Thinking about congestion pricing in terms of the quantity dual
Ask a YIMBY person: “What about the extra traffic from all those new people moving in? Won’t the ambulance arrival times be slower? Won’t the air pollution be worse? Won’t….?” and you will get a reassuring answer that a) yes there will be some problems but they can be managed by other means, and b) the external benefits of new arrivals will outweigh those problems.
Fair enough.
But then ask that same YIMBY person: “What about the extra traffic coming from all these out-of-NYC visitors?” …and you will get a very different answer. “Tax them!”
So the basic view, at current margins, is “residents good, visitors bad.”
Maybe! But, to follow up on the recent debate, that differential treatment is never justified. What if a guy starts visiting a girlfriend in the East Village — by car — for one night every two weeks? Then he is a visitor to be taxed. Say the relationship goes well, he is there 2/3 of the time, and he rents a space for his car in her apartment building garage and uses it periodically. Is he then “a resident”? Are his per hour externalities for the world then suddenly so much more positive? (Does he stop spitting on the sidewalk?)
Again, maybe, but you can see the a priorism embedded in the standard “YIMBY plus congestion tax” mix of proposals. Somehow the differential views on residents and visitors do not need to be justified.
If you wish, think of the cars issue in terms of quantity allocation. There is only so much space for cars in lower Manhattan. How much of that space do you wish to allocate to residents with cars or to visitors with cars? (This question can hold whether you are doing the allocating with prices, with planning, or by some other method.)
If you favor YIMBY plus a congestion tax, in essence you think resident car use is better than visitor car use.
But how do you know that? Repeating to me on Twitter that pollution is bad, traffic in NYC is too slow, externalities are present, and so on is a non sequitur that does not address the question.
Alternatively, you might think visitor car use is better at the margin. Then you might place bigger taxes on cars garaged in lower Manhattan, and lower the tolls on the George Washington Bridge.
I don’t see a good a priori case against the visitors. Maybe there are diminishing returns to being exposed to the genius of NYC, and at the margin we want to encourage the dad who drives from Westchester County with his 15 year old son to see a concert at the Village Vanguard, to get the kid excited about the saxophone. Or maybe there are increasing returns to being exposed to the genius of NYC (you have to soak up book wisdom at the Strand for twenty years running), which would then cut the other way.
We do observe a lot of people living in NYC for a few years when they are younger, and then leaving for saner pastures. But they move there to be moved and inspired for a while. That suggests there is some temporary nature to the net benefits from the exposure to NYC. We also see more generally, for political economy reasons, that status quo urban policies tend to favor residents and punish visitors to an undue degree. And, if we stick with the pro-YIMBY intuitions and reallocate more road resources toward residents, do we not have to worry about the traffic, noise, and congestion from the required extra construction? These arguments don’t prove any conclusion, but they do suggest there should not be an a priori bias against reallocating some traffic space away from residents and toward visitors.
The point here is to have consistent views across YIMBY and a congestion tax. And if you think we should reallocate vehicle space more toward residents and away from visitors, please make a comparative argument to that effect. Repeating observations about crowding and externalities is not an argument on either of these questions.
Addendum: For an extra point, “throughput” and “demand” are not the same.
I’ve been seeing this error frequently. Congestion pricing may well increase throughput, which is how many users get through a road or some other chokepoint in a discrete period of time, say an hour.
It is much harder for congestion pricing to increase overall demand. For instance, at a zero explicit price the ride takes much longer but overall more people will travel through than if you charge them $20 to do the trip. That said, the $20 price may well increase throughput, but if it decreases demand there is still an opportunity cost from the policy. Don’t use the possibility of higher throughput to argue the congestion toll does not have costs for many of the visitors (of course some visitors will gain due to heterogeneity effects).