Congestion toll in Boston?

[stick n move]

When we talk about congestion pricing, it should apply to Downtown, Back Bay, etc where transportation is good. It shouldn't apply to suburb to suburb commutes.

Nobody talked about congestion tolls for suburb to suburb commutes. The only mention of suburb to suburb commutes was that in order for the commuter rail to be a true alternative to driving and take substantial cars off the highways it needs to also address this. Not all suburbs, but “suburb to suburb” as in Quincy to Lynn, Chelsea to West Roxbury and all other number of alternatives possible.

 

[cadetcarl]

Many points made well here. My own experience as a motorist reflects a lot of what is being said, that the decision to take any route or mode is the result of a number of inputs. I know and care that my car emits a non-zero and non-trivial amount of carbon, I know what I can afford in terms of time and money to get around, and I know that everyone around me is performing the same calculation--I do not mean to moralize.

I think what's jumping out is that insofar as I do take a moral position on cars it's that their comfort/convenience proposition sometimes makes them a more attractive mode than we can collectively afford, and I might just be projecting because sometimes I drive when I could take the train or bus. I guess it comes down to whether you think people are already making the most rational choice (even as they define it) or whether this comfort softness exists.

 

[fattony]

What those numbers tell me is that 123,000 people that live in the suburbs have a train that runs on the time they need, to a station they need.

I'm trying to keep this discussion grounded in reality without baseless and essentially meaningless assertions like "commuter rail is not viable."

The fundamental rules of transit geometry are such that you CANNOT serve many people in low density places. The only people who will ever ride commuter rail are "the people that live in the suburbs have a train that runs on the time they need, to a station they need." There is no amount of upgrades to commuter rail that makes that more than a small percentage of the people in those suburbs.

Can ridership double? Yep. Triple? Yeah, probably over several decades time frame. That will still be a small percentage of the people in the suburbs.

Can ridership increase ten-fold? No, it cannot under any scenario, so don't accidentally make that your objective. Speaking in all-or-nothing terms is not going to get you results. We are talking about nudging things in the right direction, not overhauling the world.

The objective of congestion tolls is to get a modest number of people to switch from driving to "not driving" (which either means taking transit, making the trip another time, or not making the trip at all). It does not require giving everyone a trip to everywhere on a choo-choo. It does not mean nobody will drive. It does not mean that the people who drive won't still experience some amount of congestion.



My overarching point is that massive commuter rail upgrades are NOT a prerequisite for congestion tolling. They will help and should get underway right away. I'm all for big upgrades to commuter rail. But we can and should do congestion pricing today.

 

[stick n move]

I'm trying to keep this discussion grounded in reality without baseless and essentially meaningless assertions like "commuter rail is not viable."

The fundamental rules of transit geometry are such that you CANNOT serve many people in low density places. The only people who will ever ride commuter rail are "the people that live in the suburbs have a train that runs on the time they need, to a station they need." There is no amount of upgrades to commuter rail that makes that more than a small percentage of the people in those suburbs.

Can ridership double? Yep. Triple? Yeah, probably over several decades time frame. That will still be a small percentage of the people in the suburbs.

Can ridership increase ten-fold? No, it cannot under any scenario, so don't accidentally make that your objective. Speaking in all-or-nothing terms is not going to get you results. We are talking about nudging things in the right direction, not overhauling the world.

The objective of congestion tolls is to get a modest number of people to switch from driving to "not driving" (which either means taking transit, making the trip another time, or not making the trip at all). It does not require giving everyone a trip to everywhere on a choo-choo. It does not mean nobody will drive. It does not mean that the people who drive won't still experience some amount of congestion.



My overarching point is that massive commuter rail upgrades are NOT a prerequisite for congestion tolling. They will help and should get underway right away. I'm all for big upgrades to commuter rail. But we can and should do congestion pricing today.

If you are then lets keep it there, I am as well. Im not talking about anything overarching. Im talking about electrifying the CR, and doing the NSRL to take a lot more cars off the road than the system, as it is now, is doing... Thats it. Im talking about alternative 6 in the Rail Vision study.

