Congestion pricing in NYC appears to be a success so far

Now tell me about petty and not so petty crimes associated with increased "ridership".

And they'll squander the money I'm sure. I always find it odd how they come up with % on some of these items as well.

How many more wives are beaten because the husband has to deal with the subway?

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They forgot population: miserable

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The people I know that live in NYC(lives in Astoria but spend most of their time in the city) like it.

Wait, you’re telling me that essentially forcing the lower income people to ride the bus while charging rich people a tax to drive in the city would increase alternative ridership???? No way!

It’s probably not transferable to any other (American) city, but I can see how it’s a good idea there. Driving is the worst way to get around Manhattan. Sounds like this cleared up the roads for those who really need to.

Congestion pricing is great. You can look at numbers but just living here the real difference is simply that

1) all the congestion zones are just a lot nicer without being so packed with traffic. Less horn noise and more streets closed off with dining tables.

2) If I ever have to drive, it's better to pay the fee and save an hour not sitting in a traffic jam

Wish it would have happened a long time ago. Also, the idea that many poorer people ever drove to work in Manhattan was pretty outlandish.

It makes sense

This makes economic sense to me. Congested roads more or less represent excess demand for driving compared to the available “supply” (in this case, carrying capacity of the roads). Meanwhile, unused subway ridership represents an excess “supply” of that mode of transportation.

In a situation like that, you have two options: increase the supply of the more desired good and decrease the supply of the less desired good, or raise the price of the more desired good. But NYC can’t just “build more roads” due to physical limits, and at any rate, it costs money to do so. They also can’t really “offload” the excess supply of subway ridership; it’s not like they can sell the bigger subway cars and then buy smaller ones and come out ahead. Or maybe they could, but if they could figure out how to increase ridership, that would make more money.

So it makes perfect sense that they would “raise the price” via congestion pricing. And it makes sense that this would result in people substituting into the unused subway ridership.

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What about all the people that can't afford it, greatly inconvenienced by this?

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They take mass transit.