NYC Congestion Pricing

[Duke87]

Will congestion pricing be all of Manhattan south of 60th street? Down to battery park? Or is there a southern limit too? I read online the FDR and West Side Parkway will be exempt, but how will this affect entering those roads? I'm from Brooklyn, so if I cross the Brooklyn Bridge and immediately get on the FDR entrance ramp, will there be cameras immediately after the bridge? In that case you'd still get hit with the toll even for the FDR.

Yes, if you cross the Brooklyn Bridge you will get hit with the congestion fee, even if you use the FDR ramps.

The way things are planned out, you will not be hit with the congestion fee if you enter the West Side Highway or FDR Drive north of 60 St and then exit to the Battery Tunnel, or vice versa (you will, of course, still get hit with the Battery Tunnel toll). Any other entrance or exit will get you hit with the fee.

Yes, this does mean it will become impossible to get to Brooklyn/Queens/Long Island from the mainland by car without paying a toll. Though, as described above, one specific toll-free route to the mainland from Brooklyn/Queens/Long Island will remain.

[Alps]

Will congestion pricing be all of Manhattan south of 60th street? Down to battery park? Or is there a southern limit too? I read online the FDR and West Side Parkway will be exempt, but how will this affect entering those roads? I'm from Brooklyn, so if I cross the Brooklyn Bridge and immediately get on the FDR entrance ramp, will there be cameras immediately after the bridge? In that case you'd still get hit with the toll even for the FDR.

Yes, if you cross the Brooklyn Bridge you will get hit with the congestion fee, even if you use the FDR ramps.

The way things are planned out, you will not be hit with the congestion fee if you enter the West Side Highway or FDR Drive north of 60 St and then exit to the Battery Tunnel, or vice versa (you will, of course, still get hit with the Battery Tunnel toll). Any other entrance or exit will get you hit with the fee.

Yes, this does mean it will become impossible to get to Brooklyn/Queens/Long Island from the mainland by car without paying a toll. Though, as described above, one specific toll-free route to the mainland from Brooklyn/Queens/Long Island will remain.

I think it's complete bullshit that Queensboro Bridge isn't maintained as a free route. But that way the MTA makes more money off you using another of their bridges.

[RoadRage2023]

If the FDR is exempt but the ramps and streets leading to it aren't, then it's not going to really matter. Even if one gets on the FDR at 96th street and drives down toward the Williamsburg bridge, they will still have to take side streets to get to the bridge. If the cameras will be placed at the Manhattan side of all East River bridges/Hudson River Crossings, you already got charged before getting to any ramps. So it's moot. They might as well just make the Lincoln tunnel $40 as that's essentially what it will be.

[jeffandnicole]

Pages 14 - 24 of https://new.mta.info/document/110771 shows the approximate locations of the proposed tolling points.

[D-Dey65]

I ride the subway all the time and I don't feel unsafe. It's easy to avoid being pushed onto the tracks if you don't stand at the edge of the platform looking down the tunnel to see whether the train is coming.

If I recall, one of the more recent survivors of such an attack was fairly close to the middle of the platform.

Whenever I took the subway, I always kept in mind the possibility that I would encounter some of these destitute and disturbed people who hear voices from God telling them to push random commuters onto the tracks. Now it's happening way too often.

And yes, congestion pricing will only force even more congestion on everything outside of Lower Manhattan and Midtown Manhattan.

The old proposals of Robert Moses just keep looking better and better.

[LilianaUwU]

The old proposals of Robert Moses just keep looking better and better.

Robert Moses built overpasses purposefully low so buses full of Black people couldn't get to the beaches as easily.

[Plutonic Panda]

The old proposals of Robert Moses just keep looking better and better.

Robert Moses built overpasses purposefully low so buses full of Black people couldn't get to the beaches as easily.

It's well known he was racist. That doesn't make him a bad city planner regarding moving cars better than NYC currently does.

[Duke87]

Robert Moses built overpasses purposefully low so buses full of Black people couldn't get to the beaches as easily.

See the funny thing of that is, there IS a bus to Jones Beach, which uses the Moses-planned Meadowbrook Parkway. No, the overpasses in that area have not been raised from their original construction. No, it does not use special low-clearance buses.

And, well, this makes sense because if you look at a map you'll realize there is no access to Jones Beach without using one of the parkways. Trucks need to be able to get there to deliver stuff, so the overpasses on the parkways leading there were built high enough to accommodate them in at least one lane, and by virtue of this can also accommodate buses.

