solved via better urban planning, but most of us have little control over that. What we do have control over leaves us with a couple of options, but we have hope that maybe our grandkids will have more choices.
Agreed. And I'm in the same boat. But I've taken the "best time to plant a tree was 40 years ago" approach and have started working in my community to bring about those changes.
To people who can't afford to drive, this just sounds like relatively wealthy people whining about being reduced to living like they have been the entire time.
If you want to reduce the relative privileges of wealthy people, tax them and redistribute or do a socialist revolution. Never crusade for the privileges of people with some money while ignoring the situation of the people with less money. In the limit, you'll end up crusading for the privileges of billionaires against the privileges of multi-billionaires. As activism, imo it's silly.
A congestion charge will fall disproportionately on the wealthy, and allow the buses carrying lower-income folks to move throughout the city faster.