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SwiftOnSecurity

@SwiftOnSecurity

I'm a pretty market-based solutions person but I am just flabbergasted how few cars are on the road for charging a few bucks this is like the surface of mars. What were all these other people lollygagging around in a car doing before

Quote

David Meyer aka dmey.bsky.social

@dahvnyc

Jan 8

NEW YORKERS LOVE CONGESTION PRICING

0:03 / 0:55

Last editedOpens edit history10:09 PM · Jan 8, 2025

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David Watson 🥑

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SwiftOnSecurity

@SwiftOnSecurity

There was no "oh geeze these prices are adding up after a month and a bill I got to cut back my driving" no people just straight up stopped. What's going on man.

SwiftOnSecurity

@SwiftOnSecurity

Do they even need to eventually increase the price maybe they should even lower it I'm just in puzzlement. When I drive toll roads it's only after the auto-bill I remember this shit costs money. Why is NYC built different.

SwiftOnSecurity

@SwiftOnSecurity

NYC congestion control results are like if you forced a CAPTCHA on porn sites and all the incest viewers went to zero

Is congestion pricing not a market-based solution? I get that it’s done by a gov’t, but it seems like an instance of prices (tolls) rising and consumers (drivers) reacting accordingly without explicit gov’t direction. Alternative would be daily limits / first-come-first-served

SwiftOnSecurity

@SwiftOnSecurity

That's what I'm saying

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The weirdest thing is the tunnels that are now empty cost $18 anyway! Like they raised the price by <50% a day and poof no more traffic somehow? What?

It was frequently a thing you’d see on every block in NYC, was some person just sitting double parked blocking a lane of traffic while waiting and texting. I legitimately think people used to just drive to Manhattan from LI, Queens, etc. to just sit around in Manhattan lol.

@CricketSurfing

It had exactly the expected effect: when the price increases, demand drops. Often precipitously. My only complaint is that the money is going to government coffers, where it will be wasted.

People hate an explicit and esp recurring cost. It took so long for paid apps to take off for the same reason, regardless of value provided

Heterodox Progressivism

It is pretty cold in NYC at the moment too, even if there wasn't the blizzard that was predicted. It's possible this isn't entirely the congestion fee.

I think it’s the principle, like oppression. They don’t want to pay anything let alone for a subway they don’t want to use.

there will be massive fraud in the subsidized plates market and traffic will resume.

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This is a well studied phenomenon

The True Psychology behind the Zero Price Effect

Power of Free: The True Psychology Behind the Zero Price Effect

From buynomics.com

We really don’t appreciate the gulf that exists between paying nothing and paying almost nothing. If your economics don’t factor this in yngmi.

It’s funny if this cuts overall revenue if the tolls in the tunnels also decrease.

It's basically nudge theory. Planners know that even the *mildest* inconvenience can change behaviour for a significant number of people. I remember one stat on the use of waist-high gates on train station platforms reduced suicide attempts by ~75%. People just couldn't be

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Shao Trommashere

🏳️‍🌈

@MedicTrommasher

There was an infamous moment of my screaming “How many pounds to pay the crown?!” after being on Chicago toll roads, but I’m solidly Team No Tolls and will go an hour out my way to avoid a $3.75 toll.

It's definitely the psychology of it all bcs actually owning a car and paying for parking is 99.9% of the total costs lololol

@Mootz_Pallucci

Cause its each day pricing, 5 days or more Thats $180 a month to drive in manhattan Wont be long however til the big companies change pricing to pay for their teams to ve chauffeured around, hell it might not have ever mattered

+1 for the

theory

People will start to get used to it and then it’ll resume. Then they will be “forced” to up the tolls to get back to the previous levels.

the payments are keeping track of who's on the road for a legitimate reason and who's on the road to follow and surveil/influence those on the road

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1:51

They do this in electricity markets. It works.