Im not saying the CR can replace all cars. Idk how I got lumped into the anti car box but in this thread someone else was the one saying get rid of all drivers and I was against that saying the CR needs to be upgraded to bring down congestion, not replace every single car. That being said a well functioning and integrated CR and subway system has the potential to replace A LOT more (not all) cars trips with rail trips than are now, by doing alternative 6. The CR at full build would allow the CR and subway to function together as a legitimate alternative to many car trips taken in metro Boston, not only fuctioning as a ride to and from work at 9-5 hours, but a legitimate way of getting around between places served by both systems on both sides of Boston.

 

[TheMagicMan]

The congestion tax should be a $15 dollar a day fee to really encourage those who don't make enough money to be forced to take the T. Out of state workers should be charged double.

 

[cadetcarl]

The fundamental rules of transit geometry are such that you CANNOT serve many people in low density places. The only people who will ever ride commuter rail are "the people that live in the suburbs have a train that runs on the time they need, to a station they need." There is no amount of upgrades to commuter rail that makes that more than a small percentage of the people in those suburbs.

Can ridership double? Yep. Triple? Yeah, probably over several decades time frame. That will still be a small percentage of the people in the suburbs.

True, but what about the goal of moving the "where everyone has to live and work" needle in the other direction? A true high-functioning rail network would over time undo the Boston-or-nothing pressure on getting people into and out of the CBD every day. It spreads out where in the region things can be for equal or better travel time, which induces people to move there, and some services would follow people. Halving the time it takes to get from Lowell or Worcester or pick your favorite underperforming satellite also means halving the time to it. I don't know if that's good for x2 or x5 or x10 but it would flatten the distinction between "city" and "suburbs" significantly.

 

[stick n move]

Just so nobody is confused about what I was saying, nowhere was I saying that the CR will replace car trips between the suburbs and nobody in Ma will need a car ever again if we fix the CR. My suburb to suburb comment was only made to point out that it CAN also extend the Boston area to be ABLE TO include more trips like Lynn to Quincy type trips. Not milford to Walpole, or replacing all cars.

It just means MORE people have MORE options.

Options are the point. Driving, CR, subway, Uber, walking, biking... are all needed for an efficient city. It CAN make it so some people who can only drive right now, MAY be able to take a train instead to more places than they can now.

That wasnt even the main point though. The main point is making the whole transit network more connected by having both sides connected, and downtown, so more people than now, have more options.

 

[jklo]

The objective of congestion tolls is to get a modest number of people to switch from driving to "not driving" (which either means taking transit, making the trip another time, or not making the trip at all).

And lose the economic activity? That's why I would assume Big Biz would kill off any proposal that got off the ground.

 

[fattony]

True, but what about the goal of moving the "where everyone has to live and work" needle in the other direction? A true high-functioning rail network would over time undo the Boston-or-nothing pressure on getting people into and out of the CBD every day. It spreads out where in the region things can be for equal or better travel time, which induces people to move there, and some services would follow people. Halving the time it takes to get from Lowell or Worcester or pick your favorite underperforming satellite also means halving the time to it. I don't know if that's good for x2 or x5 or x10 but it would flatten the distinction between "city" and "suburbs" significantly.

Density near transit, regardless of which end of the line, is the key. To put it in the same terms as your last sentence, to need to make little pockets of "city" in the "suburbs."

You can provide all the transit to Lowell you want, but if there is not much accessible on-foot from the train once you get there, you won't stimulate many trips. If you want people to commute to Lowell by commuter rail, then you need Lowell government to up-zone the commercial density around their station and then you need private money to come in and take advantage of that new zoning. Along with that commercial density you need some local residential density. If you cannot get commercial density in a given community, then residential density alone will have to suffice. That is a long and complicated recipe. I think fostering that process is at least as important as getting the transit built because there is no point in building trains to nowhere.

And before anyone gets testy that I called their favorite suburb "nowhere" let me frame this in the context of the transit rider. The time on the train is just part of the equation. There is a lot that goes into the total time of a transit trip and a lot of it is the walk from the ultimate origin to the ultimate destination. 5 minute or shorter walks are good. 10 minute walks are about the limit for most people. 20 minute walks are a non-starter for all but the most dedicated. That gives you an approximately 0.5 mile radius around each transit station to actually be useful for transit trips (called the walkshed). A little less if the pedestrian infrastructure is weak as it is around train tracks in many places. That's not much area. It really doesn't matter to a transit rider what the world looks like outside the walkshed, because the rider is never going to walk that far.

