My impressions on the first two days of Congestion Pricing in NYC

[martybegan]

That's what was intended.

After the incessant accusations of presumed laziness and purported inefficiencies of working from home, made by the trumpanzees, it was an appropriate suggestion.

No, it's the hubris of a semi-skilled white collar loser who thinks their situation is the only situation.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

I drove to Manhattan once.
They charged me $15 to use their tunnel.
I was surprised at how expensive it was.
I couldn't find any place to park.
I almost ran out of gas before I found a gas station.
But it was an interesting experience.

My wife once worked for Barclays Bank in New York, she secured a rental on Roosevelt island and took a cable care to work, it was amazing and still a little known thing in New York.

 

[Hellokitty]

Best thing about the COVID lockdowns was no traffic. I'm in Georgia about 1 hour north of Atlanta, we have peach pass lanes which help a little, but they raise the lane fees during rush hour traffic. In some places it's over $8.

 

[ThisIsMe]

Imagine the increase in cost for those materials - especially when you need 2x26' Ruder trucks to deliver a full 53' trailer.

You'd have to weigh the cost of that to having extra congestion of dozens of big rig trucks in the city, wrecks, cars getting dinged, scraped, delays because a truck is stuck because nobody will let them maneuver to get where they need to be. Plus, you are already paying more because trucking companies charge more for freight to be hauled into the city. Aside from the increased risk of having an accident, tolls for an 18 wheeler to get into and out of the city can be over $200, for each truck.

By using a hub and smaller trucks, you can eliminate those costs from the trucking companies, and, in exchange for having less congestion on the roads, NYC could waive the toll fees for the new, smaller trucks.

especially when you need 2x26' Ruder trucks to deliver a full 53' trailer.

Depends...not always are entire truck loads being delivered to a single customer inside the city. Often, it's multiple stops, or, it could be just one stop of a couple of pallets, or LTL, of which that product would just as easily fit on a 26-30 foot 3 axle truck, rather than have a 53 foot trailer go into the city to drop off 2 pallets, that could be more safely done with a smaller truck.

Just an idea.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

No, it's the hubris of a semi-skilled white collar loser who thinks their situation is the only situation.

Your just bitter.

 

[martybegan]

Your just bitter.

I choose to do what I do because it is important and it pays well.

You prefer to slum in your basement apartment and avoid sunlight.

 

[M14 Shooter]

By using a hub and smaller trucks, you can eliminate those costs from the trucking companies, and, in exchange for having less congestion on the roads, NYC could waive the toll fees for the new, smaller trucks.

You would still have to pay for the smaller trucks to deliver from the hub.

Depends...not always are entire truck loads being delivered to a single customer inside the city.

Not always, but often.

Often, it's multiple stops, or, it could be just one stop of a couple of pallets, or LTL, of which that product would just as easily fit on a 26-30 foot 3 axle truck, rather than have a 53 foot trailer go into the city to drop off 2 pallets, that could be more safely done with a smaller truck.

Either way, you're paying for another truck to deliver what was on the previous truck, and if that 53 is full of LTL freight, you're using 2 trucks to deliver it all.

 

[TroglocratsRdumb]

I've lived in NYC my entire life, and I find anyone who drives to work in Manhattan crazy, but some people simply don't like mass transit.

I get it, but you wouldn't catch me trying to do it in a thousand years.

There are very few gas stations on Manhattan Island that I could find.
I was sweating it looking at my empty gas gauge.
It would have been a disaster to run out of gas in my rental car in Manhattan.

 

[martybegan]

There are very few gas stations on Manhattan Island that I could find.
I was sweating it looking at my empty gas gauge.
It would have been a disaster to run out of gas in my rental car in Manhattan.

There have always been very few in Manhattan, something they never seem to advertise.

Most are up north, or on the far west side avenues.

Always tank up before going into Manhattan, something they really need to tell people. I know because I've lived here my entire life.

 

[TroglocratsRdumb]

There have always been very few in Manhattan, something they never seem to advertise.

Most are up north, or on the far west side avenues.

Always tank up before going into Manhattan, something they really need to tell people. I know because I've lived here my entire life.

That was back in the 90s before GPS and cellphones and the internet.
I was on a business trip to NJ.
I had the weekend off and I decided to take a trip to NYC.
The only time that I got out of my car was to take a walk in central park.
I was illegally parked a couple of blocks west of the park.
I finally found a gas station on the west side.
They charged me again to use the tunnel to leave.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

I choose to do what I do because it is important and it pays well.

You prefer to slum in your basement apartment and avoid sunlight.

I prefer efficiency over theater, as an engineer you should appreciate that. In the 1930s and 1940s and 1950s science and technology and futurist journals often predicted a world where commuting to an office would no longer be necessary, I can dig out evidence of this if you want.

This was particularly true of the computer related work, where remoteness was no impediment to working and this idea has continued to develop with the internet and services like email and so on.

So "working from home" is not new and in fact has been a goal for decades in the technology industries.

I no longer waste two hours a day and instead use those hours to get more work done I no longer get interruptions as I work either and that enables me to maintain focus on the work without the cost that distractions cost mentally.

Lots of studies have been done about this and the data is out there for you or anyone to inspect.

