Why charging drivers a congestion price to enter NYC is necessary and progressive

Note: This started as a lengthy Facebook reply. I edited it for context and decided to publish it on Medium as well. For context, read this VICE article arguing for a $100 toll for drivers to drive into Manhattan.

I believe that charging a lot of money for vital services to people without means is unfair. I believe that transportation can be a lot like healthcare where you need it simply to survive. I would go further and even argue that transportation is a right and ought to be available to all, fairly priced and efficient. With that said, let’s consider some of the arguments that poor people will be unfairly penalized with congestion pricing.

For every car trip into the CBD, it costs $160 in externalities

The CBD is the Central Business District, below 60th street. I happen know Charlie Komanoff quite well and he’s extremely thorough with these kinds of models. If you take away anything from any of these articles or discussions, please take the fact that driving into a dense urban environment with extremely limited public space, most of which is dedicated to the least efficient method of moving people in a dense urban environment, is extraordinarily costly to everyone who wants to get around. Recently an Inrix study came out that pegged the cost of traffic congestion in NYC to be $17 Billion in 2016. With a B.

Drivers kill and injure a LOT of humans

If you attributed any of these deaths to terrorism, For context, drivers seriously injured 15,000 pedestrians and cyclists and killed 170 pedestrians and cyclist in 2016. We’re just making an economic argument here. But consider just how car-centric our perspective is that unconscionable numbers of innocent people, women, children, elderly, poor, rich, die minding their own business on sidewalks, crossing with the light, visiting Times Square, biking to work, and we collectively shrug as if none of that is preventable.

Those without means would get discounts

But some people can’t afford $100 per trip. As the VICE article says:

Driving a private car into Manhattan should cost $100 per trip, offering reduced pricing for incomes below $100,000 a year or licensed taxis and ride-sharing cars.

People without means who qualify would get discount rates, just like many services that cost money have options if you qualify. For example, Citi Bike offers a $60 yearly membership for NYCHA residents ($100 discount). MTA offers half price fares for students and the elderly.

We need market forces and already have them

On the flip side, market forces (ie surge pricing) are already in place for rich and poor. Drivers are not a protected class. This Strong Towns article details this idea and references an LA times piece:

The reason that electrical power and air travel don’t fail every time they get crowded is that we raise prices to manage demand. If things cost more, people use less of them. We all accept that airline tickets are more expensive during the holidays. And yet we miss that this very same, simple system of pricing could solve our congestion problem. LA Times

Which poor people are we talking about

As the piece states clearly, everyone suffers with gridlock, except the poor suffer more because they may have a time deficit and can’t afford to sit in a bus in traffic for an extra 30 mins, for example. Gridlock has an absolutely awful impact on city residents, the people who live here and pay NYC taxes and also need to get to work on time and drop their kids off at school and all of that. NYC car-free residents who depend on intra-city transit (subway, bus, walking, bike, taxis) massively outnumber those who live in NJ suburbs or Westchester, and their median incomes are far lower. If you want to help the greatest number of people (remember, transportation as a right, available to all, fairly priced, and efficient) then you have to reduce congestion in the city.

Congestion pricing is the solution, now let’s determine the price

If you agree with the concept of market economics and pricing things according to demand then we’re just haggling about the price. MoveNY is a plan I strongly support and I think you might too. It actually lowers the tolls on certain bridges, changes the prices during peak times, and adds pricing on tolls that currently are totally free.

Cars and car-centric transit are expensive and reduce options

This Brookings report breaks down a lot of these misconceptions about poor people and cars. Here are cliff notes:

• In the nation’s largest metropolitan areas, 7.5 million households do not have access to a private automobile.
• Over 90 percent of zero-vehicle households in large metropolitan areas live in neighborhoods with access to transit service of some kind.
• The typical metropolitan household without a vehicle can reach over 40 percent of metro-wide jobs via transit within 90 minutes, exceeding the 29 percent transit access share for households with a vehicle.

Cars are stupidly expensive

AAA says the average yearly cost is $9,000. That’s not a lot for people who make a lot, but that’s an enormous burden for people with modest incomes.

But I can’t get to NYC without a car! Nonsense.

Turns out, public transit is available. From a great myth-busting Streetsblog article:

Most car commuters into the Manhattan core have a viable transit option. The vast majority of people who drive to work in Manhattan below 60th Street — 90 percent — “commute from home to work zone pairs in which a majority of commuters use other modes,” according to Bruce Schaller’s 2006 report, Necessity or Choice. Put another way, we know that most Manhattan core car commuters could take transit instead because that’s how most other people making similar commute trips get to work.

NYC residents don’t pay taxes to subsidize your suburban commute

When we don’t include the externalities of the things we consume (ie driving our 2,000 lb vehicles into a dense urban center), we are effectively subsidizing sprawl, encouraging people to move further away. The number one reason I hear from friends for moving to NJ is the tax savings. Every time. Low taxes. If you want to move outside of NYC and enjoy avoiding taxes on paying 3–4 percent of your income in taxes, cool. But do not then demand to cheaply be able to commute by car into NYC, enjoy all the infrastructure and benefits but then leave and don’t pay for what you don’t use.

Congestion pricing without the price tag

You could counter and say pricing isn’t how you do it, since cost is high and poorer people will have trouble paying. Here are some interesting ways other cities have implemented plans to reduce congestion without charging tolls. Zurich, for example, has determined the maximum number of vehicles that can be in the city center and not have gridlock. Instead of charging, they simply set up traffic lights and queue drivers up at the edge of the city. They reason that if you’re going to have gridlock, better to have all that traffic outside the city limits (fewer people, more space) than let everyone come in and make the city impossible to get through. Think of it as a bouncer at a club where you wait outside on a long line, then you get in and see that the place is half empty, but comfy.

Congestion pricing, especially extreme pricing, is the simplest, most effective way to improve transportation for the greatest number of people. It corrects an already incredibly regressive system that hurts those without means.