The Driver’s Case for Congestion Pricing
Like normal people, when I’m in New York City I don’t drive anywhere. But last time I was in New York City, things were such that it seemed sharing a cab ride to JFK airport would be the best way to go. Unfortunately for me, it was rush hour and as a result there was a ton of traffic and the whole thing took forever.
That did, however, give me plenty of time to reflect on what I think has been one of the major oddities about the conversation on congestion pricing. Namely, that I don’t really understand why this has normally been construed as an “anti-driving” or “anti-driver” policy initiative. At the end of the day, folks with pedestrian-, cycling-, or transit-oriented lives in a city like New York or Washington have relatively little at stake when it comes to adopting a sensible policy approach to congestion. By contrast, people who commute every day to and from work in congestion heavy cities would benefit a lot from policies that reduce the amount of traffic they deal with on a daily basis. It’s true of course that habitual auto commuters would be paying the bulk of the direct financial cost of such a policy, but they’d also be receiving the vast majority of the benefits. Maybe some people just think sitting in traffic is awesome, but personally it seems terrible to me.
Looking back on the New York congestion pricing fight, it really seems as if the whole thing got somewhat misframed as of a piece with Jeanette Sadik-Khan’s efforts to make the city less car-oriented. In fact, that’s really quite a separate debate. The case for congestion pricing is simply that if you have a valuable, scare resource like “space on a road in a major urban area at peak traffic time” you need to price that resource appropriate (i.e., at something more than $0.00) or else it will get consumed inefficiently and you’ll have endless traffic jams. That case holds up whether you think cities should look like Copenhagen or whether you think they should look like Phoenix and really has nothing to do with urbanism per se.
134 Responses to “The Driver’s Case for Congestion Pricing”
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November 18th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
That’s a red herring. Most people don’t consider it “anti-driver,” they consider it “anti-poor driver.” As with all price rationing, what you are supporting is allocating scarce resources (”space on a road in a major urban area”) to people with the most money, instead of allocating them to everyone. That’s cool if you don’t care about social justice or fairness or anything. In light of your recent comments about the “prevent Michigan from dying” bailout package, I’m probably barking up the wrong tree here.
November 18th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
I believe the objection was that it actually reroutes congestion elsewhere, i.e., to the surrounding areas. New York gets the money and the reduced congestion and others get the costs.
Incidentally, why is the transit nirvana the one that needs congestion pricing?
November 18th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
I disagree with part of your argument – cyclists and bus riders share an interest with drivers in non-congested roads.
November 18th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
“That’s a red herring. Most people don’t consider it “anti-driver,” they consider it “anti-poor driver.” As with all price rationing, what you are supporting is allocating scarce resources (”space on a road in a major urban area”) to people with the most money,”
Trust-fund scumbags like Yglesias don’t like poor folk getting in their way.
November 18th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
That’s a red herring. Most people don’t consider it “anti-driver,” they consider it “anti-poor driver.”
Which is also a red herring, because it’s obviously not impossible to tax rush hour road access while at the same time taking other actions (such as tax code modification, or more generous social benefits) that make the net sum of changes non-regressive.
November 18th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
By contrast, people who commute every day to and from work in congestion heavy cities would benefit a lot from policies that reduce the amount of traffic they deal with on a daily basis.
This is nonsense.
Let’s say there are three drivers: A, B and C.
With congestion pricing, A and B are forced to pay some money to continue driving. C, who would like to continue driving, cannot afford to pay the money. C’s being unable to afford the payments provides a benefit to A and B.
But C receives no benefit at all. C gets screwed.
November 18th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
The case for congestion pricing is simply that if you have a valuable, scare resource like “space on a road in a major urban area at peak traffic time” you need to price that resource appropriate (i.e., at something more than $0.00) or else it will get consumed inefficiently and you’ll have endless traffic jams. That case holds up whether you think cities should look like Copenhagen or whether you think they should look like Phoenix and really has nothing to do with urbanism per se.
It’s already priced above $0.00. Drivers pay to use roads in general through gas taxes, and congestion itself is a significant price for using them during busy periods. That doesn’t mean additional monetary congestion pricing would necessarily be a bad idea. Just that there are already costs to driving where there is congestion.
Of course, the congestion pricing principle also applies to transit. If bus and subway fares were higher at peak commute times, riders might have a better chance of getting a seat.
November 18th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
“That’s cool if you don’t care about social justice or fairness or anything. In light of your recent comments about the “prevent Michigan from dying” bailout package, I’m probably barking up the wrong tree here.”
The real question is what he’s doing writing for CAP.
John Podesta needs to fire the trust-fund scumbag’s ass.
November 18th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Drivers pay either way. They pay in time or they pay in money. Seems to me that it’s better for society to capture some of those losses with congestion taxes and use the funds raised to benefit the people that are getting screwed on the margins of the policy. It’s not too hard to envision.
November 18th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
the implementation scheme sounded absurd; it socked people in nj/ct over the head; and the boundaries of the congestion-pricing area appeared largely arbitrary
November 18th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
I don’t make a lot of money, but I drive a hybrid and it saves me a lot in gas money. Still I sit in traffic every day and it drives me bonkers. I would happily pay a premium to drive on uncongested roads.
November 18th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
You should look into the congestion pricing scheme they are planning to institute in the Netherlands. There, it is being done specifically because traffic at rush hour has gotten so bad as a way to decrease the traffic. It is also recognized though, of course, that while some of the people will change the driving time of their trips, others will be compelled to take mass transit, and thus even there it is sometimes seen as part of a broader, pro mass transit initiative.
November 18th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Shorter Bobbo: I would gladly use some extra funds in my possession to prevent poorer Americans from clogging the roads.
November 18th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
I’ve said it before, but I guess it bears repeating: the solution is not congestion pricing – which involves a complicated and unruly additional bureaucracy to administer this revenue source. Instead, use the existing bureaucracy that can be easily accommodated to accomplish the same thing – increase parking prices.
November 18th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
I hate to break it you, puhq, but poorer Americans already face substantial economic obstacles to clogging the roads, most obviously the cost of buying and operating a car. That’s why many of them use transit. Your use of the word “prevent” falsely implies that congestion pricing would present an insurmountable barrier to peak-time road use by the poor, when in reality it would be just be an addition to the already considerable costs of driving.
November 18th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
I suggest bobbo build himself a toll road.
In MattY’s ideal city only delivery trucks and livery vehicles will be allowed on the road.
November 18th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
But C receives no benefit at all. C gets screwed.
By this logic, “C”, who buys Cheerios, eats nothing at all and goes hungry when the price of Cheerios goes up…
Under most conceptions of congestion pricing, the revenues produced would be allocated to things like mass transit to not only accommodate people like C, but to produce enough options so that even people who can afford the congestion toll might opt for a different form of transportation.
