I live in NYC too, I agree that it’s a mess. But you totally lost me after that part.

> The congestion pricing is not going to help anyone

The plans for the congestion charge funding were made very clear. It would have helped transit riders across the city. I don’t see how you can sensibly claim otherwise. To pick the most direct and obvious example that I can: the MTA has announced that in light of the loss of funding they would have gotten from the congestion charge they’re cancelling plans to add accessible entrances to a whole bunch of subway stations in the city. So right there we have a group that would have been helped.

The “real people” in NYC are the ones that take public transit. They vastly, vastly outnumber car drivers (who are disproportionately wealthy). As you yourself assert the roads are a mess. There are simply too many cars for the city to accommodate.

I think it’s valid to criticize the congestion charging plan but it’s notable that no one is proposing an alternative. The current situation is clearly not tenable but everyone opposing congestion charging just shrugs their shoulders. Why? At least have the courage to suggest Robert Moses-style highways slicing the city into pieces, because that’s what it would take.

Congestion was intentionally and artificially created when all roads were cut to 2/3rds capacity by creating massive bike lanes for bike riders who are reckless.

It was also artificially and intentionally created by adding a massive amount of uber/tlc vehicles. Just stand on any block and watch the cars go by. 90% are not private passenger vehicles.

Before bike lanes and uber there was almost no congestion except for limited rush hours.

There are actually fewer vehicles on the road today than ever but it's an optical illusion of more for the reasons listed above.

This is just more long term political trickery just like the hudson yards project.

Walk around in London where this has been instituted and all you see are 100k+ vehicles on the road.

That's the end game. Serfs and the Elite. Emotional naivety prevents people from understanding this.

> That's the end game. Serfs and the Elite.

Here's the problem: the elite are the ones driving cars. The serfs are the ones riding bikes and taking Ubers. So you deride the changes made to benefit the serfs while also claiming class warfare. Your argument is incoherent.

It's quite coherent, if you read it correctly. That's the end game. Not the current situation.

lol on every point.

I agree that there might be too many cars for hire now, but on the other hand there's a bit of selection bias at work. Of course they are going to be the most visible cars at a corner, especially outside of rush hour: by definition they spend most of their time moving. Most private vehicles are parked, because (hopefully) people have jobs or errands to attend to. And if more parking spots were free, perhaps fewer empty cars for hire would be driving around waiting for the next ride, but I digress.

Congestion has always been around, independent of lane counts. If you managed to add more car lanes, traffic would not get any better, because more people would drive. Fewer vehicles on the road is a net win, as the air has been getting cleaner for everyone. I get it that you're not a fan of bikes, but a chunk of those are people that might have taken a cab ride, competing with your car for space. I'm all for capping ebike speeds (while Citibike agreed to lower them from 20 to 18mph in a deal with the city, the rest are still way too fast), but no matter how dangerous they are, more people in the city are killed by reckless drivers.

There are not more bike lanes than real roads and to think that's even plausible shows how totally warped your understanding of reality is. most people in nyc do not drive, you're not advocating for "real people," you're advocating for a narrow, high-income subset of the city that you personally encounter

there's definitely an echo chamber in urbanist-type spaces, but your notion of "real people" is even more out of touch.

I live in NYC and I don’t agree that congestion pricing would not help anyone. Also saying there are more bike lanes than real roads is just false? I’m not sure where you’re getting that. I want congestion pricing and still hope it goes through. I’m honestly surprised someone who lives in NYC believes it won’t be useful, especially since similar setups have been working in other cities.

After a quick peek at the bike layer in Google maps, you'll find it demonstrably false that there are more bike lanes than roads. I live in NYC, too. Congestion pricing will help the vast majority of New Yorkers (and NJ/CT commuters) who do take transit.

I live in NYC and disagree with your assessment. Last I checked I'm a real person as are most people I know. Don't cast stones like that. It's unfair to other peoples' opinions and dilutes your points.

i live in nyc. i reread this twice and still don't understand what he is trying to say.

I’ve been visiting NYC for a few weeks, so definitely and outsider, but keen to hear your take on why congestion pricing won’t work.

Because I look at your traffic and, god, it’s awful. I watched an ambulance and a fire engine get stuck behind traffic and basically grind to a halt, which seems…extremely not ideal to me.