Nonetheless, in general parkways were intended solely for use by private automobiles, and as such effort was not made to enusre larger vehicles could fit under the bridges except in specific cases like this where it had to be.

[Scott5114]

Or will 1 or more companies ultimately say, why are we putting up with this BS - already over half our employees live in NJ - we can just move the offices to Jersey City or Newark and work in one of their new office towers there, and NYers can take the PATH or NJ Transit.

I had hopes that employers would have learned from pandemic lockdowns that they don't need their workers in the office 40 hours a week....or even 40 hours a month.

A permanent change in that regard would have gone a long way towards addressing some of NYC's gridlock, both from the reduced commuting as well as some people moving to more affordable locations.

But this also means that office vacancy skyrockets, local businesses that depend on office workers shut down, which means a lot more vacant storefronts, which means unemployment for people not working in offices goes up.  It's a Catch-22.

And for every good employee that works at home, often putting in more time than if they did in the office, there's other employees that if you called them (and they actually answered) you'll hear seagulls in the background or the intercom system requesting a cleanup on aisle 7.  They're the ones that ruin it for the rest of us that truly work at home.

The mistake a lot of managers make with WFH is getting past the idea of "putting in time". A manager should want their employees to put in work, not time.

Say you assign Bill a project that is going to take 6 months to do, and you pay him $500/week, so you've budgeted $13,000 for this project. Now, Bill is a clever guy, so he knows how to write a fancy Excel macro that will automatically do the entire project in five minutes. He could spend a week writing this macro, radically increase the efficiency of the company, and get paid $500. Or he could pretend he doesn't know how to do that and get paid $13,000. Or, more likely, he writes the macro, gets the project done, and dorks around for the other 25 weeks not turning it in and pretending to work on the project and then turns it in, oh, say, three days before the deadline so he still looks like he did a good job. Ahead of schedule and under budget, yay!

With WFH we had a golden opportunity to restructure the workplace to be task-oriented rather than time-oriented. (If Bill gets his tasks done by knocking them out faster who cares if he uses the rest of the day to go to the beach?) But instead we've largely squandered it because somebody with 47 Lamborghinis in their Lamborghini account lies awake at night paralyzed with fear that a low level employee at the company they lord over might dare to be happy at some point...

[Rothman]

Or will 1 or more companies ultimately say, why are we putting up with this BS - already over half our employees live in NJ - we can just move the offices to Jersey City or Newark and work in one of their new office towers there, and NYers can take the PATH or NJ Transit.

I had hopes that employers would have learned from pandemic lockdowns that they don't need their workers in the office 40 hours a week....or even 40 hours a month.

A permanent change in that regard would have gone a long way towards addressing some of NYC's gridlock, both from the reduced commuting as well as some people moving to more affordable locations.

But this also means that office vacancy skyrockets, local businesses that depend on office workers shut down, which means a lot more vacant storefronts, which means unemployment for people not working in offices goes up.  It's a Catch-22.

And for every good employee that works at home, often putting in more time than if they did in the office, there's other employees that if you called them (and they actually answered) you'll hear seagulls in the background or the intercom system requesting a cleanup on aisle 7.  They're the ones that ruin it for the rest of us that truly work at home.

The mistake a lot of managers make with WFH is getting past the idea of "putting in time". A manager should want their employees to put in work, not time.

Say you assign Bill a project that is going to take 6 months to do, and you pay him $500/week, so you've budgeted $13,000 for this project. Now, Bill is a clever guy, so he knows how to write a fancy Excel macro that will automatically do the entire project in five minutes. He could spend a week writing this macro, radically increase the efficiency of the company, and get paid $500. Or he could pretend he doesn't know how to do that and get paid $13,000. Or, more likely, he writes the macro, gets the project done, and dorks around for the other 25 weeks not turning it in and pretending to work on the project and then turns it in, oh, say, three days before the deadline so he still looks like he did a good job. Ahead of schedule and under budget, yay!

With WFH we had a golden opportunity to restructure the workplace to be task-oriented rather than time-oriented. (If Bill gets his tasks done by knocking them out faster who cares if he uses the rest of the day to go to the beach?) But instead we've largely squandered it because somebody with 47 Lamborghinis in their Lamborghini account lies awake at night paralyzed with fear that a low level employee at the company they lord over might dare to be happy at some point...

So...piecework.  Back in the day, piecework pay in factories was common.  It wasn't so great for the laborers...

[Rothman]

Robert Moses built overpasses purposefully low so buses full of Black people couldn't get to the beaches as easily.