November 18th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
The social justice thing is pretty ridiculous given the extensive transit system that exists in New York. It is not exactly a huge hardship to use transit, in fact, many people who easily could afford cars choose to use it because it is faster and more convenient during rush hour. The areas that are not well served by transit in NYC are generally not the areas that have high congestion. The social justice argument just seems absurd when you account for the collective cost that everyone bears for congestion. Also, don’t forget that congestion adds a time-opportunity cost on top of the additional cost of wasted fuel while idling in traffic. It seems very unlikely to me that the poor would suffer under a congestion pricing plan, although some individuals undoubtedly would.
November 18th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Congestion pricing exists for one purpose only.
To benefit FedEx delivery trucks.
November 18th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
It’s because of shit for brains idiots like Michigander that I no longer self identify as a liberal or “progressive.” The simple fact is that, if you care about “social justice or fairness or anything” the obvious answer is to have congestions pricing AND redistribute a significant portion of the proceeds to low income people.
November 18th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
I used to have a job where I had the good fortune to take the subway to work (in L.A.!). I happily paid the $62/month for the privilege. But I realized it was selfish of me to buy a subway pass, since there were probably people who couldn’t afford one, so out of guilt I changed jobs so I could drive to work and sit in traffic. Fortunately we don’t have congestion pricing, so now my miserable commute assuages my feelings of guilt.
November 18th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
Petey, haven’t you blown your brains out YET? Please do so; you will be doing your family, your “friends,” the world as a whole, and even yourself, a huge favor.
November 18th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
LarryM/Jaspe(r?):
If congestion pricing is implemented progressively, I’m in favor of it. The fact is that the vast, vast majority of congestion pricing plans are regressive. And if they operate to “free up” the “resource,” they are by definition paring off the marginal users who can’t afford the fee to create space for users who can.
Also, LarryM, your comments to Petey are infantile. Jaspe(r?) made the same point like an adult. Learn from his/her example.
November 18th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Michigander makes no sense:
If the resource is scare, how the eff are you supposed to allocate it to everyone? By definition, a scarce resource is one that not everybody can have.
Is it also wicked that we allocate the scarce resources of food, water, and shelter to people who want to pay for them? If you don’t use “ability to pay” to allocate resources, they generally end up going to people with political connections. That’s not really better.
November 18th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Of course, that should say, “if the resource is scarce, how the eff are you supposed to allocate it to everyone?”
November 18th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Re: In light of your recent comments about the “prevent Michigan from dying” bailout package, I’m probably barking up the wrong tree here.
Indeed. At this rate Matt will be moving to NRO next and will win the Marie Antoinette award of the year when he tells the unemployed auto workers they should just eat low carb granola. The idea that we have to get the rif-raf off the roads so some all-important blogger can get to the airport faster is about the most unprogressive thing I have ever heard of here.
November 18th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
If the resource is scarce, how the eff are you supposed to allocate it to everyone? By definition, a scarce resource is one that not everybody can have.
The primary alternative to price rationing is queue rationing, which is how most public roads are allocated now.
November 18th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Well, how about more toll roads? Let people pay if they want to drive on less-congested roads, and people who don’t want to pay can use queue rationing.
November 18th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
Well, how about more toll roads? Let people pay if they want to drive on less-congested roads, and people who don’t want to pay can use queue rationing
If you’re talking about building new, additional roads/streets, then you’re making a scarce resource less scarce, you’re not really rationing it. With streets in major urban centers, I don’t think this is possible. With rural highways, maybe, but they aren’t suffering from much congestion. With “spoke and wheel” metro freeway systems, it might be possible, but I don’t think its practical and it would probably be a less preferable use of resources than new or improved non-bus mass transit.
But I think (correct me if I’m wrong, someone who knows) that Toronto did that with a couple of new freeways, and the new toll roads are pretty congested.
November 18th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
If you’re talking about building new, additional roads/streets, then you’re making a scarce resource less scarce, you’re not really rationing it. With streets in major urban centers, I don’t think this is possible. With rural highways, maybe, but they aren’t suffering from much congestion. With “spoke and wheel” metro freeway systems, it might be possible, but I don’t think its practical and it would probably be a less preferable use of resources than new or improved non-bus mass transit.
There is certainly scope for increasing road capacity in many congested areas. Even where this is not possible, there are lots of other ways of addressing congestion. Various kinds of incentive for carpooling/ridesharing, telecommuting/working from home, non-traditional work hours, and relocating homes and businesses away from congested areas.
Mass transit is slow, uncomfortable, inconvenient, inflexible and unpopular. Rail mass transit is extremely expensive, and outside a few areas has little effect on congestion.
November 18th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
So there’s no congestion then? Obviously the whole point of congestion pricing is to reduce the number of people driving. The people who would cease to drive under such a regime either have the choice between driving and transit and prefer the former, even with the congestion, and so you would be forcing them into an option they don’t want, or they don’t have an option, which forces them to stay home.
It would be better to limit the number of cars allowed at any one time and distribute the permits to car owners by lot.
November 18th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
By the way, one problem with viewing traffic congestion as just a form of queue rationing is that it imposes additional negative externalities through mechanisms such as increased use of (subsidized) energy, increased pollution, increased use of (cross-subsidized) health care, and so forth.
Huh? The only externality in that list is pollution. Energy and health care costs are internalized by the users.
November 18th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Yet again Matthew Yglesias riffs about something he knows nothing about. “Congestion Pricing” yeah it sounds fantastic but how do you set up the system so that you are not diverting traffic elsewhere. How do you setup the system so you don’t favor one business district over another. How do you setup the billing for the system? What about income inequality, this would be a quite regressive tax. Yglesias and all his other trust fund buddies probably never consider those realities, just like how he says that the Volt project could be sold off in bankruptcy or we need to shut down lanes of major roads for public transportation. The problem is people like Matthew keep getting elected, and we keep running into the same problems because they never have lived in the real world and never think problems through to possible unintended consequences. Typical Harvard elite.
November 18th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Again, though, I am sympathetic to the argument that eliminating these negative externalities through congestion pricing without some sort of compensatory mechanism would be regressive. But if you can fix that problem, then in this case price rationing is indeed a superior solution to queue rationing
I don’t have a problem with progressive price rationing for city streets, and you raise some very good points. And, as you mentioned, its not that hard to implement such a program through progressive pricing. Yet, most congestion pricing programs that have been suggested or implemented are regressive, and most of the forces that have been pushing for them (e.g. the Bush administration) seem to be more interested in undermining the notion of egalitarian access to public property than in “good” transportation policy. I can envision a world where a “successful” congestion pricing program for roads is used as support for “congestion pricing” for parks, “congestion pricing” for courts, “congestion pricing” for schools, etc.
November 18th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
It would be better to limit the number of cars allowed at any one time and distribute the permits to car owners by lot.
Then you’d have a huge black market in these permits. People generally want to pay money for the things they value. It’s much better if you embrace this, try to direct it in productive directions, then try to ban it.
November 18th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Mixner: “Mass transit is slow, uncomfortable, inconvenient, inflexible and unpopular. Rail mass transit is extremely expensive, and outside a few areas has little effect on congestion.”
It wouldn’t be a transportation thread without Mixner pulling opinions out of his own fetid mind and presenting them as facts.
