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Hi Evan. I only watched half the video so you may yet address this issue. I have extremely poor mobility, I used to ride a pedal bike in London, but I can't anymore. I used to communite in by bus & train and the travel across London by bike. But unless I pay about £10K for a recumbent battery motorised trike, that is no longer an option. I can't buy an electric vehicle because I am not allowed to save up enough money to buy even a second hand one and I can't get a loan, without paying huge fees or getting a very expensive lease that I can't afford. All I can afford is a 23 years diesal and hope the number recognition cameras recognise my pre-registration for blue badge/disabled driver so I don't get fined. Plus having to pay through the nose for Diesal. But hey hoe that's the price of being ('Old')Disabled. 😢 So I have not been to London from Oxford whilst you have lived there. I used to go down to London a 3 times a week as I was doing a degree at Birkbeck but that's disability for you So I was wondering if you and your mate Matt of the Technical Difficulties team & Tom if you can persuade him. Or perhaps Geoff Marshall of the Londonist & All The Stations if you can't. See if you can borrow 3 wheelchairs and then hold an extended Top Gear style race to the centre of London! And then spend and afternoon & night on the town before making your way back home to the start. Somewhere on the inside of the M25 like Downside? Which is near by Cohbam station on the M25 south side. I checked for it on a map. Perhaps one of you rides in and out on an Electric recumbent Trike, one if you uses public transport and one of you uses a car. And see how knackered you are next day. Given that none of you have obvious physical disabilities! Perhaps even a London based disabled RUclips creator to join you. As it might popularise ther channel. Its just a thought
Evan, when did Americans start saying "transit" when they mean "transport"? I've only noticed this in the last few years, even though I've always prided myself on being a pedant. 😀
It's a bit rich for a black cab driver to be all "won't someone think of the poor people" as if taking a cab in London doesn't require you to remortage a house 😂
They don't set the price and have to work bloody hard to make a decent living with the costs they have to stump up. So not great to paint them as some out of touch middle class exploiting their passengers. If you are travelling alone then a black taxi ride is expensive, take a bus or the tube. If there are 3 or more of you then it become a lot more cost effective and more pleasant.
People have tried making the same argument about the NYC congestion charge even though the median income for NYC drivers is literally double that of non-drivers. Also, like London, owning a car in NYC is super expense. For example, I work in the NYC congestion zone near a parking lot that charges $1000 a month to rent an outdoor parking space.
@@matthewgrist5234do you know how much of your taxes goes towards maintaining roads for cars, car parks, emergency services and traffic officers. That all doesn't even have any return of investment like trains do
I just find it crazy how much Brits and Americans have to spend on public transport daily. In Germany we pay 60€ per month for all trains throughout Germany and all cities public transport. That's what i spent for a day trip into London from Reading
londoner here! a lot of us get discounts (you can purchase a railcard for like 30% off). if you're aged 16-about 18 and a half you get 50% and free local journeys (tram + bus) as the new yorker commented above, we also have fare caps on tube, train, buses and trams :)
@@dealbreakerc In early 2000s I lived in Surrey and commuted by train for a year (lived there for 3 years but the rest of the time used them occasionally). I am from Slovakia, not known for the best train transport, but I was shocked by how bad local trains can get.
Disabled drivers with blue badges can also access the zone free of charge. Worth mentioning as they are often overlooked in these discussions and unfortunately the tube even the buses in London have big accessibility problems. Even buses with ramps etc often won’t help as some drivers don’t use them. My son is disabled and that’s our experience anyhow.
@@djs98blue I was a bus driver and this is nonsense we use them day in and day out. Simply ask and you shall receive. Put your hand up at a bus stop and get the drivers attention. They don't know what bus you want. When you want to get off simply move towards the door and ask for the ramp and you will have no problems at all. The driver will even get out and help if needed. It's only those who think bus drivers are mind readers or everyone is somehow looking at them and know what they want that have issues. A driver has to look in a lot of directions at all their mirrors and cameras and also deal with all the people getting on and off the bus, they aren't paying attention to you. The disabled bell is misused 90% of the time. They won't realise if you push it and just hide behind the stairs where they cannot see you. You are just one of 100 passengers. You have to ask for things and help him or her.
@@zephyr139 I have been left by a number of buses because the driver 'didn't know how to use' the ramp. It's probably a minority but still can ruin your day.
@@Blink3h69 What part of I was a bus driver don't you get? It's not possible for the driver to not know how to use the ramp and still be moving the bus. They have to operate the ramp to even get out of the garage in the morning. It simply cannot happen like that.
People need to using disability as an argument against alternatives to cars. Disabled people drive less than non disabled people. There are many who can and want to use alternatives. Car centric design makes things much worse for many disabled people. Look how flared out our road crossings are and lack of dropped kerbs in many places, for example. 80% of disabled people can cycle (with adapted bikes or otherswise) and we should be enabling them to be able to with infrastructure.
@@zephyr139 My guy, what part of "this is my lived and direct first hand experience that has happened oh multiple occasions" do YOU not understand? Speaking as a disabled person myself, and let me make it clear I'm *extremely* confident and direct about asking for help when I need it, your training does not mean everyone else maintains the same standards. Just for starters not all buses and bus stations are the same. Some people may not understand what a ramp is (I KNOW how dumb that sounds, believe me, I witness it first-hand). Some people may not want to go through the hassle of sorting the ramp. Some people might think the ramp is out of order. Disabled people not receiivng the support the broader system says they will is very much, EXTREMELY par for the course for all number of reasons, and the fact you seem to think that's a lie made up by people who can't be bothered to stick their hands up and ask for help makes me think maybe you might be less qualified than the disabled people in the room to speak on the matter, no matter how many years you've driven a bus.
I lived in London for a number of years in the early 90s. I lived near Camden Town and worked at an office in Oxford Street. Each day the bad air quality meant my hands were dirty and the snot was black. This was not from factories or industry, this was all from all the diesel-engined vehicles. After a day of rain, the air tended to be cleaner but any laundry that was outside when it rained had to be washed again because the particles in the air were on the clothes. Kudos to London for doing something that has so improved the quality of life in the city
London air quality now is great (compared to any other city of it's size) it's practically the world's greenest megacity (my uncle used to have to wipe his window sills weekly because they'd turn black from soot, after ULEZ it's down to a couple times a year)
@@KingFinnch You reminded me about having to do that as well. There was just this ever present grime due to shit from vehicle exhaust. I can not imagine what is was like in the 50s when there was still abundant coal fired power in the centre of the city
I hardly ever use my Asthma inhaler anymore, before Ulez I used it often and I would panic if I left the house without it, now I don't have to worry so much. That's a win too in my book.
As someone who lives in London, I visited New York for the first time this year. The air quality was noticeably bad and I actually got a massive chest infection that started whilst I was in New York. The air quality probably was a factor in how bad it became. I felt like I needed to use those air filter masks just to walk around! The subway was also a shock at how ancient it was. Especially lugging a suitcase up and down the stairs... I actually walked 2 stops away just to use an elevator!
@vision-gc4hy I didn't say it was the only reason, but it definitely contributed to how bad it actually got. When I was in New Jersey during the trip it didn't feel as bad as when as I was in Manhattan. I never thought coming back to London would feel like fresh air, as it's polluted compared to most other places in the UK!
@@PurpleNurpleSPN You said it started when you were in New York. Breathing the same air everybody else breathes. I'm sorry you got sick, but having that level of sensitivity to the air on a visit sounds a bit extreme.
I moved from London to New York in 2001, then moved to Northern NJ 4 years later (and am still there today). I've always commuted into the City... using public transit. I picked a town on the Bergen line and a house within walking distance (about 8 minutes walk). So whether I was working in NYC or Jersey City no car was needed. At one point (2005?) the subway went on strike so I had to walk from Penn to 47th/Park. Which would have been annoying except the city closed off midtown to traffic; just busses allowed. The walk was so much nicer 'cos of not having to wait at every intersection. I'm hoping the NYC congestion charge will have a similar effect; less traffic making it nicer to walk around midtown/downtown. Maybe we'll start to get more streetside cafe type seating!
Does the Bergen line go directly to the city? Or do you have to transfer in Newark/Secaucus/Hoboken? And if you do have to transfer, how does that affect you outside normal commuter hours? Do you get stuck at the transfer station waiting late in the evening after a night out?
@@meaganl124 Penn requires changing at Secaucus; downtown requires Hoboken and PATH. NJT schedules are always pretty bad (when I lived in the equivalent suburbs in England trains would run every 20 minutes on a Sunday; my train here in NJ runs every 90 minutes on a weekday evening after rush hour!). Even rush hour might only have trains every 30-40 minutes. I joke that NJTransit is a transit system a third world country would be proud of. So, yeah, timing is important; eg I would leave my favourite pub in Greenwich Village around 9:30pm to get the PATH from 9th St to Hoboken to be sure I had plenty of time to catch the 10:15pm train... 'cos I didn't want to have to wait another hour or more if I missed it! Planning :-) But if I was driving then I wouldn't go out drinking, anyway.
@sweh Damn I keep trying to find a town to move to that doesn’t have my hometown park and ride But it’s looking more and more like that quick express ride to Manhattan no matter the day of the week is a rarity amongst every other NJ town :’(
@@swehI know public transport besides planes is a afterthought in the US but I did not expect the train system into NY to be quite that bad I have only gone to NY by train once when on holiday in the US went from new England to new York but I must admit I thought the public transport situation around NY would be better than that 30+ minutes on a pretty major line at rush hour is wild
@@matthewgrist5234 There's a "only poor people use public transit so why spend money on it" feeling in America. So you get what you pay for; a ticket from my station into Penn is $260/month; so let's say $3100/year (they don't do yearly tickets)... eh, close enough to £2500. My UK ticket equivalent into Fenchurch Street would be £4300. NJTransit has been massively underfunded and has been restricted in what it can charge, so the service levels match the money they have. And even if there was political will they can't raise prices to what it needs to be 'cos the service level is so poor. NJT trains are also older and slower and worse all around than the c2c trains. The New York subways are also bad; when I moved here I was working on Wall Street. Y'know, the "financial center of the world" (as it was in 2001). And I was shocked at the state of disrepair of the stations; the roofs were streaked with rust, tiles were falling off the walls. Compared to the London Blunderground, my opinion of the subway is that it was dark, dingy, dirty. It's still not that much better... We can only hope the congestion fees will provide money to fix this mess! (editor's note: "it won't").
Paris declined to implement a congestion charge because they considered it to be elitist. They've done a great job of reducing traffic and pollution by transferring road space away from cars and making massive investments in public transport.
Yes I’ve been reading and watching a lot about their efforts. But also, tbf Paris has a huge area where you CANNOT drive if your car is too old. When I visited last we HAD to park super far out or get fined €70. That’ll do the job!
@@evan Plus making parking extra expensive for bigger cars. They might not call it a congestion (relief) charge, but they are a financial incentive for ditching cars unless you really, really need them. I feel like I don't want to complain too much as the person who used to live in London in the 2000s is very jealous of today's cycling infrastructure, but Paris is definitely ahead on that one. In reality, a range of measures are required to reduce congestion, improve air quality and make life safer and nicer for people who aren't in private cars, and as is often the case, the whole is more than the sum of its parts.
@@evan we forever hear complaints in the UK that any effort to reduce issues caused by cars (congestion, emissions, speeding etc.) are "just a money raising scheme". This is why I feel sympathetic to the idea of skipping charges and just banning polluters from Greater London, banning all cars from Central London, and just banning speeding drivers rather than slapping a fine on them. See how they like that.
@@jackwalker4874 One of the reasons politicans can do it London, compare to the rest of the country is the fact that 46% of Londoners don't own a car, compared to 21% across the country.
Watching this whilst on holiday in Amsterdam for the first time, and my God the roads here are amazing - a world where cars, trams, bicycles, & pedestrians live in perfect harmony.
It's the population density, the Netherlands is a crowded country, thus the amount of transportation infrastructure needed per person is fairly low, and most journeys are not very long distances. Even New Jersey is less dense than the Netherlands, and it's one of the most densely populated states in the union.
We don't have journalism in the US anymore. I talked to a couple of different Lyft drivers in NY City recently and they seemed generally positive to the change. Less traffic means they deliver their customers faster, which means they can do more trips. The cost gets passed onto the customer apparently, so it's not money out of their pockets from that perspective. One of the drivers did speculate that the impact would be less in a few months when it's the busy time of year.
@@dazecm Every society eventually devolves into anarchy that's reset by a revolution. Each time a new constitution is established or a new country, it is always noted that it will be better for a few years before people of greed find ways around the new laws and norms to get what they want, at which point another reset is needed. It's a wave of prosperity followed by a downfall that continues to bounce up and down forever.
As someone who might be driving a lot for work related reasons, I really liked it when the work-from-home revolution started. Long weekends or school vacation times would be great too because it would mean I could finish work 10-20% sooner by simply cutting down driving time. Less cars on the road also meaning less bad drivers on the road so safety and aggravation levels are improved as well.
thats's the other thing about traffic reduction policies: they make the roads so much nicer for everyone that does need to drive, also emergency services.
> 1:48 - "People decide, 'okay, I'm gonna pay", and the traffic goes up anyway!" No. At most traffic will be the exact same as it was before congesting charging. People who aren't going to travel aren't going to think "oh, they have congesting charging - I must travel there by car immediately to see what it is all about!", which is what they're being paid to suggest.
On top of that even if the traffic goes back to the same levels as pre-congestion pricing, all that means is that the fee is too low and that people are doing perfectly fine with paying it. The CP cost should hence be increased as the free market dictates. While all that money still goes to fund public transit, and biking infrastructure.
@@AtulKedia But thats the problem, MTA mismanages their money and honestly imo, the zone is too big. All the traffic is usallly below Soho and the rest is in Midtown cuz everybody going from lincoln tunnel to midtown tunnel.
honestly, the only people i know who have a car in NYC are well off. my friends who are poor all take the public transit that isnt even nearly as good as london's. having a car is definitely a luxury in NYC too, even before the congestion pricing. like... nyc has the best public transit in the country, or at least on the east coast. it's not nearly as good as london's but it's the best we have access to so the argument against that cabbie actually extends across the pond
Similar in London, lived there 9 years and no one I knew had a car, there was no point, public transport or even using Uber was better than owning a car. Even outside the congestion charge wherever I lived you had to pay to park your car in the area ontop of all the usual car owning costs.
Then why is it so hard to find parking in Inwood, Washington Heights, Harlem, Kingsbridge, Mott Haven, Brownsville, Bed-Stuy, Bushwick, Belmont, Corona, Elmhurst, some of the poorest places in NYC?
Pedestrians in Barcelona are slowly reclaiming many parts of their city with the city's transformation of roadways into priority areas for pedestrians, even going so far as to close off certain neighbourhoods COMPLETELY to road traffic on the weekends.
The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if some of the people CBS interviewed were actually talking about Ulez not the congestion charge but they edited to make it look like it was the congestion charge.
Honestly the ulez kinda only sucks for tradesmen who drive more diesel vehicles, my parents drive their cars until they don’t run anymore and both own a ulez compliant vehicle.
Hi! As an autistic New Yorker with a physical disability that relies on transit, born to parents from New Jersey, there are things I want to add: - In just the first week according to MTA's results, it's been working! Don't underestimate our transit infrastructure. During rush-hour, the Lincoln Tunnel is home to the busiest bus lane in the US! Approximately 1,850 buses and 70K commuters use it daily. Or over 18.5 MILLION a year. Different operators use the bus lane, but many of the buses that use it is NJ Transit! You only mention the NYC Subway and NJ Transit, but there's also the LIRR and Metro-North Railroad commuter networks. Congestion pricing not only benefits the NYC Subway and MTA's buses, but also projects for the Staten Island Railway, LIRR, and Metro-North Railroad. Which I wish you mentioned. The LIRR is the busiest commuter rail system in the US and operates 24/7 year-round, its park-and-rides encourage Long Islanders to relax and take the train. The Metro-North Railroad serves NY, Connecticut and even NJ (the MNR has Port Jervis Line and Pascack Valley Line trains to Hoboken Terminal that are operated by NJ Transit under contract), and is the second-busiest commuter rail system in the US after the LIRR. At Penn Station, Grand Central Terminal, and the Port Authority Bus Terminal, there are several subway connections within walking distance. At Hoboken Terminal, there's connections to NY Waterway ferries, PATH, HBLR, and NJT buses. - I've lived in Westchester County NY, Hudson County NJ, and Long Island. In Westchester, I lived in Tarrytown/Sleepy Hollow which is a super walkable colonial suburb with bus service to Palisades Center mall and frequent trains on the Hudson Line, including express service. In Jersey City, I was able to rely on frequent NJT buses and jitneys to go to NYC, Journal Square, or the mall, the HBLR to also get to the mall or other places in Jersey City and Hoboken and did all my errands by walking. On Long Island, I rely on paratransit and the LIRR. Specifically the Ronkonkoma and Montauk Branches. I've seen Hamptonites complaining, but they shouldn't be complaining when they have both the LIRR Montauk Branch and the Hampton Jitney bus service as ways to commute! - On Staten Island, they have multiple express buses that go to Manhattan, they could go to Brooklyn and transfer to the subway in Bay Ridge, and the Staten Island Railway (which has parking lots) connects to St George terminal, a hub for buses, ferry, and the SIR, where they can board the free Staten Island Ferry to Manhattan. Oh, and when people walk to the NYC Subway after getting off the ferry, it counts as a free transfer thanks to "One city, one fare" if they transferred at St George from a Staten Island bus or the SIR. - Regarding the low-income argument, it's worth mentioning that the majority of those in poverty who live in the outer boroughs of NYC commute by transit, 61% of them! Compared to 20% who drive to non-Manhattan destinations, and 2% who drive to Manhattan. This is from a pie chart shown in a Community Service Society analysis called "What Does Congestion Pricing Mean for Outer-Borough New Yorkers in Poverty?". Not only does congestion pricing benefit them by investing in improving the transit that they rely on, but for those who drive, there is a discount for low-income vehicle owners enrolled in the Low-Income Discount Plan (LIDP). And there's also a low-income tax credit for residents of the congestion pricing zone. - As someone with a disability, the program benefits me in that it leads to making stations accessible. Not just in the NYC Subway, but the LIRR, Staten Island Railway, and Metro-North Railroad as well. People with disabilities are also exempt from congestion pricing under the Individual Disability Exemption Plan (IDEP), and the Organizational Disability Exemption Plan (ODEP) is available for organizations that operate vehicles that transport people with disabilities such as Access-A-Ride, ambulette services, or schools and special education facilities. Anti-congestion pricing politicians claim they care about affordability and low-income residents, but don't think of those of us who either have a disability that prevents us from driving, or simply can't afford one! My street doesn't even have a sidewalk, and I'm thankful I can rely on paratransit.