See the funny thing of that is, there IS a bus to Jones Beach, which uses the Moses-planned Meadowbrook Parkway. No, the overpasses in that area have not been raised from their original construction. No, it does not use special low-clearance buses.

And, well, this makes sense because if you look at a map you'll realize there is no access to Jones Beach without using one of the parkways. Trucks need to be able to get there to deliver stuff, so the overpasses on the parkways leading there were built high enough to accommodate them in at least one lane, and by virtue of this can also accommodate buses.

Nonetheless, in general parkways were intended solely for use by private automobiles, and as such effort was not made to enusre larger vehicles could fit under the bridges except in specific cases like this where it had to be.

Pfft.  You still have to take the train to get to that bus...

[jeffandnicole]

Or will 1 or more companies ultimately say, why are we putting up with this BS - already over half our employees live in NJ - we can just move the offices to Jersey City or Newark and work in one of their new office towers there, and NYers can take the PATH or NJ Transit.

I had hopes that employers would have learned from pandemic lockdowns that they don't need their workers in the office 40 hours a week....or even 40 hours a month.

A permanent change in that regard would have gone a long way towards addressing some of NYC's gridlock, both from the reduced commuting as well as some people moving to more affordable locations.

But this also means that office vacancy skyrockets, local businesses that depend on office workers shut down, which means a lot more vacant storefronts, which means unemployment for people not working in offices goes up.  It's a Catch-22.

And for every good employee that works at home, often putting in more time than if they did in the office, there's other employees that if you called them (and they actually answered) you'll hear seagulls in the background or the intercom system requesting a cleanup on aisle 7.  They're the ones that ruin it for the rest of us that truly work at home.

The mistake a lot of managers make with WFH is getting past the idea of "putting in time". A manager should want their employees to put in work, not time.

Say you assign Bill a project that is going to take 6 months to do, and you pay him $500/week, so you've budgeted $13,000 for this project. Now, Bill is a clever guy, so he knows how to write a fancy Excel macro that will automatically do the entire project in five minutes. He could spend a week writing this macro, radically increase the efficiency of the company, and get paid $500. Or he could pretend he doesn't know how to do that and get paid $13,000. Or, more likely, he writes the macro, gets the project done, and dorks around for the other 25 weeks not turning it in and pretending to work on the project and then turns it in, oh, say, three days before the deadline so he still looks like he did a good job. Ahead of schedule and under budget, yay!

With WFH we had a golden opportunity to restructure the workplace to be task-oriented rather than time-oriented. (If Bill gets his tasks done by knocking them out faster who cares if he uses the rest of the day to go to the beach?) But instead we've largely squandered it because somebody with 47 Lamborghinis in their Lamborghini account lies awake at night paralyzed with fear that a low level employee at the company they lord over might dare to be happy at some point...

So...piecework.  Back in the day, piecework pay in factories was common.  It wasn't so great for the laborers...

But those working in factories generally can't work from home. 

I would prefer being allowed to leave the office early if my work is finished. At least at home, I can do chores here and there, or bring the laptop to where my chores are.  And in many cases, I need to be ready to answer questions or provide info to others, and same with those I supervise, so we still need to be available even after our main work functions are completed.

[hotdogPi]

If your travel route brings you in, out, and back in again, do you need to pay twice?

[jeffandnicole]

If your travel route brings you in, out, and back in again, do you need to pay twice?

On Page 9 of the linked document above, it's proposed to only charge a vehicle once per day, regardless of the number of times it may leave and reenter the zone.

[1995hoo]

If your travel route brings you in, out, and back in again, do you need to pay twice?

According to this Washington Post article about the plan, private vehicles and for-hire cars (cabs, Uber, etc.) will only get charged once per day. (Edited to add: I see jeffandnicole cited what I would consider a more reliable source than the Post article, but I went ahead and posted the link anyway in case someone finds the article useful.)

[Rothman]

Or will 1 or more companies ultimately say, why are we putting up with this BS - already over half our employees live in NJ - we can just move the offices to Jersey City or Newark and work in one of their new office towers there, and NYers can take the PATH or NJ Transit.

I had hopes that employers would have learned from pandemic lockdowns that they don't need their workers in the office 40 hours a week....or even 40 hours a month.

A permanent change in that regard would have gone a long way towards addressing some of NYC's gridlock, both from the reduced commuting as well as some people moving to more affordable locations.

But this also means that office vacancy skyrockets, local businesses that depend on office workers shut down, which means a lot more vacant storefronts, which means unemployment for people not working in offices goes up.  It's a Catch-22.

