Listen, I'm just some orange-pilled Dutch guy who likes to listen to podcasts while cycling, so this is the first I've heard of New York's planned congestion pricing policy. It was a planned $15 surcharge for any car driving into Manhattan, and it was expected to raise $15 billion/year to improve public transport. An extremely unlikely coalition was pushing for congestion pricing in New York, ranging from groups promoting social justice to landlord organizations (!). And it sounds like they did everything right and did literal years of study on the benefits, producing a 4000 (!!) page report on everything from fiscal to environmental impact in an extremely wide area.
And then three weeks before the policy was supposed to go into effect, after years of pushing it, after the local government had spent close to a billion dollars implementing it, the Governor said: Naww, I just don't feel like it. 🤷♂️
The Seventh Largest Standing Army in the World strikes again 🫡
My wife, last night: Why am I getting three daily updates from you about the local transportation policy of a city on another continent?
Me: Hey, you're the one who decided to marry an autistic man with a Special Interest in American politics