Hamptonites complaining is rich. To drive out that far in long island is like 2 hrs min anyway if I'm not mistaken. There is rail and jitneys but no one is commuting daily like for work.
This. Watching people from Jersey constantly complain about how the MTA is decreasing their quality of life when in actuality it constantly stems from disinvestment and a level of unwillingness from their local state politicians
And it seems NJ spent well over a million in legal fees to challenge it, requiring NY to spend money defending it. Imagine if they'd accepted the money and worked together to analyse data and invest in joined up services where they would have most mutual benefit?
@@commentinglife6175 I think the idea is NJ could spend that money on their own public transit infrastructure making it easier to get into NYC. This is called a win-win scenario and more US politicians should probably try it.
I agree with so much of what you said here, but would be genuinely interested to see a video on travelling in the outer boroughs of London as I think it is a really different experience, especially in south London. There is very little tube coverage, and people have to rely on much less frequent national rail services (which are often hit by maintenance work, strikes, delays etc.) or long bus routes. Travelling into the city tends to be okay, but travelling between outer boroughs can be much more difficult.
ULEZ is affecting almost all parts of greater london! e.g. if i want to get anywhere from my place in hounslow and didnt have a car that was exempt, you'd have to pay the charge. its not just for people commuting into london, its everyone who lives here @@evan (fyi im supportive of the ULEZ its nice to be able to breathe but public transport around zone 4+ is just not as good as it is closer to central
@@TheChickinlover ULEZ only affects diesel cars built before 2014, and petrol cars built before 2004. Anyone living in London could scrap a non-compliant car and get £2000 for it, so even if they drove the tattiest old banger then could buy a second-hand car that _does_ meet ULEZ standards and still have cash in their pocket. (People with vans or adapted cars could get more)
@@TheChickinloverthis! It’s very easy from zones 4-6 to travel in and out of London. However travelling locally in the outer boroughs is such a pain. I can drive to a nearby shopping centre (Brent Cross) in just over 20 minutes. On the bus it’s an hour (not including waiting time and bus runs every 20 minutes) or a bus and then the tube which is a similar time. We need to improve the transport infrastructure beyond zone 2, especially as more and more apartments are being built in these areas.
Theres little tube coverage but there is a lot of rail coverage. From the south lines run into London from Sutton, Mitcham, Bromley, Orpington, Gatwick, Croydon. There is also the tram lines running between Croydon, Mitcham, Wimbledon and Beckenham
There is a near-zero-percent chance NY will implement congestion charges as well as London has. We're talking about people who pay $2.5 billion PER MILE to build a subway line (which took decades and still isn't finished)!
New Jersey had the opportunity to get congestion pricing money for NJ Transit. NY Governor Kathy Hochul offered tolling revenue to NJ Transit, as well as more money for environmental mitigation and a crossing credit at the George Washington Bridge, where there has been none. She offered upwards of 100 million dollars! NJ rejected this out of spite and continued their ridiculous lawsuit. This wasn't the first time NJ rejected such an offer to share congestion pricing money. In April 2024, MTA CEO Janno Lieber announced that New Jersey would receive a share of congestion pricing money, with a portion of mitigation being allocated to communities so they could invest in things that mitigate the impact, which the NJ government rejected. Instead of whining about it, NJ should take this as a wake up call to launch its own congestion pricing zone and give NJT needed funding. As congestion pricing encourages people to ride NJT, it should be a sign to give NJT a great funding source so it can keep up, like greenways, modernize its infrastructure, build modern BRT, dedicated bus lanes, promote TOD, electrify train lines that aren't electrified, buy PATH, and expand. It's incredily ironic that New Jersey, the state famous for always tolling you when you leave, is pissed off that they have to pay to enter. Glad you mentioned the buses! People have to remember that NJ Transit isn't just trains and light-rail, their buses are a powerhouse! So not only can people in NJ drive to NJ Transit rail stations and not have to think about driving to the city, but they could also park at a park-and-ride or walk to take one of the many NJT commuter buses to NYC, most go to the PABT in Midtown, but they also go to the George Washington Bridge Bus Station (GWB isn't in the congestion pricing zone anyway), and one bus from Bayonne goes to Lower Manhattan. NJT's buses are super good. In 2023, the bus system had a ridership of 131,253,500. There is a direct route from NYC as far as Cape May. That's not even mentioning the NJT routes that connect South Jersey suburbs with Philly, or the different buses serving sports, school or shopping purposes like the 85 going between Hoboken Terminal, Harmon Meadow in Secaucus (a shopping complex with a Walmart, Sam's Club, cinema, a marsh trail, etc), and the American Dream mall, or the 364 serving as a PM School tripper route for Ridgewood High School. It's ironic for Phil Murphy and other NJ government officials to say they care about the environment, while at the same time, be against congestion pricing! In Jersey City, 50 percent of Jersey City takes transit, thanks to the PATH, NY Waterway ferries, shared NJT bus/jitney corridors, and the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail! And yet Phil Murphy would rather widen the NJ Turnpike and bend the knee to the car industry than actually help Hudson County. The NJ Turnpike Authority under Governer Phil Murphy has supported the "One more lane, bro" NJ Turnpike widening project of the Newark Bay extension through Jersey City and Bayonne, which won't solve Holland Tunnel traffic but only makes it worse, poisons the air through added exhaust fumes and tire dust, and harms the climate. The same governor that set a goal to reduce greenhouse emissions 50% of 2006 by 2030! By expanding a highway to have more cars and trucks sit in traffic...that's not achieving that. Why spend tens of billions of dollars on expanding a highway, when you can redirect all that for needed transit investments in the state? Hoboken and Jersey City has achieved Vision Zero thanks to dedicated local leadership creating safer streets, through bikeshare, daylighting intersections, high-visibility crosswalks and curb extensions, protected bike lanes, and their transit. Vision Zero across NJ isn't possible without these investments.
New Yorker here. I support congestion relief zones. I live in the New York City Congestion Relief Zone. I love it. I love London. I am going back for my birthday. ❤❤❤
Evan, you must know that amongst broadcast news channels across the western world, other than PBS, US channels (both cable and terrestrial) rank worst for objective reporting. They are more dependent on pleasing advertisers than in any other country, and spend a lower proportion of network budget on news than major national channels elsewhere.
Absolutely phenomenal video, Evan. I’m blown away by how deftly you skewered American news media and ignorant voters while also making an incredibly informative video.
The Subway in NY is far cheaper than London, no Zones!. You buy a ticket and can travel as far as you need for the standard ticket price. This makes a huge difference for lower income people. Keep what you have NY.
Live in the US, but did live in Italy for a few years too. Since I've been back in the US it has been infuriating to deal with the public transit. Lived in 4 very different areas and states, and it has sucked each time to the point that not having a vehicle just isn't that manageable. The current place I live doesn't even have a bus system, and there might still be a taxi company here. (Couldn't find one when I looked for a friend.) Sad part, this is the biggest town in a 2hr drive radius. In Lexington, you could count on it being a 1.5 - 2 hr transit by bus for a trip that would take less than 15 min if you drove.
I didn't even have a driver's license until I moved to NJ. Definitely hard to get around without a car when the main road through town *is a major highway* ! And yet it scales up even further to the Parkway etc.
I was a transport statistician working for TfL at the time of the introduction of the congestion charge. I would argue that effective bus lane enforcement is also a significant factor in improving the central area travel experience. Having said that, how do you manage if your shopping exceeds what you can carry or you have garden rubbish to take to the tip?
Never had my shopping exceed what I could carry home. If it’s a huge thing then I’d get it shipped. But I’ve never needed my own car for any shopping. Ebike does the job these days. Hounslow had garden waste collection. Never needed that either!
@@evan I live in Brooklyn. I have a very commodius and sturdy backpack. Garden waste? We now have a bin for compostable waste that is collected once a week.
One way around is buy a car over 40 years old, but ensure it is registered as such, one also saves on tax and an annual MOT. It must have a new one when the registration is changed and advisable to have one done every couple of years if used regularly. It may later be changed to cars first registered before a certain date as '90's and noughties cars get included.
@@Redrally I had a look at a fact check site and it said it wasn't the case. I put the link up earlier but YT doesn't allow that in comments. I know tou have to pay tax on electric cars now but fully electric cars are still ULEZ free.
The crosses at road sides are more often for people killed in their cars than they are for pedestrians. You would have to find the news on the one you are looking at.
When I was in the US for the first time, i visited DC, and i was suprised by the amount of bike lanes on the streets, but then I realised after using them that they were just painted into the pre-existing road, I was almost run over twice, turns out that Hatchback truck drivers dont care about bike lanes :/.
I live on LI and commute to the city everyday. The commute is awful with my train often being delayed, and I pay over 300$ a month to use it not including the parking fee. Th congestion tax would be fine if there was better transport, not just in Jersey but in the rest of New York. The fact that you can train in from parts of Connecticut and Jersey quicker then LI which is actually in the state of New York is crazy to me. They really need to fix the LIRR if they want this tax to work!!
Problem with the ULEZ is that most trades vehicles are still diesel because EV charging infrastructure has NOT been expanded anywhere near fast enough to have a charger at every parking spot. We actually had to go BACK to diesel vans after using electric vans for 8 years because the drivers didn't have anywhere to charge at home or while on work sites. Net result, limited improvement in air quality and extra charges get passed directly to clients... 🤦🤦♂🤦♀😡😡😡
You're so right about not needing a car in London - a friend of mine used to work in Canary Wharf and he owned a car but he almost never used it cause it was just quicker and less of a hassle to use the underground.
Who's making multiple stops to go shopping in NY? The parking cost would be ruinous. Also if you're driving into Manhattan every day for work, how much does that parking cost?
I live in rural Colorado, and people often offer me rides, as they don't expect to see pedestrians. Locals are trying to get a train line back to passenger trains, which would be nice, since there's no good way to get to larger cities other than driving.
If you live on the Front Range have you considered joining ColoRail? It's a non-profit advocacy and volunteer group here that's helped implement some passenger train services like the ski train and has been advocating for Front Range rail for years.
I have to disargee with some of your points. The amount of people who take Transit into the congestion zone from NJ is around 760,000 a day vs 190,000 drivers who commute in. The system is far from perfect but it will get into the city somewhat fast and back most of day. Most core bus NJT bus lines run from 3 am to 1am every 2-15mins during peak hour and every 20-45mins off peak with the Urban Rail running every 3mins during peak and every 10-15mins offpeak , Suburban Rail varies but its no more then 20mins on the Diesel lines and every 5-15 on the electric during peak and every 30-45mins offpeak. Running the Subway 24/7 does contribute to a lot of the grim you see and London has old trains aswell.
@@kgapaneseschoolgirlb Your oldest stock is from the 1970s , the oldest trains the MTA uses is from the 1980s and will be replaced in a few years. They may look rough but they are designed to run 24/7 in all sorts of weather and the older trains breakdown less hence the reason the MTA still runs them. The only reason there being phased out quicker is due the new signaling system.
@@Nexis4Jersey I’m sorry, but the R46 and the 1972 stock are three years apart. The 1972 are also nicer than the R46 and as I mentioned before, they serve one line. You watched this video right? You saw the average age for the New York subway? It was in the video
@@kgapaneseschoolgirlb The Rolling stock he cited hasn't run on the J train in 4 yrs its all new stock. The older stock is limited to 9 of the 36 lines , that will decrease down to 4 by 2028. The rest of the system uses stock built in the 90s to just a few years ago. Some of his facts are wrong..
@@Nexis4Jersey Again, the average age of train stock here is 16 years old and the oldest ones we’ve kept around because they ‘still work fine’ are being replaced this year. Some were replaced last year in fact. Also, the R46 are still running in the lines. Evan literally was riding in one. Yes, they are due to be replaced yes, but they were due to be replaced in 2011 and it’s only now that they’ve started to replace them. The R32 were the ones replaced in 2022 and they were from the 60’s!
Hi Evan. Person from South west London here. I agree with most of what you are saying. However there are lots of journeys on the edges of the ULEZ, where taking a car is much faster. Work still needs to happen to make public transport the default choice in this edge areas.
The tax in NYC will fail because we don’t have a choice. As you said it is almost never necessary to drive through downtown London. Here it is the opposite. I can’t avoid it. Every road off Long Island passes through the city. I already don’t want to be there. I am already paying tolls on both sides of the city. Adding in an extra fee for what I can’t avoid is just kicking me when I’m down.
where are you driving to and how often? Most people are not commuting a distance as far as Long Island past NYC say to Hoboken with a frequency that the fee will be a huge burden. And for most trips I actually think you can avoid lower manhattan. Every road off long island passes into brooklyn or queens, which are not included in congestion pricing, but they do not all go through lower manhattan. if you go from Brooklyn or queens south through staten island or north through upper manhattan or the bronx you're fine...
@ that’s my point. The traffic isn’t commuting. Commuters don’t drive around all day. New York was just not planned as a major residential area. It was a sea port and trade hub. Everything is designed to funnel into downtown. All of its industrial infrastructure is on Long Island, so everything has to pass through city. Same goes for JFK and LaGuardia airports. If someone from Connecticut wants to go on a European vacation they have to drive through the busiest part of Brooklyn. It’s so stupid, but the time to fix it was 200 years ago.
@@Christopher_Gibbons I think the point is, the congestion pricing is supposed to make it so that only people who have to use cars to reach that area do it, if you can get in another way, for a commute or for whatever you want to do, you take another route. Then the money raised will improve the quality of this transit. Those bringing industrial things from Long Island into Manhattan will hopefully face less traffic, now that anyone traveling for other reasons may opt to use public transit. He even addresses this in the video, that commerce will have to adjust to account for the added cost of transporting goods in, like it did in London. Downtown London is not just residential either, it is also a central business area, trade hub, entertainment space, etc...commerce flows INTO central london as much as anywhere else. What I'm saying is rarely does anyone have to drive /through/ lower manhattan, and rarely do most people really need to drive into lower manhattan, trade hub or not, except for those making shipments.
Exactly and I would even say that's true for the majority of the UK. Public transport needs to not only be in-city effective. It needs to work connecting smaller townships to each other and not just into and out of large cities.
Dude, if it didn't target the less well off, it wouldn't work. Why would a fee drive the rich to take the bus? And why are you assuming all drivers live in London? Able bodied young people taxing the disabled, the poor and the elderly is what it looks like. CBS' reporting is crap because of their methodology but you conveniently neglect even a cursory look at the methodology that agrees with you. Hint: that's just as bad as what CBS did.
I travel to London 12 - 15 times per year per year on business. I have been in a car exactly one time in 50+ trips. The Black Cab ride was one I was told I must do once. Sure it was fun but it was also expensive and slower than all the alternate options. Riding the Tube and buses pretty much gets you everywhere in London.
16:45 this is something bad that my Tory council did in my area… shut the council run Park and Ride and said that it would encourage people to use (privately owned) busses more… in towns where the bus service is every 30/60 minutes as opposed to the 8 minute frequency of the park and ride?? Thankfully it’s since been reopened by a new Labour/LibDem council. Not trying to be overly political about this but it was a stupid, short sighted, and seemingly politically motivated decision.
I personally think there should be no personal cars in any inner city. City’s should be forced to provide public transportation. Just because a person can afford to pay to pollute and destroy doesn’t mean we should let them.
