News
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.
Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, blogs, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.
7. No duplicate posts.
If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.
All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
view the rest of the comments
I wonder how this will affect elections. I figure Governor Hochul "indefinitely" paused the program last summer to avoid hurting Democrats in the 2024 election. The next mayoral election in NYC is in November of this year and the next election of the governor is in November 2026. Right now both the mayor and the governor are not popular and congestion pricing has a lot of opponents. Maybe people will get used to it before the elections, which is what Hochul is betting on, but there will almost certainly be a new mayor (for reasons unrelated to congestion pricing) and Hochul's chances of being reelected aren't great either.
With all that and opposition from Trump, I think there's a good chance that congestion pricing won't last very long. (I can't say I would be sad.) The congestion pricing hardware cost over $500 million to build, and the expected income from the toll would take over a year to cover that. The MTA's budget will be in big trouble if congestion pricing ends up not even paying for itself.
I don't recall the name of the effect, but there's a characteristic curve that shows up on the graph of public support for these kinds of changes. The hysterical outrage peaks at the time of implementation, but falls off as time goes on. If it has visible benefits, and it lasts, a lot of people will claim that they supported it all along, by November 2026.
Happens the same with smoking bans and such. After a couple of years, even people who smoke and protested the bans notices how indoors dosen't smell like shit anymore.
People can get used to anything. I think it's also likely that the Democratic party will not put forth any serious candidates who oppose congestion pricing, most people aren't going to be single-issue voters about it, and even if someone who opposes it gets elected then he'll still have a hard time getting rid of it for all the reasons why it's always hard to lower taxes. Trump might manage to kill it, but if he doesn't then I wouldn't bet on it ending even if it does cost Hochul the election.
(But I wouldn't want to bet $500 million on it not ending either.)