Has anyone found any good videos explaining NYC congestion pricing? Most of what I’m finding are fear mongering news clips. I understand there is some subtlety to the issue and I was hoping some urbanist/bike/traffic engineering/numtot youtubers would have done an in depth review explaining whats good and whats not.
Sounds like you ran into a similar issue, my partner was giving me some carbrain talking points and I wanted to balance them with a researched perspecive.
I think part of the issue is that the congestion pricing plan has taken decades and as such has changed over time. A good lead to find details on the plan would be to search for videos with “Gridlock” Sam Schwartz. He has long been a name in traffic planning in NYC and a long time proponent of the plan.
However, I feel most of the issues with the plan involve people refusing change or unwilling to accept any cost. The two loudest groups I have heard are delivery trucks and the “commuters.” I believe in most cases that if your truckload of goods (in a vehicle getting single digit mpg) becomes unprofitable from a $25-36 surcharge (fee is based on size), then maybe that truck was too big. As for the “commuters,” they seem to mostly fall into two camps, the ones who pay $600+ a month for parking in the city already and feel violently attacked by the extra $3-400/mo, and the suburbanites who having uneventfully visited maybe twice in last decade describe NYC as the boogeyman yet think this is a vital issue personal to them.