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    HoldMeCloserTonyDanzigAndy Cush
    6/09/16 4:21pm

    The flip side to this is that it is ultimately a regressive tax.

    Somebody else said: “It’s like 38 dollars a day to park in a garage in New York City. Do working poor actually commute via private vehicle?” File this one under Gawker doesn’t know poor people. Yes they do drive in, packed 7 deep in a minivan coming in from Yonkers, and they split the cost which will now be going up for them.

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      BCDFGHoldMeCloserTonyDanzig
      6/09/16 5:06pm

      Uh, 7 deep in a minivan coming in from Yonkers? I lived in the Bronx and I knew plenty of folks in YO. It’s not that deep. Working people in Yonkers can commute using Bee-Line Bus over the border into Woodlawn and use a free Metro-Card transfer for the subway.

      Also, the real problem is that the un-tolled bridges of the East River are taken by shitheels from Westchester, Jersey and Long Island to avoid the tolled bridges, artificially inflating NYC’s traffic with other people’s spillover, with NYC getting no benefit —no economic activity, no tolls, nothing. Just the diesel emissions.

      The whole point of a “regressive” excise tax is that it’s supposed to correct this misbehavior so that commercial traffic does what it’s supposed to do —pay a small toll that pays for the wear and tear on the bridge.

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      JoshDigiHoldMeCloserTonyDanzig
      6/09/16 5:36pm

      Its not a regressive tax. Its a tax on lazy idiots. NY has good public transit and with money from a congestion tax it could have even better public transit. Anyone who insists on driving into the most dense neighborhood in America deserves to pay the price for once.

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    GMOCAndy Cush
    6/09/16 5:05pm

    Street Smart by Sam Schwartz (Former NYC Traffic guru) is a great book and covers this topic in detail. Other good moves? Drastically reducing street parking and not building more roads which he says fulfill a build it and they will come phenomena.

    He also analyzes Uber’s effect on traffic and while not conclusive, it is not a positive with regard to efficiency.

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      TeenageMutantKinjaGMOC
      6/09/16 5:29pm

      Reducing street parking is an awesome idea, that alone could have an amazing impact. The demand for garages would jump and prices woujd go up accordingly and more people would opt to take public transit .

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      JoshDigiGMOC
      6/09/16 5:40pm

      That dude is right about pretty much everything. Free street parking, no congestion pricing, pathetically low gas taxes, thousands of pedestrians killed by drivers per year. This adds up to billions in welfare for American drivers. Time for American drivers to pay for the damage they cause.

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    RobNYCAndy Cush
    6/09/16 4:22pm

    If the city collects this money it it won’t really help with the MTA budget since that’s a state agency. I mean sure NYC can contribute more money to it but that just means Cuomo and Albany will put less in themselves and we’ll still be stuck with not enough money. There’s a reason Albany is one of the most dysfunctional state legislatures.

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      gramercypoliceRobNYC
      6/09/16 4:37pm

      Still a good idea.

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      BCDFGRobNYC
      6/09/16 4:53pm

      The MTA is a state agency, but here’s the rub: the U.S. Constitution gives states rights, not cities or authorities. Both NYC and the MTA exist as legal entities only insofar as NYS provides them autonomy.

      With roads and tunnels that are physically in the city limits, NYC has actually been technically given a lot of leeway. The East River bridges are also property of the city. The subway tunnels and stations that NYCT runs through were concessions the city gave to the old subway companies, and are technically leased to the MTA (through the convoluted structure which ganged them up to the Triboro Bridge and Tunnel Authority, now MTA Bridges & Tunnels).

      Incidentally, this is why NYC is able most of the time to do things with its roads, like create pedestrian plazas or grant concessions for Citi Bike or taxis, mostly without NYS getting a word in edgewise.

      Now here’s where things get dicey: while the operations of the MTA are mostly done through its own tolls, fares, and state taxes, capital spending —new trains, new tunnels, etc.— has been paid for by bonds issued against bridge tolls, fares, and various taxes that are levied by both the city and the state, and where the city has autonomy.

      That leads to the city and state historically having diverging interests. Koch in the 1980's was pretty gung ho about getting the subways fixed up and put up a lot of the city’s taxes so that the MTA could issue the debt it needed to pay for new train cars and such. But the 1990's were years of stagnation for the MTA because both Mayor Dinkins and Giuliani drastically cut back what they were willing to put into the MTA from their taxes so that they could fund other things (like cops) which were viewed as more vital.

      The interesting thing these days is that NYC has mostly won back its autonomy in finance —it no longer owes money to the Municipal Assistance Corporation for the 1970's bailout— so NYC also has more autonomy to pick and choose which transportation projects it will fund. This is how Bloomberg paid for the 7 train extension, for example —it’s paid for 100% out of property tax revenues. It’s also why De Blasio’s transportation proposals —ferries and light rail— are almost entirely outside of the purview of the MTA.

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    UrbanNunEnthusiastAndy Cush
    6/09/16 4:26pm

    And how would this affect delivery drivers and those who need to drive around Manhattan as part of their business?

