> The money is being pocketed by the 3rd parties claiming to do the study

3rd parties claiming to do the study, per your post, is WSP Engineering. The study was completed. What am I missing about your post?

I think you misunderstand. The scenarios all result in the legislated revenue of $1 billion. The MTA does not gain or lose anything based on which scenario they choose, they are all designed around recovering $1b. The end goal is not to maximize revenue, they forecasted and created these toll schemes using three goals: Reduce vehicle miles travelled by 5%, reduce inbound volume to the CBD by 10%, and meet the required revenue stipulated by the legislation. The scenarios will all vary how much the vehicle goals are met, but the end result is based around the required revenue. The biggest toll scenario is not necessarily the best option, that's why they came up with many scenarios.

You can already see how their first implementation went, no? It's been in place since 2003. You can look back further as well, Singapore had a road pricing system circa 1998. Our system would be comparable to London's original implementation. Obviously the streets did not empty. I am not sure what else you would want to see or if you believe our implementation is somehow going to be vastly different?

Many appointees are cronyism anyways, of course some of them can't explain it lol. Look no further than the DOT commissioner. Does Ydanis have a planning degree or know about running an agency with thousands of employees? How to coordinate projects and create quality teams? Be a strong leader? I think not, based on what I see!

Yes they use the vans as well. The bikes they use in Manhattan all over the place and also via Whole Foods. This is in essence studying "mini logistics" systems, you send the truck to unload at a mini warehouse and then use cargo bikes or other sort of micro vehicles to ship out the goods. Gorilla and Getr use(d) this model as well. It doesn't necessarily make sense to use a van or truck for all cases.

I am confused by what you mean, the study was released? You can read it here: https://new.mta.info/project/CBDTP/environmental-assessment

There's over 1,000 pages... so I ask again what do you mean by claiming to do the study? It has been done. What's happening now is the MTA is waiting for the FHWA to complete its in house review. If they respond to comments with disapproval or conditional approval it means the study will need to be modified, but it's already been done and submitted in draft form last year. Sorry but no idea what you are trying to say about FOX news and influence?

I can't find the detailed study (if it was done or just a prelim conceptual review) but it looks like they proposed 350-500 feet tunnel depth which maybe would clear the subway tunnels. I imagine they couldn't ignore these conflicts so maybe that was what led to this depth.

It's a phenomenon of traffic calming principles: narrower roadway makes you wanna drive slower and more carefully cause you feel like you're gonna clip the walls or adjacent vehicles. Tunnels do that quite well. You could get similar effects on a highway if you narrowed each lane and even put overgrowing shrubs and trees along the walls that make you feel like the road is even smaller.

I agree, CBE seems more pressing tbh when there is already a proposal for the BQE to rebuild the cantilever into a basic and cheaper to maintain box-structure with park space on top. DOT is kicking off a multi-million dollar study for the CBE but I don't foresee capping ever happening really

The entirety of Hudson Yards Phase 1 cost $25 billion and they built something like EIGHT skyscrapers, malls, and the biggest cantilever deck over rail in the world I think. The proposed area where Phase 2 is (to the west) doesn't need the same complex cantilever structure so I kind of agree the cost estimate is insane, I can't see how it should cost almost 1/3 the cost of the entire Phase 1.

The city only has jurisdiction over what is referred to as "BQE Central". The section is basically what's in Brooklyn Heights and Dumbo (the triple cantilever and a bit north of it). The rest is state owned which the city cannot change on its own. There has been discussion recently about encouraging the state to join discussions about the future of the entire corridor, but right now the city basically is just looking at its own section.

No one (reputable, that I've seen anyways) is suggesting we entirely replace trucks with bikes, come on lol. The use cases being studied and considered are expanding what we already do, such as Amazon using cargo bikes for neighborhood level last mile delivery. UPS is piloting it too. This is private enterprise doing this btw, no one is forcing them, Amazon is all about money so IMO it says a lot they favor using this method when possible meaning it's probably quite cost effective.

> The BQE has no existing alternate roadway to reroute traffic during construction

Indeed, this is why the original plan was going to spend multiple billions of dollars to literally build a massive temporary highway lol. That was deemed, obviously, as insanity, and thankfully we did not go through with it. This is all known as "MPT" or maintenance and protection of traffic, and is usually one of the most complex pieces of any large traffic engineering project. A great example is the construction at LaGuardia (and soon JFK), how roadway access was maintained through each construction phase with a myriad of temporary roadways and structures.

