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Comment by misiti3780 | Hacker News Reader

i live in nyc and im glad this is happening. we have a traffic congestion problem here - i dont want more ubers, lyfts or yellow cabs on the street, i want less. i wish nyc would copy london and actually tax people for enter every bridge, tunnel etc in rush hours to stop it.

the law of diminishing returns is in full effect here, regardless of what the engineers and SC want to tell themselves.

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I live in NYC too, and I want fewer vehicles on the street full stop. I don't particularly care what kind of vehicle they are though; if I'm not in it, a private vehicle is taking exactly the same space on the road as an Uber or a taxi is, and has exactly the same utility to me: none.

This is a good argument for treating all vehicles equally and reducing congestion with a tax, not by arbitrarily targeting Ubers but not single occupancy private cars. If you only target Ubers then a lot of that reduction will just be made up with more private cars being driven around to take up the slack in the congestion.

> i wish nyc would copy london and actually tax people for enter every bridge, tunnel etc in rush hours to stop it.

The only toll route I know of anywhere near London is the QE2 crossing, which is outside Greater London.

The CCZ (congestion charging zone) covers less than 5% of the Greater London area. There are plans to expand the CCZ, and tackle pollution via an ultra-low-emission-zone.

> "The Congestion Charge is an £11.50 daily charge for driving a vehicle within the charging zone between 07:00 and 18:00, Monday to Friday."

>>> The CCZ (congestion charging zone) covers less than 5% of the Greater London area.

The "Greater London" is an abusive name to designate the whole region around London, with little relation to the actual city. It should not be used for any comparison.

For comparison, London and Paris are about the same size. Paris is 105 km2 while (The Greater) London is 1500 km2.

I want to see a high congestion tax placed in Seattle as well. Delivery, buses, and city residents exempt...possibly vehicles with multi passengers. We're starting to get NYC traffic. I bus every morning and it takes longer to get off the exit and into the city than it does for the entire rest of the ride. I look at who's driving into the city every day, and it's 95%+ single occupant vehicles, which is unacceptable.

We have a mayor who's very anti-public transit so it will not happen anytime soon.

You want even congestion pricing, or at least congestion pricing on delivery and professional drivers too. This incentives efficient car services, because 1 car carrying 4 (or 20) people can split the cost amongst those 20 people without much of a sweat. A UPS car making 100 deliveries can split the cost for pennies per package.

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