The reason transit works in cities is because the stop spacing on rapid transit (typically 0.5-1 mile) is well matched to typical urban density. You can string together lots of stations with overlapping walkshed to create one large contiguous dense area. Commuter rail, with multiple miles between stops, doesn't facilitate that at all. The best we can hope for is for municipalities to INTENSELY densify the walkshed around their station and provide top notch pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure to extend that walkshed as far as possible. What happens beyond about 0.5 miles from the station can be business as usual.

When there are enough origins and destinations in the walkshed, then it starts to matter how quickly and often the trains get there.

 

[fattony]

And lose the economic activity? That's why I would assume Big Biz would kill off any proposal that got off the ground.

What economic activity would be lost? Rationally, only trips that are worth less than the congestion charge would be lost. By definition, only low-value trips are lost.

 

[DominusNovus]

I'm trying to keep this discussion grounded in reality without baseless and essentially meaningless assertions like "commuter rail is not viable."

The fundamental rules of transit geometry are such that you CANNOT serve many people in low density places. The only people who will ever ride commuter rail are "the people that live in the suburbs have a train that runs on the time they need, to a station they need." There is no amount of upgrades to commuter rail that makes that more than a small percentage of the people in those suburbs.

Can ridership double? Yep. Triple? Yeah, probably over several decades time frame. That will still be a small percentage of the people in the suburbs.

Can ridership increase ten-fold? No, it cannot under any scenario, so don't accidentally make that your objective. Speaking in all-or-nothing terms is not going to get you results. We are talking about nudging things in the right direction, not overhauling the world.

The objective of congestion tolls is to get a modest number of people to switch from driving to "not driving" (which either means taking transit, making the trip another time, or not making the trip at all). It does not require giving everyone a trip to everywhere on a choo-choo. It does not mean nobody will drive. It does not mean that the people who drive won't still experience some amount of congestion.



My overarching point is that massive commuter rail upgrades are NOT a prerequisite for congestion tolling. They will help and should get underway right away. I'm all for big upgrades to commuter rail. But we can and should do congestion pricing today.

I have to disagree. The voters need to see some tangible benefits to them if they’re going to pay more money. And they need to seem them first. Just look at the hell that was raised when MassDOT toyed with the idea of making the pike cheaper off hours.

 

[jklo]

What economic activity would be lost? Rationally, only trips that are worth less than the congestion charge would be lost. By definition, only low-value trips are lost.

Tourism was the one that came to my mind first. People driving in from out of state. The other thought is Weston CEOs (who drive always) using it as a reason to not have their businesses Downtown.

I just don't know if Boston "can get away with it" at this point. But there are for sure a ton of people who could be taking the Commuter Rail but don't.

 

[cadetcarl]

Starting to get pretty difficult to project what those kinds of things might be without hard figures.

Weston CEOs who could move their companies to 128 vs a younger workforce with little desire to work in suburban office parks, who wins?

People who think "was gonna drive the family up to Boston but the tolls are crazy nowadays, I guess Hartford is good enough" vs people who grumble "man it's getting even more expensive to catch a Sox game" but didn't already mind paying $50 event parking near Fenway vs people who would be tourists anyway, who wins?

We're still talking the core at peak times right? After the adjustments to game the system work themselves out, all the people who'd drive to the edge of the zone and only pay $10 to save a few bucks off the toll, tourists who are warned to just use the train if they don't want to drain their wallets, etc. how many of those cars are really left? How many of them do we realistically want?

 

[tysmith95]

Part of it is drivers paying their fair share of the big dig, when transit prices keep increasing.

 

[dshoost88]

What economic activity would be lost? Rationally, only trips that are worth less than the congestion charge would be lost. By definition, only low-value trips are lost.

Tourism was the one that came to my mind first. People driving in from out of state. The other thought is Weston CEOs (who drive always) using it as a reason to not have their businesses Downtown.