If a business increases its prices "because of congestion pricing," they're lying and you should boycott them. A box truck carrying thousands of dollars of goods pays $22 to enter the zone. That's hardly ONE entree at a midtown restaurant; heck, a crappy diner will charge you that much for a tuna melt and fries. How many of those do you literally throw in the garbage at the end of the night? And the truck is presumably serving multiple businesses, so the charge being passed onto any one place is going to be even lower. If they jack up prices and blame congestion pricing, they are using it to hide their greed.
the congestion charge isn’t really a tax on the wealthy or if it is its an insanely inefficient one that only amounts to £5475 a year which for the allot of the wealthy people in London is practically nothing. in my opinion the charge should be based on income or the cost of the vehicle driven (a different calculation for each) whichever would have a larger impact, i feel the same for speeding and parking fines because as i said previously the 'fines' amount to practically nothing to the wealthy and they continue to act like nothing happened. the congestion tax only effects those in the weird middle area that have a car use it regularly but are not particularly wealthy.
@@Foxy_Hydra but it's fine because a car is a luxury poor people don't deserve right? Doesn't matter that it takes a working class person 4 hours, 6 irregular night buses, a 3 mile hike, and a lift from a bin lorry to get to work for 3am to actually open that tube station or drive that bus. Their time is worthless! 😤 The working classes are the ones that actually need a vehicle and they are taxed for it.
The pigovian tax is meant to represent the societal cost of car use, which is the same for a poor person as for a rich person driving the same car. The idea is that if their driving isn't worth the cost of pollution and traffic, they won't do it, and if it is, they'll pay the price. What about the fact that rich people can then afford to do more driving? Well, that's the same as everything else in life. If that's a problem (inequality or poverty), then it should be treated as its own issue and solved separately - not in a way that encourages the poor into cars when it's inappropriate or encourages the rich to use public transit when a car is more appropriate.
@@zephyr139 "The working classes are the ones that actually need a vehicle and they are taxed for it." Nonsense assumption. Most people, whether rich or poor, do not need to drive.
Ok, but even for poor people the amount should discourage them. So the amount should be higher than it is now for everyone, just raise it more for the rich.
ULEZ is definitely a net gain for London but as someone who lives in the more suburban areas of London (Havering specifically) lots of people I know a stuck in a bind, they can't afford to buy a new car that will match your mission standards so they are stuck paying the fee every day and while the public transport in havering is a damn sight better than most other places in the world it's not quite good enough that you do not need a car at all This is why everyone in the more suburban areas were pissed off that they had to pay this extra charge with seemingly no benefit to them
I worked in central London when the congestion charge was brought in and the traffic did drop substantially pretty much overnight. But over the 20-odd years since its got progressively worse, so trade vehicles in particular (and this goes way beyond casinos) now have to pay the congestion charge, the ULEZ - and still deal with all the traffic.
The biggest issue is cars etc sitting stationary or crawling along producing emissions all in one place. That's why they started with a congestion charge. It DID NOT work, which is why they went for emission charging. A car (Truck/bus) cruising through at it's optimum pace is pretty clean. The big issue is and always has been traffic management of stop and go traffic. I would have thought traffic management would be a doddle in a city built on a grid system.
The issue is that there are too many cars. You can't manage your way out of traffic with light tinkering. That's what Boris Johnson tried in his first term and it failed. The amount of cars goes up to match the equilibrium that drivers are willing to endure. Also, having more of a denser grid means more traffic as there are more crossing points (junctions) which are controlled by lights and are bottlenecks. Remove the driving grid so a sparser set of roads and the make the roads inside the grid zones access only (LTNs) and you reduce the number of traffic lights and busy junctions. Ultimately the only way to resolve traffic is to make alternatives better and to make driving more expensive. "I would have thought traffic management would be a doddle in a city built on a grid system." YEah clearly you are a genius that has figured it out while cities all of the world who refuse to reduce the number of cars haven't despite all the traffic engineers they've employed.
I stay with family in northern NJ and the park and ride system to NYC is awesome (TBH my standards are super low having lived in FL and TN most my life). The buses go straight to the city with no stops and come frequently enough that I don't really have to check the schedule. The worst part is that is costs more to uber the 2 unwalkable miles from my relative's house to the bus stop than the bus and the subway combined. Lately, I've been spitefully dragging my suitcase on the shoulder of the highway to save the $15 or whatever
I'm going to have to disagree with you on a number of points. I live in Greater London. I want to put on the table I don't own a car; I can't really justify the money for one and the places I generally need to get to I can get to by walking or public transport and I will try and secure a lift for those places I would struggle to get to by public transport. There are actually quite a few places for which I do need to beg for a lift because public transport isnt realistic for those particular destinations but it isnt a daily requirement. However, my Dad had no option but to exchange his car and buy a new one. My sister and my mum both have mobility issues and often need to be taken to appointments etc because they would not be able to manage the long walks to get to the station/bus stop and, in the case of my sister, would struggle with riding public transport because of the issues she suffered. He also has various places he needs to get to where a car is essential, so there was no option for him here as he is charged just for exiting his own road. He had to take £12k out of his savings (he is retired and doesnt have much in the way of savings) to be able to do this. Their finances have taken a huge hit. This is only story of course. I have quite a number of friends who live within the a few mile radius in Greater London who struggle with money but they have older cars that they have just about been able to afford that have places they need to get to that legitimately require a car. They use public transport when its appropriate but primarily for their location and situation it isnt something they can rely on for getting to where they need to go. They dont have the money to pay the ULEZ charge on a regular basis nor do they have the thousands it costs to pay for a compliant vehicle. Some are just about scraping by with the charge but others are not coping financially at all. I have heard many stories of other people I don't personally know but who are in similar positions. I also have friends that live just outside the boundary into Surrey. It's a myth that everyone in this area is well off - many of my friends here are struggling financially. They also depend on being able to get into places that are within the ULEZ zone for work and other life matters. One of my friends can no longer take her child to school (its legtimately too far away for a 4 year old to walk - her elderly father is now having to come early to take and collect him as his car is thankfully compliant but my friend should be able to take her child to school), cannot take the children to their grandparents in ULEZ zone, cannot get to see friends who live in ULEZ zone, cannot get to various regular appointments, have had to move vets. They have increased their petrol cost in having to get to certain places to avoid a ULEZ zone. Her partner has to periodically drive to a location within the ULEZ zone he cannot get to easily by public transport and the increased cost on them is really causing them problems. Again, while these stories are very individual, I am hearing of quite a few people for whom this is an issue. So no it is not the case that only the rich in London have cars and yes it is very much a case that the expansion of ULEZ it is have a significantly detrimental effect on those who were already financially struggling. It also hasnt reduced congestion certainly in my area. Everyone now tries to squeeze onto the few roads that are within Greater London but outside the ULEZ boundary whereas they used to be fanned out using other roads. It has actually made it harder not easier in my area to get anywhere as a result. As someone with fairly severe asthma I noticed a huge difference in my breathing during lockdown when there were almost no cars on the road. This obviously deteriorated once everyone started driving again. I havent noticed any improvement to my breathing at all since ULEZ was expanded. I will also say I genuinely dont trust any stats that have been put out by the Mayor and would want to see independent stats that have been developed without any involvement at all with the Mayor, his office, or TFL and with transparency on how the data has been collected. I'm not saying that there havent been improvements in other areas. I live where I live and I can only comment upon my side of London or from where I have friends who have shared their experience - I cannot comment on areas where I know no one the same as you cannot reasonably comment on areas where you know no one. Perhaps outside my area of London it has done wonders. It also makes perfect sense for the original congestion charge area where congestion was ridiculous and public transport is far more densely available as opposed to it becoming that bit more sparse the further out you go. But I think many of your comments were skewed by your own personal experience (I accept mine are skewed by my experience but it is notable that our lived experience on the same issue as people living in London are vastly different) your comment about it not being a tax on the poor is somewhat naive. Your comment that only the well off can afford a car in London, while that may be your perception, is just simply untrue. It hasnt delivered all the wonders the Mayor espouses to every area of London and it has legitimately caused a number of problems for many. It has also caused many problems for those living just outside the border but who still have to travel within ULEZ but are not captured by any of the data.
Luxembourg 🇱🇺 had a different idea than a congestion charge. It made the entire public transport system (trains, trams, buses) free of charge, not only in the capital Luxembourg City, but in the entire country (which is roughly the size of Rhode Island without its water areas since Luxembourg is a landlocked nation). This had a great effect, in particular with commuters who prefer now to use free public transit rather than their cars.
I linked the OG video as an annotation! It's my video on the hawk beacon. Those cars broke the law but EVERYONE (including cops I caught on camera) do it
When it happens in London its then rolled out to the rest of the UK. minus the public transport or actual infostructure or any money put in to anything useful for the majority of the public. Just stick more houses in there, it works in London.
Where I live in Oxford, driving is far cheaper and faster to get around. The buses are all private companies who are propped up by taxpayer money and given private use of sections of the city. So we share in all of their losses but none of their profits. Added to that, sections of the city have been blocked off to through-traffic (you can still get around, just it's a further journey and everyone's crammed onto the same roads) and it's just brought the city to its knees. A congestion charge for everyone living (say) 20 miles outside of the city would be OK if everyone living inside it can still get about.
If ULEZ is really a tax on wealthy people then it should be a percentage of income. There’s a lot of working class jobs that require a vehicle to get around, plasterers, gas engineers, electricians etc… while yes it mainly affects wealthy people it does hit some working class people way harder than it should.
The biggest issue is tolling the tunnels from NJ to Manhattan, and then tolling again as you exit the same tunnel you paid to enter. The shortest route to the west side highway should be free for traffic trying to bypass Manhattan instead of the “gotcha” tolling. Also Jersey City passed San Francisco’s the most expensive city to rent in the USA. You aren’t fitting park and rides in there as it’s essentially becoming the 6th borough of NYC that just happens to be in another state. PATH trains are crowded till midnight.
As someone who has driven buses/ coaches all over London, including routes in and out of the congestion zone (such as the route 15: blackwall - Trafalgar square; 94: Acton - Picadilly Circus), driving standards are far more predictable within the congestion zone. Reduces the possibility of accidents. Discourages incompetent inexperienced drivers from driving through Central London and improves traffic flow. I support it.
I'm from Jersey. I support congestion pricing in principal, but the issue is the MTA is terrible at spending money. They're notorious for wasting so much money, it's absolutely ridiculous. If the MTA was more competent, I'd support it in a heartbeat. I almost never drive into midtown. I always drive to one of the PATH stations and take the train or something else. MTA needs to get their act together and spend money properly.
Evan, if I may point out something here, the transport for London website says that the tube standard operating hours are only 5AM-12:30AM on weekdays. This means that public transit is essentially useless for anyone whose working hours are deeply outside the 9-5 hours, unless the commutation time is short enough. Why does the tube not have overnight service, even if reduced just to facilitate early and late commuting?
i dont know anything about london specifically and i have never visited, but it is generally preferred to have regular downtime during the night for repairs and maintenance. there are some exceptions like in copenhagen where the metro runs 24/7, but it is the exception ime.
@ I get that, but isn't the whole point of public transport to have the ability to use it when needed? I don't have that option where I live, and the hours I work are well outside the window but I can assure you that I would not drive to work if the public transport option were available and viable to use.
I live just outside of London. Working class area It’s purely a tax on me and people like me. Living costs are high. Public transport for everyone going into London is packed full every day, no seats available. The train cost is over £600 a month It’s cheaper to buy an old car and drive in. Now you have to choose an even older, less reliable, less safe and more expensive to run car to meet the emissions standards. Or buy a much newer car that costs much more. The air quality is no different since they expanded the zone, even the study from the government says it’s no different!
@@jamie0193 Air quality not changing much in less than two years isn't surprising - the rapid increase in air quality during COVID was an outlier because it drastically restricted the behaviour of most of the populations involved. Likewise, expansions and such rely not only on the projected efficacy of their scheme, but on the actual changed behaviour of society, which takes time. After all, the sound bite of choice around C40 cities (the one I see everywhere anyway) is how air quality has improved by over 25% across 20 _years_ .
IMO the best thing that happened to central London has been the speed reduction to 20mph (camera enforced).. it’s given everyone the space and thinking time to be more chilled and cooperative and there’s less polluting and stressful hard acceleration and braking.
I have lived and worked in London for over 30 years, and know nobody who thinks the congestion charge is a good thing, or has worked. It has driven so much business out of the city and overstressed and made public transport much more overcrowded. Public transport in south London is not great, and dangerous, and we depend entirely on our car (my wife and I are in our 70's) for an shopping or any kind of social life. Traffic has gotten much worse around the edges - like Brixton. Electric cars, clean buses all helped the air quality. No family members or even life long friends will visit us any more - we are just growing increasingly trapped and isolated. I do not endorse this view - and having worked for TfL, they lie through their teeth.
that is just utter bollocks, no one I know drives into central, everyone just gets the train. And I'm in southeast London and don't own a car, it's absolutely fine
@@c0wqu3u31at3r Do not drive into central London anymore, apart for work. Have to drive around it. Social life in Kingston, Bromley, Ealing, Brockwell Park, do our bulk shopping down towards Croydon. Small, economical car, cost £1 ad day for the 2 of us to run, no road tax (below CO2 limit). Public transport sideways in South London sucks, and at our age not fun. How old are you? No family members visit us anymore - they also avoid London like the plague. London has become a total hell hole as far as we are concerned.
@@croftonallamby5625 Fine. But for my wife and I it is an absolute necessity, just to survive. Still means if we want to see friends and family we have to drive to them, since NOBODY will drive into London to see us anymore. Lived her well over 30 years and it has never been this bad.
The problem with ‘I and my car owning friends in outer London don’t know anyone who likes the congestion charge’ is that it’s hardly statistics. And as the video mentioned, the actual stats show a majority in favour of a (very radical) full pedestrianisation of London, let alone the congestion charge.
Evan, not sure why they were talking to a back cab taxi driver because... "Taxis. Taxis (black cabs) are exempt from paying the Congestion Charge when actively licensed by Transport for London. A vehicle will be removed from the register of exempt vehicles on the surrender, expiry or revocation of the licence." A cut and paste from the TFL website Note: The approved black cab for London is built by London Taxi Company (it is owned by a Chinese parent company that mostly builds EVs) The LEVC TX is a plug-in hybrid range-extender electric vehicle. The vehicle is designed to comply with Transport for London's Taxi Private Hire regulations, which banned new diesel-powered taxis from January 2018, requiring zero-emissions capability. Thus all new black cabs have to be EVs or hybrids now - and the LTC is updating the LEVC TX to be fully EV
i will drop in my 2 cents as a New Yorker who technically doesn't drive. My dad does. For context, we live in Brooklyn and my dad works in Brooklyn. He drops me to the train and I take the train to my job in Manhattan. Pre-congestion pricing we would be able to get on the Belt Parkway from anytime between 7 - 7:30 AM and get to the train station in 10 minutes. The first week of congestion pricing was HORRIBLE. A 10 minute ride became 45 minutes. To beat the outer borough traffic we have been leaving the house before 7 and we're back to the 10 minute ride again, but there are noticeably way more cars on the highway than before. A lot of the news focused on New Jersey drivers, so I didn't even think about Long Island drivers who pass up on the LIRR or Queens drivers who are not near a train station. The congestion has shifted out Manhattan and into the other boroughs, which is sad. I can't even say that the trains are more packed than usual. It's only been two weeks, so it's too soon to say its a failure. I don't want it to fail. I really want the MTA to upgrade the trains and I've been patiently and excitedly waiting for any news on the Interborough Express. Hopefully the congestion pricing will speed things up!
Come on we all know the MTA aint gonna use that money to improve the trains, we all know that, but even MTA did a study and literally said that this will just push congestion to other boroughs and even some towns in Jersey. And they think adding a air purifier in schools in the Bronxs will solve that.
I don’t mind congestion pricing since my family doesn’t have a car anyway and less pollution is always good. I take the subway and bus to school and work everyday so I really hope the money actually goes into the MTA…
The "local businesses hate change to car traffic" thing is so aggravating. Some business owners fight against road diets or bike lanes or better pedestrian lights, presumably because they've been fed misinformation by fake journos, but studies post-change are extremely clear that the vast majority of businesses benefit from a reduction in car access, a reduction in parking, a reduction in lanes to support more pedestrian and bike traffic, etc. And that benefit can be measured very easily, in financial terms, before even getting into less easy-to-measure benefits like air quality and reduced noise pollution and lower stress. The NYC law _does_ require that every dollar taken in by the program has to be spent on transit improvements. If they can manage to keep it together for six months or so, it'll stick forever; once everybody in the city finds out how much better public transit has gotten, and are informed about where the money came from, it'll be extremely hard to repeal congestion pricing.
If the baseline is a poorly managed urban environment, yes, the businesses benefit from traffic being cut down. But they definitely don't want a reduction in customers, which is what they get in practice with parking removal schemes, etc. when there isn't a very robust transit system.
I think that when I was in Florida that a couple of bars were shocked that I had walked from the hotel to the bar until I said I did so that I could have a drink.
What I briefly heard about the NY congestion charge is that the drop in traffic was about 10% fewer private cars driving in from Jersey, and little change on local NY traffic. But, patterns take longer than that to become really engrained.
