NYC MTA Congestion Pricing Effects on NYCT, NJT, MNRR, and LIRR

With the Comet VI cars entering service, wouldn't there be a higher threshold for the amount of passengers on rail transport?

Irish Chieftain wrote:Why the focus on West Orange? You can't take a train to West Orange, period. You can't take a train to places like Irvington either, but that's not the point.

As for more Midtown Directs stopping at Secaucus, I do not see the point. Solely for the rare person that needs to get from the Oranges to Matawan? Monthly pass holders IIRC can use the Newark LR to get from Broad Street Station to Penn Station within Newark; it's a three-seat ride, but reliable enough; certainly more reliable than having to travel in the other direction at Secaucus.

The point is to improve intra-state travel options. With tolls and gas prices rising, we should create viable intra state travel options to get more people to shift to mass transit. Its not just the people who want to travel from Oranges to Matawan (that's just Codey's example), but anyone who wants to travel anywhere besides the NYC, Hoboken or Newark.

As someone who does a non traditional commute can attest, anytime you add a transfer, you are adding a point of failure. A three seat transfer with LR is not more reliable than transferring in Secaucus. Theoretically, its faster, but certainly not more reliable.

Honestly, I think traditional commuters could spare the extra few minutes for stopping in Secaucus if it allowed practical new transit options for non-traditional commuters.

As someone who does a non traditional commute can attest, anytime you add a transfer, you are adding a point of failure. A three seat transfer with LR is not more reliable than transferring in Secaucus. Theoretically, its faster, but certainly not more reliable

You can't serve every destination with every train. Not physically possible. If the weak point is the light rail ride between Newark Broad and Newark Penn, there are a number of bus routes that provide the connection in addition. You'd never be able to get around New York City on the subway were it not for the numerous transfers; you'd never be able to travel as flexibly around Long Island on the LIRR if not for the Jamaica transfer and the subways that connect to other stations in the city, and Grand Central Terminal would be inaccessible from downtown Manhattan if not for the subway. Sometimes the "point of failure" can be the first train you ride, even if it's giving you a one-seat ride to where you're going (casual victims of "bustitution" can attest to this).

One cannot claim that a light rail transfer in Newark is less reliable by default than traveling eastwards to Secaucus and backtracking westwards on a NJCL train out of NYP. Indeed, depending on the time of day, your most reliable transfer to a train to Matawan might be at Hoboken.

Anyway, this thread's about the NYC congestion charge, not intrastate rail travel. By default, that affects trains bound for New York. Does NJT have enough equipment on the rail side of things to handle this, is the chief question, i.e. if a significant number of people are unwilling to pay such a charge and switch to public transportation. Well, this is one of the disadvantages of having an inactive ferry service from a waterfront terminal; such boats can carry the passengers from multiple trains between the rail terminal and the city on the other side of the river. And as far as making more trains stop at Secaucus, if one really wishes to do that, one will have to make them longer.

The light rail would be the most reliable option. Unfortunately, though, the schedule has it running at only 10 minute intervals -- an awfully long time if you're making a quick transfer.

I'm curious to know if there could be a court challenge because Bloomberg's plan would have a very direct and negative impact on interstate commerce.
After all, New Jersey and New York City are next door to each other, unlike Connecticut that has a chunk of Westchester Cty separating it from NYC.

If that fails and there's no $$ relief for commuters, then maybe they should look for work closer to home and give the city the finger. If I recall, quite a bit of the talent that keeps NYC businesses going lives in NJ.

Give big, bad, Gotham the figurative finger, eh? Go ahead, New Jersey -- and find out its not the 1970s anymore. It's not even the 1990s. The game has changed. And New York is in a fairly strong position, in the regional arena, at least, to really make congestion pricing happen.

Mayor Bloomberg's plan may or may not succeed, but he's played the game like a political pro, because any congestion pricing plan involves money, federal money at that, and that's something even autoheads in Albany can't quite tear their eyes away from, even if they want to. Sure, Albany and "other" New York state interests will do their darndest to twist things their way, and that's fine; that's politics. But if they fail, the mayor of New York can point at them (with some justification) for having dropped the ball.

As for New Jersey's chance to be so high and mighty? One can see the traction it isn't getting not just from the comments of Sen. Codey, but from the Garden State print media. "We're not ready," the whiny refrain goes, as if New Jersey's majority has diligently been working for an auto alternative. Given the cushion from painful potentialities (like ... hey! ... congestion pricing), New Jersey will never be ready; the threshold of "enough" transit will never be reached. "I need my car" is the call that will prevail.

And that's fine with NJ-ARP. We urge New York City to do to/for auto drivers from all locales what it should have done years ago: Make them pay. The bluster of "we'll take our jobs elsewhere" and "we'll stay home" and "I want my ice cream" will carry bits of clout -- and that's to the good; other alternatives will surface in shapes many of us (at NJ-ARP, anyway) can't foresee. But it'll happen, and New York will be better for it, not weaker.

Finally -- and here's where NJ-ARP really makes its criticism direct -- what weight has any of the New Jersey players brought to the political table? When Sen. Codey, or a newspaper, insist, "Deal me in!" the implication is that they might have something to deal with. But we haven't seen any specific proposals, let alone any give and take, generated by the New Jersey side.

That doesn't shock us, however, given that six months ago one would be hardpressed to find a state assemblyman or senator who knew what congestion pricing was, let alone whether it was of any use or merit.

orangeline wrote:I'm curious to know if there could be a court challenge because Bloomberg's plan would have a very direct and negative impact on interstate commerce.
After all, New Jersey and New York City are next door to each other, unlike Connecticut that has a chunk of Westchester Cty separating it from NYC.

