> 1) It's a regressive tax on everyone living here -- even if you never use a car. Literally everything we buy and use in the city gets more expensive because of this.
That's an empirical question, you're going to have to prove it. The time saved by delivery drivers or contractors, for example, has value. If they can make more deliveries, or fix more elevators in the same day those services get cheaper. If the only downside is that the assistant patrol supervisor deputy liaison that would have driven to 1 Police Plaza takes the train instead it's clearly a net savings and economic improvement and makes everything we buy and use in the city cheaper.
> 2) That same regressive tax is used to provide a lifeline for an exceptionally wasteful public organization (the MTA) that needs budget discipline, not additional funding.
The MTA is chronically starved for cash and unable to do large scale long term projects because of unstable funding. If this policy, which as we saw above might well have literally zero aggregate economic downside, also builds more efficient transit, it's a virtuous circle of winning.
> 3) (more minor) By definition, the point of this tax is to make it so that only rich people can drive. As the article notes, of course this is great if you're rich enough to afford it...but the article doesn't quote the people who can't now.
Rich people can already drive. Now those rich people give money to transit for everyone else. Working people or people who need to drive (like those with a van full of stuff that needs to be somewhere) are able to do so much more efficiently and most likely face net lower costs.
The "downside" is midly affluent people who do have cars and regularly drive in the central area take fewer trips or take the train a few more times instead. And the other downside is that the tens of thousands of assholes who've been abusing the city parking placard process for decades have to find another way to get to work like the rest of us.
The MTA did prove it. That's how they got approval from USDOT. Here's an 868-page report if you're actually serious about wanting proof: https://www.mta.info/document/93446
If we're talking burden of proof then the only real one that matters is the popularity of the program. It's very clearly popular and a success, so here we are.
That's an empirical question, you're going to have to prove it. The time saved by delivery drivers or contractors, for example, has value. If they can make more deliveries, or fix more elevators in the same day those services get cheaper. If the only downside is that the assistant patrol supervisor deputy liaison that would have driven to 1 Police Plaza takes the train instead it's clearly a net savings and economic improvement and makes everything we buy and use in the city cheaper.
> 2) That same regressive tax is used to provide a lifeline for an exceptionally wasteful public organization (the MTA) that needs budget discipline, not additional funding.
The MTA is chronically starved for cash and unable to do large scale long term projects because of unstable funding. If this policy, which as we saw above might well have literally zero aggregate economic downside, also builds more efficient transit, it's a virtuous circle of winning.
> 3) (more minor) By definition, the point of this tax is to make it so that only rich people can drive. As the article notes, of course this is great if you're rich enough to afford it...but the article doesn't quote the people who can't now.
Rich people can already drive. Now those rich people give money to transit for everyone else. Working people or people who need to drive (like those with a van full of stuff that needs to be somewhere) are able to do so much more efficiently and most likely face net lower costs.
The "downside" is midly affluent people who do have cars and regularly drive in the central area take fewer trips or take the train a few more times instead. And the other downside is that the tens of thousands of assholes who've been abusing the city parking placard process for decades have to find another way to get to work like the rest of us.