When I moved to London in 2005 my car sat idle for so long that on the few occasions I drove to the supermarket it wouldn't restart so I sold it. I did live across the road from a tube station which helped. I only bought one again a couple of years ago since I started going outside London a lot more. I have an EV so was exempt from the congestion charge until this year. It still takes well over an hour to get from East London to the west of London if you avoid the congestion zone and follow the main route around it. I was always guided along this route by my satnav that knows I was exempt so it's not like it's just a rich people's way of keeping the poor out so they can have the roads to themselves.
I play piano, backing a Danish singer. My electric piano, Yamaha NP 30, weighs 4.6 K and the bag with gear as much. I also carry the stand and sometimes a small speaker, a very effective KASUNG at just above 2 K, all in all about 15 kilograms on my back and in my hands. I use the public transportation og Copenhagen and sometimes Funen and Jutland. No problem, even at my age (68). Neodynium magnets made speakers very light. Just like public transportation made travelling easy. In Detroit, the big car manufactors bought up the public transportation and scrapped it, to make need for their product. So, there's that...
Hi Evan, I think you left out a major issue-the extension of the ULEZ to "everywhere inside the M25" in late 2023. You seem to live in Zone 1 or 2, but public transport deteriorates quickly as you move beyond Zone 3. In this context, the taxi drivers' comment "tax on poor people" makes a lot of sense because, in the outer Boroughs, you do need a car. Also, with all due respect, you do not have children. Try London public transport even with a stroller, never mind a pram and several children in tow.
This indeed. On top of that, it's often the people with lower salaries doing the work that requires these people to be at places at the most ungodly of hours, when public transport is generally far from ideal, even in a city like London (and definitely in the outer boroughs, where these people usually tend to live). Then you will need a car, as public transport simply isn't a viable option. So maybe the ULEZ isn't a tax on the very poorest of people in society, but it most definitely will be on a sizeable chunk of the working class and lower middle class.
I live in zone 6 and my 10 mile commute to my job in Zone 3 takes about 20-25 minutes by car and at least 75 by public transport. It's a no- brainer, especially for my 5:30am shifts.
@Evan Edinger. Having watch the video I was left wondering if you would be interested in a follow up video on how the ULEZ has impacted those who need their vehicles for reasons related to disability. I would be most interested to see you do a video on how London / New Jersey compare when disability is thrown in the the public transport conversation and what you thoughts on the different approaches that both cities take on the subject matter. Keep up the great work.
As a Long Islander I've never driven to NYC outside of one time during COVID. There's just no reason unless you're driving to somewhere beyond NYC to the West
Good video But Evan your viewpoint is biased you live in London, I on the other hand don’t and it becomes another thing I have to factor in if I want to visit. A return train ticket costs me over £100 if I don’t plan months in advance, making public transport exorbitant. The net result I don’t go to London. In fact I actively avoid it. But then I am cut off from many theatres concerts, comedy gigs and other activities.
Cost of living. People living in the city shouldn’t have to suffer the pollution and noise that comes from cars wherever they’re coming from unnecessarily. You could always drive to Westfield and park there before hopping on the underground. Most outoftownies I know do that
The opinions of people who live in the city are far more important than those who visit simply because it is their lives and health that are impacted by the congestion and pollution that comes from every fuckwit wanting to drive into the city.
great video, and hope this actual comparison helps make people less whiny about congestion pricing, it is a great thing to have! quick correction, at 8:15, the R42s were retired in 2020, you may have been on an R46 (though the J train uses mostly if not entirely R160s and R179s from the last 10-15 years!)
Sweden has quite good public transit systems in our big cities, but even so you can see some pretty interesting differences between Stockholm and Gothenburg. Stockholm has a really good subway system that makes it a breeze to get around and you rarely have to walk more than 15 minutes from a station to get anywhere. This is supplemented by buses. Even so, there's a lot of car-centric infrastructure and usually lots of traffic in most parts of the city, and buses and cars share the same roads. In Gothenburg, public transit has been a clear consideration and priority during city planning. It has a very expansive tram system, that in many places runs on "its own road" that cars can't drive on. In some places, the infrastructure is designed to prioritze public transit at the expense of cars, which often makes driving _less_ convenient than taking public transit.
Okay. But I'm American. And I am low income. It takes me 15 minutes to get to my work. It takes an hour and a half to bus there. (I've been without a car before). And it's not safe to walk there. So this charge would hurt me pretty badly.
Based on your comment, you're not based in NYC or any place in the U.S. where congestion pricing is considered feasible. Most of America is incredibly car-dependent. But this doesn't mean we shouldn't hope for and work toward a future where this isn't the case.
Hi Evan! Content idea: your reaction to all the recent videos about how the UK is bad and everyone leaves it, complemented by your usual cool analytics and facts 😉
Well a lot of those videos are about personal feelings. You can hardly argue against how someone feels. Wont affect how they feel a lot of times. Also opens a bigger debate of London vs UK as most of those videos are about the UK, not londonn
I live in NYC, I can say that public transit is slow and not as accessible as it should be. MTA and Port Authority spend the money, and congestion toll will pay the debt, and not really pay for any needed improvement. the corruption is strong!
@@4TNR I mean they were the first to raise their PATH to $3, now they gonna raise their tunnel and bridges tolls by another dollar again saying "they lost revenue from congestion pricing"
@evan edinger: you proved your point - as a pissand youtuber that doesn't need to EVER drive in London. You said that you have lived in different places; should I assume that you only had a luggage to drag with you? Or, were you forced to do 5 trips to carry your stuff by public transport? Maybe you can't understand why people are stubborn enough to continue driving; You have 1 friend that NEEDS to drive to work. Well, I have been working in construction industry all my life, and, as a tradesman know a hundreds of people that have loads of tools to drag to work and back because they run into the real risk of having their tools stolen - ON and OFF the site. Even on the street, people would try to jimmy the van IN BROAD DAYLIGHT in the hope of getting some free tools. People found ways to deal with this, as you stated, and these costs only get passed on to other (often unintended) people, and add to the existing misery. While I'm not saying the c charge/ulez is good or bad, my opinion is that it should be applied with more consideration to the drivers and their intentions. Don't get me started on families with children that need to go shopping and fill up the trunk of a car each week! Your view is heavily polarized and shows ignorance and out of touch with the majority of the people.
But if the majority of people in London agree with me wouldn’t that mean your opinion is more ignorant? You can always rent a van if you really need one.
@@evan Majority as in the majority of brits that voted for brexit? Or the majority of americans that voted for trump? Or majority that voted for stalmer? I call bs on your argument. Read my previous comment again.
Also, to clarify "majority", no one surveyed ALL the residents in London before and after. If they did, congestion c or ulez would have never happened (see the ulez protests).
Maybe you address this later: What if you enter the zone and for whatever reason you slightly leave it, and return (like because of a one-way street you had to slightly leave and come back), do you get charged twice?
@Evan Did any of these studies specifically address the impact on disabled people who use mobility devices such as motorized wheelchairs or scooters? Is the subway safe and uncrowded enough for them to navigate there? Do they have problems going on brief errands inside the city or longer trips outside the city because of the congestion pricing? Would appreciate answers from Evan or anybody else who has first-hand knowledge. Would also appreciate links to any relevant studies.
if you have a blue badge, which is something disabled people can apply for that already lets people park for free in many places and use disabled parking spots and roadsides that would otherwise prohibit parking, then you don't pay the congestion charge at all. So the congestion charge doesn't limit disabled people from getting around but does mean less traffic so their journey are quicker. Not everyone with a disability has a blue badge. They can be a pain to get. But most people who need one have one
my mom and grandma both can't walk long distances. They try to use their "mileage" sparingly, for leisure, like having a good walk in the forest. We live just outside paris, their regulation over driving inside city limits makes it sometimes impossible for us to do stuff their most of the time. And it keeps getting worse. Taking public transit is horrible as there is far too much walking and stairs. My mom doesnt yet have a handicap placard, so If we can't get there by car it means tremendous pain from too much walking. She keeps hurting herself because of it, and It's making the city a closed disney park where people overspend on rent and there are too many tourists. It's not like going inside paris is for the fun of it. There are important agencies, DOCTORS, organisations, courts and so on both my grandma and mom have to go to. This shit is so disgusting. They also banned older cars because of pollution. Have they made any plan to subsidize people buying a cleaner car ? no. They are pricing out people going to the center, people that can't afford living inside paris in the first place, and you still have important business to conduct there. They are replacing people that live around paris with tourists and are pricing us out of doing anything there. You can't go to the museum or anything without paying insane amount in parking or you have to go by train for 1h30 a route that would take 20 mins at most before all these shenanigans.
I have been dependent on my wheelchair for the past 10 yrs and have both UK and EU disability badges on my car. Most towns and cities are easy to navigate using buses, rail, trams, but London's Tube has some access issues at some locations. My greatest challenge is in older towns which love "quaint" cobbled streets. Fortunately, London has far fewer of these than many continental cities. The EU has a great system for handicapped toilets too. Each, whether at stations, bus depots, or simply in town centres, has a key which registered disabled persons may buy for 25 Euro and which is usable across the EU.
Well, it would mean you can get where you want faster, find parking etc. You don't really need any studies aside from what there already is, congestion pricing means less cars. Meaning you would both get better public transport due to fees, and less cars on road. Win win.
Blue Badge Holders (Disabled people) can register two vehicles for £10 / year to make them congestion charge exempt. Parking is available in Blue Badge bays within Islington, Hackney, Southwark and Lambeth without any further applying for free (usually up to 4 hours). Parking in the City of Westminster requires a 'White Badge' in certain areas, and parking in the City of London requires a 'Red Badge' in certain areas (this only applies to 'high demand' areas, and is a uselessly confusing system). As for public transport, the London Underground does have accessible stations, but it is not fully accessible. National Rail services have some accessible stations, or use boarding ramps. All Busses are fully accessible, and have a ramp that comes out of the middle door. Also, all black cabs are fully accessible, and have a ramp that comes out of the passenger door, a swivel seat among other things. Disabled residents of London can also use a 'dial-a-ride' service, which involves an accessible minibus taking them door to door (I don't know much about this), or get a 'Taxi-Card' which allowes them to take any journey in a black cab for a reduced fare (capped at £10), however, this only applies to certain black cabs and they have to be ordered by a silly phone service for some reason.
I live in FL where you a very car dependent. When we visited London, using the Underground was easy to use and pretty fast. We took 1 black cab for the experience and 2 Ubers bc we needed to be somewhere before the Underground was open. If I lived in London I would sell the car I owned now.
The figures you quote which suggest massive improvements in congestion are all from early in the scheme. Figures taken out to now indicate that that traffic is just as congested now as it was pre-congestion charge. (BBC News "London remains world's most congested city" Jan 2023) Also the figures that purport to show improvements in air quality due to the congestion charge do not take account of the changes to vehicles over that period - vehicles are much cleaner now than they were back at the start. In 2003 when the charge started new cars were to the Euro 3 emissions standard (2.3 gm CO /km), the current standard is Euro 6 (1.0 gm CO/km), 3 generations of improvement. That 2.3 times improvement in CO emissions looks suspiciously like the trend on the graph you used - the improvements in emissions standards alone more than explain the reduction in pollution. Also all the figures you quote are from Transport for London, politically beholden to the London Major's office - when dealing with politics, get _independent_ figures, political sources lie.
Problem is there are no independent sources. Also the old Tory government was forced to expand ULEZ as they kept being sued by green groups even after leaving the EU.
A lot of London's tube network is still running on 1970s-1995 stock for example Bakerloo, Northern etc. You can really feel it and while I agree buses have improved, these haven't yet. Additionally, the air quality and sound on the London tube are both extremely bad, which I've experienced first hand every day. It's often overcrowded to the point you can barely breathe in rush hour. My point is TFL sure has pushed people off the roads, but they've pushed them into an overcrowded transport network that can't support them. As a Londoner, I don't agree with a lot of people that seem to push how good our public transport is when to be honest, the bar should be much much higher.
Although the ulez does unfairly affect poorer (not impoverished though, i realise that realistically it's lower middle class in the first place) people who live outside of London. Not saying it outweighs the effects of the people who do live there but some people have to deal with London for airports or embassies. I do think it's a bit of a joke that Heathrow is in a ULEZ so it costs me more to pick up a friend from there than from Gatwick. How can it be a ULEZ, it's literally an airport?
Worth noting that Heathrow's drop off charge was initially going to be an emissions based charge of the airport area, if I recall correctly, to add an even more shocking point!
The exception I think is the ULEZ in south London, like the furthest reaches of the city. In the north the Underground goes way beyond the edge of Greater London into the countryside, yet in places like Bromley they rely on cars due to busses being the only other alternative. I think they should make exceptions for any locality on the edge of London without a tube or London Underground station, or give residents in those areas on low incomes a free pass on the ULEZ. I say this as someone who lives way outside of London but we have busses in my town, yet a car is still more efficient. Apart from that I think the schemes are generally good, and whenever I visit London I always take the train up there, and the tube, bus, or walk around- and the transport in London is way better than even the relatively ok transport here about 60 miles (95km) away from central London.
I've lived in London my entire life and my post-pandemic take is we need to do even more to discourage unnecessary driving here. During lockdown the air quality was even better. I'd like that back please. There's no way everyone driving right now is a tradesman, someone with a disability who can't use the bus or tube or someone taking a sofa back home in their car.
I'm in Hertfordshire and I live in a small town on a fairly busy road even there air quality was a lot better during Covid 😂 you really don't notice it till the traffic stops for a week or two then it's this realisation of I can't believe cars change it that much
20:55 I honestly don’t see why cold temperatures would reduce traffic. Like people still need to go to work, so it being cold probably isn’t changing anything. If anything, the cold temperatures would mean that people are more likely to drive rather than taking the train as they might not want to walk or wait for a train in the cold. I live in St. Paul, and take transit or bike a lot of the time, and sometimes my mom will opt out of driving her car and take the bus or train with me for a certain activity like going to dinner, but if it’s cold she will probably stop drive because she doesn’t want to wait or walk in the cold. But hey, let’s wait til we have a normal weather day and see if traffic is still reduced then, maybe it is the cold, but I just don’t think that would cause less traffic.
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Hi Evan. I only watched half the video so you may yet address this issue.
I have extremely poor mobility, I used to ride a pedal bike in London, but I can't anymore.
I used to communite in by bus & train and the travel across London by bike.
But unless I pay about £10K for a recumbent battery motorised trike, that is no longer an option.
I can't buy an electric vehicle because I am not allowed to save up enough money to buy even a second hand one and I can't get a loan, without paying huge fees or getting a very expensive lease that I can't afford.
All I can afford is a 23 years diesal and hope the number recognition cameras recognise my pre-registration for blue badge/disabled driver so I don't get fined.
Plus having to pay through the nose for Diesal. But hey hoe that's the price of being ('Old')Disabled. 😢
So I have not been to London from Oxford whilst you have lived there. I used to go down to London a 3 times a week as I was doing a degree at Birkbeck but that's disability for you
So I was wondering if you and your mate Matt of the Technical Difficulties team & Tom if you can persuade him. Or perhaps Geoff Marshall of the Londonist & All The Stations if you can't. See if you can borrow 3 wheelchairs and then hold an extended Top Gear style race to the centre of London! And then spend and afternoon & night on the town before making your way back home to the start. Somewhere on the inside of the M25 like Downside? Which is near by Cohbam station on the M25 south side.
I checked for it on a map.
Perhaps one of you rides in and out on an Electric recumbent Trike, one if you uses public transport and one of you uses a car. And see how knackered you are next day.
Given that none of you have obvious physical disabilities! Perhaps even a London based disabled RUclips creator to join you. As it might popularise ther channel.
Its just a thought
Taipei is better
This is literally the perfect content for that sponsor
Evan, when did Americans start saying "transit" when they mean "transport"? I've only noticed this in the last few years, even though I've always prided myself on being a pedant. 😀
@@da3dsoulhaha I knoooow!
It's a bit rich for a black cab driver to be all "won't someone think of the poor people" as if taking a cab in London doesn't require you to remortage a house 😂
😂
They don't set the price and have to work bloody hard to make a decent living with the costs they have to stump up. So not great to paint them as some out of touch middle class exploiting their passengers.
If you are travelling alone then a black taxi ride is expensive, take a bus or the tube. If there are 3 or more of you then it become a lot more cost effective and more pleasant.
@@DeadpanCrypto I know, it was a ✨joke✨
@ hmmmm yeah okay.
People have tried making the same argument about the NYC congestion charge even though the median income for NYC drivers is literally double that of non-drivers. Also, like London, owning a car in NYC is super expense. For example, I work in the NYC congestion zone near a parking lot that charges $1000 a month to rent an outdoor parking space.
If only everyone in UK had access to the same level of public transport as Londoners.
We would be paying infinitely higher taxes for quite some time 😂
@@matthewgrist5234do you know how much of your taxes goes towards maintaining roads for cars, car parks, emergency services and traffic officers. That all doesn't even have any return of investment like trains do
Yet that isnt stopping other cities from trying to impose a similar congestion charge….