Mass transit is, in many cases, faster than driving, more comfortable, more convenient, more flexible, and very popular. Rail mass transit is cheap when compared with the alternatives. There, your unfounded opinions are cancelled out by my own.
November 18th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
ah DTM. Well said. It’s worth noting that wealthy and poor drivers tend to live in disparate locales. in a radial city the wealthy tend to inhabit the periphery while the less well-to-do live in the middle. In these instances urban dwellers of all stripes use public transit if they work in the city for the most part. Those who work out in the boonies enjoy light traffic in the rush hour counterflow. A conditional congestion price system that doesn’t impose a fee on the counterflow network might make sense if provisions are made to offset penalties to the set of lower income individuals affected by the new costs. I’m skylarking here, but the point is that congestion pricing is a tool, not an ideology.
November 18th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
Doesn’t NYC already have a form of congestion pricing? What else would you call bridge/tunnel tolls that are more expensive to get onto the island than to get off?
November 18th, 2008 at 8:59 pm
An additional issue with congestion pricing is privacy. London implements its congestion charge with CCTV cameras that record the license plates of vehicles entering and existing the congestion charge zone. Americans are willing to tolerate some red-light-runner cameras and speeding cameras in the interests of safety, but there may be strong political opposition to much greater monitoring of people’s movements by the government if congestion pricing were to become widespread.
November 18th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
DTM,
As I already noted in the passage you quoted, energy and health care are subsidized.
What alleged energy and health care subsidies are you referring to?
November 18th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
It wouldn’t be a transportation thread without Mixner pulling opinions out of his own fetid mind and presenting them as facts.
It wouldn’t be a transportation thread if “Jer” didn’t show up to take his customary stinking dump all over it.
Mass transit is, in many cases, faster than driving,
On average, commuting by mass transit takes twice as long as commuting by car. The time advantage of cars is even greater for non-commute travel.
more comfortable, more convenient, more flexible, and very popular.
How many cases is “many” cases? What share of the total?
Rail mass transit is cheap when compared with the alternatives.
No it isn’t. Rail mass transit is hugely expensive compared to the alternatives.
November 18th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
I thought I made clear that my unsourced unfounded opinions are more than a match for yours. Come back with facts.
November 18th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
It wouldn’t be a transportation thread if Virgin Mixie No-Friends was around to pull unsubstantiated claims out of his ever-expanding rear.
Shorter Mixie: “the answer to all questions: reorganize society to benefit sociophobes who never leave the home, like me.”
Remember, for VMN-F, any physical encounter with another human being is as discomforting as a jalapeño enema.
November 18th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
“My name is pseudonymous in nc and I live in a permanent state of uncontrollable rage.”
November 18th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
Congestion pricing will fail because of a version of Nimby-ism – even though NJ/Conn doesn’t get a say, the number of votes in the other 4 boroughs (and Westchester/LI) in the NY state legistature exceed those of Manhattan.
But the allergy against anything but strictly ‘progressive’ forms of taxation (or other pricing mechanisms) among some members of the party in power will have to give, or it will be the reason why we won’t see carbon tax, or even a rise in the gas tax.
November 18th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
Saying that the average car commute is faster than the average transit commute doesn’t really mean much. The two groups of commutes are, no surprise, composed of different journeys.
And yeah, non-commute times are much better with cars. No big surprise there. Unless both start and end point are right on top of linked nodes, a point-to-point system will always beat a transit network.
November 18th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
Hilarious!
“Like normal people, when I’m in New York City I don’t drive anywhere.”
“…it was rush hour and as a result there was a ton of traffic and the whole thing took forever.”
This strikes me as the same sort of thing you always criticize other people for. To wit, you chuckle when they say nobody wants to live in cities because they are too expensive. “Ha!… But they must want to live there, otherwise the prices would not be so high.”
OK. But here we have you doing the same thing. “Nobody in New York drives because we are all wonderful and love the shit out of trains. Trains being awesome and all. But dammit, these roads are crowded!”
Um… crowded by WHOM? The non-normal people, I presume? The millions and millions and millions of non-normal people.
November 18th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
DTM,
Energy subsidies take many forms. With respect to the liquid fuels used in cars, the major subsidies include the failure to charge for greenhouse gases, …
Nice try at double-counting, but you already listed “pollution” as a separate externality. You can’t count it twice, you know.
…the placement of the costs of securing oil supplies (most notably foreign supplies) on the general account, and tax credits for ethanol and other bio-fuels.
But the government levies taxes on gasoline and fees for vehicle registration, as well as other taxes that fund defense (”securing oil supplies”) and alt-fuel credits. Show me your evidence that drivers pay less in taxes and fees for these items than they receive in benefits.
As for health care, health insurance (including Medicare) in general creates numerous cross-subsidies, and then of course there are also programs like Medicaid and SCHIP, and last but not least the income tax exclusions for health insurance benefits.
Er, most health insurance is private, Medicare is funded through payroll taxes, and the primary beneficiaries of Medicaid and SCHIP are low-income families. Show me your evidence that drivers get more in benefits from these programs and exclusions than they pay in taxes.
November 18th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
I find it hard to envision congestion pricing as a “regressive” fee, assuming that the money is used to pay for transit (better service and/or lower fares).
Essentially, there are 4 groups of people affected by congestion pricing:
1. Drivers who continue driving.
2. Drivers who start taking transit.
3. Transit users who start driving.
4. Transit users who continue taking transit.
People in groups 1 and 3 will pay more in taxes. People in groups 2 and 4 will save money, but the people in group 2 will be unhappy because they would rather be driving.
In strictly monetary terms, people in groups 1 and 3 will pay more taxes, and people in groups 2 and 4 will receive more services. People in groups 1 and 3 are generally higher income than people in groups 2 and 4. Monetarily, the fees will in fact be progressive.
In terms of preference, groups 1, 3 and 4 all get their choice. Group 2 gets screwed. Is this “regressive”? I don’t know.
Additionally, the term “poor car driver” is somewhat of an oxymoron. According to the AAA, the total costs of car ownership range from $5,500 to $8,500 per year, assuming 10,000 miles driven. Poor people don’t have that kind of money to spend on a car.
Kyle
November 18th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
Saying that the average car commute is faster than the average transit commute doesn’t really mean much.
Yes, it does. It shows that commuting by car is generally much faster than commuting by transit. Not coincidentally, New York has both the highest share of transit commuters in the country and the longest average commute time (and also the highest share of “extreme commutes” that take 90 minutes or more each way). Transit is so slow because of the time it takes to get to and from train stations and bus stops, the time spent waiting for transit vehicles to arrive (often multiple waits), and the time spent stopping and starting at stops/stations along the transit vehicle route.
And yeah, non-commute times are much better with cars. No big surprise there. Unless both start and end point are right on top of linked nodes, a point-to-point system will always beat a transit network.
Right.
November 18th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Ah, little Mixie’s admitting he’s full of shit. Saves time for people who have lives, I suppose.
November 18th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Kyle: 2 points.
