"Forget the Boomers who are afraid of the subway: if a young single woman, or a family with a young child, or an elderly person, can’t feel safe and secure on transit, we’re screwing up."
I would have more sympathy for this position if traveling by subway were actually dangerous. But on any basis, a given car trip is much more likely to end in disaster than the same trip taken on the subway. Hundreds of drivers and pedestrians (plus a few dozen cyclists) die every year on NYC's streets in car-involved crashes; the number of deaths in the subway from all causes is usually in the low double digits. At what point do people start having to take responsibility for basic statistical literacy regarding their own safety levels?
I think most people who worry about safety on the subway are conflating danger with disorder. But these are two separate things (and, of course, there's a fair number of people who conflate "disorder" with "the visible presence of poor people and/or minorities")! Both danger and disorder are potentially negative experiences, but conflating them is a category error (and one that conservatives are particularly prone to). I'd love to see more conservatives clean house in their own movement and push to separate the two concepts; it would lead to better public safety policy.
I see your point about crime vs. disorder and about car crashes. But I think it's a difference in judgment, not factual understanding. A car crash for a lot of people is just less frightening than interpersonal violence. I think the feeling of being "exposed" on transit is a real thing. And the young woman I mentioned is very much a progressive and an urbanist type, but she still thought I was a little too dismissive (!) of concerns over subway crime. So YMMV.
I’m just nodding my head here because I grew up in an upper-middle-class midwestern suburb, have lived in quite a few places as an adult…. but I think my parents were absolutely freaked out at my stint in New York City. I had a car but it was an absolute drag, and came to embrace the “disorder” and ease of the subway, as well as all the walking. It was hard to explain to them how safe and normal it felt to get around that way—even surrounded by so many types of people—when they’ve just… never experienced it.
Right, the question is how do we get people to stop thinking like that. Is it education? PSAs?
Of course, the fact that our elected officials seem to indulge in the same line of thinking fills me with despair (cf. Kathy Hochul sending the National Guard onto the subway rather than having them direct traffic)
Yikes. How _dare_ the press make factual reporting available to the public? If we let that happen, how will we keep controlling the narrative that everything is fine????
Over-reporting individual crimes (as opposed to broader statistics with proper context) makes people feel like crime (both crime in general and specific crimes) is far more frequent than it actually is.
And that has major negative social consequences, like how the over-reporting of incredibly rare stranger kidnappings resulted in the rise of the “helicopter parent”
But is it "over-reporting" simply to record what happened and publish it in a newspaper? That's just "reporting". Almost all of the subway crime reports I read are very by-the-book acts of journalism. Not reporting those crimes feels like an attempt to sweep the problem under the rug.
Have you been on the subway lately? I've been riding it regularly since the 80s, and while it's not at the same level of disorder it was back then, there has been significant backsliding. It's easy to say "statistics" if you're not seeing the decay with your own eyes every day. And one difference the statistics don't reflect is that the usual levels of disorder are coming closer to home for the average commuter, and more frighteningly. Whereas in the past if someone was the victim of a violent crime on the subway, it was because they were riding late at night and, if you read the police report carefully, maybe up to no good themselves (think crack fiend on crack fiend violence). In the past, it was unusual to hear about violent crime during the day. Now, more and more, regular commuters at busy stations are being victimized at random, not being robbed of their possessions, which at least has some rational basis, but instead they are being slashed by strangers, unprovoked, or being pushed on to the tracks by the mentally ill. When someone gets stabbed at "your" station during rush hour, all the statistics you have don't mean anything.
I've been riding regularly since 2013, and I don't worry about my safety at all. The statistics do mean things, in fact--they mean that riding the subway is safer than driving, walking or bicycling. It's important to have an accurate understanding of the world, rather than relying on vibes and sensationalism. If you disagree...why?
If you've only been riding the subway for the last ten years, you're part of the cohort that has never known real chaos on the subway, and perhaps you're blind to the warning signs of what could come next.