Please include the Outer Boroughs in that!
Manchester is doing fine for public transport and the pedestrianisation was voted against - no congestion charge.
I just find it crazy how much Brits and Americans have to spend on public transport daily. In Germany we pay 60€ per month for all trains throughout Germany and all cities public transport. That's what i spent for a day trip into London from Reading
Given how famously delayed German trains are, you would think you should be paying more to improve the network...
in NYC there is fare capping so that the most you will spend in a week on subway or bus is $34, so $136 a month. The germanyticket really is amazing!
londoner here! a lot of us get discounts (you can purchase a railcard for like 30% off). if you're aged 16-about 18 and a half you get 50% and free local journeys (tram + bus)
as the new yorker commented above, we also have fare caps on tube, train, buses and trams :)
That's why we're so much less financially stable as Americans.
We pay too much for literally everything.
@@dealbreakerc In early 2000s I lived in Surrey and commuted by train for a year (lived there for 3 years but the rest of the time used them occasionally). I am from Slovakia, not known for the best train transport, but I was shocked by how bad local trains can get.
Disabled drivers with blue badges can also access the zone free of charge. Worth mentioning as they are often overlooked in these discussions and unfortunately the tube even the buses in London have big accessibility problems. Even buses with ramps etc often won’t help as some drivers don’t use them. My son is disabled and that’s our experience anyhow.
@@djs98blue I was a bus driver and this is nonsense we use them day in and day out. Simply ask and you shall receive. Put your hand up at a bus stop and get the drivers attention. They don't know what bus you want. When you want to get off simply move towards the door and ask for the ramp and you will have no problems at all. The driver will even get out and help if needed.
It's only those who think bus drivers are mind readers or everyone is somehow looking at them and know what they want that have issues. A driver has to look in a lot of directions at all their mirrors and cameras and also deal with all the people getting on and off the bus, they aren't paying attention to you. The disabled bell is misused 90% of the time. They won't realise if you push it and just hide behind the stairs where they cannot see you. You are just one of 100 passengers. You have to ask for things and help him or her.
@@zephyr139 I have been left by a number of buses because the driver 'didn't know how to use' the ramp. It's probably a minority but still can ruin your day.
@@Blink3h69 What part of I was a bus driver don't you get? It's not possible for the driver to not know how to use the ramp and still be moving the bus. They have to operate the ramp to even get out of the garage in the morning. It simply cannot happen like that.
People need to using disability as an argument against alternatives to cars. Disabled people drive less than non disabled people. There are many who can and want to use alternatives. Car centric design makes things much worse for many disabled people. Look how flared out our road crossings are and lack of dropped kerbs in many places, for example. 80% of disabled people can cycle (with adapted bikes or otherswise) and we should be enabling them to be able to with infrastructure.
@@zephyr139 My guy, what part of "this is my lived and direct first hand experience that has happened oh multiple occasions" do YOU not understand? Speaking as a disabled person myself, and let me make it clear I'm *extremely* confident and direct about asking for help when I need it, your training does not mean everyone else maintains the same standards. Just for starters not all buses and bus stations are the same. Some people may not understand what a ramp is (I KNOW how dumb that sounds, believe me, I witness it first-hand). Some people may not want to go through the hassle of sorting the ramp. Some people might think the ramp is out of order. Disabled people not receiivng the support the broader system says they will is very much, EXTREMELY par for the course for all number of reasons, and the fact you seem to think that's a lie made up by people who can't be bothered to stick their hands up and ask for help makes me think maybe you might be less qualified than the disabled people in the room to speak on the matter, no matter how many years you've driven a bus.
I lived in London for a number of years in the early 90s. I lived near Camden Town and worked at an office in Oxford Street. Each day the bad air quality meant my hands were dirty and the snot was black. This was not from factories or industry, this was all from all the diesel-engined vehicles. After a day of rain, the air tended to be cleaner but any laundry that was outside when it rained had to be washed again because the particles in the air were on the clothes.
Kudos to London for doing something that has so improved the quality of life in the city
London air quality now is great (compared to any other city of it's size)
it's practically the world's greenest megacity
(my uncle used to have to wipe his window sills weekly because they'd turn black from soot, after ULEZ it's down to a couple times a year)
@@KingFinnch You reminded me about having to do that as well. There was just this ever present grime due to shit from vehicle exhaust. I can not imagine what is was like in the 50s when there was still abundant coal fired power in the centre of the city
You reminded me of when I occasionally went to London for consultancy. I would head home afterwards blowing black crud out of my nose.
Huh, yeah good point. My snot is a lot less black these days when I travel into London...
I hardly ever use my Asthma inhaler anymore, before Ulez I used it often and I would panic if I left the house without it, now I don't have to worry so much. That's a win too in my book.
As someone who lives in London, I visited New York for the first time this year. The air quality was noticeably bad and I actually got a massive chest infection that started whilst I was in New York. The air quality probably was a factor in how bad it became. I felt like I needed to use those air filter masks just to walk around!
The subway was also a shock at how ancient it was. Especially lugging a suitcase up and down the stairs... I actually walked 2 stops away just to use an elevator!
You just sound soft.
@@vision-gc4hy You sound smooth brained.
@@miz4535 Just someone that's not going to get sick merely visiting a city.
@vision-gc4hy I didn't say it was the only reason, but it definitely contributed to how bad it actually got. When I was in New Jersey during the trip it didn't feel as bad as when as I was in Manhattan. I never thought coming back to London would feel like fresh air, as it's polluted compared to most other places in the UK!
@@PurpleNurpleSPN You said it started when you were in New York. Breathing the same air everybody else breathes. I'm sorry you got sick, but having that level of sensitivity to the air on a visit sounds a bit extreme.
I moved from London to New York in 2001, then moved to Northern NJ 4 years later (and am still there today). I've always commuted into the City... using public transit. I picked a town on the Bergen line and a house within walking distance (about 8 minutes walk). So whether I was working in NYC or Jersey City no car was needed.
At one point (2005?) the subway went on strike so I had to walk from Penn to 47th/Park. Which would have been annoying except the city closed off midtown to traffic; just busses allowed. The walk was so much nicer 'cos of not having to wait at every intersection.
I'm hoping the NYC congestion charge will have a similar effect; less traffic making it nicer to walk around midtown/downtown. Maybe we'll start to get more streetside cafe type seating!
Does the Bergen line go directly to the city? Or do you have to transfer in Newark/Secaucus/Hoboken?
And if you do have to transfer, how does that affect you outside normal commuter hours? Do you get stuck at the transfer station waiting late in the evening after a night out?
@@meaganl124 Penn requires changing at Secaucus; downtown requires Hoboken and PATH.
NJT schedules are always pretty bad (when I lived in the equivalent suburbs in England trains would run every 20 minutes on a Sunday; my train here in NJ runs every 90 minutes on a weekday evening after rush hour!). Even rush hour might only have trains every 30-40 minutes. I joke that NJTransit is a transit system a third world country would be proud of.
So, yeah, timing is important; eg I would leave my favourite pub in Greenwich Village around 9:30pm to get the PATH from 9th St to Hoboken to be sure I had plenty of time to catch the 10:15pm train... 'cos I didn't want to have to wait another hour or more if I missed it! Planning :-)
But if I was driving then I wouldn't go out drinking, anyway.
@sweh
Damn
I keep trying to find a town to move to that doesn’t have my hometown park and ride
But it’s looking more and more like that quick express ride to Manhattan no matter the day of the week is a rarity amongst every other NJ town :’(
@@swehI know public transport besides planes is a afterthought in the US but I did not expect the train system into NY to be quite that bad I have only gone to NY by train once when on holiday in the US went from new England to new York but I must admit I thought the public transport situation around NY would be better than that 30+ minutes on a pretty major line at rush hour is wild
@@matthewgrist5234 There's a "only poor people use public transit so why spend money on it" feeling in America.
So you get what you pay for; a ticket from my station into Penn is $260/month; so let's say $3100/year (they don't do yearly tickets)... eh, close enough to £2500. My UK ticket equivalent into Fenchurch Street would be £4300.
NJTransit has been massively underfunded and has been restricted in what it can charge, so the service levels match the money they have. And even if there was political will they can't raise prices to what it needs to be 'cos the service level is so poor.
NJT trains are also older and slower and worse all around than the c2c trains.
The New York subways are also bad; when I moved here I was working on Wall Street. Y'know, the "financial center of the world" (as it was in 2001). And I was shocked at the state of disrepair of the stations; the roofs were streaked with rust, tiles were falling off the walls. Compared to the London Blunderground, my opinion of the subway is that it was dark, dingy, dirty. It's still not that much better...
We can only hope the congestion fees will provide money to fix this mess! (editor's note: "it won't").
Paris declined to implement a congestion charge because they considered it to be elitist. They've done a great job of reducing traffic and pollution by transferring road space away from cars and making massive investments in public transport.
Yes I’ve been reading and watching a lot about their efforts.
But also, tbf Paris has a huge area where you CANNOT drive if your car is too old. When I visited last we HAD to park super far out or get fined €70.
That’ll do the job!
@@evan Plus making parking extra expensive for bigger cars. They might not call it a congestion (relief) charge, but they are a financial incentive for ditching cars unless you really, really need them.
I feel like I don't want to complain too much as the person who used to live in London in the 2000s is very jealous of today's cycling infrastructure, but Paris is definitely ahead on that one. In reality, a range of measures are required to reduce congestion, improve air quality and make life safer and nicer for people who aren't in private cars, and as is often the case, the whole is more than the sum of its parts.
Paris is the other way to do it. They have proven it works, but it needs a lot more political will and costs a lot more money.
@@evan we forever hear complaints in the UK that any effort to reduce issues caused by cars (congestion, emissions, speeding etc.) are "just a money raising scheme". This is why I feel sympathetic to the idea of skipping charges and just banning polluters from Greater London, banning all cars from Central London, and just banning speeding drivers rather than slapping a fine on them. See how they like that.
@@jackwalker4874 One of the reasons politicans can do it London, compare to the rest of the country is the fact that 46% of Londoners don't own a car, compared to 21% across the country.
Watching this whilst on holiday in Amsterdam for the first time, and my God the roads here are amazing - a world where cars, trams, bicycles, & pedestrians live in perfect harmony.
It's the population density, the Netherlands is a crowded country, thus the amount of transportation infrastructure needed per person is fairly low, and most journeys are not very long distances. Even New Jersey is less dense than the Netherlands, and it's one of the most densely populated states in the union.
We don't have journalism in the US anymore.
I talked to a couple of different Lyft drivers in NY City recently and they seemed generally positive to the change. Less traffic means they deliver their customers faster, which means they can do more trips. The cost gets passed onto the customer apparently, so it's not money out of their pockets from that perspective. One of the drivers did speculate that the impact would be less in a few months when it's the busy time of year.
Journalism is dead across the world. As I keep telling family and friends, "We don't have news anymore, we have noise" 😕
We jail all of our real journalists
@@dazecm Every society eventually devolves into anarchy that's reset by a revolution. Each time a new constitution is established or a new country, it is always noted that it will be better for a few years before people of greed find ways around the new laws and norms to get what they want, at which point another reset is needed. It's a wave of prosperity followed by a downfall that continues to bounce up and down forever.
As someone who might be driving a lot for work related reasons, I really liked it when the work-from-home revolution started. Long weekends or school vacation times would be great too because it would mean I could finish work 10-20% sooner by simply cutting down driving time. Less cars on the road also meaning less bad drivers on the road so safety and aggravation levels are improved as well.
thats's the other thing about traffic reduction policies: they make the roads so much nicer for everyone that does need to drive, also emergency services.
> 1:48 - "People decide, 'okay, I'm gonna pay", and the traffic goes up anyway!"
No. At most traffic will be the exact same as it was before congesting charging. People who aren't going to travel aren't going to think "oh, they have congesting charging - I must travel there by car immediately to see what it is all about!", which is what they're being paid to suggest.
On top of that even if the traffic goes back to the same levels as pre-congestion pricing, all that means is that the fee is too low and that people are doing perfectly fine with paying it. The CP cost should hence be increased as the free market dictates. While all that money still goes to fund public transit, and biking infrastructure.
@@AtulKedia But thats the problem, MTA mismanages their money and honestly imo, the zone is too big. All the traffic is usallly below Soho and the rest is in Midtown cuz everybody going from lincoln tunnel to midtown tunnel.
honestly, the only people i know who have a car in NYC are well off. my friends who are poor all take the public transit that isnt even nearly as good as london's. having a car is definitely a luxury in NYC too, even before the congestion pricing.
like... nyc has the best public transit in the country, or at least on the east coast. it's not nearly as good as london's but it's the best we have access to so the argument against that cabbie actually extends across the pond
ough my hubris i forgot jersey of course
Similar in London, lived there 9 years and no one I knew had a car, there was no point, public transport or even using Uber was better than owning a car. Even outside the congestion charge wherever I lived you had to pay to park your car in the area ontop of all the usual car owning costs.
"nyc has the best public transit in the country, or at least on the east coast" best in the country and its not even close
Then why is it so hard to find parking in Inwood, Washington Heights, Harlem, Kingsbridge, Mott Haven, Brownsville, Bed-Stuy, Bushwick, Belmont, Corona, Elmhurst, some of the poorest places in NYC?
the parking cost for the cars is worse than the car itself 😢
Pedestrians in Barcelona are slowly reclaiming many parts of their city with the city's transformation of roadways into priority areas for pedestrians, even going so far as to close off certain neighbourhoods COMPLETELY to road traffic on the weekends.
The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if some of the people CBS interviewed were actually talking about Ulez not the congestion charge but they edited to make it look like it was the congestion charge.
Most people mix up Ulez and congestion charge anyway
Honestly the ulez kinda only sucks for tradesmen who drive more diesel vehicles, my parents drive their cars until they don’t run anymore and both own a ulez compliant vehicle.
It affects every person with diesel cars. People old and young. From careworkers to mothers.
Hi! As an autistic New Yorker with a physical disability that relies on transit, born to parents from New Jersey, there are things I want to add:
- In just the first week according to MTA's results, it's been working! Don't underestimate our transit infrastructure. During rush-hour, the Lincoln Tunnel is home to the busiest bus lane in the US! Approximately 1,850 buses and 70K commuters use it daily. Or over 18.5 MILLION a year. Different operators use the bus lane, but many of the buses that use it is NJ Transit! You only mention the NYC Subway and NJ Transit, but there's also the LIRR and Metro-North Railroad commuter networks. Congestion pricing not only benefits the NYC Subway and MTA's buses, but also projects for the Staten Island Railway, LIRR, and Metro-North Railroad. Which I wish you mentioned. The LIRR is the busiest commuter rail system in the US and operates 24/7 year-round, its park-and-rides encourage Long Islanders to relax and take the train. The Metro-North Railroad serves NY, Connecticut and even NJ (the MNR has Port Jervis Line and Pascack Valley Line trains to Hoboken Terminal that are operated by NJ Transit under contract), and is the second-busiest commuter rail system in the US after the LIRR. At Penn Station, Grand Central Terminal, and the Port Authority Bus Terminal, there are several subway connections within walking distance. At Hoboken Terminal, there's connections to NY Waterway ferries, PATH, HBLR, and NJT buses.
- I've lived in Westchester County NY, Hudson County NJ, and Long Island. In Westchester, I lived in Tarrytown/Sleepy Hollow which is a super walkable colonial suburb with bus service to Palisades Center mall and frequent trains on the Hudson Line, including express service. In Jersey City, I was able to rely on frequent NJT buses and jitneys to go to NYC, Journal Square, or the mall, the HBLR to also get to the mall or other places in Jersey City and Hoboken and did all my errands by walking. On Long Island, I rely on paratransit and the LIRR. Specifically the Ronkonkoma and Montauk Branches. I've seen Hamptonites complaining, but they shouldn't be complaining when they have both the LIRR Montauk Branch and the Hampton Jitney bus service as ways to commute!
- On Staten Island, they have multiple express buses that go to Manhattan, they could go to Brooklyn and transfer to the subway in Bay Ridge, and the Staten Island Railway (which has parking lots) connects to St George terminal, a hub for buses, ferry, and the SIR, where they can board the free Staten Island Ferry to Manhattan. Oh, and when people walk to the NYC Subway after getting off the ferry, it counts as a free transfer thanks to "One city, one fare" if they transferred at St George from a Staten Island bus or the SIR.
- Regarding the low-income argument, it's worth mentioning that the majority of those in poverty who live in the outer boroughs of NYC commute by transit, 61% of them! Compared to 20% who drive to non-Manhattan destinations, and 2% who drive to Manhattan. This is from a pie chart shown in a Community Service Society analysis called "What Does Congestion Pricing Mean for Outer-Borough New Yorkers in Poverty?". Not only does congestion pricing benefit them by investing in improving the transit that they rely on, but for those who drive, there is a discount for low-income vehicle owners enrolled in the Low-Income Discount Plan (LIDP). And there's also a low-income tax credit for residents of the congestion pricing zone.
