Renegade334
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Why exempt taxi and for hire vehicles from the congestion charge?
Also does this include I93? I'd be in favor of I93 congestion charges, especially during rush hour. It should have been implemented from the start to help pay for the big dig.
The primary concern is discouraging SOV commuting from the burbs. People taking a taxi from one part of the city to another is not the worst kind of automobile trip. In particular, the taxi never parks and serves many many customers going in both directions across the boundary.
Taxis sit in Taxi stands. Plus what about Uber/Lyft, they have a larger market share then Taxi's these days. Uber/Lyft cars dead-mile less than Taxis. Taxing Uber/Lyft and not Taxis would create unfair competition imho.
Nobody said anything about excluding Uber/Lyft. The exclusion should be for all for-hire car services.
And Boston absolutely does have a "robust public transit system", especially in any area that would be covered by a congestion charge. For all the T's faults it still does an amazing amount of work and serves hundreds of thousands of people reliably every single day.
^ I'm pretty sure that "minimum wage office cleaner" don't drive (and park!) downtown to get to work... Congestion charges vary by time, anyway, so reverse commuters and night workers would be spared.
And Boston absolutely does have a "robust public transit system", especially in any area that would be covered by a congestion charge. For all the T's faults it still does an amazing amount of work and serves hundreds of thousands of people reliably every single day.
I agree that congestion charging is a no-go politically in Boston, but not because it will unfairly stick the little guy.
Thank you for that.
To quantify, the MBTA daily ridership is 1.3 million, so approximately 650,000 people served. Many folks have a very jaded perspective on the T, I guess people just need to have something to complain about. It isn't perfect, but that doesn't make it an utter failure. It is the beating heart of Metro Boston's economy.
I'll further add that the whole point of this brainstorming is to make Boston work better. As long as enough car-dependent people have a stranglehold on the public ways, then our buses are destined to continue their mediocre performance. If we clean out a significant percentage of traffic and on-street parking then we will unlock tremendous untapped potential in the MBTA through network effects.
Boston congestion pricing is not going to happen any time in the next couple of decades, and probably never in any of our lifetimes. Remember that this is a state that used a ballot referendum to knock down the idea of tying the gas tax to inflation, and this is a city that still gives away unlimited resident parking permits for free. No way a congestion charge will fly politically. Let's start charging more for parking and driving in general, then we can think about congestion pricing.
But even putting that aside, $9 strikes me as serious overkill. Start with a buck or two and work from there. The thing with congestion is that its relationship with traffic volume is far from linear; a small decrease in the number of cars on the road can do a lot to clear up congestion.
Tying the tax to inflation was an absurd idea. If it needs to be raised in the future, our servants on Beacon Hill can take the heat and raise it when it needs to be raised.