Originally Posted by
Polytonic
I'm aware of the TLC plate requirement, but it seems a bit strange to me to charge per-trip as it doesn't manage congestion. One taxi (or Uber/Lyft) vehicle cruising around midtown doing 20-30 trips and never leaving is net-neutral wrt traffic, whereas if you had 20-30 cabs going interborough with a passenger, well, now you've just added 20-30 cabs to midtown congestion, and the net revenue from both examples is the same.
If the 20-30 cabs enter and leave within, say, 5 minutes each, they’re contributing less to traffic over the course of the day than the one Uber driving around all day.
I think the idea is to make any trip inside the zone cost more money, thus reducing demand, however slightly.
But my question is - Is this on top of the already existing congestion zone
surcharge, below 96th St?