> In order to overcome that effect it is necessary to
> make driving less attractive, even if attractive
> alterantives are available.
Says you. Or rather: says Wikipedia. Oh, and also says Max: "We must have congestion pricing!" ... I think the term-of-art for that is a 'failure of imagination' ...
> You said it yourself that you are in favor of making
> driving less desirable if attractive alternatives are
> available.
I believe that making alternatives more attractive will make driving less attractive. Let's face it: driving (especially in NYC) already is incredibly unattractive. And yet people do it. I asked before why they do it, and you sidestepped, so I'll answer my own question: some of them do it because it's better (for them) than the alternative.
Both alternatives are bad; they pick the less bad one. Wow! Call the papers!
Now clearly, some trips are less bad than others. And plenty of people do use transit. So we're at least on the right track. And we both agree that more of this would be better, all the way even to the point where having a private car come into NYC at all would be illegal. Yay, team. The question is: how and when do we get there? I say: make transit better first; then cut off the stragglers.
You say: today is the day! It's good enough!
> I gather that we agree that NYC has such
> alternatives.
And yet clearly not enough of them. It's true: parts of NYC are better than any US city for transit; it's not, however, the paragon of transit. Come back to me when NYC transit is as good as it is in Paris. Even when Manhattan transit is as good as it is in Paris, let alone the outer bouroughs (pop quiz: what's the fastest way to get from Brooklyn to Queens?).
> So how on earth do you expect to make
> driving less desirable if not by increasing its
> MARGINAL cost (fixed cost will not do) through some
> form of user/congestion fee?
I think I've now said this 83 times: by making the alternatives more attractive. And you have to do it first, because when that hammer of congestion pricing comes down, the _very next day_ you'll have trains to capacity and full busses passing by people on rain-soaked corners. That very day! So: get to work, Mr. Bloomberg: build the transit system of your dreams, but get it done before you chop everyone off at the knees.
> The efficiency measure in this case is whether the user
> fees make driving less convenient - and you seem to agree that
> they do by claiming that they impose extra burden on
> drivers if they chose to drive, and they create
> congestion at collection points.
They certainly make it less convenient without regard to circumstance. You keep using the term "choose" as though it's always a choice. The people I know who travel to the center of Manhattan and who do it sometimes by train and sometimes by car make their decision on the basis of reason and logic, not because they have Bad Behavior Syndrome.
> Where we seem to disagree is that you object to
> implementing user fees on some apparently emotional
> grounds ...
Yeah, I'm such a wuss.
/jordan