1) The people in group 4 would be hurt by increasing the # of people on public transportation. I know I am tickled pink when the bus goes whizzing by my stop because it is overflowing with people who now want to take it.
2) The AVERAGE cost of owning a car is that much, but I know it costs me about $500 in insurance, $1,000 for gas, $500 in depreciation, and $250 for parts each year to run my car about 10,000 miles. That adds up to $2,250 … well below the $5,500 you cite.
November 18th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
“My name is pseudonymous in nc and I live in a permanent state of uncontrollable rage.”
November 18th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
Mixner, the reason you can’t compare average commute times is because the average transit commute might be much longer, distance-wise, than the average car commute. Or, it might go through much more congested areas. In either case, the transit commute is a better choice.
The only thing that matters is comparing which is the better method for each particular commute.
For example: all of those people taking public transit in NYC. Would they get there faster if they drove?
November 18th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
It would be better to limit the number of cars allowed at any one time and distribute the permits to car owners by lot.
A variation of this has been tried in Mexico City. It hasn’t worked too well.
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/21/man-vs-man-and-nature-at-the-beijing-olympics-round-two/
It is entirely reasonable to make commuters pay for better transportation. In crowded cities the best way to expand transportation options is mass transit. Congestion pricing can pay for (and indeed was to pay for in NYC) transit expansion. These sorts of schemes can let most people win if higher fees paid by motorists expand options for lower-income people already hurting from high gas prices. Progressivity is not an end unto itself, helping the most people should be the aim of progressive policymaking.
November 18th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
Matthew — It’s always faster to take the LIRR from Penn Station to Jamaica station (about 10 minutes) and the AirTrain from Jamaica to JFK, unless:
(1) You’re old or physically disabled
(2) It’s nighttime (9 PM or later)
Otherwise you will *not* save time taking a cab.
November 18th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
It wouldn’t be a black market because selling the permits would be legal.
November 18th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
If selling the permits is legal, what’s the point of distribute them by lot instead of selling them? If you sell them at the right price, the government gets the money, and it can pay for transit or road improvements. If you give them out and make it legal to sell them, you’re just giving a gift to the people who get lucky enough to get a permit.
November 18th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
Well, you have to say that Mixner’s decision to act like a three-year-old in a hissyfit makes his “arguments” particularly compelling.
Remember, guys, that “show me your evidence” tic always means he’s been caught bullshitting.
November 18th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Ethically, I’m concerned about commoditizing the commons, and the regressivity of the taxation.
Practically speaking, though, toll schemes just bug me more than traffic. That’s not a moral value judgment, just a quality of life preference– but I think it’s a valid one.
Matt, you’re not a driver yourself and would be largely (though of course not totally) unaffected both by the tax and the decreased congestion. Given this, I’d ask that you exercise some measure of humility about making that judgment for other people.
The impacts of congestion pricing on urbanism may be worth considering on their own merits, without regards to one’s relative preference for tolls versus traffic. That’s still very legitimate to discuss, of course.
November 19th, 2008 at 12:17 am
That article talks about pollution, not congestion.
November 19th, 2008 at 12:20 am
Right, in the first case the government gets the money, in the second case the person giving up driving gets the money. The second seems fairer to me. Or the person getting the permit may actually choose to use it instead of selling it. In the former case, someone who can’t afford a permit is out of luck.
If you re-run the lottery every year, then the benefit is spread evenly and so are the benefits and sacrifices.
November 19th, 2008 at 1:05 am
Christ. It’s not a goddamn mystery why this is considered anti-driver. It’s because it’s anti-driver, a measure proposed by Lord Yglesias, who doesn’t even have to leave his house to work, to fuck over people like me who commute on I-10.
It’s horridly regressive, it would require an Orwellian surveillance system, and it wouldn’t fucking work unless you put a rail station on every corner. And of course it’s non-drivers like Lord Yglesias that are the only ones who would support it, exactly as the “pain caucus” folks who want to slash Soc. Sec. and Medicare are people who don’t need those programs.
I hope like hell that no Democrat ever listens to this idea. Because everyone who has to drive in rush hour would vote Republican, including me.
November 19th, 2008 at 1:43 am
One thing Matt doesn’t get about New York, despite living there for much of his life, that politicians take the same approach as the Republican House leadership towards naming policy initiatives. For example, if money is allocated in New York towards a program to “grow sunflowers in Central Park”, it will go to anything BUT growing sunflowers in Central Park, and it might even eradicate any sunflowers that are already there.
Bloomberg’s congestion priceing proposal had NOTHING to do with decreasing traffic congestion, or getting more people to use mass transit. It was another revenue source, and a great excuse to put cameras everywhere like in London. Since Manhattan is an island, you can implement “congestion pricing” much more easily by just raising the tolls on the bridges and tunnels, something the NYS legislature is finally getting around to considering after exhuasting all other alternatives.
The actual congestion pricing proposal probably would have increased congestion in the outer boroughs and also in the evenings and early morning in Manhattan, but it sounded great and only uninformed people would have opposed it, right?
And if you like mass transit, you don’t want more people using the NYC subways at the moment. The 2,3,4,5,6 and L lines are running over capacity, way overcapacity in the case of the 4 and 5 (the line running down the east side of Manhattan). Any more people using them you have a big risk of an accident, or some sort of maintenance issue that shuts down a good part of the system. Better encourage people to drive until the MTA figures out some way soon to increase capacity.
November 19th, 2008 at 5:46 am
Dillard
We think that we aren’t paying already. Road tolls, gas prices/taxes, car maintenance, car washes, parking cost,time on the road, insurance and car accidents are just ways in which we, as the consumer are paying on a daily bases. We drive are cars for the convenience. If we can offored to buy a car, then we say it’s a necessity. If we had tranist systems that picked us up at the door and drop us off at the same destination, our thoughts may change and we probably would get on that transit during peak times and reduce the congestion. You do the math.
November 19th, 2008 at 8:41 am
In a sense it is really quite remarkable that a public property, the thoroughfare, made even more public by the expenditure of public money to build a road upon it, should be hijacked by a mob of automobile and truck drivers, each believing that they have an equal and undivided ownership of the whole. To hear the drivers tell it (and they are universally mistaken on this point) they paid for the roads and deserve to use them free.
This echoes the very lowest point of social disintegration in medieval Europe. Our “knights of the road” enforce their claims wearing the armor of their vehicles, yielding to those who are bigger or more heavily armored, and crushing the lesser sorts like bugs. The thoroughfare is no longer public, it is the exclusive province of those who can afford vehicles, and not just any vehicle, as in days of yore, but new vehicles.
Like the “knights” of medieval Europe, drivers console themselves for their lives of relative misery by reflecting on their exalted position and imperfect immunity to attack by footpads. The sovereign, meanwhile, taxes the knights and even forces some unwilling candidates to become knights to increase the revenues of the state. It’s not like none of this has happened before.
In fact, the whole congestion pricing issue for Manhattan was examined and debated in great detail just recently. As is so often the case with NYC, Albany killed the measure. Fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly, etc.
