[RhysU]

[flagged]

[tomhow]

Please don't fulminate or engage in ideological battle here. The topic is fine to discuss and disagree about, but HN is for curious conversation not indignation, and the guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. You've posted several ragey comments in a short space of time, and that's not the way HN is meant to be used. Please have a read of the guidelines and make an effort to observe them when participating here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[afavour]

> Remember kids: congestion pricing is nothing but a tariff on transportation.

On driving. And it actually makes driving more appealing, there’s much less traffic so you can get where you’re going much quicker.

> Instead of making public transport more appealing through competition

Like having multiple subway systems? NYC did that already.

[itissid]

This is also quantitatively correct because for two people coming in from afar you might change two trains or a bus and train and each ticket is at least 3.00$(bus/path from NJ) which is 24$ minimum both ways, with more than two it would make even more sense to take the car.

Congestion pricing brings in a toll above the 16$ you pay throu the tunnel. I think it's 18, So 34$ total?

So you are incentivized to get more than 2 people by car. Less traffic.

[RhysU]

It makes driving more appealing if one discounts the best alternative use of the funds, which humans are irrationally likely to do. That driving seems better is because people suck at thinking about what else they might do with the money given compound returns on its investment.

[eutropia]

Buses got significantly more reliable as a result of reduced traffic, more ridership on subways allowed for more police presence at stations, reducing crime.

Public transit got better.

[Hammershaft]

Pigouvian taxes are genuinely one of the few policies that really are nearly a free lunch in economics.

[Dylan16807]

"There is no such thing as a free lunch" is a very strong argument for tolls, I hope you realize.

> everyone paying the tolls who now needs to engage in additional pollution-causing economic activity merely to offset the costs of government-mandated congestion pricing

I don't think that's how economics work. People are already doing their best to generate money. Also even if that did happen, the thing you're describing as "pollution-causing" is GDP growth, which is overall desirable.

> tariffs

Whether a tariff is good depends on what the goal is (and whether it works toward that goal).

[RhysU]

If people aren't working harder to offset the tolls then they're strictly poorer as a consequence of the toll.

[8note]

its not a tariff because tariffs are taxes on imports. you arent paying a tax related to the value of the goods being brought over, and to the extent that new car buyers are importing cars, its neglible compared to what youre trying to draw equivalence to, trump's 30% or so tariffs.

instead, its a toll or a usage tax.

but also, you want the economic activity of having people in the city, not the cost of supporting their light trucks. people coming from outside of new york are very costly in terms of pollution, road maintenance, and losing real estate to parking spaces.

[ch4s3]

It’s a tariff on DRIVING in Manhattan, the place in America you least need to drive.

[RhysU]

You have never tried to leave the city for the suburbs after 9 pm. Driving is still immensely useful, as I sit in my Uber on the way home.

[scubbo]

> why isn't congestion pricing a tariff?

Because tariffs are imposed on trade between countries. That was easy!

[RhysU]

[flagged]

[smileysteve]

Ironic that with a headline measuring a negative externality of driving that wasn't being priced in and you think transit got the artificial leg up.

[fwip]

A tariff is a tax on imports. Driving is not an import.

[jeffbee]

In American English, tariff always means a fee that applies to international imports and exports. It doesn't apply here.