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      BCDFGUrbanNunEnthusiast
      6/09/16 6:07pm

      What I’ve heard from people who are much closer to the Move NY plan than I am: first, you’re only tolling one way (into Manhattan, but not as part of an exit).

      But second, to avoid setting up plazas that snag things further, you’d set things up with a pay-by-mail cashless toll system that uses a scan of a license plate and DMV data (which is already in place on the Henry Hudson Bridge); the benefit of that is that you can introduce a simple formula that debits people only once upon their first crossing in a 24 hour period.

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    ThrumbolioAndy Cush
    6/09/16 4:27pm

    NOTES FROM SHIT THAT SHOULD HAVE STAYED IN THE GRAYS, BUT WHICH I TOOK OUT BECAUSE IT WAS TOO FUCKING FUNNY:

    You are regularly one of the most racist people I have to see on here.

    ~a prizefighter

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      EvenBaggierTrousers4Thrumbolio
      6/09/16 4:32pm

      Well, we didn’t want to say anything, but...

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      ThrumbolioEvenBaggierTrousers4
      6/09/16 4:33pm

      Fuck. Y’got me.

      I present to you, the REAL Thrumbolio!

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    MarkEbnerAndy Cush
    6/09/16 5:16pm

    Let’s all take a moment to remember the Donald Trump of his day, Robert Moses.

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      BCDFGMarkEbner
      6/09/16 5:59pm

      With Robert Moses, say what you will —the man’s name was mud in my family since our roots were in the part of the Bronx destroyed by the Cross Bronx— but he was at root a monomaniacal utilitarian. Everything was built around financing the next big infrastructure project. When Moses died, it was without a penny in his own pocket, because everything he got out of the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority was reinvested into one highway or another.

      (Incidentally, about 2/3 of every trip you currently make on mass transit in NYC is funded by tolls from the descendant of the TBTA.)

      You simply can’t compare Trump to Robert Moses. He’s just a clown with a big mouth and a helicopter fleet to stun you with his bullshit. You want to talk about real estate in NY, you talk about the Tishmans or SL Green or the Helmsleys. The Trumps just built a couple of forgettable towers and a golf course in the Bronx, and the rest of his garbage real estate’s in god forsaken quarters of New Jersey and Florida.

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      MarkEbnerBCDFG
      6/10/16 1:50am

      I probably should have been more clear: Trump is every bit the racist that Moses was.

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    gramercypoliceAndy Cush
    6/09/16 4:27pm

    Logically, it should also help reduce pedestrian injuries and deaths by car. Though, I suppose fewer cars would tend to drive faster.

    There was a comment thread about this topic yesterday, so I won’t regurgitate those arguments here, but I do think they should also designate any midtown housing units over, say, $15 million adjusted for inflation as “Ridiculous Zones” and toll the living shit out of anybody who walks in to or out of them. $100 to get in, $1,000 to get out. Obviously, the coop board would have to add that to the pay of anyone on the crew, and delivery services would tack it in as a delivery surcharge. Just spit-balling here, but we should try it and see how it goes. Also, any governor entering the city would pay a $50 million fee and not be allowed to use any bathrooms inside the city limits. Just because.

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      BostonTerrorgramercypolice
      6/09/16 4:38pm

      Since the accidents went down in spite of increased speed - I would guess that less congestion also leads to more attentiveness/less rampant cellphone use. If that holds true (drivers being more attentive) peds should be safer too.

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      gramercypoliceBostonTerror
      6/09/16 4:41pm

      I'm holding you to that.

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    NooYawkAndy Cush
    6/09/16 4:47pm

    NYC could actually easily pay for all the repairs and upgrades we need out of our taxes paid. If NY State didn’t use all our taxes to fund the rest of the state. I wish Upstate NY’ers would start pulling their own damn weight.

    These subways are literally going to break down once and for good one day. And all hell is going to break loose.

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      Ole Slew FootNooYawk
      6/09/16 4:57pm

      Dunno about that. I remember the strike. Not too hellish.

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      TheDogIsStillBarkingNooYawk
      6/09/16 5:11pm

      I think a lot of upstate New Yorkers would agree with you. What happened to the plan to split that was getting a lot of attention a year or two ago?

      Out of curiosity, where would you draw the line? Are you a hardcore “even the Bronx is upstate” or would you include a little of the Hudson Valley in there for scenery?

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    WhatthefoxsaysAndy Cush
    6/09/16 4:55pm

    There’s one hitch to this plan: the people from NJ will pick up the slack and drive in. The Hudson tolls will not increase (presumably since they are already at $15) so if the traffic disappears, then more people would be willing to drive rather than take NJ Transit, which is way more expensive than the subway.

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      Misteaks were madeAndy Cush
      6/09/16 4:40pm

      Is Alyssa Walker on vacation this week? I feel like I’m reading her Ban Cars propaganda from Gizmodo.

      Not saying this isn’t a good idea for NYC, just used to seeing it in other places.

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