Associated Press – June 7, 2007:
New York City, where tolls are $6 and putting your car in a parking garage for just an hour can run you $20, is already an expensive place to drive. Now the mayor wants to make it so costly some people won’t even bother driving and will take mass transit instead.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg is proposing to reduce traffic and pollution by charging cars $8 and trucks $21 to enter the busiest parts of Manhattan.
Backers say the plan would cut traffic jams and pollution by discouraging driving, and would also generate nearly $400 million in just its first year — money that could go toward buses, subways and other mass transit.
“This is a tax on middle-class people,” said state Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, a Democrat from suburban Westchester County who is chairman of one of the committees that will hold a hearing on the plan Friday. “This will stop the Chevrolets from coming in, not the BMWs.”
just one more way to widen the gap between rich people and everyone else.
Using taxes as a social engineering tool is never a good idea.
It would actually be very cool if this backfired, encouraging people not to enter the city at all, thus seriously damaging the city’s economy.
So now when all the people start taking mass transit, the crime rate will go up on trains, buses, trollies…
Nah, to really PO people…not carpooling, rather no tolls or restrictions for hybrids. Like CA’s HOV lane.
Not to say whether it’s a good or a bad idea, the problem exists even in downtown Montreal. Way too many cars going in & out of the city.
What happens during a fire and it’s the rush hour? Or you, sir, having a heart attack?
My idea would have been no cars at all except for taxi, bus, ambulance, police, diplomatic plated cars.
To make it work, huge multi-level parking garages 10 miles out all around with dedicated, free, buses to the downtown core.
(Parking fee includes transit ride)
By spreading out the parking structures you spread out the congestion.
Right now, dedicated parking in downtown Montreal is 300$ a month for a cheap place. The indoor places are higher.
Place a 250$ / month parking + 10 min transit ride to downtown.
Only the car owners will be riding those buses, not the blue collar workers that take the regular transit route.
Here in Montreal, the suburbs have started putting up electric transit transit trains to downtown with free parking. They are hugely popular.
London has had traffic congestion pricing since 2003.
wikipedia info: http://tinyurl.com/ygfh6h
This is an excellent plan and terrible reporting on the part of Mr. Dvorak, no offense.
This plan, following the highly successful plan in place in London, seeks to accurately attribute costs. We have an incredibly high asthma rate in the city, about 3 or 4 times the national average. Business also lose a huge amount of money from their employees sitting in traffic. Further, this money will go solely to improve mass transit giving people more and better alternatives to driving than even our current excellent transit system does. This is a highly necessary change.
Drivers should actually like it. Most are already paying $6 in tolls, so will only see an increase of $2 as the $8 congestion charge is a total, including other tolls into the city. The drivers that will feel the full force are the ones coming over the free East River crossings. That said, I would think that many drivers will welcome the extra fee if it means that their commute is cut in half.
Further, for those of us that live here, it means less smog, less noise, easier walking, bike-riding, rollerblading, etc. This is truly a win all around. Those who need to drive in will pay the fee and have a much shorter commute. Those who can will take mass transit. Even at current levels, remember that the huge traffic jams are just 20% of commuters. To halve the number of cars would only mean an increase of about 12.5% on our transit systems.
#2 – TheGlobalWarmer – Using taxes as a social engineering tool is being done already. If it weren’t, you probably couldn’t afford to fill the tank in your surbusban. Want your oil subsidies ended? Mind if I stop subsidizing your gasoline?
#4 – HBear – The fee is already cut by carpooling. The $8 would be shared by all occupants of the vehicle.
#5 – Mark Derail – You’ve got some really good ideas there. I’d question that discounted $250/mo parking only because I currently pay much more than that.
One more point. It’s not a tax on the middle class. It’s a recognition that Manhattan is an island with 1.2 million residents and 8 million people on weekdays. It’s a recognition that the 1 million vehicles a day coming into the city are causing quality of life and severe health issues for the residents. It’s a more accurate allocation of costs.
I think this is a great idea and they should probably add a occupancy tax to people that live in large cities and an air tax as well based on the number of breaths per minute you take. Also would be a good idea to give everyone decibel measuring devices so that they can be taxed if they exceed noise polllution limits, they could call it the yak tax. Before to long going to any large urban area will be like entering a theme park in Orlando. You will have to pay fees just to have access to the city and what it offers.
#9 – I like all of it. If city living offers so much, the residents should have to pay for “privilege” of living there.