Also, relying only on cold statistics isn't always useful in the real world. As I described above, what's changed is the nature and timing of crime on the subway, not just the raw numbers. Before I could protect myself simply by not riding late at night (a luxury for the professional class, good luck keeping with that if you work the late shift), and by sticking to well-trafficked stations. Now even if I keep to myself and act sensibly, I could still become the victim of the more random crime that has become the norm. The random, violent turn that subway crime has taken doesn't show up in the statistics you're relying on.
It's very interesting to me that you're not making the obvious comparison to cars here. After all, if you're driving or walking you can just as easily become the victim of someone else's violence, totally randomly--a drunk driver plows into your car, or someone fleeing a police chase drives onto the sidewalk, or a truck makes a right turn across a crosswalk without looking (all of these are from just the last couple weeks in NYC). Overall traffic deaths are substantially higher than deaths on the subway, and injuries are even more incredibly disproportionate; why does the subway freak you out so much, but driving apparently doesn't?
For starters, like most subway riders in NYC, I don't own a car. Most of the carnage driving the statistics you cite are what we might call car-on-car violence. Since I never sit behind the wheel of a car in NYC, and only rarely sit in the back seat of one, getting in a car crash isn't high on my list of things to worry about.
As for the other bad things that happen, yes, I know they exist. A colleague's father was killed last year when a joyriding teenager sped a sports car onto the sidewalk, killing him. Another colleague was out of work for three months when a car ran over her foot as she walked in a crosswalk. You can be minding your own business as a pedestrian, and bad things can still happen to you. But I don't lump this in with "travel" or "transportation" or getting from A to B. I associate it with the background noise of bad things that are rare but might happen to me anytime I leave my apartment. I could get hit by a falling brick. I could trip on an uneven sidewalk and break my ankle. I could get mugged. Some of those things I can make efforts to prevent (watch the sidewalk for potholes, don't walk down a dark alley at night, etc.). But the uptick in subway crime is so scary because so much more of it is random and unpredictable. That's why it puts me (and lots of other people) on edge.
Your comment about not liking New York as a kid hits home with me. I grew up in southern Wisconsin and going to Chicago meant sitting on the highway after an hour or two, finding parking etc. It was ordeal. A couple years ago I was able to stay downtown and walk around, and I realized how much more I enjoyed it
One of the things I loved about Jim and Deborah Fallows' Our Towns series of stories several years ago (now gathered in a book) was how it highlighted all the many good things happening all over the country. Most of it never came to the attention of the national press or a wider audience. Here's a story about the series: https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2018/04/our-towns-fallows
I feel the power of living in a place like that. Just last week, Cincinnati city council passed a new zoning ordinance called Connected Communities. Over time it will overturn generations of zoning restrictions that have prevented us from building the kind of housing that was common until the 1940s, especially along major transportation corridors and neighborhood business districts. It faced an enormous amount of opposition from well-connected people and communities, and will likely cost some council members votes in the 2025 council elections.
They passed it anyway. It was the right thing to do, and it will likely cost them votes in the 2025 election. Taking bold stands like these is not something we associate with politicians at this point in our history.
I was looking forward to seeing how congestion pricing would improve future NYC visits (I have family there). I'm, too, am disappointed it's not going into effect as planned.
Yes, I was just in Cincinnati for the Strong Towns/CNU conference, and we were talking about that. I got the overall sense there that there's a trajectory - a sense of going somewhere. I really liked the mood.
I think this is important - I think most people in the country shrug their shoulders at a policy in NYC, and I think all of us miss the numerous ways people do work together across this country, in public policy, to get a lot of sensible things done. They probably get it done BECAUSE it's less visible, so it doesn't go viral and become part of the culture wars.
I also remember reading a review of the "Our Towns" documentary series, and the review was so cynical - "this isn't how the world really is." The reviewers were, objectively, wrong - most people don't talk about the latest thing on CNN or twitter. They talk about their days, their commutes, their kids' activities, their vacations and weekends. If they talk about "policy" these days it's usually somewhat guarded, or if not it's something that is recognizable to Our Towns and Strong Towns but not to national media - "new community rec center opening," "more sculptures and trees in the old downtown," "changing the bussing/dropoff policies for the schools."
