Comment on There's a new toll I'll have to pay to drive anywhere.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 2 weeks agoMove to Houston then where the city was designed for the car and you can drive in traffic every day and park in massive parking structures whenever you like. It’s a very odd opinion that you choose to live in the only city that focuses on people and mass transit in this country, and complain that one of the best things about it is the one thing that is unique. Go live in Texas if you like driving. Go live in LA and drive on the 5 where cars were at the center of their city planning. Sounds like your dream. You can have 20 lanes of constant traffic, 30 story tall parking garages, just like you dream of.
ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I live in NYC to support (and have the support of) my relatives, not because I want to. I also never said that I was rich. Even without the toll, driving in Manhattan is at the edge of what I can reasonably spend. Just the parking costs several times more than all my other discretionary spending put together.
I grew up in a Texas suburb and it was pretty nice (except for the humidity) but I don’t have first-hand experience with driving in a place like Houston or LA. I know that there’s a lot of traffic, but I’m genuinely curious about whether it’s really slower than mass transit in NYC is.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 2 weeks ago
If you live in Manhattan, congrats, you’re doing better than the vast majority of the country financially. Even with dependents, you’re doing much much better.
There’s no way to know because no other cities in North America have one like NYC. No where has mass transit. I’m in Seattle, we have 2 (disconnected) light rail lines. Houston has 3 light rail lines for the entire city. LA has a metro that doesn’t even connect to the airport yet. You want to know why you’re being downvoted to hell? It’s because you live in the only place in the entire country with an actual, working metro service and you don’t want to ride it because it’s slightly dirty sometimes, or you might be forced to interact with other people. Let me tell you, I travel to NYC regularly, and I wish we had a metro system like yours. I sit in traffic for 1.5 hours each way to get to work, and I live 7 miles away from it. And Seattle has a “good” metro system compared to the vast majority of the country. Last time I was in New York I happily stepped over a pile of human shit to get on the train, and I still got across the city in less than 30 minutes. How many people here have to tell you, you have a golden ticket with your metro service, the ability to go anywhere in your city at any time for $2 and change, and you’re trying to convince all of us that it’s actually not that great.
Do you know what I’d give to not have to drive? To not have to get in a car every day to go to work? Even if it took longer? To not have to white-knuckle drive, to not have to maintain a vehicle, to not have to sit there day after day. A train would be a godsend, and we’re finally starting to get a working one in Seattle but we’re decades away from a system that can get me to more places than the Airport, downtown, or the university.
The most ironic thing is that the tax you’re paying is literally to improve the subway, to make it cleaner, safer, to finish the second avenue line, and for maintenance, but you probably still will convince yourself that it’s not worth it.