Not to worry though. If your highways are congested, congestion pricing, or high-occupancy vehicle lanes, or some variant, will be coming to you. Building enough freeways to relieve congestion has been tried and failed. Thank god, the 20th century is over and we don’t have to be modern any more.
November 19th, 2008 at 8:45 am
Good point about the subways, Ed. Maybe we need congestion pricing on the 4 and 5 trains.
November 19th, 2008 at 9:21 am
Look, it’s quite simple: automobile drivers want and end to congestion, free roads, cheap gas, ample parking, vanishingly low taxes, and the total exclusion of any and all other road users. Anything less is an all-out assault on the rights of Real America. How hard can that be for you to understand?
The American Way Of Life is, after all, not negotiable.
November 19th, 2008 at 9:59 am
in other transportation congestion news, Bush is on board with slot auctions for NYC area airports, along with other transportation measures for the holidays
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/11/20081118-1.html
what’s with this Petey guy?
November 19th, 2008 at 10:24 am
On average, commuting by mass transit takes twice as long as commuting by car.
Not when you compare the same commutes.
Tell me that people who live in one part of Devenport, Iowa and drive to another part have shorter commutes than people who live in one part of Greater Boston and take the T to work tells us nothing about the relative length of transit and car commutes.
An apples-to-apples comparison would involve looking at people who live in, say, Newton, MA and drive or transit to downtown Boston.
November 19th, 2008 at 10:26 am
Let’s say there are three drivers: A, B and C.
With congestion pricing, A and B are forced to pay some money to continue driving. C, who would like to continue driving, cannot afford to pay the money. C’s being unable to afford the payments provides a benefit to A and B.
But C receives no benefit at all. C gets screwed.
Comment thread winner. It’s good to see that progressive readers are smart and independent enough not to fall in line with Dr. Y. Matt, no one wants to hear about a non-compensated congestion system. We don’t want to pay to drive. Period. You need revenue for transportation, suck it up and add a point on the income tax.
November 19th, 2008 at 10:36 am
It’s worth noting that wealthy and poor drivers tend to live in disparate locales. in a radial city the wealthy tend to inhabit the periphery while the less well-to-do live in the middle.
Completely the opposite in New York. The wealthy live in the middle of Manhattan while the poor, working class and/or less well-off are forced out to the periphery in places such as Queens, the Bronx, or Staten Island.
November 19th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Matthew — It’s always faster to take the LIRR from Penn Station to Jamaica station (about 10 minutes) and the AirTrain from Jamaica to JFK, unless:(1) You’re old or physically disabled (2) It’s nighttime (9 PM or later) Otherwise you will *not* save time taking a cab.
What about LaGuardia? Presumably if he was flying to DC he was going to LaGuardia, not JFK, and there’s (ridiculously and incredibly) no subway or AirTrain to LaGuardia.
Also, you assume he was leaving from the center of Manhattan. If he was in an outer borough such as areas of Brooklyn, he might not have had convenient subway access to the A/C or LIRR to Jamaica.
November 19th, 2008 at 10:44 am
I really have to laugh at these folks from Michigan who oppose congestion pricing because it is “regressive”. I live in Brooklyn and have a car and have invariably found that it is faster to take the subway than to drive into Manhattan from Brooklyn. Except on Sunday mornings, driving in Manhattan is a nightmare. To add insult to injury you have to pay $20 or $30 dollars for a garage once you get there. Anyone who chooses to do this is nuts in my opinion.
If you live in the city, you should take public transit 90 percent of the time. period.
November 19th, 2008 at 10:58 am
A, B and C like to drink champagne, a scarce good. With the customary treatment of scarce goods, each is forced to pay some money to continue drinking champagne. C cannot afford it, A and B can.
C must rearrange expenditures and do something else, A and B continue with the champagne.
A and B benefit from C’s situation?
a lot rides on this casual use of “like”
In addition, congestion fees and access or use fees (which could be related to environmental concerns) may be an effect way to raise government general revenue or raise funds for specific uses, such as occur with the various trust funds used by the federal government. This in turn could allow reductions in tax rates for existing tax structures — a back door way to the “redistribute the proceeds” compensation schemes mentioned elsewhere.
November 19th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Harold, that’s true if you’re going from an area of Brooklyn with good subway connections to Manhattan. But it’s not necessarily true if you’re going from one part of Brooklyn to another part (say from Red Hook to Williamsburg), or from Brooklyn to Queens or Staten Island, or if you live in a part of Brooklyn, such as Bay Ridge or East Flatbush, that doesn’t have good subway access. Subways in New York are designed to get people into and out of Manhattan — they’re not really designed to connect the other boroughs with each other.
November 19th, 2008 at 11:09 am
It’s not true that Bloomberg’s congestiong pricing plan would be regressive. Commuters who drive into the city are more affluent that commuters who mass transit. The NYC Independent Budget Office did an analysis of this issue:
http://www.ibicycleivote.com/newsroom/media/1542
November 19th, 2008 at 11:10 am
While congestion pricing may be wonderful in a place like New York, once again MY fails to realize that not every city has viable mass transit.
To once again bring up my town, Kansas City, if you had congestion pricing there would be tens of thousands of people who would get screwed.
Buying and maintaining a car is expensive enough, but then they’d have to find even more money in already tight budgets to pay for such a thing. That’s regressive.
And if they couldn’t afford it, they’d just find new ways to get around the priced area, thus shifting traffic congestion to side streets and main streets not equipped for such a load. That just diverts the problem somewhere else.
And even if you used the funds to expand mass transit, it’d take years (or even decades) for it to be up and running, meaning those paying the price now may never see the benefit. That’s nice long term, but wouldn’t do much to solve the issue in the near term.
Basically, congestion pricing only works in areas where mass transit is already an option. For everyone else, it’s a regressive and additional cost on something people have already paid for, and that won’t actually solve the problem.
Just my 2¢ … keep the change.
November 19th, 2008 at 11:25 am
Since Manhattan is an island, you can implement “congestion pricing” much more easily by just raising the tolls on the bridges and tunnels, something the NYS legislature is finally getting around to considering after exhuasting all other alternatives.
Tolls on East River bridges & tunnels would only be a partial substitute for congestion pricing (since it would (a) would not be aimed specifically at easing congestion (b) would not affect suburban commuters). It’s also worth noting that most of the legislators who opposed congestion pricing also oppose placing tolls on East River bridges.
And if you like mass transit, you don’t want more people using the NYC subways at the moment. The 2,3,4,5,6 and L lines are running over capacity, way overcapacity in the case of the 4 and 5 (the line running down the east side of Manhattan). Any more people using them you have a big risk of an accident, or some sort of maintenance issue that shuts down a good part of the system. Better encourage people to drive until the MTA figures out some way soon to increase capacity.
In my opinion, this was the one good argument against congestion pricing. OTOH, the revenues from congestion pricing would have been used to fund mass transit improvements. The failure to institute congestion pricing deprived the MTA of an annual $400 million revenue source.
