> How about it's done just to prevent having a massive building block out the sun and destroy the character of a lower-rise neighborhood? This is common sense quality-of-life stuff, not some mass conspiracy to constrain the housing supply.

Phrases like "character of the neighborhood" are... what to do they say these days? Problematic?

The places that have the massive buildings are the places most in demand. That seems inconsistent with the result being a detriment to the neighborhood.

> No, again, that is not why I am in favor of it. I am perfectly able to afford to drive to NYC and pay the congestion pricing fee on a daily basis if I wanted to. But I don't enjoy driving in NYC, and it isn't much faster than public transit anyway, and parking is a nightmare, and personal vehicles are worse for the environment. So why do it?

You're describing why it is why you're in favor of it. You already chose not to drive even before the congestion pricing, therefore you don't pay the cost and are happy to see it fall on someone else instead of yourself.

> As for inconvenience of someone else, the folks driving personal vehicles and causing all the congestion are the ones inconveniencing all the mass-transit bus riders, and adding pollution that affects everyone who lives here. Yet you think the pro-congestion-pricing bus riders are the ones externalizing the costs? Is this seriously your argument?

The sensible way to fund a transit system is with broad-based general taxes that apply to everyone, including you. You want to fund it through a tax that only applies to people who drive cars, some of them for legitimate and unavoidable reasons, so... yes?

Also, modern cars don't emit a significant amount of local pollution. Modern emissions control systems are extremely effective against everything except CO2 (a global rather than local concern), to the point that car exhaust in some of the more polluted cities actually has a lower particulate content than the ambient air, and hybrid and electric vehicles produce minimal brake dust because of regenerative braking.

> So users of NYC local roads, who don't live in NYC or NY State, nor contribute taxes to the maintenance of those roads, should somehow have a say in NYC congestion pricing just by virtue of living in the United States? That's completely absurd.

You're making a lot of assumptions there. Who says they don't pay any other taxes in New York? Also, why should suffrage depend on where you sleep rather than where you work? If New York is excluding people by pricing them out through restrictive zoning who otherwise have a right to live there as US citizens, they also get to disenfranchise them as a result?

> But in practice you absolutely can. I'm not familiar with the particulars of zoning variances in NYC, but this does happen all the time. For example when I lived in Manhattan, a 5-story building on my street was replaced by a 24-story monstrosity.

The ability to do something at all, ever is not the same as the ability to do it at the level needed to make housing more affordable. The lots zoned for 24-story buildings mostly but not entirely already have them, and then the ones that don't are the few cases where that can actually happen. The issue is that the market would have done that 1000 times except that the zoning only allowed it in 50 of those places, and then you get only 5% as much new housing as you would have otherwise, which isn't enough to keep prices in check.