The ‘authorities’ will know everything that you buy and everything you do, but they’ll now be dictating how and where you can go
People can drive freely around their own neighbourhood and can apply for a permit to drive through the filters, and into other neighbourhoods, for up to 100 days per year. This equates to an average of two days per week.
The alternative is to drive out on to the ring road and then back in to the destination.
The first of many I suspect - those electronic chains will just keep getting tighter and tighter!
Another worthwhile tidbit: "The alternative is to drive out on to the ring road and then back in to the destination. "
So, they are trying to reduce traffic in the city center. You can go anywhere you want, any time you want, if you take the ring road around the city, rather than trying to drive through the heart of the city. Downtown London has had a traffic limiting scheme in place for several years.
In the 70s, Kalamazoo tried to reduce traffic in residential areas by creating a lot of dead end streets by building concrete barricades closing off the streets to through traffic. The scheme didn’t work, because emergency vehicles were obstructed too.
Now, Detroit is trying to reduce traffic speeds in residential neighborhoods by installing speed humps. People are often clocked at 50-60mph in neighborhoods with a posted 25mph limit.
Hartford and West Hartford got smart. We made one lane streets on both sides with a partition down the center. It naturally slowed the traffic down. The lights were reworked to get the traffic through town. It is just as fast but no bottle neck ever. Which means many days it is faster.
It is also much much safer for pedestrians and other drivers.
That seems to be the case in the UK. I used to watch the “Inspector Lewis” series on Mystery, which, coincidentally, was placed in Oxford. Whenever Lewis started working a case, his first move was to see what CCTV had captured. Somehow, he was involved in a case in Germany. His first question to his German counterpart was “what does CCTV show?”. The German detective said “This isn’t England. We don’t have cameras everywhere”. It does seem that “Big Brother” is real in England.
Real Soon, I fear. They are using it to fund the subway, whose ridership still has not grown back to pre-COVID levels (despite their keeping all the MTA employees busy with the “make-work” of scrubbing down and fogging every subway car, every night, during the COVID crisis).
This is mainly to increase FAS in the years before retirement so they can maximize their pension. With less ridership, and fewer cars used, during covid, they needed some excuse to grant massive overtime hours to those who needed it. Remember, the primary purpose of the MTA is to provide jobs, pensions, and political patronage to the hierarchy of employees and management. The secondary purpose is to manage transportation in the metro area.
I have a friend who is a top lawyer in Manhattan. I doubt he will worry about any of that at all. You obviously know what it costs to house a car in Manhattan year round. He gave a new Mercedes to his daughter for her 16th birthday. Money is not a problem for him and many people in Manhattan. The rest were generally taking the subway or train anyway.
Wonder where the Uber drivers end up?
Tourism will mostly continue as it is a one off expense.
Coming in through the tunnels from NJ will change. That is the big change.
How do you see traffic from Northern New Jersey changing?
They may not own the vehicles they drive. They may lease/rent/whatever vehicle offered via the lease company. So they do not have any parking expense as a result. Of course, users of the service pay for it all via fares.
AFAIK many immigrants who work with Uber get an extension of credit to buy their own car. Then they pay back Uber with interest. It can take 85 hours a week of work to make a small living.