There are still plenty of roads though, which shouldn't exist in a dense city like Manhattan. We have a long way to go still

> There are still plenty of roads though, which shouldn't exist in a dense city like Manhattan. We have a long way to go still

How, exactly, are stores supposed to get the things they sell, restaurants supposed to get the food they prepare, construction crews supposed to get the materials they use, garbage collectors supposed to pick up trash -- and a million other things that make a city possible -- without roads?

New York City has had roads since before cars existed...since it was a tiny little colony with a literal wall where "wall street" is today. This kind of rhetoric is silly and counterproductive.

Nobody is talking about ripping up roads. The city obviously needs roads, at the very least for the kinds of public and business services you've mentioned.

(One of the virtues of congestion pricing is that it makes obligate uses of the road better: fewer personal cars on lower Manhattan's grid means faster grocery store deliveries, fewer construction trucks double parked, faster garbage pickup, etc.).

> Nobody is talking about ripping up roads. The city obviously needs roads

I don't know what to tell you. I quoted the parent post, in its entirety, at the time I wrote my comment. Doesn't seem cryptic to me.

> Nobody is talking about ripping up roads.

Nobody? The post being replied to literally said:

> roads though, which shouldn't exist in a dense city

I think you’re being a tad uncharitable with your interpretation of “no roads”.

Arguably they mean “no roads for private vehicle traffic”.

Pedestrian plazas and walkable areas demonstrably result in higher foot traffic for shops. Nobody has the slightest issue with the garbage truck cruising through to pick stuff up-they’re not a big cause of gridlock and congestion. This is a pretty solved problem in parts in Europe.

Unfortunately, "no roads" is exactly what the OP wrote. I'd like to think he really meant either "no roads open to personal cars", or "no wide roads", or "no roads with street parking", because I think those are all fairly reasonable positions for a dense city, but I find it hard to interpret his comment that way, the way it's written.

But you're right: it is possible to have roads that aren't open to private vehicles; I've seen this in Amsterdam, for instance, where remote-control bollards will lower for certain vehicles (trash trucks, etc.).

Personally, as someone who lives in Tokyo, I think the easiest way to solve this problem is the way it's mostly solved here: simply eliminate all street parking, and require anyone living in the city who wants to own and keep a car there to prove they have a place to park it. We don't have roads banned to private cars, or congestion pricing (aside from tolls on the highways), but there's remarkably little car traffic for a city with this many people, and I think it's pretty clear why: if there's no place to park other than inconvenient and very expensive private parking lots, why get a car, or use it in the city if you have one? (To be clear, a lot of people actually do own them, but just don't drive them much because there's no place to park at the places inside the city where they want to go, so many cars are just for weekend use.)

There are relatively few cities (of which Manhattan is probably one) where, if I lived in the city, I wouldn't own a car but--yes--I might park somewhere on the periphery where it was cheaper and not use it day-to-day. I know very few people who aren't maybe just out of school who don't own cars even if they live in a city.

It is easier to get by with things like Zipcar and Uber but I'd still probably find it had value so I wasn't structuring things around not having a car.

I guess everyone in Venice, Dubrovnik, and Capri just starves under a mountain of trash?

That's a completely silly response, but I'll give you points for at least making me wonder how they collect trash in Venice. Turns out that:

a) it's a huge problem in the canal district (thus making my point)

b) they have boats with trash compactors:

https://www.c40.org/case-studies/new-waste-collection-system...

My point is these problems are solvable if you make an actual effort to solve them. There are costs and tradeoffs, but it's crazy to just throw up your hands and assume a city without roads is impossible as soon as you think of a problem rather than taking 5 minutes to actually try to address it.

Why is congestion pricing not going to help anyone?

Who is being downvoted? I see one person who seems to be flagged for only responding with flame comments.

> There are more bike lines than real roads now.

What's the point in exaggerating? This is nowhere near true. There are many more bike lanes than there were even a decade ago, but the city have several orders of magnitude more navigable roads than bike lanes.

> It's a congestion mess now without pricing....

That's the point of congestion pricing: to reduce demand on the street grid to those who actually need it. Congestion pricing makes the streets less congested; it benefits those who need to drive.

I lived in London until recently. Congestion charging was the best thing that happened there for decades. Try getting out of your echo chamber and look at what actually works.

> It's a congestion mess now without pricing....

Right, which is exactly why pricing is needed.

>There are more bike lines than real roads now

NYC has 650mi of bike lanes and 6300mi of roads for cars.