How much are they going to lose on parking/traffic tickets?

mean reversion will happen

It's just after new years. There's no one in the city right now. A huge drop off in traffic was going to happen at this time anyway.

@tablefourthree

Zero cost services creates coo coo wack incentives. Charging just a dollar would probably have similar seemingly outsized effects

Lol welcome to Singapore’s ERP solution

Jorge Emrys Landivar

you don't even need to charge a few bucks, you could have charged a 50 cents and it still would have worked.

Vedang Vatsa FRSA

Interesting point. It's crazy how much we rely on our cars while also ignoring cleaner alternatives. It's high time we rethink our urban mobility strategies.

People were being free, going where they chose to go in their implement of freedom: cars. When you add costs, people will go be free somewhere else.

Boycott Manhattan and MTA

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David Frank Writes

This was 1030 yesterday. There's still plenty of traffic

Bye Jerry Sullivan

@ByGerrySullivan

Yay for forcing people to stay home i guess

This has the makings of a psy-op. A $9 fee isn’t going to change behaviors so quick unless they were a million Gypsy cabs running around taking $10 fares.

Ideally, the number of cars would be capped at the optimal level, and people would bid for passes.

this will be back to normal in like 6 months. this is a just knee-jerk reaction

Everyone is happy now, everyone will complain why the center start losing business. Sure it will keep being affluent but traffic will for sure go down. Why go into center ever if you're not required to?

Yes but New York has viable public transport options. Try that in another city and it’s just a straight tax on living.

A tax is definitionally not a market solution

Theres a severe weather warning thats killed people and you’re really making this about a law that passed three days ago

A few bucks? Fuck you!

(((Matthew Lewis))) cults & consequences

Quote

(((Matthew Lewis))) cults & consequences

@mateosfo

Jan 9

People authentically interested in cars and traffic but who don't study this stuff are consistently shocked by what happens to cars when you apply basic market principles to them: They "evaporate." This is the academic term. The reason: Massive share are car trips are induced. x.com/SwiftOnSecurit…

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From milkroad.com

Went to the Rose Parade floatfest in LA after New Years. the free shuttle from the parking garage to the festival was a 90 minute line. Ubering from the parking garage to the festival cost $3. But everyone wanted the free shuttle, even after paying $25 per person for tickets.

A lot of congestion is marginal: you add just a tiny bit more and it goes from reasonable to clogged up. Also, there's probably lots of people who could theoretically take public transit but are just lazy enough not to.

universal soldier

I’ve been wondering same thing especially since tolls are $15 and parking is another $40. Why did the extra few dollars change the math for so many people? My only assumption is it’s people going around the city rather than directly through it now.

People seriously underestimate the demand elasticity of driving. Everyone assumes people who drive *have* to go somewhere and they underestimate the people who drive just to drive around.

(((Jeremy Posner)))

Governor Murphy really dropped the ball. Not only does the reduction in traffic render his $10b turnpike widening project unnecessary, but he turned down an offer of substantial funding to NJTransit to settle the state’s lawsuit over the policy. NJTransit needs a lot of work.

will.i.am blake

expect traffic will regress almost to the mean as people who are staying home on principle, but could eat the charge, adjust to valuing their convenience more than $45/work week.

It's something else. 2 subway trips is about $6, so this is only saving $3/day? Taking PATH in from NJ is about $3 on top of that...so unless you are also canceling an expensive parking spot, are you really saving?

DeadManOnAStick

@DeadManOnAStick

During peak hours that can be 2k a year to do that daily. That's a lot of money to add one's budget. Those folks are making different arrangements to avoid that cost. Those in non-peak hours simply don't see a need to do what they used to do as it likely wasn't that important.

I think some of the effect is that roads operate at a more optimal load level, letting through cars faster, never letting them accumulate into a congested traffic which reduces the throughout even more and creating a traffic death spiral. Efficient looks empty.

