Congestion toll in Boston?

bigpicture7 said:
^Goes into individual towns' budgets for their operation, NOT the MBTA
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Why on Earth should the cost of my car be used to subsidize the MBTA in any way, shape, or form? The argument seems to boil down to making me pay more so your commute can be cheaper.

Again, if you want to propose more fees but won't be the one who actually has to pay those fees, then TAKE A HIKE.
 
DZH22 said:
Why on Earth should the cost of my car be used to subsidize the MBTA in any way, shape, or form? The argument seems to boil down to making me pay more so your commute can be cheaper.

Again, if you want to propose more fees but won't be the one who actually has to pay those fees, then TAKE A HIKE.
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Because you as a driver DIRECTLY benefit from other potential motorists vacating the road (and using transit instead) so that YOU can use it!

And I use a combination of transportation modes, and on occasion, will most certainly pay such fees.
 
Motorists fees and tolls pay about 40 to 60% of our total spending on roads.
The rest comes from sales income and property taxes.

What all of us are supposed to be getting for all of our monies is systems that provide optimal mobility.

All other taxes miss this peak-time component of supply and demand. Only a congestion charge properly asks the question "are sure you need to drive right here right now?"

(The MBTA commuter rail fare structure already has a congestion charge. The highest prices are charged for entering the terminal district on weekdays. Weekends are now a flat discounted $10 all weekend. Interzone fares in the outer regions are also cheap on a per mile basis. the expensive thing on commuter rail is now a trip that begins or ends in the congestion zone on weekdays
 
DZH22 said:
Again, how are you subsidizing me? Blanket statements are inadmissible in a debate. I pay the gas tax, excise tax, tax when I purchase a vehicle, tax on all maintenance, and a never-ending parade of yearly fees.

If you want to talk about subsidizing, how about the rest of the state is forced to subsidize the MBTA, even when it doesn't reach all of those towns? How about drivers are subsidizing bikers to be on the roads that are paid through the above taxes?

It's easy to frame an argument to suit your agenda. If you can afford to live right on the T, then you can afford to pay more and not make the people who can't afford to live there in the first place subsidize YOUR lifestyle.

At the end of the day, if you are making the argument that certain people should pay more, and you're not one of those people, then you can take a hike.
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You caught me (see the emphasis added to your text). Yes, I made a blanket statement, you correctly called me on it, then proceeded to make several blanket statements. There's a reason I put it the way I did in my first post, and it was because you were guilty of what you now decry.

However, sometimes blanket statements are true. It is true, for example, that road maintenance is a cost shared by all tax payers, whether or not we use the roads. Add to that the externalities that we don't bother to address at all, such as pollution, not to mention the question of why a public resource (land, owned by all of us in common) should be so heavily dedicated to an inefficient activity. We can't have an honest debate about this unless you start to acknowledge some of the facts about how your choices impact not only your own circumstance but also that of others.
 
HenryAlan said:
No, you don't. Road maintenance is primarily paid for by general funds, which means it is subsidized by all tax payers, regardless of utilization.
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Tell the city to take my share out of Liberty Mutual or GE tax incentive.
 
TheRifleman said:
Tell the city to take my share out of Liberty Mutual or GE tax incentive.
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Don't you live in Everett or some place north of the city? Those two tax incentives don't really impact you unless you live in Boston. Also, non-sequitor.
 
bigpicture7 said:
Because you as a driver DIRECTLY benefit from other potential motorists vacating the road (and using transit instead) so that YOU can use it!
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I CAN USE IT ANYWAY! I have had my license for 20 years, and traffic around here has been hell for 20 years. I know what the deal is!

Frankly, the only people this truly benefits are the rich. The rich would love to have totally clear roads for just $5/day. This leads me to believe that you must be a rich driver.

If you already ride the T, then you know that the T is overcrowded and very inconsistent. Adding more people into an overloaded system is not going to fix anything!

So at the end of the day, I believe I am arguing with rich people who want to use their privilege to keep the peons off the road. Frankly, I will stay on the road and I hope it makes you all MISERABLE because I HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO BE ON IT THAT YOU DO!
 
DZH22 said:
This leads me to believe that you must be a rich driver.
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Nope, just a different person than you.

DZH22 said:
If you already ride the T...
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Yup, I commute to work every day on the T, and use a car for non-routine specific personal obligations on a fairly frequent basis.

DZH22 said:
...then you know that the T is overcrowded and very inconsistent.
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Yup, my commute sucks and takes about 30mins longer than it should because of how much the T sucks.

DZH22 said:
Adding more people into an overloaded system is not going to fix anything!
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No, but money from a congestion charge will!
I believe the roads are at/near max capacity.
I believe the T is NOT at max capacity. New O/R cars, GL Type 10s, and new signals will substantially increase capacity.
Therefore, shifting some people and some money toward the T will both fix its problems and absorb more commuters.

DZH22 said:
So at the end of the day, I believe I am arguing with rich people who want to use their privilege to keep the peons off the road. Frankly, I will stay on the road and I hope it makes you all MISERABLE because I HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO BE ON IT THAT YOU DO!
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Can't speak for other aB'rs richness.

But, since my personal values are "take the high road", I 100% don't care that you personally will still be driving...in fact, I do not care that a portion of the population will never agree...what I care about is a better overall system and higher overall quality of life for greater Bostonians.