November 19th, 2008 at 11:54 am
Mark D,
I agree that congestion pricing is more problematic in areas where there’s not the alternative of mass transit. One option is to allow drivers to choose between (a) driving in congestion and pay no toll or (b) pay a toll for an uncongested trip. There is also the option of HOT lanes, which charge no tolls to high-occupancy vehicles (e.g. carpools, buses) but allow single-occupancy vehicles to pay a toll to use the HOV lanes.
And as DTM says, you could use the revenue raised from congesting pricing to fund mass transit expansion.
November 19th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
I doubt that it would make much practical sense to attempt congestion pricing in more than a few urban areas in the US just now. (Similarly, it probably wouldn’t make much practical sense to attempt slot auctions or other congestion management techniques at more than a few US airports).
I expect those who can do shift travel to less congested times. The reason congested times get congested and unpleasant is that for various reasons those on the road “can’t” shift., and are willing to take the unpleasant hit that congestion imposes.
As is often the case, the Onion has an important take on this question: http://www.theonion.com/content/news/report_98_percent_of_u_s_commuters
November 19th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
DTM,
Well, just recently it does seem like we are going to start treating greenhouse gasses as pollutants. So if you like you could fold that subsidy into the category of pollutants, although originally what I had in mind was pollutants such as particulates and ground-level ozone, which have local air quality effects
Unless you’ve become a climate change denialist, greenhouse gas emissions necessarily qualify as pollution in your assertion. But you’re trying to count them twice, as both “pollution” and “energy subsidies.” You can’t do that.
To the extent drivers are contributing to something like securing oil supplies through income taxes, the amount of their contribution doesn’t depend on the amount of petroleum they use. So, since a marginal increase in their use of petroleum does not lead to a marginal increase in their income taxes, they aren’t internalizing all the costs of their additional petroleum use.
Wrong yet again. You claimed that “securing oil supplies” is a subsidy to drivers. It would only be a subsidy if drivers get more in “securing oil supplies” benefits than they pay for it through taxes and fees. You haven’t shown that that is the case. You have no idea whether drivers are subsidized in this way at all, regardless of the effect of congestion on gas use. As always, you’re just guessing, and presenting your guesses as fact.
Again, that’s not the relevant question. The relevant question is whether the amount they are paying in premiums, payroll taxes, or other taxes to fund these benefits will increase with the marginal increases in health care costs that are caused by their driving. Again, if not, they won’t internalize those costs.
No, that is not the relevant question. You claimed drivers are subsidized for these costs. The relevant question is whether that is true. You have produced no evidence that it is true, and therefore no evidence that congestion increases this alleged subsidy. Show us your evidence that drivers are subsidized for health care, DTM.
November 19th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Stefan, I live in Bay Ridge (on the edge of) and we have good connections via subway & express bus (which I have never taken). I agree that connections within and between the boroughs are execrable. It is a scandal — they must be improved. But congestion pricing applies only to Manhattan, as I understand it. I need a car precisely to get from Brooklyn to Queens — or Staten Island or the Bronx — or LI.
November 19th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
moron,
Matthew — It’s always faster to take the LIRR from Penn Station to Jamaica station (about 10 minutes) and the AirTrain from Jamaica to JFK, unless:
(1) You’re old or physically disabled
(2) It’s nighttime (9 PM or later)
Otherwise you will *not* save time taking a cab.
Er, according to Google Transit:
New York Penn Station to JFK, leaving Penn Station right now (1:22pm)
By car: 27 minutes
By transit: 43 minutes
November 19th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Not when you compare the same commutes.
Obviously, the difference will not be the same for every commute. For most commutes, the time advantage of cars over transit will be even greater than 2-to-1. Mass transit is only time-competitive with driving for a small share of commutes. Commutes by bus and light-rail would virtually never be time-competitive with making the same trip by car, and even many commutes involving the use of high-speed rail (subway or commuter rail) could be done faster by car.
November 19th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Mixner, the reason you can’t compare average commute times is because the average transit commute might be much longer, distance-wise, than the average car commute. Or, it might go through much more congested areas.
Er, so what? Why does this mean you can’t compare them? And it seems highly implausible that the average transit commute involves a longer distance than the average car commute. Given how slow transit is compared to making the same trip by car, the longer the distance, the greater the incentive to drive rather than use transit. Transit is most competitive for short trips in higher-density areas. That’s why cities like New York and Chicago have the highest shares of transit commuting, and places like Houston and Phoenix have the lowest.
November 19th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Er, according to Google Transit:
New York Penn Station to JFK, leaving Penn Station right now (1:22pm)
By car: 27 minutes
By transit: 43 minutes
Google must not be taking traffic into account. According to <a href=”http://www.hopstop.com/”Hopstop, it’s
By Taxi or Car Service: 1 hour 10 minutes
By LIRR/Air Train: 49 minutes
OTOH, you can get a taxi or car service near your apartment, while you’d still have to take another subway or bus to get to Penn Station.
November 19th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Er, so what? Why does this mean you can’t compare them?
Well, because the total time isn’t the important thing, it’s the rate at which you’re travelling. Without distance, you can’t figure the rate.
Even then, the important thing is the rate of a transit commute compared to the rate of taking a car on the same route.
November 19th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Google must not be taking traffic into account.
No, Google does take traffic into account. The estimate is based on average traffic conditions.
I just tried hopstop, and it gave an estimate of 1 hour 11 minutes for Penn Station to JFK by transit.
November 19th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Well, because the total time isn’t the important thing,
Huh? Why isn’t total time the important thing?
Even then, the important thing is the rate of a transit commute compared to the rate of taking a car on the same route.
I addressed this in my last comment. Did you miss it? Most transit commutes are done by bus, and buses (and light rail) are virtually never faster than making the same trip by car. And even rapid rail transit (subways and commuter rail) are often slower than cars. There are some cases where transit is faster than making the same journey by car, but they are the exceptions.
November 19th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
I just tried hopstop, and it gave an estimate of 1 hour 11 minutes for Penn Station to JFK by transit.
UR DOIN IT RONG.
That’s what happens, Mixie, when you claim to know more than everyone in the US from your secluded Sprawl Belt basement.
November 19th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
OTOH, you can get a taxi or car service near your apartment, while you’d still have to take another subway or bus to get to Penn Station.
Exactly, how have to compare door to door. Unless you live in Penn Station you also have to add on the time it would take you to get to Penn Station. From my apartment, for example, it would take me about a half-hour/45 minutes to get to Penn by subway, then add in the time to get a ticket, etc. and you’ve added a good hour on before I even step onto the train. But if I go out my front door and hail a cab, I’m at JKF pulling up to the door in a half-hour/45 minutes (or LaGuardia in 20-40 minutes).
November 19th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Actually, Google’s driving time is based on there being no traffic. It also includes an in-traffic guess as well. Read the directions again; It says “25 minutes (up to 1 hour 40 mins in traffic)” There is no way you can get from mid-Manattan to JFK in 25 mintues unless you’re driving late at night. Trust me, I live in NYC.