- As someone with a disability, the program benefits me in that it leads to making stations accessible. Not just in the NYC Subway, but the LIRR, Staten Island Railway, and Metro-North Railroad as well. People with disabilities are also exempt from congestion pricing under the Individual Disability Exemption Plan (IDEP), and the Organizational Disability Exemption Plan (ODEP) is available for organizations that operate vehicles that transport people with disabilities such as Access-A-Ride, ambulette services, or schools and special education facilities. Anti-congestion pricing politicians claim they care about affordability and low-income residents, but don't think of those of us who either have a disability that prevents us from driving, or simply can't afford one! My street doesn't even have a sidewalk, and I'm thankful I can rely on paratransit.
Hamptonites complaining is rich. To drive out that far in long island is like 2 hrs min anyway if I'm not mistaken. There is rail and jitneys but no one is commuting daily like for work.
They even offered to give $100m/year to NJ Transit as a "settlement" but NJ's governor turned it down, smh
This. Watching people from Jersey constantly complain about how the MTA is decreasing their quality of life when in actuality it constantly stems from disinvestment and a level of unwillingness from their local state politicians
And it seems NJ spent well over a million in legal fees to challenge it, requiring NY to spend money defending it. Imagine if they'd accepted the money and worked together to analyse data and invest in joined up services where they would have most mutual benefit?
The drivers like driving and don't like paying for it. The NJ governor doesn't care about transit.
If they can afford to give away money, then they have no need for the revenue from this tax!
@@commentinglife6175 I think the idea is NJ could spend that money on their own public transit infrastructure making it easier to get into NYC. This is called a win-win scenario and more US politicians should probably try it.
I agree with so much of what you said here, but would be genuinely interested to see a video on travelling in the outer boroughs of London as I think it is a really different experience, especially in south London. There is very little tube coverage, and people have to rely on much less frequent national rail services (which are often hit by maintenance work, strikes, delays etc.) or long bus routes. Travelling into the city tends to be okay, but travelling between outer boroughs can be much more difficult.
Yes but then they aren’t coming INTO London innit
ULEZ is affecting almost all parts of greater london! e.g. if i want to get anywhere from my place in hounslow and didnt have a car that was exempt, you'd have to pay the charge. its not just for people commuting into london, its everyone who lives here @@evan
(fyi im supportive of the ULEZ its nice to be able to breathe but public transport around zone 4+ is just not as good as it is closer to central
@@TheChickinlover ULEZ only affects diesel cars built before 2014, and petrol cars built before 2004. Anyone living in London could scrap a non-compliant car and get £2000 for it, so even if they drove the tattiest old banger then could buy a second-hand car that _does_ meet ULEZ standards and still have cash in their pocket. (People with vans or adapted cars could get more)
@@TheChickinloverthis!
It’s very easy from zones 4-6 to travel in and out of London. However travelling locally in the outer boroughs is such a pain. I can drive to a nearby shopping centre (Brent Cross) in just over 20 minutes. On the bus it’s an hour (not including waiting time and bus runs every 20 minutes) or a bus and then the tube which is a similar time.
We need to improve the transport infrastructure beyond zone 2, especially as more and more apartments are being built in these areas.
Theres little tube coverage but there is a lot of rail coverage. From the south lines run into London from Sutton, Mitcham, Bromley, Orpington, Gatwick, Croydon. There is also the tram lines running between Croydon, Mitcham, Wimbledon and Beckenham
There is a near-zero-percent chance NY will implement congestion charges as well as London has. We're talking about people who pay $2.5 billion PER MILE to build a subway line (which took decades and still isn't finished)!
New Jersey had the opportunity to get congestion pricing money for NJ Transit. NY Governor Kathy Hochul offered tolling revenue to NJ Transit, as well as more money for environmental mitigation and a crossing credit at the George Washington Bridge, where there has been none. She offered upwards of 100 million dollars! NJ rejected this out of spite and continued their ridiculous lawsuit. This wasn't the first time NJ rejected such an offer to share congestion pricing money. In April 2024, MTA CEO Janno Lieber announced that New Jersey would receive a share of congestion pricing money, with a portion of mitigation being allocated to communities so they could invest in things that mitigate the impact, which the NJ government rejected. Instead of whining about it, NJ should take this as a wake up call to launch its own congestion pricing zone and give NJT needed funding. As congestion pricing encourages people to ride NJT, it should be a sign to give NJT a great funding source so it can keep up, like greenways, modernize its infrastructure, build modern BRT, dedicated bus lanes, promote TOD, electrify train lines that aren't electrified, buy PATH, and expand. It's incredily ironic that New Jersey, the state famous for always tolling you when you leave, is pissed off that they have to pay to enter.
Glad you mentioned the buses! People have to remember that NJ Transit isn't just trains and light-rail, their buses are a powerhouse! So not only can people in NJ drive to NJ Transit rail stations and not have to think about driving to the city, but they could also park at a park-and-ride or walk to take one of the many NJT commuter buses to NYC, most go to the PABT in Midtown, but they also go to the George Washington Bridge Bus Station (GWB isn't in the congestion pricing zone anyway), and one bus from Bayonne goes to Lower Manhattan. NJT's buses are super good. In 2023, the bus system had a ridership of 131,253,500. There is a direct route from NYC as far as Cape May. That's not even mentioning the NJT routes that connect South Jersey suburbs with Philly, or the different buses serving sports, school or shopping purposes like the 85 going between Hoboken Terminal, Harmon Meadow in Secaucus (a shopping complex with a Walmart, Sam's Club, cinema, a marsh trail, etc), and the American Dream mall, or the 364 serving as a PM School tripper route for Ridgewood High School.
It's ironic for Phil Murphy and other NJ government officials to say they care about the environment, while at the same time, be against congestion pricing! In Jersey City, 50 percent of Jersey City takes transit, thanks to the PATH, NY Waterway ferries, shared NJT bus/jitney corridors, and the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail! And yet Phil Murphy would rather widen the NJ Turnpike and bend the knee to the car industry than actually help Hudson County. The NJ Turnpike Authority under Governer Phil Murphy has supported the "One more lane, bro" NJ Turnpike widening project of the Newark Bay extension through Jersey City and Bayonne, which won't solve Holland Tunnel traffic but only makes it worse, poisons the air through added exhaust fumes and tire dust, and harms the climate. The same governor that set a goal to reduce greenhouse emissions 50% of 2006 by 2030! By expanding a highway to have more cars and trucks sit in traffic...that's not achieving that. Why spend tens of billions of dollars on expanding a highway, when you can redirect all that for needed transit investments in the state? Hoboken and Jersey City has achieved Vision Zero thanks to dedicated local leadership creating safer streets, through bikeshare, daylighting intersections, high-visibility crosswalks and curb extensions, protected bike lanes, and their transit. Vision Zero across NJ isn't possible without these investments.
New Yorker here. I support congestion relief zones. I live in the New York City Congestion Relief Zone. I love it. I love London. I am going back for my birthday. ❤❤❤
Evan, you must know that amongst broadcast news channels across the western world, other than PBS, US channels (both cable and terrestrial) rank worst for objective reporting. They are more dependent on pleasing advertisers than in any other country, and spend a lower proportion of network budget on news than major national channels elsewhere.
Every news agency in the US is classified as entertainment for a reason. It means they have 0 accountability, and can say anything they want
And they are all owned by the very same corporations and HNW investors that profit heavily from car dependency in the US.
and car dealers are one of the biggest advertisers on local news (which is that CBSNews New York is)
Absolutely phenomenal video, Evan. I’m blown away by how deftly you skewered American news media and ignorant voters while also making an incredibly informative video.
The Subway in NY is far cheaper than London, no Zones!. You buy a ticket and can travel as far as you need for the standard ticket price. This makes a huge difference for lower income people. Keep what you have NY.
Live in the US, but did live in Italy for a few years too. Since I've been back in the US it has been infuriating to deal with the public transit. Lived in 4 very different areas and states, and it has sucked each time to the point that not having a vehicle just isn't that manageable.
The current place I live doesn't even have a bus system, and there might still be a taxi company here. (Couldn't find one when I looked for a friend.) Sad part, this is the biggest town in a 2hr drive radius.
In Lexington, you could count on it being a 1.5 - 2 hr transit by bus for a trip that would take less than 15 min if you drove.
I didn't even have a driver's license until I moved to NJ. Definitely hard to get around without a car when the main road through town *is a major highway* ! And yet it scales up even further to the Parkway etc.
I was a transport statistician working for TfL at the time of the introduction of the congestion charge. I would argue that effective bus lane enforcement is also a significant factor in improving the central area travel experience.
Having said that, how do you manage if your shopping exceeds what you can carry or you have garden rubbish to take to the tip?
Never had my shopping exceed what I could carry home. If it’s a huge thing then I’d get it shipped. But I’ve never needed my own car for any shopping. Ebike does the job these days.
Hounslow had garden waste collection. Never needed that either!
@@evan I live in Brooklyn. I have a very commodius and sturdy backpack. Garden waste? We now have a bin for compostable waste that is collected once a week.
Anecdoteally - an issue with the ULEZ was people who live outside of London didn't get the support to replace older vehicles that people in did.
And ancient EV cars are not exempt for some reason.
One way around is buy a car over 40 years old, but ensure it is registered as such, one also saves on tax and an annual MOT. It must have a new one when the registration is changed and advisable to have one done every couple of years if used regularly. It may later be changed to cars first registered before a certain date as '90's and noughties cars get included.
@@Redrally I had a look at a fact check site and it said it wasn't the case. I put the link up earlier but YT doesn't allow that in comments. I know tou have to pay tax on electric cars now but fully electric cars are still ULEZ free.
Also the ULEZ didnt have a grace period like with the LEZ and CCZ
To be fair if you don’t have a ulez compliant car in current year that’s actually impressive
The crosses at road sides are more often for people killed in their cars than they are for pedestrians. You would have to find the news on the one you are looking at.
The one shown in this video was discussed in my earlier video on hawk beacons. It was a 15 year old crossing the street to get a wawa
When I was in the US for the first time, i visited DC, and i was suprised by the amount of bike lanes on the streets, but then I realised after using them that they were just painted into the pre-existing road, I was almost run over twice, turns out that Hatchback truck drivers dont care about bike lanes :/.
I live on LI and commute to the city everyday. The commute is awful with my train often being delayed, and I pay over 300$ a month to use it not including the parking fee. Th congestion tax would be fine if there was better transport, not just in Jersey but in the rest of New York. The fact that you can train in from parts of Connecticut and Jersey quicker then LI which is actually in the state of New York is crazy to me. They really need to fix the LIRR if they want this tax to work!!
Problem with the ULEZ is that most trades vehicles are still diesel because EV charging infrastructure has NOT been expanded anywhere near fast enough to have a charger at every parking spot. We actually had to go BACK to diesel vans after using electric vans for 8 years because the drivers didn't have anywhere to charge at home or while on work sites.
Net result, limited improvement in air quality and extra charges get passed directly to clients... 🤦🤦♂🤦♀😡😡😡
You're so right about not needing a car in London - a friend of mine used to work in Canary Wharf and he owned a car but he almost never used it cause it was just quicker and less of a hassle to use the underground.
Who's making multiple stops to go shopping in NY? The parking cost would be ruinous.
Also if you're driving into Manhattan every day for work, how much does that parking cost?
The pariing at stores is free.
I live in rural Colorado, and people often offer me rides, as they don't expect to see pedestrians. Locals are trying to get a train line back to passenger trains, which would be nice, since there's no good way to get to larger cities other than driving.
If you live on the Front Range have you considered joining ColoRail? It's a non-profit advocacy and volunteer group here that's helped implement some passenger train services like the ski train and has been advocating for Front Range rail for years.
@@m.someone6792 I live on the Western slope, not the front range. Good idea though.
I have to disargee with some of your points. The amount of people who take Transit into the congestion zone from NJ is around 760,000 a day vs 190,000 drivers who commute in. The system is far from perfect but it will get into the city somewhat fast and back most of day. Most core bus NJT bus lines run from 3 am to 1am every 2-15mins during peak hour and every 20-45mins off peak with the Urban Rail running every 3mins during peak and every 10-15mins offpeak , Suburban Rail varies but its no more then 20mins on the Diesel lines and every 5-15 on the electric during peak and every 30-45mins offpeak. Running the Subway 24/7 does contribute to a lot of the grim you see and London has old trains aswell.
The Average train age is 16 years…That’s considerably less. Do older trains exist? Yes. Are they common? No
@@kgapaneseschoolgirlb Your oldest stock is from the 1970s , the oldest trains the MTA uses is from the 1980s and will be replaced in a few years. They may look rough but they are designed to run 24/7 in all sorts of weather and the older trains breakdown less hence the reason the MTA still runs them. The only reason there being phased out quicker is due the new signaling system.
@@Nexis4Jersey I’m sorry, but the R46 and the 1972 stock are three years apart. The 1972 are also nicer than the R46 and as I mentioned before, they serve one line. You watched this video right? You saw the average age for the New York subway? It was in the video
@@kgapaneseschoolgirlb The Rolling stock he cited hasn't run on the J train in 4 yrs its all new stock. The older stock is limited to 9 of the 36 lines , that will decrease down to 4 by 2028. The rest of the system uses stock built in the 90s to just a few years ago. Some of his facts are wrong..
@@Nexis4Jersey Again, the average age of train stock here is 16 years old and the oldest ones we’ve kept around because they ‘still work fine’ are being replaced this year. Some were replaced last year in fact.
Also, the R46 are still running in the lines. Evan literally was riding in one. Yes, they are due to be replaced yes, but they were due to be replaced in 2011 and it’s only now that they’ve started to replace them. The R32 were the ones replaced in 2022 and they were from the 60’s!
Hi Evan. Person from South west London here. I agree with most of what you are saying. However there are lots of journeys on the edges of the ULEZ, where taking a car is much faster. Work still needs to happen to make public transport the default choice in this edge areas.
The tax in NYC will fail because we don’t have a choice. As you said it is almost never necessary to drive through downtown London. Here it is the opposite. I can’t avoid it. Every road off Long Island passes through the city.
I already don’t want to be there. I am already paying tolls on both sides of the city. Adding in an extra fee for what I can’t avoid is just kicking me when I’m down.
where are you driving to and how often? Most people are not commuting a distance as far as Long Island past NYC say to Hoboken with a frequency that the fee will be a huge burden. And for most trips I actually think you can avoid lower manhattan. Every road off long island passes into brooklyn or queens, which are not included in congestion pricing, but they do not all go through lower manhattan. if you go from Brooklyn or queens south through staten island or north through upper manhattan or the bronx you're fine...
@ that’s my point. The traffic isn’t commuting. Commuters don’t drive around all day. New York was just not planned as a major residential area. It was a sea port and trade hub. Everything is designed to funnel into downtown. All of its industrial infrastructure is on Long Island, so everything has to pass through city. Same goes for JFK and LaGuardia airports. If someone from Connecticut wants to go on a European vacation they have to drive through the busiest part of Brooklyn. It’s so stupid, but the time to fix it was 200 years ago.
@@Christopher_Gibbons I think the point is, the congestion pricing is supposed to make it so that only people who have to use cars to reach that area do it, if you can get in another way, for a commute or for whatever you want to do, you take another route. Then the money raised will improve the quality of this transit. Those bringing industrial things from Long Island into Manhattan will hopefully face less traffic, now that anyone traveling for other reasons may opt to use public transit. He even addresses this in the video, that commerce will have to adjust to account for the added cost of transporting goods in, like it did in London. Downtown London is not just residential either, it is also a central business area, trade hub, entertainment space, etc...commerce flows INTO central london as much as anywhere else. What I'm saying is rarely does anyone have to drive /through/ lower manhattan, and rarely do most people really need to drive into lower manhattan, trade hub or not, except for those making shipments.
So the LIRR just doesn’t exist?
In the US, not relying on a car is a privilege. There is no way to get where I need to go efficiently with public transportation.
Exactly and I would even say that's true for the majority of the UK. Public transport needs to not only be in-city effective. It needs to work connecting smaller townships to each other and not just into and out of large cities.
Dude, if it didn't target the less well off, it wouldn't work. Why would a fee drive the rich to take the bus? And why are you assuming all drivers live in London?
Able bodied young people taxing the disabled, the poor and the elderly is what it looks like. CBS' reporting is crap because of their methodology but you conveniently neglect even a cursory look at the methodology that agrees with you. Hint: that's just as bad as what CBS did.
I travel to London 12 - 15 times per year per year on business. I have been in a car exactly one time in 50+ trips. The Black Cab ride was one I was told I must do once. Sure it was fun but it was also expensive and slower than all the alternate options. Riding the Tube and buses pretty much gets you everywhere in London.
16:45 this is something bad that my Tory council did in my area… shut the council run Park and Ride and said that it would encourage people to use (privately owned) busses more… in towns where the bus service is every 30/60 minutes as opposed to the 8 minute frequency of the park and ride??
Thankfully it’s since been reopened by a new Labour/LibDem council. Not trying to be overly political about this but it was a stupid, short sighted, and seemingly politically motivated decision.
I personally think there should be no personal cars in any inner city. City’s should be forced to provide public transportation. Just because a person can afford to pay to pollute and destroy doesn’t mean we should let them.