So if there's some percentage of you that continue to do your thing, great. Democracy doesn't require 100% consensus.
 
bigpicture7 said:
Yup, I commute to work every day on the T, and use a car for non-routine specific personal obligations on a fairly frequent basis.

No, but money from a congestion charge will!
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Do you need to drive to the T, or do you live right by it? This makes a MAJOR difference in both time and cost.

Again, why should one set of commuters be asked to supplement another set of commuters? A congestion charge should be used to pay for the roads, period. I shouldn't have to prop up a system that I choose to stay away from.
 
DZH22 said:
I will stay on the road and I hope it makes you all MISERABLE because I HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO BE ON IT THAT YOU DO!
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Solid mature argument.

Your weird sense of entitlement is blinding you to the facts. Very simple question: Why do you feel your use of roads should be subsidized by taxpayers? That is all this comes down to.
 
Justin7 said:
Your weird sense of entitlement is blinding you to the facts. Very simple question: Why do you feel your use of roads should be subsidized by taxpayers? That is all this comes down to.
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I am a taxpayer. I live on a road and not right by transit. I help pay for these roads. I should have the right to use the roads without an extra penalty to help subsidize anything other than the roads.
 
^ So you are fine with congestion tolling if it directly pays for road maintenance?
 
We all know people who say "I don't really mind sitting in my car in rush hour traffic." In my life these are the people who live in
Billerica or New Hampshire.

But what they are really saying is, "I don't mind being congestion"

But congestion imposes social costs. The more congestion you are in, the more congestion you are making. (When you are IN traffic, you ARE traffic).

In Philadelphia and Virginia and now in Westchester New York, they have what is called ramp metering. They make you sit in a timeout at a traffic light, and undergo your delay by yourself sitting on an omramp, rather than imposing it on a nearby freeway (I-276, I-66, I-287).

This is a form of congestion pricing. It asks you to waste your time on a ramp as a way of making sure that this trip really has to occur now, and by making sure the highway itself never bogs down.

The problem is it is a pure waste-- a pure punishment imposed on individual congestion makers. It simply makes the individual eat his own deadweight loss that he would otherwise spread across the system.

(On interstates ramp metering is the only legal way of imposing any kind of individual cost on roads that, by law, have to be toll free. Technically it is not a toll, but it is an individual cost)

Extracting a monetary toll is a much better system. Rather than throw you in stoplight jail for a time, it extracts a toll, which then can improve everyone's commutes (by both decongesting the roads and speeding and improving Transit alteratives).
 
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DZH22 said:
I am a taxpayer. I live on a road and not right by transit. I help pay for these roads. I should have the right to use the roads without an extra penalty to help subsidize anything other than the roads.
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I am a taxpayer. I live on a transit line and not right by any major roads. I help pay for the transit lines. I should have the right to use the transit lines without an extra penalty (like T fares) to help subsidize anything other than the transit lines.

Fixed it for you.
 
Justin7 said:
^ So you are fine with congestion tolling if it directly pays for road maintenance?
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No, but mainly because I know that's not what it's going towards. For instance, the tolls on Route 90 were supposed to be removed when the highway was paid for, and have instead remained forever.

It would be one thing if there were zero-sum actions to spread the costs out onto more roads (and not just 90 or the Tobin bridge). However, it's obvious that the state sees these things as a cash cow. The tolls should be enough to keep the roads paid for, but instead will far surpass that and only get more expensive over time. It's hard to put faith in even MORE tolls when we were so blatantly lied to regarding the ones on the Mass Pike.

Regarding public transit, if MBTA workers were forced into 401k's instead of pensions like the rest of the country, the T would probably be solvent. Congestion pricing is like putting on a bandaid without cleaning the wound first. It's just more money to be directed towards wasteful government spending. The MBTA needs to make wholesale changes and I hate the thought of being asked to direct more of my hard-earned money towards a broken system. (as an aside, I earned my Masters of Accounting and we spent a long time examining why pensions DO NOT WORK and eventually lead to bankruptcies)
 
For the record, Being unwilling to be physically close to other people is literally the definition of "anti-social"

it should be unsurprising that anti-social preferences and anti-social behaviors (like taking 1000sqft of right of way to move 4sqft of person at rush hour) impose social costs on others.
 
You're obfuscating. I'm not asking for faith. I'm asking if you would be fine with a hypothetical congestion toll if the funds directly paid for road costs. Simple yes or no.
 
JeffDowntown said:
I am a taxpayer. I live on a transit line and not right by any major roads. I help pay for the transit lines. I should have the right to use the transit lines without an extra penalty (like T fares) to help subsidize anything other than the transit lines.

Fixed it for you.
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How much is your yearly insurance for taking the T? What are the extra yearly fees? Did you need to earn (and renew) a license to ride? Do you need to pay for the yearly T inspection? Do you pay separately for the train's fuel or is that part of the price of admission?

Do you have a road that runs by your house? If you ever needed emergency services, would they use that road or take the T to get to you? Do you ever go to stores or restaurants in your area, and would they be able to stay supplied without trucks on roads?

Also, how are you "helping to pay for transit lines" beyond paying for your monthly pass to ride?
 
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