> You do not really make any arguments why
> congestion pricing is bad for behavior modification
I think I've been very clear on this; both Dwayne and Shag have tried to supplement it:
- Some people don't have a choice that you think they do; there are poor people who will be hurt by this indiscriminate pricing scheme. If the proponants of this scheme had their way, soon we'd find that only rich people can afford to drive to Manhattan. This reason ALONE should convince you (who put 'transportation apartheid' in the Subject: line) that this is a bad idea.
- It amounts to a tax which un-does the progressive nature of the Income Tax
- You're not going to get everyone onto a subway by charging them; some will just shift their finances, some will find ways around it (like parking in Brooklyn, what Joseph originally said his concern was), some will flaunt it like a $100 cheeseburger
- The mechanism by which the money is collected has shown itself to be WOEFULLY inefficient (Bloomberg's own numbers say 35%, and history says this is inflated)
- The whole thing is a pipe dream: MAYBE there will be some money for transit LATER. History, again, says this is optimistic
I can go on! This is just plain bad policy: you don't get what you want; you create a new corrupt boondoggle that is not just costly but continues to erode civil liberties; you shift attention away the responsibility of providing the service; you increase the costs uniformly without regard to ability to pay for it.
If you think I haven't listed out good reasons, you're not listening. I've also listed things that could be done instead to have an even greater impact on what everyone seems to know is the problem: that there's too much congestion, pollution, and misery on the streets of NYC.
There's not one good thing _for_ it, other than some gut feeling that it will Do Something. Bleah.
And yes, I know my 'use the General Fund for most everything' statement is a radical idea; that's why I bring it up here :-)
---
Brian made a comment yesterday about "there's more cars on the road in NYC than ever" ... and I wanted to follow up on that. The number of cars in the CBD is virtually unchanged since the early 90s *** DURING THE BULK OF THE WORK DAY *** ... nearly all of the growth in traffic has been in the late night and early morning hours (roughly 10p-5a). There's a nice chart of this in the paper that I posted two months ago (and Dennis resent yesterday in his "facts are stupid things" posting), and it's easy to see why: the day is already above capacity, you can't get any more cars and trucks in there. But: due no doubt at least partly to "off-hours" transit cutbacks, more cars are showing up in total.
Yes: the transit situation is actually getting worse in NYC.
/jordan