New York City’s congestion pricing program is moving forward with a $15 fee on passenger vehicles, reports Stephen Nessen in Gothamist, after the MTA board voted to approve it. The program now enters a 60-day public comment period before a final vote.
Nessen points out that “The stakes are high for the program. Congestion pricing has been successfully implemented in other countries. But the MTA’s program represents the first effort in the United States to impose a fee to reduce gridlock.” Additionally, “The tolls are required by law to back $15 billion worth of loans, which accounts for nearly a third of the MTA’s 2020-2024 construction program.”
The program includes exemptions and fare discounts for low-income drivers, emergency vehicles, and drivers who already pay certain tolls. “Small trucks, buses and vans face a $24 charge during those hours, while large trucks, including big rigs, will have to pay $36. Motorcycles will be tolled a $7.50 daytime fee.” The fee is reduced by 75 percent during nighttime hours.
Sounds good overall, should reduce traffic levels significantly and make people consider whether they really need to drive their car in such a compact city.
Not sure if I agree with tolling motorcycles though, they don’t take up anywhere near the same footprint as the average car
Well what are we tolling? Square footage? Noise? Carbon emissions? Deaths and injuries? Yes. Motorcycles are better in some categories and worse in others
fair point that I didn’t consider! my assumption would be traffic, seeing as the toll is branded as “congestion pricing” - which wouldn’t really make sense for motorcycles because they make up so little of the actual cause of traffic in NYC (large motor vehicles).
If we’re talking about noise though, and how clean the engine burns fuel, motorcycles are 100% guilty as charged IMO.
Deaths and injuries is a little muddier because there are several factors at play, fault could lie on any individual involved in the accident, or maybe even the road design itself. I don’t think these would be robust enough to use as the sole basis for a toll fee
I and most other people are riding around on stock engines with stock exhausts. Those confirm to stricter quiet standards in Japan than anywhere in the US.
To your second point, modern car engines have efficiency gains due to important innovations like direct fuel injection, whereas most motorcycles are stuck with port injection, a limitation currently forced by the fear of having a very high pressure fuel pump between rider’s legs…
In spite of that, total bike emissions are lower for the same distance vs a car, we’re not lugging an entire chassis, air conditioning etc. The result is that even carbureted bikes from the 80s could go 55-60mpg. Bikes also have much lower engine displacement, your v6 2L has about 2000 cm^3 of air and fuel burned per revolution, whereas most motorcycles are in the 6-800 cm^3 range, per rev.
Manufacturers could make them quieter, but that adds both weight and cost, more of one if you adjust the other. I look forward to electric bikes with great range, as I don’t really do more than 350 miles on my long trips unless I’m late for something.
E: looks like Japan relaxed their standards since 2013, per some internal documentation, see slide 9 for harmonized requirements. Still quiet, all things considered.
Motorcycles are still FAR noisier than cars, even brand new with the OEM exhaust. I don’t think my stock bike is overly obnoxious, but it’s certainly the noisiest vehicle around most of the time. Modern cars you don’t even necessarily notice the engine from further than a few feet away.
Also, motorcycles have lower carbon emissions than most cars, but higher everything else. Can’t exactly fit a catalytic converter on there. NOx, fine particulates, etc, are all much worse than a car’s IIRC.
In the end these factors don’t matter much because motorcycles in the West are mostly a hobby, so there’s typically not enough of us to be a huge societal problem. However, if I’m going in the city I usually opt for my ebike because I live close enough and it doesn’t make sense to annoy everyone with my noisy dinosaur fart machine.
You’re partially correct, older bikes didn’t have catalytic converters. Compliance with Euro 5 means all new models past… 2018 I think, must have one equipped.
As for noise, 75db is louder than a modern car, but we don’t have room onboard to dissipate a lot of the sound energy like a car’s long, standing-wave tuned exhaust does.
I don’t have a car, just a bicycle and motorcycle. I like them both, though I trust my bicycle more when there’s a blizzard.
P.s. I also like fortnine videos, he’s mostly correct (though dead wrong about physicists being the grownup version of engineers) but look at the data for yourself. Keep in mind all these values are far, far lower than they used to be. We shouldn’t stop striving for better, but we should keep things in perspective too: https://www.bts.gov/content/estimated-national-average-vehicle-emissions-rates-vehicle-vehicle-type-using-gasoline-and
Neat, thanks for the additional insight!