Agree
Now if you really want to see low cost and efficient public transportation, come to Vienna.
If a business increases its prices "because of congestion pricing," they're lying and you should boycott them. A box truck carrying thousands of dollars of goods pays $22 to enter the zone. That's hardly ONE entree at a midtown restaurant; heck, a crappy diner will charge you that much for a tuna melt and fries. How many of those do you literally throw in the garbage at the end of the night?
And the truck is presumably serving multiple businesses, so the charge being passed onto any one place is going to be even lower. If they jack up prices and blame congestion pricing, they are using it to hide their greed.
the congestion charge isn’t really a tax on the wealthy or if it is its an insanely inefficient one that only amounts to £5475 a year which for the allot of the wealthy people in London is practically nothing. in my opinion the charge should be based on income or the cost of the vehicle driven (a different calculation for each) whichever would have a larger impact, i feel the same for speeding and parking fines because as i said previously the 'fines' amount to practically nothing to the wealthy and they continue to act like nothing happened. the congestion tax only effects those in the weird middle area that have a car use it regularly but are not particularly wealthy.
Yeah every fine and tax should be based on income, but good luck passing those laws when every politician is in the pocket of someone
@@Foxy_Hydra but it's fine because a car is a luxury poor people don't deserve right? Doesn't matter that it takes a working class person 4 hours, 6 irregular night buses, a 3 mile hike, and a lift from a bin lorry to get to work for 3am to actually open that tube station or drive that bus. Their time is worthless! 😤 The working classes are the ones that actually need a vehicle and they are taxed for it.
The pigovian tax is meant to represent the societal cost of car use, which is the same for a poor person as for a rich person driving the same car. The idea is that if their driving isn't worth the cost of pollution and traffic, they won't do it, and if it is, they'll pay the price.
What about the fact that rich people can then afford to do more driving? Well, that's the same as everything else in life. If that's a problem (inequality or poverty), then it should be treated as its own issue and solved separately - not in a way that encourages the poor into cars when it's inappropriate or encourages the rich to use public transit when a car is more appropriate.
@@zephyr139 "The working classes are the ones that actually need a vehicle and they are taxed for it." Nonsense assumption. Most people, whether rich or poor, do not need to drive.
Ok, but even for poor people the amount should discourage them. So the amount should be higher than it is now for everyone, just raise it more for the rich.
12:54 The "wein wein wein wa-LUIGI" when talking about the business owner 🤣🤣 PLEASE i hope i'm not the only one that caught that😂
ULEZ is definitely a net gain for London but as someone who lives in the more suburban areas of London (Havering specifically) lots of people I know a stuck in a bind, they can't afford to buy a new car that will match your mission standards so they are stuck paying the fee every day and while the public transport in havering is a damn sight better than most other places in the world it's not quite good enough that you do not need a car at all
This is why everyone in the more suburban areas were pissed off that they had to pay this extra charge with seemingly no benefit to them
tbf ULEZ areas that don't have as good of public transit should get a large proportion of the fees generated to increase the service
@@evan I definitely agree, if nothing else it would help soothe the bruised egos in the suburban areas
I worked in central London when the congestion charge was brought in and the traffic did drop substantially pretty much overnight. But over the 20-odd years since its got progressively worse, so trade vehicles in particular (and this goes way beyond casinos) now have to pay the congestion charge, the ULEZ - and still deal with all the traffic.
The biggest issue is cars etc sitting stationary or crawling along producing emissions all in one place. That's why they started with a congestion charge. It DID NOT work, which is why they went for emission charging. A car (Truck/bus) cruising through at it's optimum pace is pretty clean. The big issue is and always has been traffic management of stop and go traffic. I would have thought traffic management would be a doddle in a city built on a grid system.
The issue is that there are too many cars. You can't manage your way out of traffic with light tinkering. That's what Boris Johnson tried in his first term and it failed. The amount of cars goes up to match the equilibrium that drivers are willing to endure. Also, having more of a denser grid means more traffic as there are more crossing points (junctions) which are controlled by lights and are bottlenecks. Remove the driving grid so a sparser set of roads and the make the roads inside the grid zones access only (LTNs) and you reduce the number of traffic lights and busy junctions.
Ultimately the only way to resolve traffic is to make alternatives better and to make driving more expensive. "I would have thought traffic management would be a doddle in a city built on a grid system." YEah clearly you are a genius that has figured it out while cities all of the world who refuse to reduce the number of cars haven't despite all the traffic engineers they've employed.
I stay with family in northern NJ and the park and ride system to NYC is awesome (TBH my standards are super low having lived in FL and TN most my life). The buses go straight to the city with no stops and come frequently enough that I don't really have to check the schedule.
The worst part is that is costs more to uber the 2 unwalkable miles from my relative's house to the bus stop than the bus and the subway combined.
Lately, I've been spitefully dragging my suitcase on the shoulder of the highway to save the $15 or whatever
I'm going to have to disagree with you on a number of points. I live in Greater London. I want to put on the table I don't own a car; I can't really justify the money for one and the places I generally need to get to I can get to by walking or public transport and I will try and secure a lift for those places I would struggle to get to by public transport. There are actually quite a few places for which I do need to beg for a lift because public transport isnt realistic for those particular destinations but it isnt a daily requirement.
However, my Dad had no option but to exchange his car and buy a new one. My sister and my mum both have mobility issues and often need to be taken to appointments etc because they would not be able to manage the long walks to get to the station/bus stop and, in the case of my sister, would struggle with riding public transport because of the issues she suffered. He also has various places he needs to get to where a car is essential, so there was no option for him here as he is charged just for exiting his own road. He had to take £12k out of his savings (he is retired and doesnt have much in the way of savings) to be able to do this. Their finances have taken a huge hit. This is only story of course.
I have quite a number of friends who live within the a few mile radius in Greater London who struggle with money but they have older cars that they have just about been able to afford that have places they need to get to that legitimately require a car. They use public transport when its appropriate but primarily for their location and situation it isnt something they can rely on for getting to where they need to go. They dont have the money to pay the ULEZ charge on a regular basis nor do they have the thousands it costs to pay for a compliant vehicle. Some are just about scraping by with the charge but others are not coping financially at all. I have heard many stories of other people I don't personally know but who are in similar positions. I also have friends that live just outside the boundary into Surrey. It's a myth that everyone in this area is well off - many of my friends here are struggling financially. They also depend on being able to get into places that are within the ULEZ zone for work and other life matters. One of my friends can no longer take her child to school (its legtimately too far away for a 4 year old to walk - her elderly father is now having to come early to take and collect him as his car is thankfully compliant but my friend should be able to take her child to school), cannot take the children to their grandparents in ULEZ zone, cannot get to see friends who live in ULEZ zone, cannot get to various regular appointments, have had to move vets. They have increased their petrol cost in having to get to certain places to avoid a ULEZ zone. Her partner has to periodically drive to a location within the ULEZ zone he cannot get to easily by public transport and the increased cost on them is really causing them problems. Again, while these stories are very individual, I am hearing of quite a few people for whom this is an issue.
So no it is not the case that only the rich in London have cars and yes it is very much a case that the expansion of ULEZ it is have a significantly detrimental effect on those who were already financially struggling. It also hasnt reduced congestion certainly in my area. Everyone now tries to squeeze onto the few roads that are within Greater London but outside the ULEZ boundary whereas they used to be fanned out using other roads. It has actually made it harder not easier in my area to get anywhere as a result.
As someone with fairly severe asthma I noticed a huge difference in my breathing during lockdown when there were almost no cars on the road. This obviously deteriorated once everyone started driving again. I havent noticed any improvement to my breathing at all since ULEZ was expanded.
I will also say I genuinely dont trust any stats that have been put out by the Mayor and would want to see independent stats that have been developed without any involvement at all with the Mayor, his office, or TFL and with transparency on how the data has been collected.
I'm not saying that there havent been improvements in other areas. I live where I live and I can only comment upon my side of London or from where I have friends who have shared their experience - I cannot comment on areas where I know no one the same as you cannot reasonably comment on areas where you know no one. Perhaps outside my area of London it has done wonders. It also makes perfect sense for the original congestion charge area where congestion was ridiculous and public transport is far more densely available as opposed to it becoming that bit more sparse the further out you go. But I think many of your comments were skewed by your own personal experience (I accept mine are skewed by my experience but it is notable that our lived experience on the same issue as people living in London are vastly different) your comment about it not being a tax on the poor is somewhat naive. Your comment that only the well off can afford a car in London, while that may be your perception, is just simply untrue. It hasnt delivered all the wonders the Mayor espouses to every area of London and it has legitimately caused a number of problems for many. It has also caused many problems for those living just outside the border but who still have to travel within ULEZ but are not captured by any of the data.
Luxembourg 🇱🇺 had a different idea than a congestion charge. It made the entire public transport system (trains, trams, buses) free of charge, not only in the capital Luxembourg City, but in the entire country (which is roughly the size of Rhode Island without its water areas since Luxembourg is a landlocked nation). This had a great effect, in particular with commuters who prefer now to use free public transit rather than their cars.
Well yes, but Luxembourg is just a big tax haven so they can afford to spend the taxes that _should_ being being paid in the UK.
18:00 why are cars driving by when you’re crossing? Shouldn’t they have a red light at that point or is the crossing system different in the US?
I linked the OG video as an annotation! It's my video on the hawk beacon. Those cars broke the law but EVERYONE (including cops I caught on camera) do it
I feel like it really shouldn't be surprising that if you base and adjust your policy based on data rather than feelings you get better results 😮💨
When it happens in London its then rolled out to the rest of the UK. minus the public transport or actual infostructure or any money put in to anything useful for the majority of the public. Just stick more houses in there, it works in London.
Where I live in Oxford, driving is far cheaper and faster to get around. The buses are all private companies who are propped up by taxpayer money and given private use of sections of the city. So we share in all of their losses but none of their profits. Added to that, sections of the city have been blocked off to through-traffic (you can still get around, just it's a further journey and everyone's crammed onto the same roads) and it's just brought the city to its knees. A congestion charge for everyone living (say) 20 miles outside of the city would be OK if everyone living inside it can still get about.
If ULEZ is really a tax on wealthy people then it should be a percentage of income. There’s a lot of working class jobs that require a vehicle to get around, plasterers, gas engineers, electricians etc… while yes it mainly affects wealthy people it does hit some working class people way harder than it should.
The biggest issue is tolling the tunnels from NJ to Manhattan, and then tolling again as you exit the same tunnel you paid to enter. The shortest route to the west side highway should be free for traffic trying to bypass Manhattan instead of the “gotcha” tolling.
Also Jersey City passed San Francisco’s the most expensive city to rent in the USA. You aren’t fitting park and rides in there as it’s essentially becoming the 6th borough of NYC that just happens to be in another state. PATH trains are crowded till midnight.
As someone who has driven buses/ coaches all over London, including routes in and out of the congestion zone (such as the route 15: blackwall - Trafalgar square; 94: Acton - Picadilly Circus), driving standards are far more predictable within the congestion zone. Reduces the possibility of accidents. Discourages incompetent inexperienced drivers from driving through Central London and improves traffic flow. I support it.
We dont all like it. It has kiled the central zone which now feels like the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse and businsses are losing money
I'm from Jersey. I support congestion pricing in principal, but the issue is the MTA is terrible at spending money. They're notorious for wasting so much money, it's absolutely ridiculous. If the MTA was more competent, I'd support it in a heartbeat. I almost never drive into midtown. I always drive to one of the PATH stations and take the train or something else. MTA needs to get their act together and spend money properly.
Evan, if I may point out something here, the transport for London website says that the tube standard operating hours are only 5AM-12:30AM on weekdays. This means that public transit is essentially useless for anyone whose working hours are deeply outside the 9-5 hours, unless the commutation time is short enough. Why does the tube not have overnight service, even if reduced just to facilitate early and late commuting?
Congestion charge doesn’t apply at night so there’s always that!
Also there’s always a way back… just with night bus
i dont know anything about london specifically and i have never visited, but it is generally preferred to have regular downtime during the night for repairs and maintenance. there are some exceptions like in copenhagen where the metro runs 24/7, but it is the exception ime.
@ I get that, but isn't the whole point of public transport to have the ability to use it when needed? I don't have that option where I live, and the hours I work are well outside the window but I can assure you that I would not drive to work if the public transport option were available and viable to use.
I didn’t think the congestion charge was too bad until ULEZ came in. If they lowered the cost of public transport it would make more sense.
I live just outside of London. Working class area
It’s purely a tax on me and people like me. Living costs are high. Public transport for everyone going into London is packed full every day, no seats available.
The train cost is over £600 a month
It’s cheaper to buy an old car and drive in.
Now you have to choose an even older, less reliable, less safe and more expensive to run car to meet the emissions standards. Or buy a much newer car that costs much more.
The air quality is no different since they expanded the zone, even the study from the government says it’s no different!
The air quality is defo better
That said
Imagine if they had some £50 a month for unlimited public transit ticket
@@evan my second comment got deleted.
Bromley council measure their air quality and it didn’t get better since the 2023 expansion
@@evan if they had a £50 unlimited ticket I still wouldn’t be able to get all my tools to my job
@ better says who?
The people who put the ulez in place?
@@jamie0193 Air quality not changing much in less than two years isn't surprising - the rapid increase in air quality during COVID was an outlier because it drastically restricted the behaviour of most of the populations involved. Likewise, expansions and such rely not only on the projected efficacy of their scheme, but on the actual changed behaviour of society, which takes time.
After all, the sound bite of choice around C40 cities (the one I see everywhere anyway) is how air quality has improved by over 25% across 20 _years_ .
IMO the best thing that happened to central London has been the speed reduction to 20mph (camera enforced).. it’s given everyone the space and thinking time to be more chilled and cooperative and there’s less polluting and stressful hard acceleration and braking.
I have lived and worked in London for over 30 years, and know nobody who thinks the congestion charge is a good thing, or has worked. It has driven so much business out of the city and overstressed and made public transport much more overcrowded. Public transport in south London is not great, and dangerous, and we depend entirely on our car (my wife and I are in our 70's) for an shopping or any kind of social life. Traffic has gotten much worse around the edges - like Brixton. Electric cars, clean buses all helped the air quality. No family members or even life long friends will visit us any more - we are just growing increasingly trapped and isolated. I do not endorse this view - and having worked for TfL, they lie through their teeth.
that is just utter bollocks, no one I know drives into central, everyone just gets the train. And I'm in southeast London and don't own a car, it's absolutely fine
@@c0wqu3u31at3r Do not drive into central London anymore, apart for work. Have to drive around it. Social life in Kingston, Bromley, Ealing, Brockwell Park, do our bulk shopping down towards Croydon. Small, economical car, cost £1 ad day for the 2 of us to run, no road tax (below CO2 limit). Public transport sideways in South London sucks, and at our age not fun. How old are you? No family members visit us anymore - they also avoid London like the plague. London has become a total hell hole as far as we are concerned.
I live in a borough of London and I've not driven a car in 19 years, but I do drive when on holiday
@@croftonallamby5625 Fine. But for my wife and I it is an absolute necessity, just to survive. Still means if we want to see friends and family we have to drive to them, since NOBODY will drive into London to see us anymore. Lived her well over 30 years and it has never been this bad.
The problem with ‘I and my car owning friends in outer London don’t know anyone who likes the congestion charge’ is that it’s hardly statistics. And as the video mentioned, the actual stats show a majority in favour of a (very radical) full pedestrianisation of London, let alone the congestion charge.
Another amazingly well researched and put together interesting and informative video, my hat is off to you sir
Evan, not sure why they were talking to a back cab taxi driver because...
"Taxis. Taxis (black cabs) are exempt from paying the Congestion Charge when actively licensed by Transport for London. A vehicle will be removed from the register of exempt vehicles on the surrender, expiry or revocation of the licence."
A cut and paste from the TFL website
Note:
The approved black cab for London is built by London Taxi Company (it is owned by a Chinese parent company that mostly builds EVs)
The LEVC TX is a plug-in hybrid range-extender electric vehicle. The vehicle is designed to comply with Transport for London's Taxi Private Hire regulations, which banned new diesel-powered taxis from January 2018, requiring zero-emissions capability.
Thus all new black cabs have to be EVs or hybrids now - and the LTC is updating the LEVC TX to be fully EV
Love these types of videos
i will drop in my 2 cents as a New Yorker who technically doesn't drive. My dad does. For context, we live in Brooklyn and my dad works in Brooklyn. He drops me to the train and I take the train to my job in Manhattan. Pre-congestion pricing we would be able to get on the Belt Parkway from anytime between 7 - 7:30 AM and get to the train station in 10 minutes. The first week of congestion pricing was HORRIBLE. A 10 minute ride became 45 minutes. To beat the outer borough traffic we have been leaving the house before 7 and we're back to the 10 minute ride again, but there are noticeably way more cars on the highway than before. A lot of the news focused on New Jersey drivers, so I didn't even think about Long Island drivers who pass up on the LIRR or Queens drivers who are not near a train station. The congestion has shifted out Manhattan and into the other boroughs, which is sad. I can't even say that the trains are more packed than usual.
