Great news everyone! Hopefully the system works well and other cities will follow suit. I know in the USA (in the few places we do have public transit) the argument for keeping fares is always 1.we don’t want to pay taxes for that and 2.if we charge that’ll keep the vagrants from using it. Two arguments that make no sense at all, 1. We already pay taxes for the public transit, why pay more to actually use it? And 2.anyone who has used public transit knows the fare doesn’t keep vagrants out.
In the short term, there’s also a lack of capacity. Fares function as a limiter on the number of people using it. Too many people for your capacity? Raise prices. Spare capacity? Lower prices.
This can be solved by increasing capacity, but it takes time to figure out what the capacity necessary actually is and then buying more trains/buses and hiring/training drivers.
My home city of Riga tried to do that after success in Tallinn. The mayor thought of releasing special Riga cards to residents. The issue was that many people come to Riga for work from other cities, towns and villages and they got angry to pay for transport. So mayor said to declare themselves in Riga instead of their home towns. That caused an uproar from town councils as that meant that they will lose all the tax income and won’t be able to provide local services. And Riga is already home to a third of the country’s population, so town budgets are overstretched.
In the end the government had to step in and ban the whole thing. The end.
All in all, car bloat has increased vehicle prices while making autos more destructive to human life, natural ecosystems, and pavement alike. Because the full societal costs of crashes, pollution, and road repairs are not borne by owners of SUVs and trucks, every American is effectively subsidizing car bloat. Even if they drive a sedan. Even if they don’t own a car at all.
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
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 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.
Nah man, I absolutely don’t think that’s the case, not is that the case for any fellow city folk. My previous post should have made that real clear. We got all walks of life walking and talking, and a lot of us travel too. We see what we have, and what’s out there as well.
One thing you won’t see me doing is talking shit on other people’s home towns, because that’s low class and low quality thinking. I don’t particularly like small towns or suburbs for social reasons, some people do. That’s ok.
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.
Why should I wait? Do you know what an air cooled engine is? I incur more risk in driving specifically for the benefits of agility and compactness.
I’m sorry that my ability to go past you makes you upset, but again, I’m exposing myself to significantly more danger specifically for the benefits including the ability to not be stopped by the car in front of me, much higher mpgs, lower cost of ownership, etc.
Do you get mad at bicycles because they don’t operate the same as cars? I pass you in the bike lane all the time on my bicycle.
At least my life will have been more fun and interesting than yours 👍
Also: laws protect nobody until after the fact. Even in your car, you’re expected to keep your wits about you.
Either way, I’m usually passing people at about 10mph faster than they are in slow traffic, about the speed of a bicycle. When someone wants to change lanes, crossing my path, plenty of time for me to slow down and let them do their thing. If I don’t keep moving at least a little bit, my motorcycle will overheat as it is not water-cooled.
Well what are we tolling? Square footage? Noise? Carbon emissions? Deaths and injuries? Yes. Motorcycles are better in some categories and worse in others
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.
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: bts.gov/…/estimated-national-average-vehicle-emis…
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.
It could be that it’s more normalised, or that post-Covid people don’t want to share public transport as much.
Whatever the reason, it’s good news as the more cyclists there are, the more that planners will have to take them into account - making it easier for more to become cyclists. Let’s just hope the momentum continues to fuel this virtuous cycle.
You’re probably right about the post-COVID thing of not wanting to be in enclosed spaces, actually. There was also a big increase in cycling right after the 7/7 bombings, for similarly depressing reasons.
Yes, I think the increase in WFH is likely the biggest factor. Still, the bike lanes are probably helping more people make active travel decisions and keeping them safe when they do, so it’s all good!
Doesn’t look too bad in this light, it’s the even daylight where the idea of it doesn’t show. I think it’s ugly but can look cool in certain light like this, the top section bright and the lower shadowed. Should have been a concept car cause of obvious reasons producing it at scale.
Part of me respects a design that can be so provocative. It shows how people care about design, and reminds me how boring and “nothing” a lot of the objects we interact with on a daily basis are.
I’m all for it. I’d like them to lead by example. If this was actually enforced I bet my bottom dollar that public transport/mirco-mobility issues would be completely solved in 15 years max.
The video makes good points, but unfortunately loads of the arguments made in this video could be fuel for these nutjobs to start arguing that cars are over-regulated.
There are already people who seem happy with low levels of regulation on firearms, I don't see how they'll accept the safety argument for car licensing.
I mean I know the raw stats are fairly easy to show that cars are one of the most dangerous things in the world (ranked up there with thinks like malaria) - but do those people care?
There’s also a counter argument. Houses are also over regulated with exclusionary zoning. If they like to de-regulate housing then we can start the discussion from there.
Just SUVs? Why not Lamborghini, Ferrari, Bently, or all the other luxery vehicles? This seems pretty arbitrary at first glance. I don’t know french car culture very well but aren’t SUVs more of a middle class thing?
French car culture isnt much different than European car culture in general, for the sake of the topic here. Small displacement engines (1.6, or 2.0 liter usually) and small footprint because of space. Scooters and pedal bikes are super common around places like Paris, tho…parking, gas, weaving through the congestion, etc. However, some of the wagon variants of cars and these luxury cars you mention sometimes have a much larger footprint than small and mid-sized SUVs. Unless overhead clearance is an issue, like in parking garages, i don’t quite understand the reason for singling out SUVs here.
This, of course, is all stated with European sized SUVs in mind that share the same small displacement engines as other cars. Not the giant American sized ones that have much larger engines where emissions issues now come into play. However, all those luxury cars usually have even bigger engines and sometimes the loud exhaust as well…sooo…🤷
Could it also be to do with the increased lethality of SUVs? A study in Ireland shows 11.5% of pedestrians hit by an SUV were killed versus 4.5% for a car.
No law is perfect and there’s always an edge case to provide a reason for doing nothing. This is definitely a step in the right direction to stop the arms race that purchasing larger vehicles has become though.
True tho. In some episodes they just solder random panes of metal together for a joke and those look better. Id rather drive the two sided car than this.
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