Scott, I have no doubt that there are subsidies involved. Do you have a good link? On the other side, excise taxes add over .60/gal on average to the pump price. My point is that the whole system is Sporkked up. I’m fairly certain that if all taxes/corruption/pork were eliminated the net result would be cheaper fuel.
I like Mark’s idea of a million slots of parking surrounding a city, but it should only be about 5.00/day for parking and transit fee. You residents want the rest of us in your city, bringing money in and manning the businesses, you help pay for it.
#8, Scott,
That is the best argument yet.
#9, 10,
We already pay. With real estate prices at well over $1,000 per square foot, we pay plenty. And, with both property taxes and local income tax, we also get hit with the triple level tax whammy in a big way.
As for every breath we take, just remember that NYC residents emit less than a third of the carbon of the average U.S. resident. So, KVolk, you can leave your snark at the door please. Oh, and if what we’re doing is so wrong, why is it that our real estate prices keep skyrocketing and our tourism keeps increasing? When we improve quality of life, everything goes up.
#10 – Yes, I have a good link about gasoline subsidies and other externalities of the costs. Though the study is about 9 years old, there have been updates to many sections of it. I’ll post the complete version here. I doubt the numbers look any better today than they did in 1998. I suspect they are a lot worse, especially for those of us that consider the Iraq war to be a cost of oil.
I’m going to hope this link is short enough. I know you’re blocked from tinyurl at your office and can never remember your other one. I also hated that it put up advertising prior to the redirection.
http://www.icta.org/doc/Real%20Price%20of%20Gasoline.pdf
#10,
On the other side, excise taxes add over .60/gal on average to the pump price. My point is that the whole system is Sporkked up. I’m fairly certain that if all taxes/corruption/pork were eliminated the net result would be cheaper fuel.
The only thing “sporked up” is your brain. Those “taxes” go to pay for building the roads, maintenance, policing, etc. Without the roads, you huge SUV would exists simply because there would be no way the auto makers could construct it at a reasonable cost. You wouldn’t be able to find fuel because the oil companies couldn’t deliver it. etc., etc., etc.,
I don’t think you even drive a SUV. It is even possible you can’t even drive. I bet you’re just some punk ne’re do well that assumes an on-line persona of bluster and bull to satisfy your dreams of superiority.
#5, Mark, Here in Montreal, the suburbs have started putting up electric trains to downtown with free parking. They are hugely popular.
That’s pretty cool. In Dallas, DART has free parking way out in the ‘burbs and it’s just a $2 electric train ride (good all day) to the West End museum and entertainment district downtown. Great way to travel since the freeways are most often a mess. With gasoline at over $3.00 per gallon and parking at $10.00, it’s quite a savings.
#11 – Mr. Fusion,
Thanks for the compliment. I try to distill these things down to blog post level and still often go way over normal blog post length.
#13 – Mr. Fusion (again),
While I agree with you on the content of most posts you write, I have to say that this particular line of attack is unlikely to convince anyone of your point. As I’m sure you’re aware, TheGlobalWarmer and I disagree on nearly everything. However, s/he is far to well read and well spoken to be just some kid assuming the personality of an adult. I think we can at least give benefit of the doubt to the persona being real.
That said, I’d love to provide TheGlobalWarmer with a lengthy reading list and see if any of his/her opinions changed by the end of it.
#12 – “We already pay. With real estate prices at well over $1,000 per square foot, we pay plenty. And, with both property taxes and local income tax, we also get hit with the triple level tax whammy in a big way.” Kind of illustrates my point about the system being Sporkked up. Of course, in my subjective opinion city living period is paying a huge price. 😉
Thanks for the link. (At the moment they opened up tinyurl for us – my alternative is shrinkster.) The report just had to open with a picture showing 1.199 – that hurts!
#13 – Chevy Avalanche – I think it’s actually more often classed as a truck. My wife drives a Tahoe though.
The point behind my bluster is that lefties trying to make me drive a smaller vehicle or live smaller to save Mankind is no different than religious fundies trying to make me live by their warped morals. I won’t try to make you drive a truck if you don’t try to make me stop.
Speaking of sporkked up brains, you’re not really my state senator are you? 😉 He never met a tax he didn’t like. I fully agree that taxes are necessary. I just think the current rates are far higher than they should be.
#15 – I am an adult although often I wish I weren’t as life used to be much simpler.
Actually, other than city living, a number of your end goals aren’t that different from mine. The reasons and route to get there is where the “spirited debate” comes in.