I'm disheartened by the congestion pricing, mainly due to whether we can get things done - but a part of me recognizes that emotion is out of place, because the attention given to this issue is probably unfair and not reflective of a lot that is going right even in NYC, and another part of me thinks that if those things going right get attention...they maybe get scooped up in the culture war so, let it be.
Hi, you nailed it. I wrote a message to Gov Hochul saying the same thing: You've gained zero improvement in suburbanites opinion of you, but you have sent a very clear message to New Yorkers to just not bother trying advocacy. Why spend years working on something just for it to be banned in a fit of pique? And so forth.
I don't know what reforms need to get done to allow localized FAFO, but we won't have localized YIMBY without it.
One other thing I wanted to add - it is hard for me to understand the perspective of folks afraid of taking the train into and around NYC, just because I was also born and raised in a couple of Jersey suburbs, and taking the train was the default method for getting into and especially around the city. Driving to the city was an exceptional event when I was a kid, meant for when you had a critical mass of people stuffed into Ford Taurus that would definitely be considered child endangerment in this day and age.
I don't want to be harsh on people who think of NYC as any other place in America that needs ample parking...but it is a hard thing for me to understand.
While I have been no fan of congestion pricing for NYC, I am still puzzled by the resentment that Jerseyites feel about it. People from New Jersey have always had to pay to cross the Hudson, even in colonial times (even if you owned your own boat, you still had to pay to moor it somewhere). With generations of Jersey residents accustomed to paying tolls to come into Manhattan, why was congestion pricing a bridge too far for them, so to speak?
Hochul's stated reasons for her last-minute reversal are unconvincing, but there may be other forces at work behind the scenes. In 2022, Republicans gained a narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representative due in part to an unexpectedly strong performance in suburban New York. If they are able to convince voters in swing districts that congestion pricing will add to their inflation woes, they might have the same advantage in 2024. Politco summarized the politics pretty well here: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/05/new-york-city-toll-hochul-democrats-00161930
If there is a Republican majority in Congress and if Trump returns to power, then any meaningful action on climate change at the national level will be out of the question. Looking at the big picture, then, the best overall play may be to temporarily take congestion pricing off the table until we are assured of not having Republican domination of all three branches of government. Of course, the risk is that an indefinite pause becomes a permanent cancellation. I have no idea of whether and how Governor Hochul plans to avoid that outcome.
The problem is that she forgot she owes something to people of NYC too. If everything is about elections, nothing gets done. NYC is moving to the right because of bad governance and Trumpy cops and other bigots. She is not going to get them back. NYC will never support her again too because she lost the core voters.
It's funny. I'm a woman, born in 1950. I came to New York in 1968 to go to college and stayed on till 1982. I lived in Manhattan the whole time, rode the subway constantly, and never was a crime victim during all my years in the city. I was a witness to two purse snatchings, and even then, there were dozens of people around who were not crime victims.
In 1981-1982, after I had completed my NYC apprenticeship, I drove a cab and enjoyed the experience. Of course, the fact that I was separated from my passengers with a thick metal plate in the seat back and one inch of plexiglass glass, contributed to my sense of security. The foundation of security is awareness. You have to keep an eye out on all sides, and even to the back, and discretely keep your distance from oddballs.
Contrast this with my sister's neighbor who lives in the Washington DC suburbs, but has never been downtown, “Because it is too dangerous.”
Very thoughtful. I think Hochul is being honest when she says congestion pricing is being paused. She is not being honest about the reason for the pause. It will be implemented after the fall elections. Substantial funds have already been spent on the infrastructure for the program. Second, the MTA does not need the money. Both their operating costs and construction costs are well above those of comparable transit agencies. In addition, fare evasion is a significant problem which costs the MTA about $700 million a year. This is well over half of what the MTA hopes to realize from congestion pricing. In short, the MTA could obtain the funds which it hopes to raise through congestion pricing by reducing fare evasion and carrying out needed economies in operating and construction costs. Third, congestion pricing will reroute much truck traffic from Manhattan to the Bronx & NJ with attendant increases in pollution and road maintenance costs. As a matter of policy, this seems undesirable.
