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A comment on The Streets Were Never Free. Congestion Pricing Finally Makes That Plain. Parent comment

Re:The Streets Were Never Free. Congestion Pricing Finally M... by jdavis703 on Thursday April 04, 2019 @10:25AM (#19572644)
I don’t know the situation in Sydney as I’ve never been there. But in NYC, which is what the article is about, the funds will go to transportation improvements that make it easier for people to get around. There’ll be more freedom of choice because the subways will be better (and hopefully they’ll add more bike lanes and wider sidewalks).
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Re:The Streets Were Never Free. Congestion Pricing Finally M... by jiggliemon on Thursday April 04, 2019 @10:33AM (#19572743)
Any new money for public spending is typically used to pay down the ballooning public pension liabilities. And if it doesn’t go towards pensions, it’s diverted away to other welfare projects, or education.

Point is these new funds won’t make transportation better in any significant way.

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Re:The Streets Were Never Free. Congestion Pricing Finally M... by pavelmark on Thursday April 04, 2019 @11:25AM (#19573402)
Budget will go to capital construction costs [0], particularly for MTA, buses, and underserved areas of NYC. This was layout in the NYS 2020 budget place.

Source: https://congestion-pricing.com/

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Re:The Streets Were Never Free. Congestion Pricing Finally M... by ramraj07 on Thursday April 04, 2019 @10:39AM (#19572833)
The proposed budget explicitly says this money will go towards the MTA.
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Re:The Streets Were Never Free. Congestion Pricing Finally M... by refurb on Thursday April 04, 2019 @11:28AM (#19573447)
Yes, so what they'll do is reduce the budget for the MTA to offset that, then "poof"! They have new money to spend on whatever they want.
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Re:The Streets Were Never Free. Congestion Pricing Finally M... by jiggliemon on Thursday April 04, 2019 @10:58AM (#19573078)
Then you simply take a loan out from the MTA fund. The same way our lottery monies are allocated towards education, but find their way to fund various pension funds.

Perhaps this new fee will be used to fund MTA’s pension liabilities, and the current spending on pensions gets allocated to food stamps.

New money never goes to where it’s said it’s supposed to go. That’s because government funding is a Ponzi scheme.

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Re:The Streets Were Never Free. Congestion Pricing Finally M... by smnrchrds on Thursday April 04, 2019 @10:47AM (#19572927)
Does it truly do? Or does it go towards MTA the same way lottery and gambling revenue goes towards education budget, i.e. not really except as an accounting trick?
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