@jordan_ross_8F

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London has pretty steep congestion charging but traffic is still terrible... It just finds a new equilibrium.

Yeah I think it shows that congestion wasn't linear. Like you increase car count 10% and all of a sudden traffic backs up 50%.

@treblesketch.com

So glad that it’s working as intended and brings in additional income to support improving the public transport infrastructure even more. US always likes to talk about how nice other countries are and now that some cities are actually implementing int. policies, here’s hoping!

Finally we have discovered the mythical Homo Economicus and they are the average new york resident

it's classic queueing theory, right? it didn't even have to be a huge change in use, as long as it brought demand below the throughput level the queues disappear

When the sky way to Chicago was just $1 people avoided it then. It is now like $8. And it is glorious. Saves 15 min on a good day. An hour on a bad day. Ppl freeze to spend on this but then blow $15 in a drink.

Are the roads empty or just working? As you approach capacity limits congestion rapidly increases so you don't need to remove all that many vehicles in order to achieve free-flowing conditions. content.tfl.gov.uk/technical-note

Was everything fake? Surely ridership should have gone up much more than it actually has

Johnnie Karate 900

@FreethruJustice

My bet is that the number of people will gradually increase, but to a level more reasonable that before. People usually take a wait and see approach before coming out of pocket because if traffic was no better and you just spent $9, you might have feelings about that.

FunkDancingSelfDefense

The hysteria was vastly disproportionate to the toll. Cara will trickle back into a stable equilibrium

@jordan_ross_8F

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I’m really interested to see the numbers on what people switched to (whether a different form of transportation or just forgoing trips altogether).

- mr daylight time year round

There's no way it won't normalize in a couple of weeks when congestion pricing isn't all over the news, right? The bridge tolls going into Manhattan were already way over $9 as far as I'm aware.

@ZaxxonGalaxian

The funny thing is it’s like $40 to park for 2 hours in New York, so why is paying $9 such a huge deal.

Some of it is on principle but I think we'll see the results soften out as people begrudgingly oblige

This is what happens when you give unlimited something away for free.

FakePlasticTree

Probably most of them were just driving a few blocks. There was some fat dad on TV moaning about having to pay a charge to drive about 1km to his kids' house, if I remember rightly.

They're sticking it to us! "Gonna charge me? Fine, I'm not gonna drive at all! That'll show ya!"

Turns out, charging fees are INCREDIBLY effective at influencing people’s behaviors

👷🏾‍♀️

Amanda Builds Up

@AmandaBuildsUp

I think it's indicative of how ubiquitous the NYC subway system is. Millions of people walking by several perfectly effective subway stations to drive instead, until it costs $45/week to drive in

how much is the congestion charge?

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This is likey when price of gas goes up. People simply have an allergic reaction to the "current thing" and change their behavior. In a week or a month they will forget about it and will return to their normal routine that includes paying to go into the city.

@StinkyTheGrillf

They probably had to choose between the tolls and a carton of eggs a day

going crazy cause I imagine they’re the same ppl who pay 50% extra for their doordash but not this?? I’m thrilled to be wrong but I was so worried when they dropped the rate but ????

Congestion pricing is a market based solution. Putting a price on negative externalities to improve social surplus is basic economic theory. It’s glorious to have this moment for the economists.

Is this when a hologram of Hari Seldon like, steps out of a toll camera and explains basic second order effects to people

The Savvy Millennial™

by a similar token, spam would instantly cease to exist if it cost one tenth of one cent to send an email, I think

Cheapness and the desire to save small sums of money is extremely common and policymakers must harness this basic psychological fact more

Profitable Ideas

@ProfitOverPanic

When I lived in the Lower East Side, people would drive over from Jersey and play music with their windows down at max volume at 4 AM which would wake up every single person on the block. They’re probably not interested in paying $9 to do that so now New Yorkers can get sleep

Yeah this won’t last. $9 is nowhere near enough to create this strong a deterrent

Congestion pricing took the dumbest, slowest drivers off the road. The people who take five seconds to realise the light turned green. The people who don’t know when you can or can’t turn right on red. The people who drive round the block seven times to find a parking space.

da mets babey lets go mets go all about da mets

@damnation_space

literally they turned traffic off like there was a big switch in the mayor's office its bizarre

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From milkroad.com

As much as I support congestion pricing, I think it's very likely that this is at least in part a short term effect.

