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Notes -
Here's something we haven't talked about yet: congestion pricing.
Recently, New York's congestion pricing scheme went live. Drivers who wish to enter lower Manhattan must pay a toll of $9. Almost immediately after the toll went live, traffic congestion got a lot better.
From an economics standpoint, the toll has been a big success. Consider, for a minute, the perspective of a person who is willing to wait an hour in traffic, but is not willing to wait 15 minutes plus pay $9. In a world of rational actors, this person should not exist. But in the real world, this person in fact does exist in great numbers. Not only that, but their irrational choice is also clogging up traffic for everyone else, as well as increasing pollution. From a standpoint of utility, there is no question that this program increases the overall utility of the city's transportation system.
There's also the money aspect. This toll raises money for a city that is chronically short of it – despite having some of the highest per-capita taxation in the world. In an ideal world, the additional funds would be used to build out more transportation infrastructure. In reality, the new taxes will end up in the bottomless pit of graft that grips the city.
A few takes I've seen:
This will increase traffic outside the zone as much as it decreases it in the zone. Personally, I doubt this. Near me, when the 520 bridge was tolled, it reduced traffic on the bridge without increasing it too much elsewhere.
This is unfair because it prices out the working class people who drive into Manhattan.
This is unfair because it forces people to take the subways and the subways are full of murderous lunatics.
The city has substituted new taxes for actually, you know, building stuff. The fact that city planning geeks are celebrating this shows how small our ambitions have become. The biggest infrastructure projects now are just... more taxes?
One take I haven't seen but is relevant:
Will people cheat? Here in Seattle, people drive without license plates, have fake temporary ones, register in different states, and put covers over their plates which make them invisible to cameras. You cannot be pulled over for this, so it's basically an honor system. I assume NYC will be similar.
What do people think about these new taxes? Good or bad?
You can't be pulled over for driving with fake plates?
Some states have a distinction of 'primary' and 'secondary' traffic offenses: primary offenses can be justification for a police stop and citation at any time, while secondary offenses can only be issued where a stop has already begun under reasonable suspicion of a primary offense, or another citation is already being issued.
Depending on offense, the theory is either that the secondary offenses are intended to augment other errors (eg, speeding a few MPH at night while your headlights are broken is much worse than speeding a few MPH), or that enforcement of the law while a vehicle in motion is so impractical that it would more often be used as justification for improper or illegal stops than for true enforcement (eg, you aren't going to be able to tell if a driver has buckled their seatbelt fully at 80 MPH on a freeway no matter how good your eyes are), or that the law is intended more as a guideline and it has been abused in the past (eg, pulling someone over for a single broken tail lights was notorious as a pretext for other searches, rather than an opportunity to tell people to get the light fixed).
That said, while New York has considered such a distinction, I don't know the state of the current law there or in Washington. And sometimes this is a policy thing, rather than a statute one.
The US is an insane place. Here missing plates are treated with as much suspicion as hiding your face when walking past a cop. Being caught with fake plates results in your driving license suspended for a year. Making your plates intentionally unreadable and getting caught twice - suspension for 3 months.
Texas just got rid of temporary tags because there’s too many fakes, too- this isn’t just a blue state thing.
Sounds like a problem that is easy to solve. Have speed and lane control cameras scan every plate they see. If they see a fake plate, alert the nearest patrol car. Texas Highway Patrol makes ~7500 traffic stops a day. If just 10% of these stops will be about plates, that's 750 drivers punished each day.
The system that most plate-scanning mechanisms utilize wouldn't be able to keep up with this volume, I think.
It's also illegal to use said system for plate-scanning, but they do it anyways. And continue to do so; who knows how that court case would work out.
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