One note - I think there’s another undercurrent here. We are seeing so much incompetence in our cities generally on issues really important to people. Crime, disorder, education, and more. People who don’t read Vox every day notice this. So when the basics aren’t being done well, society loses faith that the same people can execute big change or big projects. If we actually did the basics well and efficiently, the whole dynamic might change.
I do think that's the biggest thing - that something which affects a small number of the people who live, work, or play in a unique but iconic part of America became this whole big thing that everyone had opinions on - but most of us don't matter.
But it does lead to this sense that even trying to change anything is impossible - it's not true, of course. Bike lanes are suddenly prevalent whereas they didn't exist 15 years ago. But the more visible anything you do is, the more likely it is to get picked up as part of a culture war. And then someone somewhere with some power over a process that maybe doesn't affect them will find the right chokepoint to veto it. Doing anything these days requires you to be stealthy and under the radar.
By not arrest I don't mean don't punish - I think an escalating fine sort of like traffic tickets would be plenty. (In theory fare evasion in D.C. will get you a $100 ticket, but they're rarely written.) Failure to pay a toll in your car is sort of similar, I think if you get a ticket by mail and don't pay you get a fine that's many multiples of the toll. The problem (similar to traffic enforcement) is that the punishment on paper is often a deterrence but the chance of getting caught is small. Even a *smaller*, but predictable, penalty would probably do more to change behavior.
You know, I probably would have agreed with you at one time here, but I've had this discussion with a lot of people and am pretty convinced by the argument that motorists routinely put people in more danger and rarely face any criminal repercussions. I would never have thought this back then, but now I do find it hard not to see a bias when speeding, parking violations, and toll violations are treated as somehow different from fare evasion, even though they're offenses of about the same magnitude. Both "steal" from a public realm or service in some sense, and one creates much more danger for others.
"Forget the Boomers who are afraid of the subway: if a young single woman, or a family with a young child, or an elderly person, can’t feel safe and secure on transit, we’re screwing up."
I would have more sympathy for this position if traveling by subway were actually dangerous. But on any basis, a given car trip is much more likely to end in disaster than the same trip taken on the subway. Hundreds of drivers and pedestrians (plus a few dozen cyclists) die every year on NYC's streets in car-involved crashes; the number of deaths in the subway from all causes is usually in the low double digits. At what point do people start having to take responsibility for basic statistical literacy regarding their own safety levels?
I think most people who worry about safety on the subway are conflating danger with disorder. But these are two separate things (and, of course, there's a fair number of people who conflate "disorder" with "the visible presence of poor people and/or minorities")! Both danger and disorder are potentially negative experiences, but conflating them is a category error (and one that conservatives are particularly prone to). I'd love to see more conservatives clean house in their own movement and push to separate the two concepts; it would lead to better public safety policy.
I see your point about crime vs. disorder and about car crashes. But I think it's a difference in judgment, not factual understanding. A car crash for a lot of people is just less frightening than interpersonal violence. I think the feeling of being "exposed" on transit is a real thing. And the young woman I mentioned is very much a progressive and an urbanist type, but she still thought I was a little too dismissive (!) of concerns over subway crime. So YMMV.
I’m just nodding my head here because I grew up in an upper-middle-class midwestern suburb, have lived in quite a few places as an adult…. but I think my parents were absolutely freaked out at my stint in New York City. I had a car but it was an absolute drag, and came to embrace the “disorder” and ease of the subway, as well as all the walking. It was hard to explain to them how safe and normal it felt to get around that way—even surrounded by so many types of people—when they’ve just… never experienced it.
Right, the question is how do we get people to stop thinking like that. Is it education? PSAs?
Of course, the fact that our elected officials seem to indulge in the same line of thinking fills me with despair (cf. Kathy Hochul sending the National Guard onto the subway rather than having them direct traffic)
I think we have to Do Something about the media and their constant voyeuristic “crime reporting”.
Yikes. How _dare_ the press make factual reporting available to the public? If we let that happen, how will we keep controlling the narrative that everything is fine????
Over-reporting individual crimes (as opposed to broader statistics with proper context) makes people feel like crime (both crime in general and specific crimes) is far more frequent than it actually is.
