Summary
New York City has become the first U.S. city to implement a congestion charge, with car drivers paying up to $9 daily to enter areas south of Central Park.
The scheme aims to reduce traffic and fund public transport but has faced opposition, including from Donald Trump, who has vowed to overturn it.
Fees vary by vehicle type, with trucks and buses paying higher rates.
Despite legal challenges, the initiative moves forward as New York remains the world’s most congested urban area, with peak traffic speeds averaging just 11 mph.
Doesn’t the congestion revenue explicitly help fund public transportation? Which would help mitigate a lot of the issues you bring up, there will for sure be growing pains but with smart decisions should adapt to the needs of traffic
Eh. Money’s perfectly fungible, except for restrictions the government puts on itself through the budget process. Theoretically, they could have simply decided to pay for the MTA with existing funds, and tie the future of street maintenance to the implementation of the congestion toll. Instead, they tied the MTA funding increase to the implementation of a congestion toll, for political reasons.
How much congestion tax would it take to add a new line to New Jersey to handle the offloading of big traffic?
Looking at the numbers to fix the infrastructure, the tax is a drop in the bucket.
Yet to the businesses in the area, it’ll severely lower their income.
I’d hate to see Comic-Con leave the Javits center to move to New Jersey.
Additional tunnels are already being built as part of the Gateway Program which will double train capacity.
So put the congestion charge in once they can handle the traffic…