Sheer fuel cost may eventually drive one of our vehicles away, but it certainly wouldn’t be by choice. We would have to keep one though to haul our dogs around. Now, if dog poop could be made into a fuel, I could not only supply my needs but probably export. 😉
#16 – TheGlobalWarmer,
Taxes are too high? OK, let’s start making some real cuts. Let’s cut oil and gas subsidies, the Iraq war, the tax free status of religion, tax exemptions that only apply to the extremely wealthy, the tax free status of municipal bonds (subsidize the interest payments instead of creating tax free income), corporate welfare, and get rid of all deductions (no reason for me to subsidize other peoples’ kids or anyone else to subsidize my mortgage). Once everyone pays their fair share and we get rid of things we shouldn’t be paying for in the first place, I’m betting those of us that aren’t multi-gazillionaires will all pay less. How about a tax form that looks like this:
1. Enter your total income from all sources: ___________
2. Look up the tax rate for your income bracket: __________
3. Multiply line 1 by line 2: ___________
4. Enter any taxes you have already paid: ___________
5. Subtract line 4 from line 3: _____________
Line 5 is the amount you owe or will receive in a refund.
I realize I will be putting a large number of accountants and all tax attorneys out of business with this. But, it is nice to dream.
#17, I don’t want to take your vehicle(s) away. I just want to encourage you, through fair accounting and economics, to choose the most fuel efficient vehicle that meets your needs.
I have a hard time imagining that a vehicle the size of an Avalanche (named for a disappearing phenomenon) is the minimum size/horsepower you require. Perhaps there are no good choices out there. But, I want to encourage better choices as well. If you tell me that you need to go 0 – 60 in 4 seconds flat up a 45 degree slope of mud, I just might not believe that that is an actual need. I might encourage you to get a testosterone boost from something other than driving.
#12 Scott
I think it is funny that you extoll the virtues of living in a Megaplex and I think your facts are dead on about the pollution etc but then the cost of living in that envirnment keeps going up? Don’t you see the contadiction at the fundamental level to your argument, It’s a great way to live but the cost of maintaining it is going up all the time. Hell I enjoy visiting the Megaplexs my self, Boston in particular, I have a ball everytime but like I said it is more and more like going to Orlando to visit one of the theme parks.
#18 – OMFG – We agree 100% on something!!!
Well, maybe: lets add something. Once we’ve purged the unnecesary expenses and defined what the gov’t should be doing and what it costs let’s change the income tax system itself to something more “fair” – a flat tax. Progressive tax systems penalize success. Combine lines 2 & 3 on your form to “Multiply Line 1 by 0.xx: ______”
Of course there is the group that wants to do away with all income tax and go to a national sales tax instead. I haven’t decided f that’s a good idea or not.
“This is a tax on middle-class people,” said state Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, a Democrat from suburban Westchester County who is chairman of one of the committees that will hold a hearing on the plan Friday. “This will stop the Chevrolets from coming in, not the BMWs.”
So, only people with BMWs will pay…isn’t that the opposite of a tax on the middle class?
#19 – I chose what I have specifically for my needs. I used to have a larger truck and I downsized to the Avalanche. There have been many times hen the bed was just a little small for what I need to do so I had to get creative. It will be a real pain to go smaller some day.
Now, who is to say what a need is? Wearing clothing for style is valid and that’s nothing more than a want. What’s wrong with choosing a vehicle based on want? Also, I think you view driving as a means to get from A to B or haul something from A to B and a vehicle as tool to accomplish that and nothing more. I view driving as an end unto itself. Driving, with no particular destination is recreation for me. For those like me, another factor in vehicle choice is simply comfort, how it handles, how it feels on the road. Find a Harley rider and ask them why they ride – what they say could just as easily describe my feelings about driving.
Find me a cheaper/cleaner power source for my truck and I’m all over it.
(Oh yeah, specific to the Avalanche is the Midgate – coolest thing since sliced beer.) 😉
#9 – You will have to pay fees just to have access to the city and what it offers.
and it would still be better than spending time in the barren Hicksville wasteland we call The Flyover States.
#16 – The point behind my bluster is that lefties trying to make me drive a smaller vehicle
No one is trying to make you do anything.
And you know, I don’t really believe in the “Hicksville” comment… but I get tired of, and start taking personally, the value judgments made against city living.
You like that Green Acres lifestyle? Great. Live it up, or live it up as much as you can in a place where the greatest attraction is that nothing ever happens. But I like living in the city… Not in the suburbs or near the city, but IN the city… The costs of which are offset by the fact that I don’t need a car at all.
