Republicans hate it when government works I

At his excellent new Substack — the blundering by the Times editors is our gain — Paul Krugman has a couple of good posts about the Trump administration trying to undo programs and institutions not because they’re not working but because they are.

The first of these is congestion pricing in New York. This will not be a surprise to anyone who knows how it has worked everywhere else it’s been tried, but it’s been a smashing success — less congestion and hence less pollution, more transit ridership, more transit funding. A hugely positive-sum policy in which everyone wins except for some suburbanites who think they have an inalienable right to free ride, and anytime they lose is a big win for democracy. For this reason, Trump wants it killed:

A bit over a month has passed since New York City finally did what economists and urban planners have urged for decades: it began charging vehicles for the right to enter lower Manhattan. As I wrote at the time, the case for such a charge is Economics 101: driving into a highly congested area worsens traffic congestion, imposing costs on other drivers, trucks making delivery, and so on. The idea that drivers should have a right to harm other people without payment is bizarre, if you think about it, and the $9 congestion fee is very modest compared with reasonable estimates of the damage those choosing to drive into the city actually does.

So how’s it going? All indications are that the congestion charge has been remarkably successful, exceeding even its supporters’ expectations. Traffic congestion has clearly declined, with travel times falling on most routes within the congestion relief zone. Some of the major routes into and out of Manhattan have seen spectacular improvement…

At the same time, transit ridership has increased. Overall, there’s no reason to believe that significantly fewer people are entering lower Manhattan; they’re just getting there in ways that hurt others less.

The congestion charge is also proving increasingly popular among those actually experiencing its consequences — an important qualification I’ll get to in a minute. One remarkable result of a recent Morning Consult poll is that 66 percent of adults who regularly drive into lower Manhattan support the congestion charge, while only 32 percent oppose it. The most likely explanation is that the time these drivers save from shorter commutes is worth more to them than the cost of the fee.

Yet Morning Consult found that while residents of New York City approve of the congestion charge, residents of New York State as a whole disapprove by a substantial margin. What this tells us is that negative views of the charge come from upstaters, people who will almost never pay it or experience its effects.

Which brings me to the most important enemy of this remarkably successful policy, someone who definitely isn’t personally affected: Donald Trump, who told the New York Post that he wants to “kill” congestion pricing (and bike lanes too.)

This is something we’re very familiar with in Washington state, but exurban and rural voters who don’t think cities should be able to tax themselves to raise funding for the services that allow cities to actually function are the quintessential Trump voters. It’s a politics of pure resentment.