[lr1970]

Congestion pricing is only a half of the solution. The second half should be the MTA reform. MTA has been a dysfunctional mess and a bottomless money pit for as long as I remember. MTA of today will squander any amount of money you throw on it wasting all the potential gains from congestion pricing.

[sethhochberg]

Regrettably the only source I can find hosting this video is a reddit post, but you might find the remarks by the MTA chair interesting: https://www.reddit.com/r/nycrail/comments/1iyve4d/mta_buildi...

In short: for decades they’ve been allergic to doing any design or project management in house, which meant brand new teams of consultants and contractors spun up for every single project. Lucrative for the consultants, not an efficient way to use funds for a big organization that is constantly doing design and construction.

Seems like the MTA is finally starting to invest in building internal expertise again so they can stop farming everything out

[const_cast]

This is the story of the American public sector. Voters push them to outsource X Y Z to the private sector because clearly public organization X sucks. The private sector is greedy and a black box, so they're basically going to bleed the tax payers dry because they have no accountability to anyone. And the added complexity of hops between communication just burns money. And now the military is paying 150 dollars for a shovel.

The American public is allergic to just considering public actors as job programs. If the MTA would just keep everything in-house that can be a real boon to the local economy. But no, we have to give those jobs to some fuck ass companies made up primarily of salespeople who are going to make big claims and then proceed to run every project overtime and over budget.

[krferriter]

Americans have a weird thing with government agencies (or government-owned companies, e.g. Amtrak) simply hiring people to do a thing the government is tasked with doing, or buying things the government needs in order to do that thing. So instead our governments at all levels rely heavily on contracting it out to private companies to do the exact same thing but with higher cost and turnover and no long term expertise built in-house in the government agency which is now tasked with managing and overseeing all this contracting.

The MBTA in Boston also suffered from this and is now undergoing an effort under the new management to hire more in-house staff to do routine maintenance and other work that had previously been contracted out to a variety of private firms.

[nobodyandproud]

Largely because a hostile state government is given control over what’s largely a NYC issue.

[passivedonut]

Congestion pricing is a regressive tax. It doesn’t actually ‘work.’

As the population or inflation increases the fee will have to increase to keep enough people off the road. It doesn’t actually address the public’s transportation needs, it’s just some rich assholes way of using wealth to cut in line at the expense of the general public.

Most of these policies that seek to inflict harm on the public to effect social change never actually produce a positive and productive end result.

Small businesses which is the U.S. economy will be heavily impacted resulting in local cities moving revenue generation from commerce to residential property, increasing cost of living.

If gentrification is your wheelhouse then yah Congestion Pricing sounds wonderful.

[JumpCrisscross]

> As the population or inflation increases the fee will have to increase to keep enough people off the road

Most people in a car in Manhattan don’t need to be in one, and most of those that do are exempted from this charge.

(I say this as someone who is commonly in a car in Manhattan.)

[ethbr1]

It would be a regressive tax... if there weren't public transit alternatives.

As is, it's a tax on people who drive.

[CPLX]

It’s not a regressive tax, it’s a fee. Taxes and fees are related but distinct.

It’s possible for an overall fee based structure to be regressive, but it’s also possible for it to not be.

For example a fee for landing private jets at public airports is not regressive.

Given the contours of who does and doesn’t drive in Manhattan it’s almost certain that this one has a similar dynamic and is actually progressive.

[insane_dreamer]

it works in places that are already gentrified, like Manhattan or the City (of London). No one is suggesting congestion pricing in Queens.