With Hopstop, you have to uncheck the “exclude regional rail” option before you click the “Get Directions” button. Otherwise, it has you taking the E train to the Airtrain, which is 22 minutes longer than the LIRR route. That’s would explain why you got an estimate of 1 hour 11 minutes instead of 49 mintues.
November 19th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Google maps does NOT factor in the average when it gives the trip time. It will give a higher, in traffic, estimate that is based on peak traffic conditions in addition to the normal average. You have no chance in hell of making that drive in 27 minutes between 8 and 10 or 3 and 7. Oh, and you get the added joy of hitting every single traffic light and averaging about 2 mph driving crosstown in Manhattan. Yes, driving in NYC is fantastic!
November 19th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
UR DOIN IT RONG.
NO I’M NOT. UR A MORON
November 19th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Heh. Peter H has explained how Mixie EPIC FAILed on both Google and Hopstop, but the petulant little child can never admit he’s wrong, so we’re likely to see a five-comment whine about how people who live in NYC are fools and idiots.
November 19th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Google maps does NOT factor in the average when it gives the trip time.
Yes it does.
It will give a higher, in traffic, estimate that is based on peak traffic conditions in addition to the normal average.
It gives an estimated maximum driving time in addition to the the estimate for average traffic conditions.
Actually, Google’s driving time is based on there being no traffic.
No it isn’t.
It also includes an in-traffic guess as well. Read the directions again; It says “25 minutes (up to 1 hour 40 mins in traffic)”
The “in traffic” estimate is an estimated maximum (hence the words “up to”), not an estimate for typical traffic conditions.
November 19th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Exactly, how have to compare door to door. Unless you live in Penn Station you also have to add on the time it would take you to get to Penn Station. From my apartment, for example, it would take me about a half-hour/45 minutes to get to Penn by subway, then add in the time to get a ticket, etc. and you’ve added a good hour on before I even step onto the train. But if I go out my front door and hail a cab, I’m at JKF pulling up to the door in a half-hour/45 minutes (or LaGuardia in 20-40 minutes).
Right. The vast majority of trips from Manhattan to JFK will not originate at Penn Station, of course. Total travel time for transit would also involve the time needed to get from the point of origin to Penn Station. The point is that even for the small share of trips that would originate at Penn, a taxi is still likely to be faster than using transit (even if we assume no delays or cancellations in transit service).
November 19th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
“My name is pseudonymous in nc, and I live in a permanent state of uncontrollable rage.”
November 19th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Mixner,
I refuse to get into yet another pissing contest with you. Instead, I’ll just ask you this: Have you ever lived in New York City? Do you really think you can drive from mid-Manhattan to JFK in 27 minutes (at a time other than late at night)?
November 19th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
The point is that even for the small share of trips that would originate at Penn, a taxi is still likely to be faster than using transit (even if we assume no delays or cancellations in transit service).
Ah, but now factor in delays in taxi service, i.e. good luck getting a taxi when it’s raining or snowing or at rush hour. If it takes you twenty minutes of standing on a street corner as your luggage gets soaking wet while you vainly hail cab after cab that sails past, then mass transit is the better option.
November 19th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
DTM,
Are you really unaware of the whole recent debate about this very question (whether contributing to global warming makes something a pollutant)?
Asking irrelevant questions to try and distract attention from your error isn’t going to work, DTM. Pollution is “the introduction of contaminants into an environment that causes instability, disorder, harm or discomfort to the physical systems or living organisms they are in.” You’re seriously claiming that greenhouse gas emissions from cars are not a pollutant, are you? Yes or no, DTM?
No I didn’t. I said energy and health care are subsidized, which they are. I didn’t attempt to calculate whether on average the class of people you are calling “drivers” ends up paying more in various ways to support these subsidies than they receive in benefits from these subsidies.
Another lie. You said “congestion [causes] increased use of (subsidized) energy.” This can only be true if drivers do not pay the full cost of the additional energy used as a result of congestion. If they do pay the full cost, it’s not “subsidized” energy. You have produced no evidence whatsoever supporting the claim that the energy is subsidized.
November 19th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
DTM,
My wife commutes back and forth from work using an express bus that is faster than driving would be at the same time. How that works is pretty simple: the express bus uses a dedicated busway without congestion, and the fastest route between our house and her place of work is heavily congested during rush hours.
I’m sure you’re just making this claim up out of thin air, as you do almost all your claims, but in any case it’s completely irrelevant to the point of mine you’re responding to. Express bus services running on dedicated busways comprise only a tiny fraction of all bus routes, and are therefore irrelevant to my point that “commutes by bus and light-rail would virtually never be time-competitive with making the same trip by car.”
November 19th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Do you really think you can drive from mid-Manhattan to JFK in 27 minutes (at a time other than late at night)?
Absolutely. I’ve taken taxis many times from Manhattan to JFK, at various times of the day, and it usually takes no longer than 30 to 45 minutes. Almost all the trip is on expressway, and unless congestion is severe the taxi is rarely stuck in traffic.
November 19th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Huh? Why isn’t total time the important thing?
(total travel time, as opposed to the rate of travel)
Really? You really can’t understand this? Let’s try an experiment: say commuter A lives in Concord, CA, about 35 miles by car from San Francisco. Commuter B lives in the city of South San Francisco, about 10 miles from the center of San Francisco.
Commuter A takes the BART train and his total commute time is one hour. Commuter B drives to work and his total commute time is half an hour.
Commuter B has the shorter commute, in total time, but it’s also slower. Commuter A is going 35 miles per hour, and Commuter B is going 20 miles per hour. Commuter A’s travel is more efficient.
Of course, I made up these numbers for the purpose of making a simple model. You do understand my point, though? That the rate at which you’re traveling is more important than the total time?
Perhaps the reason the average train commute is longer than the average car commute is this: people take the train when they would be facing a really shitty car commute. These are the people with the worst commutes, time-wise. If the car was faster than the train, they’d drive.
November 19th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
I’ve taken taxis many times from Manhattan to JFK, at various times of the day, and it usually takes no longer than 30 to 45 minutes.
Or, in other words, if it “usually” takes “no longer” than 30 to 45 minutes, that means that even in this best-case scenario it “sometimes” does take “more than” 45 minutes. And in any case, 30 to 45 minutes is not lower than 27 minutes.
Almost all the trip is on expressway, and unless congestion is severe the taxi is rarely stuck in traffic.
Well yes – if there is no traffic then there won’t be traffic for the taxi to be stuck in. Penetrating insight. But if congestion is severe, what then?
Meanwhile, I’ve also taken cabs and town cars to JKF from Midtown many times, and my range has been from about 30 minutes (late at night, no traffic) to over an hour and a half (bad traffic). The 27 minute figure, while theoretically possible, is not at all probable.
November 19th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
I’ll pipe in on the Google maps question, too: it’s been my experience that Google’s driving times assume that you’ll be traveling about the speed limit. They don’t account for traffic congestion or for driving real fast. The “in traffic, may take up to x” number is the only one that appears to take traffic into account.
November 19th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Re: It would be better to limit the number of cars allowed at any one time and distribute the permits to car owners by lot.
