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Comment by throwaway0a5e | Hacker News Reader

I am not at all a fan of surge pricing or toll roads.

The janitor (or journeyman plumber, if you want to be pedantic) has every right to sit in gridlock beside the stock broker.

There will never be meaningful accumulation of political capital to address public transit issues so long as the wealthy can avoid it with a trivial fee ($6.50 in this case, with unspecified income discounts).

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If you read the article, the janitor probably wouldn't be paying the congestion fee since it's income-based.

46k is low enough I bet some janitors would be included

Maybe some but not most https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-francisco-janitor-sal...

There are some interesting proposals out there that are ostensibly more equitable - for example, plate based restrictions (see bogota[0] and beijing[1]), although these can still be avoided by owning multiple cars.

Maybe the most fair would be like one of these systems except person-based rather than plate-based, however that's not something that can or should be implemented because it would require identifying every driver on the road.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pico_y_placa

[1] https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1098345.shtml

That depends on how wealthy you need to be to not care. If only billionaires can ignore the costs, then there will be plenty of demand for transit (or more likely to get rid of the fees...). While if the fee is so low most people choose to just pay it, then it won't make a difference.

Of course the people who most need to ignore it are those like plumbers who have a job that can't be done via transit.

For plumbers and the like, it's another cost of business and will be passed on to customers. They'll adapt, and no one will go out of business because everyone has to pay the tax.

Except the ones that do go out of business and aren't talked about.

If every business's costs go up by the same amount, and they're all passing the costs on to customers, why are any of them going out of business?

Are some businesses able to plan better and reduce the amount they pay in tolls? Do some choose not to pass costs on? Definitely. But you can say that about any cost of doing business - labor, materials, licensing, insurance.

Because not all business costs go up by the same relative amount and not all of them are able to easily pass the costs onto customers.

I think I addressed both of those points already.

No, you didn't.

Weirdly thus seems to hit just above the average skilled union worker pay in San Francisco. This means that A Lot of the workers will, basically, just be taxed to work as there's no reasonable way for them to take public transportation into the job (though they often car pool).

https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/Union-Worker-Salary-in...

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