Motorcycles are loud and the exhaust can be pretty bad, we don’t want everyone buying one to get around the congestion fees. They still take up more space than a standard bicycle or someone who took the subway.
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Literal nonsense. Idiots make their bikes loud because they’re annoying idiots, not for some moral reason.
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Yes, quite obviously so…
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https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/moral
You should probably give it a read, I guess.
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The last time I was in NYC I was awoken by some asshole running his motorcycle up and down sixth avenue at five in the goddamn morning. And I was on the 14th floor of a hotel.
The fact that they weren’t drawn and quartered in the street shows what a lawless place NYC is.
It’s cuz most of us aren’t thin skinned piss-babies. Bit of noise in a very loud city, shut the fuck up and deal.
There’s that welcoming New York attitude.
No wonder I avoid it
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It’s the only place I know where people have argued with each other on how to best help a tourist out.
Look, this is a city where you have wealthy business owners and blue collar folk living across the street from one another, literary geniuses and creatives living next door to programmers and engineers… the people who live and thrive here are makers and doers, in every avenue of human adventure we can yet think of.
That a bit of noise is all it takes to get you to miss how wonderfully unique this situation is, of all walks of life talking, reading, eating and living with each other, is a damning indictment of how tough you actually are, and how much you bring to the table.
Can’t handle it? Wahh.
E: Each downvote on this comment is an admission that you, the downvoter, are similarly rigid. Prove me wrong.
Yet another great example of the NYC mindset
Certainly better than the alternative. Take care now! 🤭
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You sound like an insufferable ass.
Yeah we are.
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At least their vehicles aren’t obnoxiously noisy.
Nah man, loud pipes and rev slamming save lives.
Way more than the protective equipment that they don’t wear.
Aww, someone’s mad they got stuck in traffic while the bike carefully rolled past. Aww 🤭
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Well aware. Working on remedying that, section 1252 needs amending.
“Carefully rolled past”
More like lane split 20+ mph more than traffic was going in an unsafe manor.
Some morons like to gamble, most of us don’t because of how low (aka zero) reward is vs risk.
But you’ll always remember the people in life making the insane choices vs the regular folk.
I absolutely remember how many motorcycles lane spilt safely.
Zero.
And that’s before we talk about the crotch rockets that pass me going 90+ weaving in and out of traffic.
Your vehicle doesn’t make you special; wait in traffic like the rest of the motor vehicles on the road.
No thanks, citation-free dingus.
https://news.berkeley.edu/2015/05/29/motorcycle-lanesplitting-report/
Your vehicle doesn’t make you special; wait in traffic like the rest of the motor vehicles on the road.
You’d be PISSED if you were in line at the grocery store with a full cart of groceries and someone with 5 items “filtered” around you without your consent because they’ll be faster.
The article got slashdotted so does anyone know how often that 15$ would be charged? Is it like a daily fee? Monthly?
Gothamist has more info, but passenger vehicles and motorcycles only pay once per day. For other vehicles, the toll is incurred every time the vehicle crosses into the zone below 60th Street/Central Park. There are a bunch of discounts and details for evening hours and tunnel users that already pay a toll, and additional surcharges for rideshare drivers. It’s a little complicated.
https://gothamist.com/news/mta-board-approves-congestion-pricing-tolls-initiating-60-day-review
They are charging carpoolers extra? Or is rideshare like Uber?
I understood it to only cover Uber/Lyft/etc. I would think that carpooling is what the charge is intended to encourage.
That’s what I figured, but this is America we have come up with stupider fucking laws
It’s a specific area and it sounds more like a toll than a reoccurring charge. Not really different if that’s your daily commute but it is avoidable.
Eric Adams actually being useful? Now that’s rare
His support has become more tepid lately. I wouldn’t count him out of some eleventh hour bullshit.
instead of charging people why not invest in better public transit? why punish people who may not have a choice?
i hear public transit in ny is awful
this is what the money is being used for
trillions were just printed to bail out banks in the last few years, somehow we end up paying for everything but it never comes back to us.
This is fucked because the subway isn’t safe I’d much rather just park in a garage. Sry nyc.
In what way isn’t the subway safe?
Scary news told me it wasn’t safe so it’s not, so there.
just don’t you dare compare it to the risks of driving /s
Said by someone who clearly doesn’t live there nor has ever used the subway.
And has clearly never been killed in a road crash
