Gulag for anyone doing this. Five years at least.
All this hysteria over a charge of $9 btw. In a city where parking for the day will cost you ~$50.
this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2025
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traingang
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There was a guy who lives near Central Park and drives to see his kids who live near another part of Central Park that was crying about the toll, lol. I was like if the $9 is killing you, you could save thousands a month by living literally anywhere else.
He's a real estate investor and his home is worth $20m.
Or simply walking. Central park isn't that big
East to west it’s not, north to south is pretty far
Still only about a 40-50 minute walk. A bit long, but hardly unachievable. At the risk of sounding stereotypical, I walked that twice a day to school and back for years.
And it's healthier than sitting in a car dealing with clogged roads
I know exactly the thing you saw. That guy lived 15 blocks from his kids. That's a ~20 minute walk in one of the most pleasant parts of Manhattan. It would take him longer to find parking than walk to see his kids. Insanity.
Terminal car brain
well.. would you rather pay $50 for the day or $59? sucks ass for folks who are forced to drive in and don't get reimbursed i'm sure
I’d rather take the train
of course, but sometimes its not an option.. like you can't exactly carry a bunch of equipment on the train if your job requires that sort of thing
I'd think that if your job requires that, the company you're working for would be paying that not the driver?
No offense, but you may not be familiar with the dismal state of employment in Amerikkka.
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no middle class new yorker is choosing to commute by car to downtown manhattan on the regular, it's the upper class. most new yorkers and almost 80% of manhattan locals don't even OWN a car. this is a win for pedestrians who don't want to be perpetually surrounded by smog and honking overwhelmingly from rich assholes, tourists, and people going to the airport
Nobody is "forced" to drive in Manhattan. Nobody. Anybody who works in Manhattan can take the bus or train in, it has a tremendous amount of transit connections from all areas where people are commuting from. Any worker like a plumber or whatever will have the toll paid for by their company.
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There should be daily pricing for any bankers entering the financial district
Like we can buy the bankers?
Toll: one head 
The only time chuds hate cops is when they get traffic tickets. Then they're full acab cause God forbid they can't use they're large machines that can kill people irresponsibly
It’s so funny watching chuds trying to rail against speed cameras without revealing their actual reasoning, that they should be allowed to speed.
I mean sure, American speed cameras are a privatized nightmare where half the money just gets taken by a private corporation, but seeing chuds try to pretend that this is the only reason they hate them is still funny.
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I met a yank in Sydney circa 2023 (so post BLM protests) who was like "yeah I used to back the blue wholeheartedly except for the few bad apples, but last year when I called the cops for a welfare check on my neighbour they put her in a headlock! The system needs to be overhauled and they need to be held accountable" or something along those lines.
Like all the footage of police brutality and incompetence you can ignore, but it happens to an old lady you're friends with that's how you know it's time to change the system?
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10 years GULAG for whoever tweeted this
Actually fare evasion in any form is based. I'm not certain about the specifics of this toll in particular, but alot of the tolls are privatized and even if this one isn't, dl you really think they're gonna allocate these resources responsibly, or would they just give it all to the pigs?
I think the pigs will get their money either way, it's the only part of the City Government that is always overfunded.
Its unfortunate that Governments (and esp private sector) see tolls as a way to squeeze money out of people rather than as a way to manage demand.
At the end of the day, fares only hurt the working class
Car owners in NYC make twice as much as non car owners on average: https://www.hunterurban.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Car-Light-NYC-Infographics-May-2024.pdf
The tolls are slated for repairs and expansion of the NYC subway system, which 1) already exists and 2) is now looking at a budget shortfall of billions of dollars because the toll was reduced from $16 to $9.
Finally, driving through lower Manhattan is not a God-given right, and it has real economic impact on the city. Traffic violence, air pollution, sound pollution, economic suppression of areas choked with cars...
Go rent an apartment right at the mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel and then tell me that an economic penalty for driving a private car instead of taking abundant public transit is a bad thing. I don't mean this in a hostile way but it honestly sounds like you do not know what you are talking about
Eh people should be biking, walking, or taking public transit in big cities like this. All the cars create a lot of issues for working class non car commuters.
