Posted on 07/17/2007 1:05:00 PM PDT by Contentions
Michael Bloomberg’s all-but-declared presidential campaign suffered a serious setback on Monday, when the New York state legislature refused to sign on to plans to impose congestion pricing on New York City. The mayor’s plan would have charged people to drive into midtown Manhattan between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. on weekdays. Congestion pricing is a good idea—in principle. There were, however, numerous substantive problems with Bloomberg’s plan, which would not have reduced traffic so much as redistributed it to less well-to-do areas bordering the mid-Manhattan congestion zone. But what may have been its real undoing was the mix of arrogance and managerial incompetence that the mayor brought with him to Albany.
Bloomberg’s proposal, from the start, struck skeptical legislators as a ploy designed to burnish the mayor’s green credentials for a run at the presidency. And the mayor (who spent the days before the decision not lobbying in Albany, but attending the Aspen Festival) never did the groundwork necessary to win approval in the State legislature. When concerns were raised that the subways were already heavily overcrowded and increasingly late—problems sure to be worsened by the plan—Bloomberg dismissed them out of hand. “He does not accept criticism and he views advice as criticism,” said one Senate Democrat. “He had no answers for complaints that weren’t flippant.” “If the mayor came in with one vote, he left with none,” said Senator Kevin S. Parker (D-Brooklyn). So angered were Albany Democrats that they voted as a bloc to defeat the measure.
(Excerpt) Read more at commentarymagazine.com ...
We have this in London.....and it keeps out the poor. As only the rich can afford to drive in, so the roads are only for the rich, just like in the Soviet Union.
But it would be great if Bloomturd blew a billion or so of his own money to run and take votes from The Hilldabeast.
Bloomberg prefers the Soviet style Government to American representative Government. He has said many times that he has no patience for endless discussion and debate in Government and that America’s problem is that there’s not a really smart businessman — like him presumably — in office that can simply make all the decisions for the rest of us and just get on with making everything work well.
He’s an elitist jerk — just like most liberals.
What a totally dumb and clueless statement. Congestion pricing is a rotten idea.
Congestion pricing is the fairest way to distribute a scarce good. In this case, the scarce good is right-of-way at a particular time of day. We distribute almost all other scarce goods through a pricing system, so what not this one?
That said, it sounds like Bloomberg went around things in a bad way. But he’s right on principle.
I mean “why not this one?” Sorry.
Of course Boomberg is the smartest in the land,
After all, he has so much money..............
SO SHUT UP YOU PROLES!!
Because we already pay for roads with gas taxes, tolls, auto registration fees and other costs? Heck, gas taxes already subsidize transit too. How many times do we have to keep paying for the same things we've already paid for?
At best, congestion pricing will force more traffic into the suburbs immediately adjacent to the area in which the fee is imposed.
Why is the solution to every supposed problem a new tax?
ML/NJ
I have been hearing reports that congestion pricing did not really reduce congestion in London - that most people there see this as really just a way to obtain additional money in taxes. Is this your impression?
No, the scarce good is right-of-way on such-and-such road, at that time of day. You presuppose the existence and maintenance of the road, which is of course an error.
So how do roads exist and persist to be "distributed" in the first place? Taxes are collected to pay for this. It's too complicated for me to unravel how/which taxes exactly pay for the roads exactly, but let's say you can more or less identify the road-maintenace funds with a generic gasoline-tax that's collected (I doubt this, but it's the best approximation I can think of). Thus, the way we currently "distribute" right-of-way on whatever-road is,
(a) we collect a tax on people in proportion to the distance they drive so as to build and maintain the road, and
(b) we allow them to use roads (or queue up for using roads) on a first-come, first-served basis.
You are claiming that it would be fairer to replace (b) by a rule
(b) if the road is designated high-use, charge a fee to queue up (in a queue that is therefore shorter, or nonexistent) for using it.
Your total method of right-of-way-on-roads distribution, then, would be to charge people a total tax of the form
A x D + B x C.
where A = the gasoline-tax, D = the Distance people drive, and B = the "congestion-pricing" fee, and C = the distance people drive on the Congested (high-use) roads.
It's unclear to me why this is fairer than the tax we currently use, which is
A x D + queueing
Obviously this depends on how one defines "fairness". Many people would identify "fairness" with the impacts on people of various wealth levels. Let's look at that.
It seems probable that your congestion tax B x C is a regressive tax (added to the tax A x D which was already arguably regressive). That is, as a percentage of peoples' income (or of their wealth), it decreases. After all, extremely wealthy people won't feel the bite at all.
Meanwhile the "queuing" tax implied by simply allowing free use of roads (and people then wait in traffic), which is a tax on peoples' time, is perfectly flat: a one-hour traffic jam takes up 1 hour of a rich person and of a poor person's time; that time is far more valuable to the rich person so he's "paying" in proportion to his income, roughly speaking.
So, your definition of "fairness" really can't be the one that identifies "more progressive" with "more fair" and vice versa.
Another definition of fairness I can think of is based on a different sort of consideration: since we are dealing with a government action and government coercion, something is fair of the coercion is in accord with the implied social contract that gives the government its ongoing authority. In this case, we have a government that has been
(a) collecting taxes from people for decades,
(b) to use them (in part) for roads,
(c) with the implied promise that the roads are equally accessible to rich and to poor who have paid those taxes.
So I say it would be unfair to, having done that, change the rules of the game and turn around and restrict the roads that were already built with the previous tax money collected under conditions of promise (c) and change the terms of their accessibility.
But you say it's fair, so clearly you're not using that definition of "fairness" either.
What definition of "fairness" are you using, I wonder?
If Bloomberg can just tax the riff-raff OUT of mid-town, it will be so much easier for the limousines of his pals to get around.