And that has major negative social consequences, like how the over-reporting of incredibly rare stranger kidnappings resulted in the rise of the “helicopter parent”
But is it "over-reporting" simply to record what happened and publish it in a newspaper? That's just "reporting". Almost all of the subway crime reports I read are very by-the-book acts of journalism. Not reporting those crimes feels like an attempt to sweep the problem under the rug.
Have you been on the subway lately? I've been riding it regularly since the 80s, and while it's not at the same level of disorder it was back then, there has been significant backsliding. It's easy to say "statistics" if you're not seeing the decay with your own eyes every day. And one difference the statistics don't reflect is that the usual levels of disorder are coming closer to home for the average commuter, and more frighteningly. Whereas in the past if someone was the victim of a violent crime on the subway, it was because they were riding late at night and, if you read the police report carefully, maybe up to no good themselves (think crack fiend on crack fiend violence). In the past, it was unusual to hear about violent crime during the day. Now, more and more, regular commuters at busy stations are being victimized at random, not being robbed of their possessions, which at least has some rational basis, but instead they are being slashed by strangers, unprovoked, or being pushed on to the tracks by the mentally ill. When someone gets stabbed at "your" station during rush hour, all the statistics you have don't mean anything.
I've been riding regularly since 2013, and I don't worry about my safety at all. The statistics do mean things, in fact--they mean that riding the subway is safer than driving, walking or bicycling. It's important to have an accurate understanding of the world, rather than relying on vibes and sensationalism. If you disagree...why?
If you've only been riding the subway for the last ten years, you're part of the cohort that has never known real chaos on the subway, and perhaps you're blind to the warning signs of what could come next.
Also, relying only on cold statistics isn't always useful in the real world. As I described above, what's changed is the nature and timing of crime on the subway, not just the raw numbers. Before I could protect myself simply by not riding late at night (a luxury for the professional class, good luck keeping with that if you work the late shift), and by sticking to well-trafficked stations. Now even if I keep to myself and act sensibly, I could still become the victim of the more random crime that has become the norm. The random, violent turn that subway crime has taken doesn't show up in the statistics you're relying on.
It's very interesting to me that you're not making the obvious comparison to cars here. After all, if you're driving or walking you can just as easily become the victim of someone else's violence, totally randomly--a drunk driver plows into your car, or someone fleeing a police chase drives onto the sidewalk, or a truck makes a right turn across a crosswalk without looking (all of these are from just the last couple weeks in NYC). Overall traffic deaths are substantially higher than deaths on the subway, and injuries are even more incredibly disproportionate; why does the subway freak you out so much, but driving apparently doesn't?
For starters, like most subway riders in NYC, I don't own a car. Most of the carnage driving the statistics you cite are what we might call car-on-car violence. Since I never sit behind the wheel of a car in NYC, and only rarely sit in the back seat of one, getting in a car crash isn't high on my list of things to worry about.
As for the other bad things that happen, yes, I know they exist. A colleague's father was killed last year when a joyriding teenager sped a sports car onto the sidewalk, killing him. Another colleague was out of work for three months when a car ran over her foot as she walked in a crosswalk. You can be minding your own business as a pedestrian, and bad things can still happen to you. But I don't lump this in with "travel" or "transportation" or getting from A to B. I associate it with the background noise of bad things that are rare but might happen to me anytime I leave my apartment. I could get hit by a falling brick. I could trip on an uneven sidewalk and break my ankle. I could get mugged. Some of those things I can make efforts to prevent (watch the sidewalk for potholes, don't walk down a dark alley at night, etc.). But the uptick in subway crime is so scary because so much more of it is random and unpredictable. That's why it puts me (and lots of other people) on edge.
Your comment about not liking New York as a kid hits home with me. I grew up in southern Wisconsin and going to Chicago meant sitting on the highway after an hour or two, finding parking etc. It was ordeal. A couple years ago I was able to stay downtown and walk around, and I realized how much more I enjoyed it
One of the things I loved about Jim and Deborah Fallows' Our Towns series of stories several years ago (now gathered in a book) was how it highlighted all the many good things happening all over the country. Most of it never came to the attention of the national press or a wider audience. Here's a story about the series: https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2018/04/our-towns-fallows
I feel the power of living in a place like that. Just last week, Cincinnati city council passed a new zoning ordinance called Connected Communities. Over time it will overturn generations of zoning restrictions that have prevented us from building the kind of housing that was common until the 1940s, especially along major transportation corridors and neighborhood business districts. It faced an enormous amount of opposition from well-connected people and communities, and will likely cost some council members votes in the 2025 council elections.
