Comment by afavour | Hacker News Reader

Comment by afavour | Hacker News Reader

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I live in NYC too, I agree that it’s a mess. But you totally lost me after that part.

> The congestion pricing is not going to help anyone

The plans for the congestion charge funding were made very clear. It would have helped transit riders across the city. I don’t see how you can sensibly claim otherwise. To pick the most direct and obvious example that I can: the MTA has announced that in light of the loss of funding they would have gotten from the congestion charge they’re cancelling plans to add accessible entrances to a whole bunch of subway stations in the city. So right there we have a group that would have been helped.

The “real people” in NYC are the ones that take public transit. They vastly, vastly outnumber car drivers (who are disproportionately wealthy). As you yourself assert the roads are a mess. There are simply too many cars for the city to accommodate.

I think it’s valid to criticize the congestion charging plan but it’s notable that no one is proposing an alternative. The current situation is clearly not tenable but everyone opposing congestion charging just shrugs their shoulders. Why? At least have the courage to suggest Robert Moses-style highways slicing the city into pieces, because that’s what it would take.

Congestion was intentionally and artificially created when all roads were cut to 2/3rds capacity by creating massive bike lanes for bike riders who are reckless.

It was also artificially and intentionally created by adding a massive amount of uber/tlc vehicles. Just stand on any block and watch the cars go by. 90% are not private passenger vehicles.

Before bike lanes and uber there was almost no congestion except for limited rush hours.

There are actually fewer vehicles on the road today than ever but it's an optical illusion of more for the reasons listed above.

This is just more long term political trickery just like the hudson yards project.

Walk around in London where this has been instituted and all you see are 100k+ vehicles on the road.

That's the end game. Serfs and the Elite. Emotional naivety prevents people from understanding this.

lol on every point.

> That's the end game. Serfs and the Elite.

Here's the problem: the elite are the ones driving cars. The serfs are the ones riding bikes and taking Ubers. So you deride the changes made to benefit the serfs while also claiming class warfare. Your argument is incoherent.

It's quite coherent, if you read it correctly. That's the end game. Not the current situation.

I agree that there might be too many cars for hire now, but on the other hand there's a bit of selection bias at work. Of course they are going to be the most visible cars at a corner, especially outside of rush hour: by definition they spend most of their time moving. Most private vehicles are parked, because (hopefully) people have jobs or errands to attend to. And if more parking spots were free, perhaps fewer empty cars for hire would be driving around waiting for the next ride, but I digress.

Congestion has always been around, independent of lane counts. If you managed to add more car lanes, traffic would not get any better, because more people would drive. Fewer vehicles on the road is a net win, as the air has been getting cleaner for everyone. I get it that you're not a fan of bikes, but a chunk of those are people that might have taken a cab ride, competing with your car for space. I'm all for capping ebike speeds (while Citibike agreed to lower them from 20 to 18mph in a deal with the city, the rest are still way too fast), but no matter how dangerous they are, more people in the city are killed by reckless drivers.

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