New York City Plans Tolls To Enter Manhattan

this is a smart idea in both environmental and traffic reduction terms. nyc has the best mass trasit system in the US so there's really no need for people to be driving around in cars alone in the city.

Those people must be high!

I live here in NYC and let me tell you it is crowded. BUT there are a lot of needed improvements needed to be made to the subway system. I use it daily and drive only when venturing in Queens and Brooklyn or Long Island since there really is no need to drive it here in the city. But the subways are getting overcrowded at rush hour times. Sometimes having to wait 2 trains to squeeze your way on (the 4 or 5 express. So unless they are ready to add more rush hour commuter trains this could be a subway nightmare. I have a few friends who don't care since living in Manhattan and having the car already over we are not affected. However those living in any other 4 boroughs or NJ will be penalized....meaning those who make less money get penalized. A lot more thought would have to go into this. I am all for less traffic here in our wonderful city....but other things need to be fixed before that.

I live in Westchester and drive into the city often for business. I would hope that this plan would be a last resort. The cost to move goods through the city is only going to translate to higher prices for the consumer. The transit system over here is already one of the best in the world, but it needs more train cars and capacity before they can go ahead with this plan. And honeslty, don't we pay enough damn tolls as it is? Everytime I go to Long Island im paying $10 in tolls for a 30 minute ride. Enough is enough.

Provided there are other means of ingress and egress to the inner city?

yep 8 quid.
and they extended it to Kensington, which is odd, as the people in Kensington are the exact people who would drive to london, and they get a 90% discount. Now poor people are priced out of Kensington.
The Zone isn't far from my house, only about 2-3 miles.

I used to live in Westchester but always hated driving into Manhattan unless it was to attend an industrial show and provided I could just leave my car parked in the Colisseum. I wonder if the guy with the Viking horns and the guy wearing a wolf mask are still walking the streets of Manhattan?

This would cause a huge problem for many buinesses in Manhatten. If this does go into effect, many people will try to turn to alternatives just to not pay the entrance fee. I live in NYC too and the traffic is god awful as well as the roads. Its great to see that theyre trying to reduce pollution, but this will so piss off the city, especially visitors and businesses.

TheSailor,

NYCs mass transit is a wonder, but its VERY VERY hard to get around during rush hour. And thats right now with no entrance fee to Manhatten. Imagine now a 15-25% increase in mass transit usage. Trains will be overcrowded, people will be shoving each other to get a place to stand. My point is that the mass transit will have to go through a huge change up to accomadate the large increase of people. Not to mention that the trains need to move quicker in order to stay on top of things. No train or bus here in NYC is accurate to the estimated time of arrival, its either too early when no ones there or too late cause of some complications. By the time people will settle into this entrance fee, years would have flown by.

Good God Bloomberg, what else will you think of to squeeze money from the people of NYC?

Actually if people read who is behind this proposal they would realize that it is the big businesses that are pushing for this. They proposed this last year because they did a study that showed that traffic backlogs and late deliveries, etc. wasted far too much money for their liking. I live here in NY and there are too many cars in Manhattan. It would be great for them to add capacity to mass transit - but where is the money going to come from?? This has nothing to do with "squeezing the little guy". If someone can afford to pay for all of that gas and pay for parking in Manhattan - then this surcharge surely isn't going to hurt them much. See the little guy doesn't have the luxury of doing that because he already takes the train!! That said - we do need more trains than just the soon to be new Second Ave. subway - again that takes political will and it takes capital.

People love their cars no matter what, charging them extra to drive them is just yet another tax, its exactly the same here in london.