They passed it anyway. It was the right thing to do, and it will likely cost them votes in the 2025 election. Taking bold stands like these is not something we associate with politicians at this point in our history.
I was looking forward to seeing how congestion pricing would improve future NYC visits (I have family there). I'm, too, am disappointed it's not going into effect as planned.
Yes, I was just in Cincinnati for the Strong Towns/CNU conference, and we were talking about that. I got the overall sense there that there's a trajectory - a sense of going somewhere. I really liked the mood.
I think this is important - I think most people in the country shrug their shoulders at a policy in NYC, and I think all of us miss the numerous ways people do work together across this country, in public policy, to get a lot of sensible things done. They probably get it done BECAUSE it's less visible, so it doesn't go viral and become part of the culture wars.
I also remember reading a review of the "Our Towns" documentary series, and the review was so cynical - "this isn't how the world really is." The reviewers were, objectively, wrong - most people don't talk about the latest thing on CNN or twitter. They talk about their days, their commutes, their kids' activities, their vacations and weekends. If they talk about "policy" these days it's usually somewhat guarded, or if not it's something that is recognizable to Our Towns and Strong Towns but not to national media - "new community rec center opening," "more sculptures and trees in the old downtown," "changing the bussing/dropoff policies for the schools."
I'm disheartened by the congestion pricing, mainly due to whether we can get things done - but a part of me recognizes that emotion is out of place, because the attention given to this issue is probably unfair and not reflective of a lot that is going right even in NYC, and another part of me thinks that if those things going right get attention...they maybe get scooped up in the culture war so, let it be.
Wait wait back up. Why are we talking about New Jersey suburbanites at all?
How and why do the opinions of people who not only don’t live in NYC but don’t even live in New York STATE have any bearing on what NYC does?
Hi, you nailed it. I wrote a message to Gov Hochul saying the same thing: You've gained zero improvement in suburbanites opinion of you, but you have sent a very clear message to New Yorkers to just not bother trying advocacy. Why spend years working on something just for it to be banned in a fit of pique? And so forth.
I don't know what reforms need to get done to allow localized FAFO, but we won't have localized YIMBY without it.
She got herself primaried for sure. Hopefully Adams gets it too. What a couple of bozos.
One other thing I wanted to add - it is hard for me to understand the perspective of folks afraid of taking the train into and around NYC, just because I was also born and raised in a couple of Jersey suburbs, and taking the train was the default method for getting into and especially around the city. Driving to the city was an exceptional event when I was a kid, meant for when you had a critical mass of people stuffed into Ford Taurus that would definitely be considered child endangerment in this day and age.
I don't want to be harsh on people who think of NYC as any other place in America that needs ample parking...but it is a hard thing for me to understand.
While I have been no fan of congestion pricing for NYC, I am still puzzled by the resentment that Jerseyites feel about it. People from New Jersey have always had to pay to cross the Hudson, even in colonial times (even if you owned your own boat, you still had to pay to moor it somewhere). With generations of Jersey residents accustomed to paying tolls to come into Manhattan, why was congestion pricing a bridge too far for them, so to speak?
Hochul's stated reasons for her last-minute reversal are unconvincing, but there may be other forces at work behind the scenes. In 2022, Republicans gained a narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representative due in part to an unexpectedly strong performance in suburban New York. If they are able to convince voters in swing districts that congestion pricing will add to their inflation woes, they might have the same advantage in 2024. Politco summarized the politics pretty well here: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/05/new-york-city-toll-hochul-democrats-00161930
If there is a Republican majority in Congress and if Trump returns to power, then any meaningful action on climate change at the national level will be out of the question. Looking at the big picture, then, the best overall play may be to temporarily take congestion pricing off the table until we are assured of not having Republican domination of all three branches of government. Of course, the risk is that an indefinite pause becomes a permanent cancellation. I have no idea of whether and how Governor Hochul plans to avoid that outcome.