It can be more complex and costly to monitor congestion precisely in real time, though is possible. Time of Day based plans were probably chosen for simplicity in the tolling structure and using averages from existing data. It also means it would be much more difficult to analyze and forecast this, unless you again used an assumed average. To first model average congestion, which itself is a tricky metric given the size of the CBD, and then change the toll, and then study how it reduces congestion in real time, the traffic modeling work to do that... I would shoot my brains out that would be insane to study lol. On the bright side, the toll structure has flexibility, they can tweak peak hours and off peak costs for example, that's gonna be much easier to do versus dynamic monitoring.

Under Toll Scenario A the overnight fee would be $5, not so bad eh? You can see the full toll scenarios here: https://new.mta.info/document/93451

Scenario A is the most equitable so I'm personally hoping that's the one that goes through... but we'll see. The $12 tolls are under Scenarios E and F which give exemptions and caps to many many people.

While I hate the previous delays from the MTA's side and Janno's indifferent sounding comments "oh well we don't need it right now" when just recently the MTA was literally shitting its pants about budget shortfalls... according to this the delay right now is from the federal side with the FHWA. I still think it's ridiculous the federal government needs to approve a tolling system on majority city or state owned roadways. NEPA requirements (what this is following) make sense if let's say NYC wanted to build a coal fired power plant 10 feet from the border and let the pollution go down wind to NJ, but this will improve air quality.. you'd think positive environmental projects wouldn't need this crazy amount of scrutiny and advanced analysis lol

What's weird is it's already passed legislation though, so why care at this point? The "risk" of doing it should already have happened, it's already been done by NY legislatures, and the FHWA has nothing to lose if they greenlit this because it's not as if passing congestion pricing will cause NYC to flip to republican instantly for the Biden Whitehouse, nor does the FHWA care what one city thinks of it, unless Buttiegieg is going to mount some surprise campaign and fears NYC will hold a grudge?

That's a separate, existing surcharge traveling into the CBD, this is for a new type of toll.

I wouldn't be so sure, under Toll Scenario A, the cost for a tractor trailer paying with E-ZPass would be just $27.60 during peak hours., and about $20 for single unit (box) trucks. That isn't exactly a disaster. I imagine small vendors will pass on that cost to customers, but larger ones potentially not, since companies like Amazon want people ordering more and more and thrive on their free delivery charge for larger orders. It will really depend on the final scenario chosen, Scenario F, for example, the peak large truck cost with E-ZPass would be $82, that's obviously a bit more. More info on Page 878 here: https://new.mta.info/document/93451

It depends, under toll Scenario A, the one with no exemptions, peak large trucks with E-ZPass rate is $27.60. Under the worst scenario with the most exemptions, the max toll is $82 (with E-ZPass). You can see more on Page 878 of the Environmental Assessment Appendix, Appendix 2E, here: https://new.mta.info/document/93451

Eliminate no, but congestion can sort of be exponential, whereby once you hit a level of service of F, even just a few extra cars can cause massive added delay/queues, so the projected goal of 10% may actually go a long way in at least improving flow around the CBD. There will likely remain troubled areas such as near the Holland Tunnel that just have so much congestion that it would take more than 10% reduction to make a sizeable improvement, but we'll see!

> streets are empty

In the environmental assessment, they modeled traffic with a goal in 5% reduction in VMT and 10% reduction of vehicles entering the CBD toll zone. The goal is not, nor has it ever been, to evaporate traffic from the CBD, that would be impossible and nonsensical.

Source from the Regional Plan Association commenting on the EA: https://rpa.org/latest/testimony/congestion-pricing-mta-environmental-assessment See, first comment.

I vaguely remember a SB article mentioning that the MTA did not release the questions, I don't think it is required to until the process moves to the next stage and a new draft EA is released. We only know what they have mentioned and complained about, such as having to do traffic and air quality simulations in suburbs outside of Philadelphia.

WSP completed and released it's tolling study, what do you mean by "claiming"?

In the OP's defense, Uber was literally based on ignoring regulation and laws to get into markets and then was even banned from several cities for such violations. It is still being debating in courts in various jurisdictions whether Uber is a "gig" economy with little to no responsibilities to workers, or whether the drivers are employees. Uber does crazy shilling and lobbying to do everything possible to avoid labor regulations.