I just don't know if Boston "can get away with it" at this point. But there are for sure a ton of people who could be taking the Commuter Rail but don't.

Starting to get pretty difficult to project what those kinds of things might be without hard figures.

Weston CEOs who could move their companies to 128 vs a younger workforce with little desire to work in suburban office parks, who wins?

People who think "was gonna drive the family up to Boston but the tolls are crazy nowadays, I guess Hartford is good enough" vs people who grumble "man it's getting even more expensive to catch a Sox game" but didn't already mind paying $50 event parking near Fenway vs people who would be tourists anyway, who wins?

We're still talking the core at peak times right? After the adjustments to game the system work themselves out, all the people who'd drive to the edge of the zone and only pay $10 to save a few bucks off the toll, tourists who are warned to just use the train if they don't want to drain their wallets, etc. how many of those cars are really left? How many of them do we realistically want?

I like data, so let me throw this in for your consideration.

London DataStore has international visitor data dating from 2002 to 2018 available in Excel format on their website.

Though not associated with tourism dollars spent by UK residents arriving to the city by car, it does illustrate international tourism visitor numbers and pounds spent (their currency) during the same time frame the London Congestion Charge was introduced (February 2003).

The number of international visits to London:
2002 = 11,603,000
2017 = 19,828,000

Total amount by international visitors to London:
2002: £5,788,000,000
2017: £13,546,000,000

Taking these variables into consideration, the City of London clearly thrived economically during the time lapse since the introduction of their congestion charge zone. Although this says little about the impact to local travelers to the region by car, what it does demonstrate is that such a charge will not adversely impact a region's ability to increase tourism spending.

 

[DominusNovus]

I like data, so let me throw this in for your consideration.

London DataStore has international visitor data dating from 2002 to 2018 available in Excel format on their website.

Though not associated with tourism dollars spent by UK residents arriving to the city by car, it does illustrate international tourism visitor numbers and pounds spent (their currency) during the same time frame the London Congestion Charge was introduced (February 2003).

The number of international visits to London:
2002 = 11,603,000
2017 = 19,828,000

Total amount by international visitors to London:
2002: £5,788,000,000
2017: £13,546,000,000

Taking these variables into consideration, the City of London clearly thrived economically during the time lapse since the introduction of their congestion charge zone. Although this says little about the impact to local travelers to the region by car, what it does demonstrate is that such a charge will not adversely impact a region's ability to increase tourism spending.

Correlation does not mean causation. There could be a connection there, but you’ll need a lot more data points to prove that premise.

 

[tysmith95]

If you put streets on a diet and instituted more pedestrian zones, I'd argue that you'd definitely get more tourism to Boston. It would be unique for the US.

 

[jklo]

Weston CEOs who could move their companies to 128 vs a younger workforce with little desire to work in suburban office parks, who wins?

I was thinking more just outside of the zone. Guess it would depend on where the zone is and isn't. If it's just Downtown and the North End, that would be easy to move to some other part of the city.

 

[fattony]

I was thinking more just outside of the zone. Guess it would depend on where the zone is and isn't. If it's just Downtown and the North End, that would be easy to move to some other part of the city.

There is nothing easy about relocating a company. It would take a heck of a lot more than saving a few dollars per day (for the employees, not even the company itself) to justify the massive cost and disruption of relocating. You don’t spend much time thinking before you post, do you?

 

[jl326]

Yea I think he just needs to get a pass on that 1. We all have off days and make mistakes, sometimes we say something absolutely ridiiiiiiiiculous as hell. Ill just pretend that didnt happen, welcome him back to reality, n move on lol. Im sure once he came back the next day and looked at that comment.. he was like hmmmm... welp, what a freakin disaaaaster of a comment that was. He gets a pass haha.

LOL.. I like your optimism, but unfortunately no. This Kinopio loon regularly spews the same kind of shit everywhere. He could turn an article about puppies into a pathetic tirade about how all drivers = criminals. It’s tiresome and well into mental illness territory. And I say this one who supports congestion tolling and investment into public transit infrastructure (though along with much more scrutiny into how the T spends its money).