The problem is that she forgot she owes something to people of NYC too. If everything is about elections, nothing gets done. NYC is moving to the right because of bad governance and Trumpy cops and other bigots. She is not going to get them back. NYC will never support her again too because she lost the core voters.
It's funny. I'm a woman, born in 1950. I came to New York in 1968 to go to college and stayed on till 1982. I lived in Manhattan the whole time, rode the subway constantly, and never was a crime victim during all my years in the city. I was a witness to two purse snatchings, and even then, there were dozens of people around who were not crime victims.
In 1981-1982, after I had completed my NYC apprenticeship, I drove a cab and enjoyed the experience. Of course, the fact that I was separated from my passengers with a thick metal plate in the seat back and one inch of plexiglass glass, contributed to my sense of security. The foundation of security is awareness. You have to keep an eye out on all sides, and even to the back, and discretely keep your distance from oddballs.
Contrast this with my sister's neighbor who lives in the Washington DC suburbs, but has never been downtown, “Because it is too dangerous.”
Very thoughtful. I think Hochul is being honest when she says congestion pricing is being paused. She is not being honest about the reason for the pause. It will be implemented after the fall elections. Substantial funds have already been spent on the infrastructure for the program. Second, the MTA does not need the money. Both their operating costs and construction costs are well above those of comparable transit agencies. In addition, fare evasion is a significant problem which costs the MTA about $700 million a year. This is well over half of what the MTA hopes to realize from congestion pricing. In short, the MTA could obtain the funds which it hopes to raise through congestion pricing by reducing fare evasion and carrying out needed economies in operating and construction costs. Third, congestion pricing will reroute much truck traffic from Manhattan to the Bronx & NJ with attendant increases in pollution and road maintenance costs. As a matter of policy, this seems undesirable.
Will rerouting trucks to New Jersey and the Bronx reduce the number of lungs that will be sucking in that pollution?
One note - I think there’s another undercurrent here. We are seeing so much incompetence in our cities generally on issues really important to people. Crime, disorder, education, and more. People who don’t read Vox every day notice this. So when the basics aren’t being done well, society loses faith that the same people can execute big change or big projects. If we actually did the basics well and efficiently, the whole dynamic might change.
Excellent piece
I do think that's the biggest thing - that something which affects a small number of the people who live, work, or play in a unique but iconic part of America became this whole big thing that everyone had opinions on - but most of us don't matter.
But it does lead to this sense that even trying to change anything is impossible - it's not true, of course. Bike lanes are suddenly prevalent whereas they didn't exist 15 years ago. But the more visible anything you do is, the more likely it is to get picked up as part of a culture war. And then someone somewhere with some power over a process that maybe doesn't affect them will find the right chokepoint to veto it. Doing anything these days requires you to be stealthy and under the radar.
By not arrest I don't mean don't punish - I think an escalating fine sort of like traffic tickets would be plenty. (In theory fare evasion in D.C. will get you a $100 ticket, but they're rarely written.) Failure to pay a toll in your car is sort of similar, I think if you get a ticket by mail and don't pay you get a fine that's many multiples of the toll. The problem (similar to traffic enforcement) is that the punishment on paper is often a deterrence but the chance of getting caught is small. Even a *smaller*, but predictable, penalty would probably do more to change behavior.
You know, I probably would have agreed with you at one time here, but I've had this discussion with a lot of people and am pretty convinced by the argument that motorists routinely put people in more danger and rarely face any criminal repercussions. I would never have thought this back then, but now I do find it hard not to see a bias when speeding, parking violations, and toll violations are treated as somehow different from fare evasion, even though they're offenses of about the same magnitude. Both "steal" from a public realm or service in some sense, and one creates much more danger for others.
Frankly, fares are inefficient. Why not just abolish them entirely and make the whole system run smoother?
Forgive me for not taking seriously the opinion of someone who doesn’t know the difference between “fare” and “fair”