To be fair, they were mostly right, since 93% continued to drive.
This is commute tax for the wealthy, and a time tax for lower income people. B39 only crosses the bridge, so there's waiting/transfer on both sides. Commute is generally 2-5x more time by public transport there, with all the stops.
The key point is that traffic is basically exponential in number of cars. Roads have a capacity below which there's almost no traffic, and above which capacity stays constant (or goes down). The amount of traffic in a city without congestion charging is the amount caused by the last couple percent of drivers most willing to wait in traffic. By introducing a fee that switches the decision for that small group of people, everyone else's commute gets a noticeably shorter (including all the people that were taking the bus previously).
I suppose this was tongue in cheek, and I don't live in NYC - but where I live, a single ticket is 4 EUR, so that's 8 EUR there and back. So right now, parking up to a couple hours is already cheaper (if we ignore the wear and tear of driving 20km) per day in the city. If I manage to optimize for the parking price (or can do it for free) - the 9$ would still be a maybe 10% increase, not 'for the wealthy'. And I can imagine several of such scenarios, I guess you are only looking at "person commuting to work 20 days a month and thus paying 180$ extra"
Yes, monthly tickets exist but I've not used one for years because I usually cycle all the time.
nomel|1 year ago
This is commute tax for the wealthy, and a time tax for lower income people. B39 only crosses the bridge, so there's waiting/transfer on both sides. Commute is generally 2-5x more time by public transport there, with all the stops.
adgjlsfhk1|1 year ago
wink|1 year ago
Yes, monthly tickets exist but I've not used one for years because I usually cycle all the time.