Of course they work. If the government manipulates the equation to make something unaffordable, the poor can no longer afford it. That’s not the point.

Pigouvian*, this is a regressive tax though that is probably unnecessary as the other studies referenced or linked in this thread show.

is it? i dont see the relevant other studies, and my initial assumptions would be that the median subway user is lower income than the median car driver in NYC, so transfering funds from car drivers to subway improvements would be progressive.

However NYC's transit is notoriously bad at spending, so not sure it would achive that. Which studies linked in this thread are you refering to? I cant see them.

Regular driving in large working cities is usually only done out of professional necesscity and people who drive for a living tend to be in lower socioeconomic bands.

How many people on Wallstreet do you know that drive to work?

I'm not so confident in that first claim, and my anecdotal evidence doesn't support your theory.

However you did mention some other studies on this thread that support your claim this is a regressive tax, I'm worried I missed them, can you share the links?

> How many people on Wallstreet do you know that drive to work?

A lot. Also white-shoe lawyers. They live in Greenwich, Westchester or Westport and drive into the city. (And still, they often park uptown because driving in the congestion zone is annoying and expensive.)

The poor in New York don't drive. If they do, they do so to earn an income. Less congestion helps with that.

Regressive taxes aren't bad inherently bad. Regressive spending is bad.

In this case, you have a regressive tax with a huge positive side effect due to taxing an externality. If the funds are also spread into progressive services it can be a net positive for all income brackets.

TIL that word.

I wish as a society we'd use this form of taxation more, and widely applied taxes less. In theory insurance is supposed to have the actuarial people who figure it out and properly price the choices in, but it's also surprising how crude they can be-- lumping very distinct situations as "the same". eg aggressive drivers are only penalized after they hurt someone, like the phrase "no harm no foul" (until there is harm). It'd be better if telemetry was collected and penalized in realtime.

They can also have their own significant externalities and introduce perverse incentives (in this case...) for revenue-seeking infrastructure governance.