And for every good employee that works at home, often putting in more time than if they did in the office, there's other employees that if you called them (and they actually answered) you'll hear seagulls in the background or the intercom system requesting a cleanup on aisle 7.  They're the ones that ruin it for the rest of us that truly work at home.

The mistake a lot of managers make with WFH is getting past the idea of "putting in time". A manager should want their employees to put in work, not time.

Say you assign Bill a project that is going to take 6 months to do, and you pay him $500/week, so you've budgeted $13,000 for this project. Now, Bill is a clever guy, so he knows how to write a fancy Excel macro that will automatically do the entire project in five minutes. He could spend a week writing this macro, radically increase the efficiency of the company, and get paid $500. Or he could pretend he doesn't know how to do that and get paid $13,000. Or, more likely, he writes the macro, gets the project done, and dorks around for the other 25 weeks not turning it in and pretending to work on the project and then turns it in, oh, say, three days before the deadline so he still looks like he did a good job. Ahead of schedule and under budget, yay!

With WFH we had a golden opportunity to restructure the workplace to be task-oriented rather than time-oriented. (If Bill gets his tasks done by knocking them out faster who cares if he uses the rest of the day to go to the beach?) But instead we've largely squandered it because somebody with 47 Lamborghinis in their Lamborghini account lies awake at night paralyzed with fear that a low level employee at the company they lord over might dare to be happy at some point...

So...piecework.  Back in the day, piecework pay in factories was common.  It wasn't so great for the laborers...

But those working in factories generally can't work from home. 

I would prefer being allowed to leave the office early if my work is finished. At least at home, I can do chores here and there, or bring the laptop to where my chores are.  And in many cases, I need to be ready to answer questions or provide info to others, and same with those I supervise, so we still need to be available even after our main work functions are completed.

Piecework is piecework, whether on an assembly line or at home.  Sounds like a good way of arguing to get rid of salaries.  "What, you're doing chores?  Fine, we'll pay you by some quantification of product rather than time.  Welcome to the gig economy.  Oh wait, we can probably get rid of benefits, too, in the process..."

[kalvado]

Or will 1 or more companies ultimately say, why are we putting up with this BS - already over half our employees live in NJ - we can just move the offices to Jersey City or Newark and work in one of their new office towers there, and NYers can take the PATH or NJ Transit.

I had hopes that employers would have learned from pandemic lockdowns that they don't need their workers in the office 40 hours a week....or even 40 hours a month.

A permanent change in that regard would have gone a long way towards addressing some of NYC's gridlock, both from the reduced commuting as well as some people moving to more affordable locations.

But this also means that office vacancy skyrockets, local businesses that depend on office workers shut down, which means a lot more vacant storefronts, which means unemployment for people not working in offices goes up.  It's a Catch-22.

And for every good employee that works at home, often putting in more time than if they did in the office, there's other employees that if you called them (and they actually answered) you'll hear seagulls in the background or the intercom system requesting a cleanup on aisle 7.  They're the ones that ruin it for the rest of us that truly work at home.

The mistake a lot of managers make with WFH is getting past the idea of "putting in time". A manager should want their employees to put in work, not time.

Say you assign Bill a project that is going to take 6 months to do, and you pay him $500/week, so you've budgeted $13,000 for this project. Now, Bill is a clever guy, so he knows how to write a fancy Excel macro that will automatically do the entire project in five minutes. He could spend a week writing this macro, radically increase the efficiency of the company, and get paid $500. Or he could pretend he doesn't know how to do that and get paid $13,000. Or, more likely, he writes the macro, gets the project done, and dorks around for the other 25 weeks not turning it in and pretending to work on the project and then turns it in, oh, say, three days before the deadline so he still looks like he did a good job. Ahead of schedule and under budget, yay!

With WFH we had a golden opportunity to restructure the workplace to be task-oriented rather than time-oriented. (If Bill gets his tasks done by knocking them out faster who cares if he uses the rest of the day to go to the beach?) But instead we've largely squandered it because somebody with 47 Lamborghinis in their Lamborghini account lies awake at night paralyzed with fear that a low level employee at the company they lord over might dare to be happy at some point...

So...piecework.  Back in the day, piecework pay in factories was common.  It wasn't so great for the laborers...

But those working in factories generally can't work from home. 

I would prefer being allowed to leave the office early if my work is finished. At least at home, I can do chores here and there, or bring the laptop to where my chores are.  And in many cases, I need to be ready to answer questions or provide info to others, and same with those I supervise, so we still need to be available even after our main work functions are completed.

