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Absurd violation of states’ rights. Trump made the smart call on abortion, let states experiment with congestion schemes if they want.
Too late for that. If we're going to switch back to "states rights", it has to be for a Red issue or it doesn't look like "state's rights" but rather "who/whom".
It is a red issue. If congestion pricing is so terrible, NYC will suffer and, as in California with Texas, red states will benefit from an influx of investment and tax revenue.
Obvious sophistry. It's a way to get people from outside the city to pay for NYC transit unions.
This is leaves out its genuine major benefit. Most urban planning studies show that people will adapt to whatever transit conditions are present, and the impact of induced demand is quite real. Freeway lane expansion in the long term, counterintuitively, doesn’t much reduce congestion and usually slightly increases vehicle miles traveled. Congestion pricing could* be a wonderful tool to help steer more people to mass transit, which is more than sensible in the single-most population dense city in America.
*The problem with this in NYC (and other Democrat-run large cities) is that a number of liberal policies spanning decades, from the courts banning involuntary commitment in all but the most severe cases, to more-recently a pronounced aversion to policing quality of life violations in public spaces, has made public transit deeply unpleasant.
What benefit? Less congestion? We won't see such a benefit.
What urban planners call "induced demand" is simply "pent-up demand"; the roads were so oversubscribed that when a new lane or road opens of course it is still at LOS F. The demand wasn't caused by the road; it was caused by the useful things along the road.
That is obviously false as seen by the actual massive drop in traffic after the congestion pricing scheme went on.
The major beneficiaries were the tradesmen that bill $150/hr and more than saved paying the fee and chopping 20-40minutes of driving off their day.
Since they were declaring victory in the first week of the year (always lighter traffic than usual, and with a snowstorm, no less) based on comparing cherrypicked routes on those days to similar days during more normal commute periods, I know they will lie about this and claim a massive drop in traffic regardless of what actually happens.
What evidence would convince you that traffic has reduced?
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