If that fails and there's no $$ relief for commuters, then maybe they should look for work closer to home and give the city the finger. If I recall, quite a bit of the talent that keeps NYC businesses going lives in NJ.

The congestion pricing plan does not run afoul of the interstate commerce clause because it treats all cars equally, no matter where they come from. The maximum you pay due to the congestion charge is $8 because the amount you pay in tolls is deducted from the congestion charge. A much bigger impact will come from LI who can currently use the free east river bridges to enter Manhattan and will now have to pay $8 if they want to enter the city streets. NJ residents will only pay $2-$3 more than they do now.

I thought that it was an $8 add-on when there's a toll, thus if it's $6 then it's $14 with the congestion charge.

Nope, if you paid a $6 toll on the tunnel, you only pay the difference ($2). There's a lot of mis/disinformation about the congestion charge out there so I don't blame you for being confused.

Everyone: I read this topic with interest. Manhattan, being the island it is, I cannot help but wonder when it suffers from auto gridlock due to extreme congestion? Could the mass transit agencies handle the ridership increase?

Take a look at this link: CCLondon.com which goes to the congestion charge page on the Transport for London website – it includes info on transit such as the London Underground and an explanation of London's congestion charging. I find it interesting that the £8 fee (about $16 US now) allows unlimited access to the charge zone for the charge period as well as the map showing roads that allow free passage through parts of the zone.

One of NYC's problems would be incentives to avoid Manhattan – the sky-high Verrazano Narrows Bridge toll is no bargain, as an example. Hopefully, those in the know will put heads together to try and solve a growing problem: Manhattan congestion!

MACTRAXX

Bloomburg just wants more money and will take it from any source he can. He wants bad congestion because it means that more fuel is spent which provides additional tax revenue for him.
Of course I don't see him providing any positive encouragement for motorists to bypass the city. He won't try to drop or reduce the ridiculously high tolls for the bridges that do so. If the Verrazano($9 outbound compared to nothing for the holland tunnel) and Whitestone bridges were less expensive this would encourage people to bypass the city(even though Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island are in no great shape when it comes to traffic).

One has every right to be skeptical of political forces or personalities, but we at NJ-ARP (ourselves a political entity) can't quite buy the idea that the mayor of New York wants congestion, given the negative economic impacts that most people -- even autoheads! -- acknowledge as a potential outcome.

Doubtless many motives can be ascribed to Mayor Bloomberg. But here's one not-so-novel note: Lots of folks always admonish government(s) to "act more like a business." In this case, Mayor Bloomberg's doing just that. He's got a commodity package -- roads and parking -- that appears to be going for under the market rate. He can charge more for those commodities, even if it makes no difference on volume (and NJ-ARP believes it will make a difference). Beyond that, his city -- unlike too much of New Jersey -- actually can offer transportation alternatives for those needing a less expensive option.

And this is negative ... maybe to those who believe driving is a right mandated by the Constitution. Not to us. We reiterate: Make them pay.

blockss wrote:Bloomburg just wants more money and will take it from any source he can. He wants bad congestion because it means that more fuel is spent which provides additional tax revenue for him.
Of course I don't see him providing any positive encouragement for motorists to bypass the city. He won't try to drop or reduce the ridiculously high tolls for the bridges that do so. If the Verrazano($9 outbound compared to nothing for the holland tunnel) and Whitestone bridges were less expensive this would encourage people to bypass the city(even though Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island are in no great shape when it comes to traffic).

The main point of congestion pricing isn't to make motorists bypass Manhattan. Rather it is to even out out the timing of many trips and, more importantly, to eliminate car-trips altogether (by shifting to mass transit, car pooling, etc.) Congestion pricing would be poor public policy if it was meant to shift traffic elsewhere. Rather, by reducing car trips, it aims to reduce congestion and improve air quality region-wide.

To say that Bloomberg wants people to waste more fuel so that there is higher revenue make zero sense. Fuel taxes are at the state and federal level, not the city level. In any case, less fuel is wasted because there will be fewer vehicle miles traveled.

People make a lot of wild assertions that Congestion Pricing will fail but the record shows otherwise. C.P. in London was able to reduce congestion in the C.B.D by 26%.

If Bloomberg's congestion pricing idea does go through, I can't help but wonder if it would spur the construction of new subway lines. What alignments do we suppose might be considered first?

By its own terms the congestion pricing plan is designed to cut traffic in Manhattan by about 6%. It has been reported that at any given time 25% of the traffic in Manhattan is neither originating in nor bound to Manhattan, but rather traffic traveling through Manhattan in route somewhere else, typically Brooklyn-Queens-LI to NJ or vice versa. So basically, we are imposing a huge tax and surveillance apparatus to achieve about one quarter of what could be done by building above or below ground routes to siphon through traffic off Manhattan streets, where it doesn't want to be in the first place. I understand that roads are not popular on this board, but requiring a truck to cross a dozen plus traffic lights and block pedestrians and others in midtown just to get from Long Island City to, say, Kearney is a failure of infrastructure. I'm sure many of us Jersey people on this board have suffered through afternoons spent on Canal Street going from the Holland Tunnel to an East River crossing. The current state of affairs makes no sense and congestion pricing does nothing to address the problem. Bloomberg could have drawn up any plan he wished to discuss and address NYC's infrastructure needs. New and improved mass transit are crying needs in NYC, but so are updated vehicle routes.