this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2025
1131 points (100.0% liked)
Fuck Cars
11339 readers
123 users here now
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
Rules
1. Be Civil
You may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.
2. No hate speech
Don't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.
3. Don't harass people
Don't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.
4. Stay on topic
This community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.
5. No reposts
Do not repost content that has already been posted in this community.
Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.
Posting Guidelines
In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
- [meta] for discussions/suggestions about this community itself
- [article] for news articles
- [blog] for any blog-style content
- [video] for video resources
- [academic] for academic studies and sources
- [discussion] for text post questions, rants, and/or discussions
- [meme] for memes
- [image] for any non-meme images
- [misc] for anything that doesn’t fall cleanly into any of the other categories
Recommended communities:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Nice. Now cars are only for the rich like they should be.
Real solution: Ban cars in parts of NYC.
Right because everyone needing a car means everyone who can't afford one just automatically gets one.
Step one of reducing car-dependency is to reduce their number on the road. Then you can start bulding shit that accommodates the poor through actually nice-to-use public transit, bicycle paths, and walking routes.
Charge the rich. Build for the poor. Better yet, charge the rich, build for everyone. Not just cars. Because not everyone has cars.
Like FFS "good job now the poor can't drive" is hardly a comeback when it's like the most expensive mode of transit, massively subsidized with taxpayer money, just to kind of make it work. It wasn't something that could be made affordable or even efficient enough for everyone to use on a daily basis to begin with.
Zippity zoppity let's redistribute some property
Cut to me dramatically removing my "fuck cars" jacket like a Yakuza character to reveal a "fuck private property" t-shirt
Why can't you start building shit before reducing their numbers? I don't see what one has to do with the other.
Of course you can. I'm using "step one" as a figure of speech to express importance.
Controlling vehicle numbers is a very "low hanging fruit" that can do a lot to improve things for a very low cost.
What was that saying again, something along the lines of: A great city is not where the poor own and drive cars, but the rich take public transportation.
- Gustavo Petro, current president of Colombia, former mayor of Bogota
I feel like what this good intentioned quote misses is that the poor are priced out of the city core entirely and pushed into banlieus
More that roads are for high occupancy or professional vehicles - buses, ambulances, construction vehicles, commercial trucks - that still need access to Manhattan but can't be placed on a train.
Buses --> tram
Ambulances --> single lane road/biking path
Construction vehicles, commercial trucks --> single lane road
Problem solved, no need for cars inside the city
I should not need to explain why running an ambulance down a bike lane is a bad idea.
Why would reducing the number of road lanes without implementing congestion pricing be a preferable solution? How would this improve access to construction vehicles and wide-body trucks?
No, you should explain why ambulances using bike lanes is a problem as multiple european countries do that and it works perfectly.
Because reducing lanes means less people will use the road because if you literally cant get anywhere with a car you will use an alternative(of course that has to be provided). Also this is another european thing but you can just ban cars that are not there to do stuff(idk what they call it english but in hungarian its "célforgalom").
A video posted by La Flamme Rouge shows the emergency vehicle approaching the pack head on as it drives around a corner on a narrow stretch of road.
You know that ambulances also cause accidents on roads?
What does that have to do with the OP?
Banning cars actually works really well if you can prepare parking spaces or fully focus public transport
Source: Taksim Street
Please elaborate the "if you can prepare parking spaces" part.
Multistory and underground parking spaces with a toll on how long a car stays, turkey has İSPARK which maintains this
This'll both allow people with cars to travel here, and will also lead to people preferring to walk or use public transport
The profit incentive to build parking is through the roof in NYC, they can charge a ton for parking, and there's still not enough.
The poorer you are the less you can afford paying for it. This is really just a method of opening the streets just for the rich.
Regressive solution.
Counterpoint, this funds public transport which is cheaper than car ownership and driving.
If you are poor, this pushes you to take a train or bus which saves you money.
The only people this taxes is the rich which makes this a progressive solution.
Cars in Manhattan were already "just for the rich".
It's simply making the rich think for a moment, before taking their car to the street. Which makes the streets safer for everyone who's not rich.
$9 doesn't make any rich person think twice.
You might think that, but - they sure do like to complain about $9!
https://lemmy.world/post/23952553
It adds up. There's plenty of wealthy, but not obscenely wealthy people in NYC who would think twice about paying $9 for no reason even if they can easily afford it.