Piecework is piecework, whether on an assembly line or at home.  Sounds like a good way of arguing to get rid of salaries.  "What, you're doing chores?  Fine, we'll pay you by some quantification of product rather than time.  Welcome to the gig economy.  Oh wait, we can probably get rid of benefits, too, in the process..."

Is there an ideal solution?
Salary is salary, whether in the office or at home.  Sounds like a good way of arguing to get rid of work efficiency control. "What, you're playing games in the office?  Fine, we'll pay you by the hour rather than the outcome of your work.  Welcome to the union."
If there is  a good way to quantify outcomes, rewarding sloppy slow work isn't a good idea. As a customer, I prefer to pay per result anyway - be it a loaf of bread, car service task, or case processed by the office. Quantifying more diverse work environment is definitely a problem. 

PS - should the WFH thread be split off? It may become pretty long, and has minimum relation to the original subject

[RoadRage2023]

If your travel route brings you in, out, and back in again, do you need to pay twice?

On Page 9 of the linked document above, it's proposed to only charge a vehicle once per day, regardless of the number of times it may leave and reenter the zone.

Thanks, I was going to ask that.

I still think though that it would just be a better plan to bump all the bridges and tunnels up to $40, since everyone coming through will immediately be hit with the congestion toll anyway. Most of the traffic in Manhattan is from the crossings, so put the increases there, is any.
At least that wouldn't make people pay just for crossing an arbitrary point on 5th Avenue. And that wouldn't result in pushing even more traffic north, if the GWB was increased too.

Congestion pricing has also got to be the 1st ever system that will put a fee on roads with traffic lights. Normally fees are only on expressway-type routes.

[hotdogPi]

Congestion pricing has also got to be the 1st ever system that will put a fee on roads with traffic lights. Normally fees are only on expressway-type routes.

1. Congestion pricing isn't new. It's only new to North America.
2. What about the traffic lights on Prince Edward Island? To get to the island, you have to pay for either the bridge or the ferry.

[The Ghostbuster]

Singapore has had a congestion charge since 1975. Central London has had one since 2003. Other places across Europe have them as well, such as Stockholm, Milan, and Gothenburg. In the future, Asia, Australia, and other cities in North, Central and South America will likely get them as well. I don't foresee any coming to Africa, save for some of the more urbanized areas.

[RoadRage2023]

Congestion pricing has also got to be the 1st ever system that will put a fee on roads with traffic lights. Normally fees are only on expressway-type routes.

1. Congestion pricing isn't new. It's only new to North America.
2. What about the traffic lights on Prince Edward Island? To get to the island, you have to pay for either the bridge or the ferry.

Because it's a bridge or a ferry. I've never heard of tolls to just drive through a neighborhood.

[Rothman]

Congestion pricing has also got to be the 1st ever system that will put a fee on roads with traffic lights. Normally fees are only on expressway-type routes.

1. Congestion pricing isn't new. It's only new to North America.
2. What about the traffic lights on Prince Edward Island? To get to the island, you have to pay for either the bridge or the ferry.

Because it's a bridge or a ferry. I've never heard of tolls to just drive through a neighborhood.

See London...

You're ignoring other posts in the thread...like a recently banned member...

[kalvado]

Congestion pricing has also got to be the 1st ever system that will put a fee on roads with traffic lights. Normally fees are only on expressway-type routes.

1. Congestion pricing isn't new. It's only new to North America.
2. What about the traffic lights on Prince Edward Island? To get to the island, you have to pay for either the bridge or the ferry.

Because it's a bridge or a ferry. I've never heard of tolls to just drive through a neighborhood.

See London...

You're ignoring other posts in the thread...like a recently banned member...

Maybe reasonable to say that such toll on general purpose street is the first in US. Which may be closer to reality.

[1995hoo]

Florida has a couple of surface roads that are tolled, though I don't believe any of them have traffic lights.

A US location with a toll to drive through a neighborhood might be Lake Harmony, Pennsylvania. You have to pay a toll to use Moseywood Road as a shortcut from PA-940 to PA-903. It's a privately-owned road.

[RoadRage2023]

I know other countries have done it, but added onto already existing fees in NY, it is pretty steep. And it will worsen GWB traffic. Manhattan streets are public roads, not privately owned, and are just intersections with traffic lights and sidewalks. It's not a typical route, such as a bridge, tunnel, state park, or private that one would be charged for.