Cars are not extensions of the penis… Cars are money pits thatw e are better off without.
#20 – KVolk – Our economic indicators and the way we value things are completely wrong. That’s why city living is more expensive. This is not the worst example of how badly we value things in our society.
Imagine I just told you that stock in company XYZ is selling for $100 and that they had $1 billion in transactions. Do you buy or sell?
You’d probably ask for more information. You might want to know things like their revenue versus their expenses. You might want to know a bit about their balance sheet, say debt to capital ratio. (You’d probably also want to know the number of shares, but let’s ignore that as an obvious aside for this discussion.)
So, you would probably not act on the original information. But, every single day, we measure the economy of our country by the GDP, which is exactly that. It is the dollar value of all transactions. When Exxon spilled oil in Valdez, the $10 billion cleanup was ADDED TO THE GDP!! Shouldn’t that have been counted as an expense? As a negative?
Our resources are also not counted in the GDP. That is why the government sells an 800 year old tree for a dollar and considers it a profit. Nothing has value until we chop it down, dig it up, or otherwise convert it into something else. When all things are appropriately valued, as must happen if we are to survive, city living will be shown to be cheaper.
#21 – TheGlobalWarmer – I can’t agree on a flat tax. I am a liberal. I make more than most people. I should pay more. What bugs me is that people making insanely more than I do pay less. I’m willing to pay my share. I think those of us that make more can afford a higher percentage. Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed. – Lazarus Long – A Heinlein character.
#22 – Todd – I think the point was that those who can only afford a Chevy are in some way being taxed by being given better mass transit as their option. Personally, I think BMW owners are middle class in the tri-state area, something that is not well considered in the AMT, which affects a huge number of New Yorkers that are barely able to get by with our higher cost of living.
#23 – That’s why I specified your needs. If you really need the avalanche, great. If you could have gone with significantly less horsepower and still met your needs, then Chevy didn’t give you good options.
Oh, one more point about vehicles that meet needs. Some vehicles are self-evidently unnecessary. In NYC, we see many Land Hoovers and Range Hoovers and other high end V8 enormo-SUVs with low profile racing tires. These vehicles are obviously not going off road and are useless both as race cars and as SUVs. They are purely for the “I can burn more gasoline than you can”, “look at me” crowd. Oh, can I add 45 foot long stretch Humper limos to the list?
“What bugs me is that people making insanely more than I do pay less.” I couldn’t agree more, which is why the loopholes, etc. need to go. As far as a flat tax goes, if you make twice what I do, you pay twice as much tax as I do. What could be more fair? If you earned your income , why should you owe still more? If you feel it were give to you than maybe that’s different.
#12, you keep posting links to a document that is filled with claims based upon faulty premises. For example… the claim that the cost of urban sprawl adds to the real price of gasoline. First of all, we aren’t giving up open spaces to sprawl just because we use gasoline; gasoline is just a fuel. We lose open spaces to sprawl because people desire to move away from population centers, regardless of the mode of transportation used. Actually, it would probably be true that sprawl would be even greater if we has a more efficient way to move people around than exists today. But in any case, none of this can be accurately described as a cost of using gasoline, and therefore does not contribute to its so-called real price.
#30 – Mike,
I have to disagree. The whole American Dream and the lack of public transportation that goes with suburbia and lack of ability to walk to anything was promoted heavily by the oil and automobile industries.
In fact, many areas of the country used to have excellent street cars for public transportation. GM bought up the street cars and let them decay to the point that no one would ride them. They then replaced them with their own vehicles, buses, that were slow, noisy, and smelly. Big shock, people then wanted cars.
Neo-urban developments following the style of Brooklyn and Queens and many other areas have started to sprout up now so that people could congregate on their doorsteps, walk to markets, and use grid designed streets as alternate routes when the main roads clog up. These developments offer a far better lifestyle than cul-de-sacs that go nowhere and getting into a car to drive 0.6 miles to a supermarket.
#29 – TheGlobalWarmer,
I think it’s easier for someone making $100K to pay a higher percentage than someone who makes $30K as well. I think that someone making $30K cannot pay $4,500/year as easily as someone making $100K can pay $30k/yr even though the latter is double the tax rate. Of course, scales need to be adjusted. 30% is probably still too high for someone making only $100K/yr. But, 15% is far too high for someone making $30K/yr and far too low for someone making $100K/yr. And, 30% may be too low for someone making $100 million/yr.