Congestion pricing is about taxing blue collar workers (plumbers electricians and such), who cannot afford to live in Manhattan and have to use vehicle for work.
I don't buy that argument. If the plumber/electrician is working for a company and driving a company car, then the company will pay the extra $15 for that corporate vehicle to be in Manhattan.
If the person has their own business then they can easily afford the daily $15. Skilled trades and the owners of those companies make very good wages in NYC.
I see plenty of blue collar workers on the MTA. Its one of the fastest ways to get around Manhattan and much cheaper than paying for parking.
I have a problem with this “can easily afford” logic. This is not true, and this is not how taxation should work. You are just justifying stealing money from blue collar by bogus “they can afford it” logic.
A lot of NYC residents can easily afford extra $15 (their incomes are like 6 figures) why not just spread the tax to everyone to make it more equitable? And more revenue for MTA
all costs are passes through, but elasticity of demand and supply will lead to consumer/supplier splitting the tax in the ratio of their respectable elasticities.
fundamentally though it is NOT about reducing congestion, it is about stealing money from poor blue collar workers from outer boroughs, and handing them out to finance MTA's bogus overtime and 400k salaries for doing nothing useful.
while also enabling rich urban liberals from manhattan to signal their "ecology conciousness"
> it is about stealing money from poor blue collar workers from outer boroughs
It isn’t though, is it? What percentage of poor blue collar workers in the outer boroughs drive into the CBD of Manhattan for work on a regular basis? Very few. The cost of parking already makes it prohibitive for most. If they work as e.g. an electrician they’re already passing the parking fee onto their customer. Congestion charge will be the same.
But yeah, sure, there will be a small number of people affected that way. But orders of magnitude more poor blue collar workers would benefit from better public transit. You can’t run a city by vetoing anything that has a negative effect to someone. Nothing will ever get done.
