As a New Yorker, a few things made me a proponent of congestion pricing:

- watching people have to squeeze between stopped (mostly single-occupant) cars blocking sidewalks on Broome or Canal on their own pedestrian light at rush hour, and realizing that it would be impossible for someone with a stroller or mobility aid.

- seeing packed busses miss light cycles because the intersection is blocked

- seeing ambulances or fire trucks with sirens blaring stuck in gridlock

“Pays off” to me means that transit users and pedestrians are no longer regularly inconvenienced by the fact that more people choose to drive than there is frankly room for.

All these issues have better solutions than congestion pricing.

Cars blocking intersections and/or sidewalks can easily be solved with automated traffic fines - that's how Zurich and London does it (the former without any congestion pricing!)

Many cities also have special lanes only useable by some classes of vehicles - e.g. busses (or sometimes taxis as well) - I guess ambulances could also use those.

In fact, congestion pricing doesn't solve any of those problems, it's just an irrelevant (as in, it doesn't solve any specific problem directly) regressive tax to "drive less".

> Cars blocking intersections and/or sidewalks can easily be solved with automated traffic fines

Rush hour traffic is so gridlocked that cars often can’t know if they will clear a light cycle, so fining would effectively just reduce to a stochastic congestion tax.

NYC does have some dedicated bus lanes, but adding more means reallocating more space from cars which is a political no-go without reducing the number of cars first. That’s what congestion pricing aims to do.

You're wrong on both counts.

Fining for blocking intersection isn't stochastic. You simply don't enter the intersection if you're not sure you'll be able to exit it. You wait at green light. Simple. That's how people in London and Zurich drive.

Congestion automatically reduces the number of cars (because they literally can't get into the city!), without congestion pricing. If you reduce 3 lanes to 2, then... 2 lanes will be blocked, instead of 3, so there will be complete gridlock & congestion - for cars. But not for busses! So public transport will work, even thought private is gridlocked. Combine this with (1) - empty intersections - and busses can drive very well!

My point with adding bus lanes is that it’s a political no go, not that it wouldn’t work to speed up buses.

People who oppose congestion pricing in NYC also oppose dedicated bus lanes and bike lanes because they "cause congestion".