Like a good reason many people can even afford to live in a city is because you're trading off car ownership costs for higher rent. Which is mostly going to be the working class making those calculations.
Just straight up banning them from parts of the city would be better though
Imagine you're an independent plumber. You need a truck to transport your tools. Every time you pass through the toll booths in the city that's more money out of your pocket.
They charge the client. Like literally any business expense.
Like they already do for the tolls they already pay
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Petit boug pro car apologia? In my Hexbear? It's more likely than you think
an independent plumber isn't a prole
A (truly) independent plumber is a worker that owns their own means of production. Literally the ideal.
Although it's more likely they're "independent" but working for some company using "independent contractors" as a way to avoid offering benefits and following labor laws.
Either way it's the worker that eats the fare, or has to pass it on to the customer.
Although it's more likely they're "independent" but working for some company using "independent contractors" as a way to avoid offering benefits and following labor laws.
That's called piece work, those are proles. Unusual in the trades afaik. In thoroughly unionized work like plumbing they'd be scabs. They should join their UA local 1 and get union jobs instead of scabbing.
A (truly) independent plumber is a worker that owns their own means of production. Literally the ideal.
They are an artisan, with different material interests than proles.
??
I think in the west, independent contractors tend to be closer to petit bourgeoisie. Also depending on the industry, are used to cross picket lines during strikes and industrial action, like the freelance armorer that was in charge of the gun Baldwin used to kill that lady was there because the union film crew walked out due to unsafe working environments.
Fwiw I don't actually know if, say, NYC plumbers have a union and if/when there are independent plumbers, they would side with the workers. Although in my experience, small business owners tend to be tyrants just as often as big business owners.
Goes back to Marx too. Artisans are not proles, and have different material interests even if they aren't petty boug. They are not alienated from their labor, even if they don't exploit proles themselves.
OP should've used rideshare drivers as her example. But piecework taxi driving is inextricable from the problem congestion pricing is trying to solve.
The only solution is to ban cars.
I think "independent plumber" was intended to mean "self-employed" in this case. I am not defending small business owners outside of the owner/operator type setup.
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I will not tolerate this Mario Mario slander
So make an exception for the work vehicles of essential workers. Policies should be refined and improved upon overtime, not scrapped the moment any short coming is found
That's a bit different than taking a drive throughh the park on a Sunday afternoon
Yeah I mean my field has workers driving all around the megalopolis and we just charge the client for costs like that
Wait can you not write those off as a business expense in Amerikkka? Lmao what a shithole country.
Yea, more workers should (and do) use public transport. It's New York, one of the few cities in the US where public transport is available, though it should be made free.
I wouldn't support such tolls in Houston because there is no other choice available.
In most places and situations I would agree, but NYC is a special situation. Car dependency and automotive congestion hurts everyone, so it can onlg be justified when effective public transit options do not exist. However, NYC is the only city in the US where the majority of people do not commute by car. So the vast majority of car traffic is completely unnecessary, the drivers just don't want to share a train with poor people
This toll is actually a congestion charge to discourage driving in Manhattan. The proceeds of the toll go directly to funding the MTA so they can build more subway lines. Only wealthy people even own cars in Manhattan. I assure you this form of fare evasion is not in any way based, and the only people doing it are carbrained petite bourgeoise.
just ban the cars. ambulances and trams only. police get bicycles and a swift kick in their porcine asses.
so much wasted space in NYC for these belching, noisy petroleum chariots to run and sleep and maim pedestrians so that the rich can be shuttled to and from secure locations.... which these fares won't even touch.
I think they keep cars around in big cities, refusing to even reclaim modest sections of streets as pedestrian only, because cars make it hard for large crowds to amass and march.
cars speeding through crowds--like they did in 2020 and do to this day--make our cities deadly, even if you're in a large group of allies looking out for each other.
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So much for law and order.
Guarantee you it's the pigs driving in from Staten Island, Long Island, and Jersey who are doing this
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