New York City - Transit News

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Gantz

Even with congestion revenue MTA would be broke. Their major issue is costs, not revenue side.
They got billions of dollars during COVID and they pissed it all away with nothing to show for it.
Remember, congestion pricing was projected to bring about $1 billion a year, or 5% of MTA current operating budget in revenue. Those are not some Earth-shattering funds. In 10 years, that would be enough to fix a staircase, maaaybe.

This is all bullshit.

-The MTA, at this moment, has the highest credit rating in its history. It has been judged an strong steward of public dollars. You might not agree, but that's the official word per the ratings agencies. It has the best rider-per-dollar ratio of any major U.S. transit agency, BTW.

-COVID funding was essential to keeping the system running. Without COVID funding and with ridership revenue near zero, the system would have been cut to the bone. An agency with fixed salary/benefits costs cannot survive when 40% of revenue vanishes.

-Congestion pricing would bring in $15 billion, to start. It was bonded for $15 billion. So "pausing" the start immediately eliminates $15 billion from the budget. That will be enough to eliminate every single expansion project, all the essential track upgrades as well as almost all the (court-mandated) accessibility improvements.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Gantz

That is what I said before. Congestion charge is nothing more than the failure of infrastructure. You are basically artificially forcing people not to do the trips. You can make driving in Manhattan cost $1M per mile! I am sure then you'd get nice and empty streets. Better yet, just blow up the bridges into the island altogether. I am sure that would get rid of cars.

Sure, it's a failure of infrastructure in the sense that if we built it with the hope of eliminating congestion, it will fail because it isn't capable of doing what we're asking of it.
Because it simply isn't feasible to build enough infrastructure in a major city to eliminate congestion. That's why there's congestion in every major city without a congestion charge regardless of how much or little infrastructure they have. So there will always be congestion whether the infrastructure is excellent, passable or poor. That's the part that just doesn't seem to sink in with some people.

The road infrastructure of a city will experience congestion if traffic volumes exceed 100% of capacity. So if you go to 105% it gets congested, things slow down, and no more vehicles can fit on the roads. Lots more people would like to use the roads if they could but can't due to the time and hassle of dealing with traffic. But the desire for road space, depending on the city, can be 200%, 400%, 600% or whatever meaning you'd need the capacity to double, quadruple or more. That is, until population growth and lifestyle changes induce more demand. And adding that much road infrastructure in a dense urban environment is just too expensive to be feasible. That's why cities that have tried such as Houston and LA still have congestion. The source of their demand isn't what's relevant. What matters is the amount of demand and how much is feasible to supply.

Yet people act like, "Well when we're at 105%, that 5 percentage points is what's causing the congestion so if we build infrastructure to accommodate that, then problem solved. But then they don't realize that the demand is 600% and the only reason the roads are only at 105% capacity is because they can't physically handle more.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Crawford

There is no "alternative route". The state, in the postwar decades, tried multiple times to build a road & rail crossing from LI to CT. NIMBYs killed it.

The same NIMBYs who don't want to pay for tolls also don't want any new infrastructure built anywhere. You would get laughed out of every North Shore LI town with such a proposal. These are affluent towns that go crazy when someone proposes a 5-unit building, or paints an old building the wrong color.

They sound like a delightful bunch.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

They sound like a delightful bunch.

if you are wondering and want to know more this is what crawford was mad googling, but won’t post so he can front and act like a know it all —

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Island_Sound_link

[Busy Bee]

Just for the petty record I already posted that link three pages back. Pay attention people.