I don't think they would ever have to pay it. It would be travel expenses on their accounting.
I think you might be misunderstanding the non-$100s of millions wealthy class.
They still do normal stuff, like go to shows and eat McDonald's while driving themselves instead of having a chauffeur.
Having your business pay the toll for a personal trip is embezzlement and most people wouldn't risk that over $9.
If companies are reimbursing people for commutes into work, that's probably not an approved tax exempt benefit so you would still need to pay income tax on that $9.
Having business pay for your tolls is absolutely not embezzlement. It's part of your compensation package. When charges increase or even gas prices, you list it and get paid back. Of course that rarely applies to poor people.
Decades ago my outside accountant passed all travel expenses to my business as part of his fees. His hourly time even included driving travel time to the office.
You'd think so, but the data clearly disagrees
Can you show the data? Because I find it extremely hard to believe multimillionaires would take the bus instead of being driven into the city in their limo.
The data this whole thread is about.
And you're making assumptions about what "rich" means.
People only making half a million are rich. They still drive their own car. Those are most of the personal vehicles being driven in Manhattan.
The people you're thinking of, are the wealthy. There are only a few hundred of those people in the city, they aren't a major driver of traffic anyway, so nobody cares about them.
Is there any data that shows people making $500k a year are deterred by a $9 fee?
Going to work 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year is $2,250. The average garage price is $15 a day.
The lower traffic numbers are the data. That's what the screen shot shows. None of the bridges or tunnels are backed up.
I claimed the fee means that now only the rich are driving in NYC. You said the data said that's not true. Yes, the poor outnumber the rich. I didn't question that. The poor can no longer afford to drive into NYC making it a new luxury for the rich. They no longer have to deal with the poors on the road with them. The rich aren't going to take a bus to save $9.
That was the claim. The drop in traffic, proves that's not the case.
Your new idea that "now only the rich are driving in NYC" always was the case anyway. The middle class and lower don't bother owning cars in NYC. The public transit being the best in the nation, and permanent parking spaces to store your car costing hundreds of dollars per month, after the cost of the car and insurance that everyone everywhere pays; most born and raised NYers don't even have drivers licenses, because cars are such a waste of money there.
The map doesn't show traffic inside NYC by NYC residents. It shows commuters going into NYC.
You realize congestion heading into the city improves, if the traffic within the city gets better? The roads are all connected. They all effect each other.
But that has nothing to do with the argument. People living in NYC aren't being charged. But they are suffering from people dodging the toll.
https://nypost.com/2025/01/11/us-news/nyc-congestion-pricing-turns-upper-manhattan-nabes-into-parking-war-zone-as-drivers-take-up-spots-to-avoid-toll/
Commuters coming into the city are being charged and the fee only affects the poor commuters. A ban on cars in parts of the city would fix the problem better without being discriminatory against poor.
I don't know why this is hard to grasp.
The Poor in NYC... Don't Drive!
Maybe you're thinking of the upper middle class.
AGAIN, This has nothing to do with those in NYC.
It is about commuters into the city.
Would you be happier if I classified people into poor, middle class, and rich instead of rich and poor?
Ok. This toll forces the middle class to commute with the poor so the rich have the streets to themselves.
There you go. That makes sense.
Anyone who takes the bus knows this is bullshit
You mean like how most things are anyways?
I'd say almost anywhere in the US besides the NYC area, this would probably be true. Given public transit is the norm there, it hardly seems regressive. I don't think giving the rich the privilege of taking care through the city is a good thing, but at least the city gets to take some money from them. It would be much better if health care ceos all took public transit. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure an outright ban on private vehicles would be strongly opposed by such people right now...
congestion pricing doesn't apply to public transit, which is the point. Take the damn bus to work. If it's a long walk from your stop, you can buy an ebike with money saved from not maintaining a car.
It's only regressive if you assume cars are a necessity, they're really not in NYC. I sold my car after moving down from New England and haven't regretted it, and it's not an affordability issue for me either.
Also the rich will always have access to luxuries that poor people don't. There will always be fancy restaurants and nicer clothes than are inaccessible to the poor, but that is separate from them having decent quality food and clothes, and maybe can go out to a nicer dinner every so often, just not a $500 tasting menu.
Public transport won't be built?
True wealth is not needing to drive a car at all.