It shouldn’t take 40 minutes to get from the Dakota on Central Park West to the Racquet & Tennis Club on Park Avenue, should it?.
Let’s spend $500MM for a “study” that “confirms” all that.
I said this was the biggest flaw in the plan right from the start.
Bloomberg of all people should know that New York City's transit system is even more crowded than its streets.
Red Ken in London started this as far as I know. The consequences are yet to be understood. Though I expect when the reality of it slowly sets in, it won’t be good.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
My definition of “fairness” is “free exchange of goods and services.” The limited commodity is not the road, but the access during certain times of the day.
Under a queue, no one has the opportunity to exchange other goods for the good in question. I can’t say “I will go mow someone’s lawn for an hour in exchange for the chance not to be sitting in traffic for hour.” Under the queue system, the exchange is prohibited. Under congestion pricing, if someone pays me $10 for mowing the lawn, I can use that money to pay the toll and thereby avoid the traffic.
The main counterargument to congestion pricing is that it “hurts the poor.” The truth is that the poor would benefit in most cases. Many of the poor can’t afford a car and have to take a bus. Presumably, buses would be exempt from congestion pricing, so the poor who have to take the bus would save an hour of their time.
The lower middle class who prefer to drive their own cars could make their costs minimal by carpooling. By dividing the cost four or more ways, they can save an hour of their time. If four people get in a car and save an hour in traffic and pay $2.50 each, they could then get to their destination and work an extra hour. Even if they only made minimum wage, they would be better off.
Mussolini made the trains run on time.
Then both congestion-pricing and queue-pricing are equally "fair". In either case there is a (rationed, somehow) free exchange of a scarce resource. And your definition of "fairness" doesn't really give me any way to rank one above the other in "fairness".
The limited commodity is not the road, but the access during certain times of the day.
Again, you're simply ignoring an important issue when you say this. "Access" is highly dependent on the road existing, and being maintained. It's very very very difficult to "access" a road that does not exist.
Under a queue, no one has the opportunity to exchange other goods for the good in question.
Sure they do. You can pick route B rather than route A, giving your spot in the queue to the person behind you in exchange. You can stay an hour later at work, or do errands, displacing your spot in the queue by an hour. As you point out below, you can carpool. You can take mass transit.
You can telecommute. You can move. You can get a different job.
There are myriad ways of "exchanging" the price one pays in commute time for something else, or "paying" some cost in order to reduce that time. Everyone intuitively knows this (even if they don't realize it) and does it all the time.
I can’t say “I will go mow someone’s lawn for an hour in exchange for the chance not to be sitting in traffic for hour.”
Sure you can. Where is this lawn? Go do the lawn during commute time, and then get on the roads later, when there's less traffic. (of course this depends on logistics but some arrangement could probably be made if you're in a position to mow the lawn in the first place)
Under congestion pricing, if someone pays me $10 for mowing the lawn, I can use that money to pay the toll and thereby avoid the traffic.
What this really means, in practice, is that "if someone pays me $700k/year to do options trading, I can use that money to pay the tolls and thereby avoid the (suffer less) traffic on the road I already use". All this does is reiterate what I've already observed, that this is a regressive tax. Yes, it's exchangeable in the sense you mean, but its impact is clearly regressive, which is precisely why many richer people would be in favor of it.
The main counterargument to congestion pricing is that it “hurts the poor.”
Well, I don't know if it's a "counterargument against" congestion pricing itself (it might be, I haven't made this claim yet). But it's certainly a counterargument against the assertion that it's more fair.
Unless - again - you have some pathological definition of "fairness" which is substantively different than most's, under which congestion pricing is clearly more "fair". You haven't stated such a definition yet.
The truth is that the poor would benefit in most cases. Many of the poor can’t afford a car and have to take a bus. Presumably, buses would be exempt from congestion pricing, so the poor who have to take the bus would save an hour of their time.
This assumes the poor person in question lives and works and shops completely in a "congested" area. What if they live outside of the area and transit to it for work? (After all, "congested" might mean "big, appealing city & fancy skyscrapers" which might mean "astronomical housing costs" which might mean "poor(er) people who work there don't live there, they live elsewhere commute to there. This certainly holds in Manhattan right?) In that case, as others have pointed out a likely effect of this would be to divert traffic into the neighborhood of the poorer person. So the poorer person gets the bus at his local bus stop, and that bus takes longer to even get to the congested area.
What's the net result? Net gain? Net loss? A wash? I don't know (requires lots of data/modelling) but it's certainly not the one-sided effect you make it out to be.
The lower middle class who prefer to drive their own cars could make their costs minimal by carpooling. By dividing the cost four or more ways, they can save an hour of their time. If four people get in a car and save an hour in traffic and pay $2.50 each, they could then get to their destination and work an extra hour. Even if they only made minimum wage, they would be better off.
The act to arrange & use a carpool (if one didn't before) is itself a "cost" in that it entails a loss of the convenience and autonomy of having your own transportation, it involves a certain amount of coordination with others, etc. It's easy to say (to other people) that you can "just" carpool and thereby save $7.50. But who's to say that the "convenience cost" of that person carpooling is less than $7.50? You? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't; depends on the person and their situation. In any event the fact remains that this is a middle class person faced with a new $10/day (or whatever) tax and this tax is a higher % of his income than of the rich person's. Even if you're right that the tax "$2.50 + carpooling" represents a net savings to that middle class person over that $10 (this isn't obvious!), this at best would only make the tax marginally less regressive.
But at this point in the discussion that doesn't matter, your definition of fairness (which still doesn't seem conherent or well-defined) isn't harmed by regressivity in the first place, it seems.
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