@Cryptomnomiconz

It's the same kind of mentality where people keep complaining about YouTube ads but won't pay for premium

linoleum_expert

going to horse mart to return a cup of hay they bought 3 weeks ago probably idk

we really should quintuple gas taxes

@Nokidsnomoney5

A lot of people just refused to do anything else. They could have easily taken a bus or train to where they were going but got in their car

Probably a good chunk of it is reactionary “I ain’t giving those liberals my money” which is just delicious irony

@macdonaldncode

Who knew a few bucks could clear out the roads?

they were actually headed into nyc and doing stuff, now they’re not.

I would have thought that demand was so elastic. Possibly there is an over reaction to it being imposed and things will settle out over the next few weeks as it ceases to be viewed as a crime against humanity.

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Rate proposed Community Notes

Lightskinned Avenger

@LightskinnedAv1

After a few days once the novelty wears off, it will go back to normal

@coherentranter

It's not a few bucks, it's $2,000 a year.

I need to see one of these from people on the metro

. Like someone who usually drives taking the metro and someone who usually takes the metro.

Miranda ~*Randi*~ Doerfler

I think a lot of people are broke? And can’t afford to pay a fee every time they wanna drive into the city?

This is a market-based solution.

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The secret is that there were never that many cars to begin with

AlexanderPreston

People have no idea what money they are spending. "Pay 9 bucks" is really obvious and it stops the people just driving around

People hate getting charged by the government. Sanitation fines for non-compliance are paltry, but when they put up new rules my mom and all her friends are hair on fire to make sure they don't get hit

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I think people will slowly start to fill it back up.

@ScissorGrinder

wait for market correction, its too early to say it's effective

It makes no sense. I live in suburban GA and I pay $10+ to park all the time because I have two little kids and it’s easier than driving around for 15 mins and walking 10 more from a free space. These dudes worth 8-9 figures on the UES who won’t pay $9 are hysterical to me.

Revacholian Libertine (Reva Li)

Driving reckless from suburb to suburb cause god forbid they ever set foot on the PATH if needed

Complete bullshit - there really were a lot of complete psychopath ppl just driving around nyc for no reason that we all refused to acknowledge existed

It won’t last. London was the same - first few weeks it looked like the apocalypse and then straight back to normal.

chris turbeville

Now if they really invest this in the subway transport

Especially since parking is already 500 a month. If you could afford that this is nothing

They were saving 30m and it’s not worth $9

You already have to pay a toll to enter the city lol then you talking about another fee just for driving through a certain part of the city

"market-based" solutions are literally always shit

Yeah I mean you’d think it would compound over 5+ years as people decided to not buy cars, live in different places, and work in different places. But if you have a car, and felt that driving was your best option before, interesting that this makes such a difference.

@TalentedAndHot

so many problems/inefficiencies would vanish if people got over their incessant need to impose their individualistic whims upon the world

@ColdCathodeMan

They were driving around, assumably spending time and money on the NYC economy, which they clearly aren’t doing now.

@jordan_ross_8F

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@ONEBIGMONSTER_

ITS $9 LMAO THATS NOT A COUPLE BUCKS TO GO ONE WAY SOMEWHERE.

Jonathon Siegle

9$ a day makes commuting untenable long run. So it’s a forced habit shift for all, not a ‘I’ll drive once a week as a treat’

most americans suck so bad at visualizing expenses that it only takes 9 dollars worth of un-ignorable expenses to freak them out

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