It's only been two weeks, so it's too soon to say its a failure. I don't want it to fail. I really want the MTA to upgrade the trains and I've been patiently and excitedly waiting for any news on the Interborough Express. Hopefully the congestion pricing will speed things up!
Come on we all know the MTA aint gonna use that money to improve the trains, we all know that, but even MTA did a study and literally said that this will just push congestion to other boroughs and even some towns in Jersey. And they think adding a air purifier in schools in the Bronxs will solve that.
I don’t mind congestion pricing since my family doesn’t have a car anyway and less pollution is always good. I take the subway and bus to school and work everyday so I really hope the money actually goes into the MTA…
The "local businesses hate change to car traffic" thing is so aggravating. Some business owners fight against road diets or bike lanes or better pedestrian lights, presumably because they've been fed misinformation by fake journos, but studies post-change are extremely clear that the vast majority of businesses benefit from a reduction in car access, a reduction in parking, a reduction in lanes to support more pedestrian and bike traffic, etc. And that benefit can be measured very easily, in financial terms, before even getting into less easy-to-measure benefits like air quality and reduced noise pollution and lower stress.
The NYC law _does_ require that every dollar taken in by the program has to be spent on transit improvements. If they can manage to keep it together for six months or so, it'll stick forever; once everybody in the city finds out how much better public transit has gotten, and are informed about where the money came from, it'll be extremely hard to repeal congestion pricing.
If the baseline is a poorly managed urban environment, yes, the businesses benefit from traffic being cut down. But they definitely don't want a reduction in customers, which is what they get in practice with parking removal schemes, etc. when there isn't a very robust transit system.
I’ve been saying for years that the entire Northeastern US, especially NJ, NYC, and Philly, need to combine their transit systems!
I think that when I was in Florida that a couple of bars were shocked that I had walked from the hotel to the bar until I said I did so that I could have a drink.
What I briefly heard about the NY congestion charge is that the drop in traffic was about 10% fewer private cars driving in from Jersey, and little change on local NY traffic. But, patterns take longer than that to become really engrained.
14:15 OH MY GOD STOKE-ON-TRENT!! HISTORIC TOWN ON THE RIVER TRENT!!
When I moved to London in 2005 my car sat idle for so long that on the few occasions I drove to the supermarket it wouldn't restart so I sold it. I did live across the road from a tube station which helped. I only bought one again a couple of years ago since I started going outside London a lot more. I have an EV so was exempt from the congestion charge until this year.
It still takes well over an hour to get from East London to the west of London if you avoid the congestion zone and follow the main route around it.
I was always guided along this route by my satnav that knows I was exempt so it's not like it's just a rich people's way of keeping the poor out so they can have the roads to themselves.
I play piano, backing a Danish singer. My electric piano, Yamaha NP 30, weighs 4.6 K and the bag with gear as much. I also carry the stand and sometimes a small speaker, a very effective KASUNG at just above 2 K, all in all about 15 kilograms on my back and in my hands. I use the public transportation og Copenhagen and sometimes Funen and Jutland. No problem, even at my age (68). Neodynium magnets made speakers very light. Just like public transportation made travelling easy. In Detroit, the big car manufactors bought up the public transportation and scrapped it, to make need for their product. So, there's that...
Hi Evan, I think you left out a major issue-the extension of the ULEZ to "everywhere inside the M25" in late 2023. You seem to live in Zone 1 or 2, but public transport deteriorates quickly as you move beyond Zone 3. In this context, the taxi drivers' comment "tax on poor people" makes a lot of sense because, in the outer Boroughs, you do need a car. Also, with all due respect, you do not have children. Try London public transport even with a stroller, never mind a pram and several children in tow.
I’ve lived mostly within zones 2-4 most my London life. 3 months in zone 1 was fun. But mostly always zone 3, and I’ve never needed a car
This indeed. On top of that, it's often the people with lower salaries doing the work that requires these people to be at places at the most ungodly of hours, when public transport is generally far from ideal, even in a city like London (and definitely in the outer boroughs, where these people usually tend to live). Then you will need a car, as public transport simply isn't a viable option.
So maybe the ULEZ isn't a tax on the very poorest of people in society, but it most definitely will be on a sizeable chunk of the working class and lower middle class.
I live in zone 6 and my 10 mile commute to my job in Zone 3 takes about 20-25 minutes by car and at least 75 by public transport. It's a no- brainer, especially for my 5:30am shifts.
@Evan Edinger. Having watch the video I was left wondering if you would be interested in a follow up video on how the ULEZ has impacted those who need their vehicles for reasons related to disability. I would be most interested to see you do a video on how London / New Jersey compare when disability is thrown in the the public transport conversation and what you thoughts on the different approaches that both cities take on the subject matter. Keep up the great work.
Excellent channel, mate! Keep up your fine work! 🎉😊
As a Long Islander I've never driven to NYC outside of one time during COVID. There's just no reason unless you're driving to somewhere beyond NYC to the West
Good video
But Evan your viewpoint is biased you live in London, I on the other hand don’t and it becomes another thing I have to factor in if I want to visit. A return train ticket costs me over £100 if I don’t plan months in advance, making public transport exorbitant. The net result I don’t go to London. In fact I actively avoid it. But then I am cut off from many theatres concerts, comedy gigs and other activities.
Cost of living. People living in the city shouldn’t have to suffer the pollution and noise that comes from cars wherever they’re coming from unnecessarily. You could always drive to Westfield and park there before hopping on the underground. Most outoftownies I know do that
The opinions of people who live in the city are far more important than those who visit simply because it is their lives and health that are impacted by the congestion and pollution that comes from every fuckwit wanting to drive into the city.
The problem with London's public transport is that the underground/overground/DLR/train fares are exorbitant.
great video, and hope this actual comparison helps make people less whiny about congestion pricing, it is a great thing to have!
quick correction, at 8:15, the R42s were retired in 2020, you may have been on an R46 (though the J train uses mostly if not entirely R160s and R179s from the last 10-15 years!)
Great point!
Sweden has quite good public transit systems in our big cities, but even so you can see some pretty interesting differences between Stockholm and Gothenburg.
Stockholm has a really good subway system that makes it a breeze to get around and you rarely have to walk more than 15 minutes from a station to get anywhere. This is supplemented by buses. Even so, there's a lot of car-centric infrastructure and usually lots of traffic in most parts of the city, and buses and cars share the same roads.
In Gothenburg, public transit has been a clear consideration and priority during city planning. It has a very expansive tram system, that in many places runs on "its own road" that cars can't drive on. In some places, the infrastructure is designed to prioritze public transit at the expense of cars, which often makes driving _less_ convenient than taking public transit.
Okay. But I'm American. And I am low income. It takes me 15 minutes to get to my work. It takes an hour and a half to bus there. (I've been without a car before). And it's not safe to walk there. So this charge would hurt me pretty badly.
Based on your comment, you're not based in NYC or any place in the U.S. where congestion pricing is considered feasible. Most of America is incredibly car-dependent. But this doesn't mean we shouldn't hope for and work toward a future where this isn't the case.
Hi Evan! Content idea: your reaction to all the recent videos about how the UK is bad and everyone leaves it, complemented by your usual cool analytics and facts 😉
Well a lot of those videos are about personal feelings. You can hardly argue against how someone feels. Wont affect how they feel a lot of times. Also opens a bigger debate of London vs UK as most of those videos are about the UK, not londonn
I live in NYC, I can say that public transit is slow and not as accessible as it should be. MTA and Port Authority spend the money, and congestion toll will pay the debt, and not really pay for any needed improvement. the corruption is strong!
The PA isn't getting any CP revenue.
But a lot of it is going to be used to pay for MTA station accessibility improvements.
@@4TNR I mean they were the first to raise their PATH to $3, now they gonna raise their tunnel and bridges tolls by another dollar again saying "they lost revenue from congestion pricing"
My city is taking a good chunk of funding away from public transit. It's already barely there, this is gonna kill it. Quite unfortunate
@evan edinger: you proved your point - as a pissand youtuber that doesn't need to EVER drive in London. You said that you have lived in different places; should I assume that you only had a luggage to drag with you? Or, were you forced to do 5 trips to carry your stuff by public transport? Maybe you can't understand why people are stubborn enough to continue driving; You have 1 friend that NEEDS to drive to work. Well, I have been working in construction industry all my life, and, as a tradesman know a hundreds of people that have loads of tools to drag to work and back because they run into the real risk of having their tools stolen - ON and OFF the site. Even on the street, people would try to jimmy the van IN BROAD DAYLIGHT in the hope of getting some free tools. People found ways to deal with this, as you stated, and these costs only get passed on to other (often unintended) people, and add to the existing misery. While I'm not saying the c charge/ulez is good or bad, my opinion is that it should be applied with more consideration to the drivers and their intentions. Don't get me started on families with children that need to go shopping and fill up the trunk of a car each week! Your view is heavily polarized and shows ignorance and out of touch with the majority of the people.
But if the majority of people in London agree with me wouldn’t that mean your opinion is more ignorant? You can always rent a van if you really need one.
@@evan Majority as in the majority of brits that voted for brexit? Or the majority of americans that voted for trump? Or majority that voted for stalmer? I call bs on your argument. Read my previous comment again.
Also, to clarify "majority", no one surveyed ALL the residents in London before and after. If they did, congestion c or ulez would have never happened (see the ulez protests).
Maybe you address this later: What if you enter the zone and for whatever reason you slightly leave it, and return (like because of a one-way street you had to slightly leave and come back), do you get charged twice?
It's one charge per day in NY. Don't know zbout London though.
@Evan Did any of these studies specifically address the impact on disabled people who use mobility devices such as motorized wheelchairs or scooters? Is the subway safe and uncrowded enough for them to navigate there? Do they have problems going on brief errands inside the city or longer trips outside the city because of the congestion pricing? Would appreciate answers from Evan or anybody else who has first-hand knowledge. Would also appreciate links to any relevant studies.
if you have a blue badge, which is something disabled people can apply for that already lets people park for free in many places and use disabled parking spots and roadsides that would otherwise prohibit parking, then you don't pay the congestion charge at all. So the congestion charge doesn't limit disabled people from getting around but does mean less traffic so their journey are quicker. Not everyone with a disability has a blue badge. They can be a pain to get. But most people who need one have one
my mom and grandma both can't walk long distances. They try to use their "mileage" sparingly, for leisure, like having a good walk in the forest. We live just outside paris, their regulation over driving inside city limits makes it sometimes impossible for us to do stuff their most of the time. And it keeps getting worse. Taking public transit is horrible as there is far too much walking and stairs. My mom doesnt yet have a handicap placard, so If we can't get there by car it means tremendous pain from too much walking. She keeps hurting herself because of it, and It's making the city a closed disney park where people overspend on rent and there are too many tourists. It's not like going inside paris is for the fun of it. There are important agencies, DOCTORS, organisations, courts and so on both my grandma and mom have to go to. This shit is so disgusting. They also banned older cars because of pollution. Have they made any plan to subsidize people buying a cleaner car ? no. They are pricing out people going to the center, people that can't afford living inside paris in the first place, and you still have important business to conduct there. They are replacing people that live around paris with tourists and are pricing us out of doing anything there. You can't go to the museum or anything without paying insane amount in parking or you have to go by train for 1h30 a route that would take 20 mins at most before all these shenanigans.
I have been dependent on my wheelchair for the past 10 yrs and have both UK and EU disability badges on my car. Most towns and cities are easy to navigate using buses, rail, trams, but London's Tube has some access issues at some locations. My greatest challenge is in older towns which love "quaint" cobbled streets. Fortunately, London has far fewer of these than many continental cities. The EU has a great system for handicapped toilets too. Each, whether at stations, bus depots, or simply in town centres, has a key which registered disabled persons may buy for 25 Euro and which is usable across the EU.
Well, it would mean you can get where you want faster, find parking etc. You don't really need any studies aside from what there already is, congestion pricing means less cars. Meaning you would both get better public transport due to fees, and less cars on road. Win win.
Blue Badge Holders (Disabled people) can register two vehicles for £10 / year to make them congestion charge exempt. Parking is available in Blue Badge bays within Islington, Hackney, Southwark and Lambeth without any further applying for free (usually up to 4 hours). Parking in the City of Westminster requires a 'White Badge' in certain areas, and parking in the City of London requires a 'Red Badge' in certain areas (this only applies to 'high demand' areas, and is a uselessly confusing system).
As for public transport, the London Underground does have accessible stations, but it is not fully accessible. National Rail services have some accessible stations, or use boarding ramps. All Busses are fully accessible, and have a ramp that comes out of the middle door. Also, all black cabs are fully accessible, and have a ramp that comes out of the passenger door, a swivel seat among other things. Disabled residents of London can also use a 'dial-a-ride' service, which involves an accessible minibus taking them door to door (I don't know much about this), or get a 'Taxi-Card' which allowes them to take any journey in a black cab for a reduced fare (capped at £10), however, this only applies to certain black cabs and they have to be ordered by a silly phone service for some reason.
I live in FL where you a very car dependent. When we visited London, using the Underground was easy to use and pretty fast. We took 1 black cab for the experience and 2 Ubers bc we needed to be somewhere before the Underground was open. If I lived in London I would sell the car I owned now.
The figures you quote which suggest massive improvements in congestion are all from early in the scheme. Figures taken out to now indicate that that traffic is just as congested now as it was pre-congestion charge. (BBC News "London remains world's most congested city" Jan 2023)
Also the figures that purport to show improvements in air quality due to the congestion charge do not take account of the changes to vehicles over that period - vehicles are much cleaner now than they were back at the start. In 2003 when the charge started new cars were to the Euro 3 emissions standard (2.3 gm CO /km), the current standard is Euro 6 (1.0 gm CO/km), 3 generations of improvement. That 2.3 times improvement in CO emissions looks suspiciously like the trend on the graph you used - the improvements in emissions standards alone more than explain the reduction in pollution.
Also all the figures you quote are from Transport for London, politically beholden to the London Major's office - when dealing with politics, get _independent_ figures, political sources lie.
hear hear
Problem is there are no independent sources.
Also the old Tory government was forced to expand ULEZ as they kept being sued by green groups even after leaving the EU.
A lot of London's tube network is still running on 1970s-1995 stock for example Bakerloo, Northern etc. You can really feel it and while I agree buses have improved, these haven't yet. Additionally, the air quality and sound on the London tube are both extremely bad, which I've experienced first hand every day. It's often overcrowded to the point you can barely breathe in rush hour. My point is TFL sure has pushed people off the roads, but they've pushed them into an overcrowded transport network that can't support them. As a Londoner, I don't agree with a lot of people that seem to push how good our public transport is when to be honest, the bar should be much much higher.
Although the ulez does unfairly affect poorer (not impoverished though, i realise that realistically it's lower middle class in the first place) people who live outside of London. Not saying it outweighs the effects of the people who do live there but some people have to deal with London for airports or embassies. I do think it's a bit of a joke that Heathrow is in a ULEZ so it costs me more to pick up a friend from there than from Gatwick. How can it be a ULEZ, it's literally an airport?
Worth noting that Heathrow's drop off charge was initially going to be an emissions based charge of the airport area, if I recall correctly, to add an even more shocking point!
The exception I think is the ULEZ in south London, like the furthest reaches of the city. In the north the Underground goes way beyond the edge of Greater London into the countryside, yet in places like Bromley they rely on cars due to busses being the only other alternative. I think they should make exceptions for any locality on the edge of London without a tube or London Underground station, or give residents in those areas on low incomes a free pass on the ULEZ. I say this as someone who lives way outside of London but we have busses in my town, yet a car is still more efficient.
Apart from that I think the schemes are generally good, and whenever I visit London I always take the train up there, and the tube, bus, or walk around- and the transport in London is way better than even the relatively ok transport here about 60 miles (95km) away from central London.
I've lived in London my entire life and my post-pandemic take is we need to do even more to discourage unnecessary driving here. During lockdown the air quality was even better. I'd like that back please. There's no way everyone driving right now is a tradesman, someone with a disability who can't use the bus or tube or someone taking a sofa back home in their car.
I'm in Hertfordshire and I live in a small town on a fairly busy road even there air quality was a lot better during Covid 😂 you really don't notice it till the traffic stops for a week or two then it's this realisation of I can't believe cars change it that much
I was wondering about people whose disability makes taking public transport too difficult. Are they given an exemption from paying the charges?
@@becsutherland4506Access.
The train and tube stations are old in the UK so aren't designed for those with mobility issues.
20:55 I honestly don’t see why cold temperatures would reduce traffic. Like people still need to go to work, so it being cold probably isn’t changing anything. If anything, the cold temperatures would mean that people are more likely to drive rather than taking the train as they might not want to walk or wait for a train in the cold. I live in St. Paul, and take transit or bike a lot of the time, and sometimes my mom will opt out of driving her car and take the bus or train with me for a certain activity like going to dinner, but if it’s cold she will probably stop drive because she doesn’t want to wait or walk in the cold. But hey, let’s wait til we have a normal weather day and see if traffic is still reduced then, maybe it is the cold, but I just don’t think that would cause less traffic.