Do Democrats sit around all day thinking “what else can we tax?” Probably so
(NY Times) Ever since August Belmont Jr. arranged the financing for a four-track “underground railroad†more than a century ago, the subway has fueled New York City’s economy, delivering workers from homes in distant neighborhoods to jobs in Manhattan and enriching landlords and real estate developers near stations.
Today, with the subway in precipitous decline and the city enjoying an economic boom, some policymakers think the time has come for the subway to profit from the financial benefits it provides, including its considerable contribution to property values.
Proponents point to the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where co-op and condominium prices in a 10-block stretch near the Second Avenue subway have risen 6 percent since it opened in January 2017, according to figures from the Corcoran Group, a large real estate firm. In Manhattan’s main business corridors, from 60th Street south, the benefit of being near a subway adds $3.85 per square foot to the value of commercial property, according to calculations by two New York University economists.
And because the Democratic run government has done a poor job of managing the money to keep the subway in good repair, they feel they need to tax tax tax
The notion that property owners should pay extra for their proximity to the subway is called “value capture†and has long been debated in urban planning circles. Now Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, has made value capture a prominent part of his plan to salvage the subway system by proposing to give the Metropolitan Transportation Authority the power to designate “transit improvement subdistricts†and impose taxes.
Of course, the reality is that those taxes will get passed along, and will, in fact, hit the middle and lower class residents of NYC.
Here’s an idea: use the money already taken from citizens responsibly.
Back when I was paying attention to Urban Planning, the planners were discussing how to encourage more housing around transit stations as a way to encourage ridership and therefore profitability of the mass transit. Using govt. dollars to subsidize such developments. Now the political bosses want to tax those locations. does anybody have stable long term plans anymore. (beyond tax and spend?)
I favor this. People who use a service should pay for it. This is much better than the normal way of diverting gasoline taxes to pay for subways and taxing rural people to pay for it. But let’s not just tax those near a subway. Tax the entire city that is served by it. Of course, the most fair way would be to raise fares so that the people who use it are paying for what they use.