This would be an excellent idea. I believe something similar is already done in Mexico, although there the idea was more to cut down on air pollution than on congestion.
You would need to make it, of course, so that everyone had the right to drive on the roads, just not every day per week. For example, on Monday-Tuesday you could have cars with licence plates ending in 0,1, and 2, and so forth.
November 19th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Commuter B has the shorter commute, in total time, but it’s also slower. Commuter A is going 35 miles per hour, and Commuter B is going 20 miles per hour. Commuter A’s travel is more efficient.
I don’t know what you mean by “more efficient.” It’s obviously not “more efficient” with respect to the commuter’s time, because it takes longer. But since you’re comparing two different contrived commutes, I’m not sure what you think the comparison tells us anyway.
And Commuter A’s commute would likely take less time if he made it by car. In fact, Google Maps estimates Concord to SF (Market and Van Ness) at 1 hour 3 minutes by transit, vs 40 minutes by car.
Whatever contrived situations you may be able to devise that make transit look attractive, the fact remains that in general commuting by transit is much slower than commuting by car. And transit is even slower still compared to cars for travel in general. That’s one reason why using transit is unpopular.
November 19th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Oh, I see someone else already brought up a flaw in the Mexico City plan. Well, there’s an easy solution to that. You could only issue a licence plate to people who turn in the licence plate from their old car. That way no one would be permitted to have more than one car, and the problem is solved.
November 19th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Mixner: “I’m sure you’re just making this claim up out of thin air, as you do almost all your claims, but in any case it’s completely irrelevant to the point of mine you’re responding to. Express bus services running on dedicated busways comprise only a tiny fraction of all bus routes, and are therefore irrelevant to my point that “commutes by bus and light-rail would virtually never be time-competitive with making the same trip by car.””
Wow. This is being pinned up on my wall. Projection, denial, and dishonesty, all rolled up into one perfect Mixner package.
November 19th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Re:That’s one reason why using transit is unpopular.
Staying faithful to your wife is unpopular, too. Nevertheless, it remains the right thing to do. People often choose things that are not good for them, or for society.
November 19th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
MS Live Search Maps driving distance and time estimates for Penn Station to JFK are almost identical to Google’s – 17.3 miles and 26 minutes. So hopstop’s estimate is way out of line with both these services. Also, hopstop does not provide route information. Its distance estimate is 2 miles shorter than Google’s and Live Map’s, which suggests it is using a different (and slower) route.
November 19th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
I’ll pipe in on the Google maps question, too: it’s been my experience that Google’s driving times assume that you’ll be traveling about the speed limit.
The Google Maps and Live Maps estimates involve an average speed of about 38 miles per hour. About 13 of the 17 miles of the trip are on expressway. It therefore seems unlikely that these estimates assume that you’ll be travelling the speed limit.
November 19th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Yahoo Maps gives 16.49 miles and 27 minutes for Penn Station to JFK.
MapQuest gives 16.7 miles and 27 minutes.
So we’ve got four major web map services that all give a driving distance of about 17 miles and a drive time of about 27 minutes for Penn Station to JFK, all using more or less the same route, versus one other service that gives a different distance, a different drive time, and no route information.
November 19th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Hector,
Staying faithful to your wife is unpopular, too. Nevertheless, it remains the right thing to do. People often choose things that are not good for them, or for society.
I think other people are in a better position to decide what’s good for themselves than you are, especially given your wacky religious-conservative social views.
November 19th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
It certainly seems that the standard travel time estimate on google maps is calculated from an algorithm that factors in the speed limit on the road and average stopping time at lights. Do you have evidence that they are actually based on empirical evidence of traffic speed on these roads? I’d love to see the methodology but Google obviously isn’t giving away their intellectual property. Considering that if I drive the speed limit I am almost never faster than the Google maps directions, I’m skeptical that any averaging is used.
This argument is idiotic anyway since gmaps estimated trip time has no relation to reality during peak hours. Also, don’t forget about finding parking, unless you are rich enough to garage it…
November 19th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
That way no one would be permitted to have more than one car, and the problem is solved.
Even better — the government would get to throw some people in jail for owning more cars than Hector wants them to! That’s a big plus, right? Maybe we can even chop their gas-pedal foot off, or their shifting hand.
I’ll give you this, Hector: you might be evil and have no basic decency or regard for the humanity of your fellow man, but you’re a lot smart than Mixner. It’s amazing what this guy can’t be made to grasp.
Yes, dude, covering 35 miles in an hour is “more efficient” than covering 10 miles in half an hour. Most people, especially in this economy, can’t just decide to work closer to home. The only variable within their control is how they get there.
This should settle the Google Map question once and for all: I just mapped the route from the Sepulveda on-ramp in Culver City, directly north on the 405 to the Sunset Blvd exit. That’s the slowest freeway in the country, if I’m not mistaken. The distance 6 miles, 100% freeway, and Google says it should take 6 minutes — just about the speed limit. Now, if you were crazy enough to attempt that drive anytime between, say, 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. on a weekday, it would take you half an hour, minimum, to travel those 6 miles.
November 19th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Mixner,
Er, no, they aren’t. For example, you clearly aren’t a good judge of right and wrong, for yourself or for anyone else.
November 19th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Ethan,
It certainly seems that the standard travel time estimate on google maps is calculated from an algorithm that factors in the speed limit on the road and average stopping time at lights.
Er, how does it seem that?
This argument is idiotic anyway since gmaps estimated trip time has no relation to reality during peak hours.
The claim that started all this wasn’t about peak hours. It was about travel at any time other than nighttime after 9pm. You can’t move the goalposts now.
Also, don’t forget about finding parking, unless you are rich enough to garage it…
More irrelevance. We’re talking about taxi vs transit.
November 19th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
This is a very interesting proposal that I have not heard of before. My only concern regards the implementation. I fear there would be a tremendous backlash against this, regardless of what city it was implemented in. Nevertheless, it is an interesting solution to an ever-increasing problem.
November 19th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Yes, dude, covering 35 miles in an hour is “more efficient” than covering 10 miles in half an hour.
No, it merely involves a higher speed. “More efficient” does not mean “higher speed.” The contrived comparison doesn’t tell us anything useful about real-world commutes by car vs transit, anyway. In the real world, in general, commuting by car is simply much faster than commuting by transit. That’s one reason why the overwhelming majority of commuters drive rather than take buses or trains.
November 19th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
I live in NY and it does not take 37 minutes to get to JFK (even from Bay Ridge), except in theory. You have to allow an hour at least. I don’t care what Google says. The Belt is usually packed and accidents are frequent. Same with LaGuardia.
November 19th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
I also live in NY, and I’d say 30 minutes is pretty realistic for midtown to JFK outside of morning and even rush hours on weekdays. The LIE usually doesn’t have much traffic in the middle of the day.
December 14th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
CLICK HERE TO SEE ALL OF THE MORNING DELAYS AND CANCELLATIONS Sunday’s train derailment in Jamaica had a lasting impact on this morning’s commute for Long Island Rail Road riders as a dozen morning rush-hour trains were canceled and
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