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Comment by ummonk | Hacker News Reader

I hope other cities don’t actually follow suit. I don’t know about Seattle but SF’s public transport is rather poor. If it were as good as that in Manhattan, congestion pricing would be perfectly fine, but they shouldn’t be heavily taxing vehicles when the only reasonable mode of transport is vehicles.

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Congestion pricing isn't (supposed to be) punishment for driving a car when transit is available, it's designed to internalize the actual costs that driving a car imposes on others (i.e., takes up room on the road, among other things). So what you're suggesting is that cars should be subsidized in cities where transit is bad. But this doesn't make sense. If you are worried about a negative shock to the poor-ish, you should just give them cash.

SFMTA service is terrible because you’re on a bus stuck behind ubers in the bus lane and an intersection blocked by people trying to get on the Bay Bridge because they live in Manteca. Driving in SF is characterized by total lawlessness. The number one most effective thing you can do for transportation in SF would be to drag box-blockers from their vehicles and beat them to death on the spot. The next best thing is to toll the roads.

The problem isn't solely other cars, Ubers or any other scapegoats; it's the layout of American cities making MOST of them purposefully unwalkable and the destruction/atrophy of public transportation, leading to long commutes and gridlock. Recall that the auto makers bought/legislated their way to destroy an once vibrant local tram infrastructure in America. One "quick-fix panacea solution" isn't going to do much; it's going to take a concerted effort of many, integrated, holistic solutions to make things better.

There is no land-use issue that can be fixed by transportation but neither NYC nor SF has this problem. Their problems are entirely solvable by transportation policy alone.

NYC did solve this problem and then let its amazing system atrophy over the years (though I still give it credit for being 24/7). Its original sin is that the subway was built to get people in and out of Manhattan so parts of Brooklyn and Queens are in dead zones only serviceable by bus or car (to say nothing of Staten Island) and it's nearly impossible to create new track these days. NYC as a whole would benefit from more point to point connection in the outer boroughs instead of hub-and-spoke through Manhattan.

SF and the broader Bay Area transit policy make zero sense to me.

It will be faster but still annoyingly slow even if you kept all the cars off the bus lanes where they don't belong, or even removed them from the streets altogether. Can't really go fast with a bus without running over pedestrians at every intersection. Good public transit has dedicated rights of way.

I'm also curious how you think people from Manteca should be commuting to the city.

I don’t think they should be. _That_ is a land use problem.

If there's less congestion, doesn't that a) help with clearing the streets so that buses run faster, b) broaden ridership so it's not just "those people" on transit, and c) help get a larger body of the population lobbying for no-brainer improvements like dedicated lanes, shorter headways, etc?

A congestion tax doesn't meaningfully improve congestion if there aren't good alternative modes of transport available (and buses are not going to run very fast as long as pedestrians are able to cross the street). It would just result in people paying more in taxes, unless they're price sensitive (read: poor and forced to take the hit to travel time).

One could tax single-occupant vehicles to encourage carpooling.

Nit: most public transit involves vehicles. Walking, swimming, skipping, jogging, etc. aren't usually considered public transit.

>One could tax single-occupant vehicles to encourage carpooling.

I'm not sure how the mechanics of that would work with ridesharing (e.g. if the driver has a passenger along at entry into the city, do they pay a tax?).

>Nit: most public transit involves vehicles. Walking, swimming, skipping, jogging, etc. aren't usually considered public transit.

Well, I had the NYC subway in mind, which while technically vehicular doesn't fall under the common usage of "vehicle" to mean "motor vehicle".

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