A juster solution would be to hike the fee to $3 per ride, but increase the bonus for buying more than $10 to 50%. The unlimited MetroCards should have their prices seriously increased as their users are effectively subsidized; the average system fare is down to $1.08, if I remember correctly. I’m not big about an off-peak charge, because the cost of operating a 6 train at 8:30 am with 1,500 riders is a lot less than ten times the cost of operating it at 1 am with 150 riders.

“My dad owns a flower shop in Queens. My dad used to deliver in a truck to Manhattan–it’s no longer profitable thanks to the “time tax”– it takes too long, the gas is too expensive. There are business owners in the outer ring who are making the decision every day about getting into Manhattan, and the congestion fee is just putting a number on that.”

http://www.dmiblog.com/archive.....ideas.html

In other words, there’s already a burden on these kinds of businesses: the cost of sitting in traffic. With congestion pricing many of them will be able to serve more customers and get more productive work for their drivers’ salaries. This can easily translate to more than $8 per day.

i think reality is probably somewhere in the middle in terms of who is going to get hammered by a congestion pricing “add-on.” i maintain that small to very small contractors who work in manhattan and the outer boroughs (including the bronx) whose clients are individuals as well as small businesses and government are one group who will suffer. and i’m not “making up” any group of new yorkers here. drive up the west side highway at any time during the day and you will see many of them. and their trucks ain’t so nice because they have to fight for every single dollar they make. even IF their clients are wealthy.

but, i agree with you on the regressiveness of fare hike. there is absolutely no doubt in my mind as to who will bear that burden.

also, i have always maintained that several years ago there was a fork in the road for transit funding and the perception as to who would, again .. ‘bear the burden’ of this cost. this, to me, was when new yorkers (and i speak of “new yorkers” as a group, not just new york city dwellers), voted DOWN the commuter tax. state government does many things that are antithetical to new york city (and the state) because they want to keep their upstate constituents “happy.” it was an extremely, extremely foolhardy measure as far as i’m concerned.

and we continue to pay the price for it.

Most – if not all — of the individuals employed in those business are uber-local. If a carpenter or electrician lives in Brooklyn, he works in Brooklyn. Sure, there are exceptions, but those are the people with wealthy clients. As Chris pointed out, the wealthy clients are going to be the ones shouldering the $8 congestion fee in increased bills for services.

Meanwhile, increased subway fares affect everyone, and there’s no way for the low-wage employees of the world to bill their employers for more money to cover the increased subway fare.

perhaps the demographic that, while they have been to great schools and who happily read and write blogs and who can intelligently comment on the multitudinous issues (in english by the way) that face our fair city, can self-righteously refer to themselves as “poorer” because they are part of the educated elite who have chosen to work either in the public sector or the arts and can still be cool while playing the ‘poor me’ act.

but the truth is that many small,independent contractors are in exactly the same place you are … they aren’t all working for “the rich guys” who can deal with a cost increase. they are in fact working for their fellow middle to lower-middle-class fellows. their lives are just as difficult as yours, despite the fact that their ambitions, necessarily, travel a different trajectory.