Now can people slack off when working at home? Yes they can but I still have a boss, I still have targets and deliverables and deadlines and if these are not met then that would be noticed.

Anyone who works in software also well knows that "slacking off" (unproductive time) is always present, people often chat around other people's cubes and so on.

Morons like Elon Musk are simply unable to manage well in a remote world, they DO NOT KNOW how to manage people in those circumstances, so do not mistake Musk's pontifications as important or accurate, when he complains about remote workers he's really revealing his own poor management skills, it's very well known in the tech industry that a most software workers make poor managers.

I once worked at a successful and very conservative company named Faithlife, run by a former Microsoft worker. They had remote working down to an art ten years ago when I was there and did not insist on people being in the office, this was a very money and cost focused company too.

 

[martybegan]

I prefer efficiency over theater, as an engineer you should appreciate that. In the 1930s and 1940s and 1950s science and technology and futurist journals often predicted a world where commuting to an office would no longer be necessary, I can dig out evidence of this if you want.

This was particularly true of the computer related work, where remoteness was no impediment to working and this idea has continued to develop with the internet and services like email and so on.

So "working from home" is not new and in fact has been a goal for decades in the technology industries.

I no longer waste two hours a day and instead use those hours to get more work done I no longer get interruptions as I work either and that enables me to maintain focus on the work without the cost that distractions cost mentally.

Lots of studies have been done about this and the data is out there for you or anyone to inspect.

Now can people slack off when working at home? Yes they can but I still have a boss, I still have targets and deliverables and deadlines and if these are not met then that would be noticed.

Anyone who works in software also well knows that "slacking off" (unproductive time) is always present, people often chat around other people's cubes and so on.

Morons like Elon Musk are simply unable to manage well in a remote world, they DO NOT KNOW how to manage people in those circumstances, so do not mistake Musk's pontifications as important or accurate, when he complains about remote workers he's really revealing his own poor management skills, it's very well known in the tech industry that a most software workers make poor managers.

I once worked at a successful and very conservative company named Faithlife, run by a former Microsoft worker. They had remote working down to an art ten years ago when I was there and did not insist on people being in the office, this was a very money and cost focused company too.

And yet many people don't have that option. Again your reek of classist hubris.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

And yet many people don't have that option. Again your reek of classist hubris.

That might be because since we started school, all of us have been indoctrinated with the concept of "going out" to our jobs and for some, I suspect you are one, the idea of being a productive worker without leaving the house is just too alien a concept.

I know how to maximize my own productivity and I know what things reduce my productivity, as I've said before too there are many studies about all of this, but windbags like Elon Musk are too ignorant to learn.

We use the term (really a technical term) "context switching" to refer to the process of being interrupted, trying to save one's thought and ideas very quickly and reacting and dealing with the interruption.

It carries a huge cost in certain kinds of work, a very good analogy that some find easier to grasp is that of composing music. Imagine interrupting John Williams every fifteen minutes with some distraction like five people turning up next to his piano and talking or someone asking him where this or that is every half an hour or so - all day - every day - he would SCREAM and be unable to produce the kind of work he does.

Redirecting to: https://blog.ninlabs.com/blog/programmer-interrupted

blog.ninlabs.com

The costs of interruptions have been studied in office environments. An interrupted task is estimated to take twice as long and contain twice as many errors as uninterrupted tasks (Czerwinski:04). Workers have to work in a fragmented state as 57% of tasks are interrupted (Mark:05).

 

[martybegan]

That might be because since we started school, all of us have been indoctrinated with the concept of "going out" to our jobs and for some, I suspect you are one, the idea of being a productive worker without leaving the house is just too alien a concept.

I know how to maximize my own productivity and I know what things reduce my productivity, as I've said before too there are many studies about all of this, but windbags like Elon Musk are too ignorant to learn.

We use the term (really a technical term) "context switching" to refer to the process of being interrupted, trying to save one's thought and ideas very quickly and reacting and dealing with the interruption.

It carries a huge cost in certain kinds of work, a very good analogy that some find easier to grasp is that of composing music. Imagine interrupting John Williams every fifteen minutes with some distraction like five people turning up next to his piano and talking or someone asking him where this or that is every half an hour or so - all day - every day - he would SCREAM and be unable to produce the kind of work he does.

More upper middle class arrogance.

How can construction workers work from home?

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

More upper middle class arrogance.

Very well ignore facts, ignore metrics, ignore science, I'd hate to work in a building you've been involved in.

How can construction workers work from home?

They can't but software developers can just as music composers and artists can and do.

As I said earlier you're just bitter.

 

[martybegan]

They can't but software developers can just as music composers and artists can and do.

And that's the point I am trying to get through your entitled thick skull.

Just saying "work from home" doesn't work for everyone you self centered sack of shit.

 

[M14 Shooter]

Just saying "work from home" doesn't work for everyone you self centered sack of shit.

Nice thing about working from home - if you can do your job there, then someone can do your job from anywhere.

 

[martybegan]

Nice thing about working from home - if you can do your job there, then someone can do your job from anywhere.

They don't realize they just increased their replacement pool by an order of magnitude.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

And that's the point I am trying to get through your entitled thick skull.

Just saying "work from home" doesn't work for everyone you self centered sack of shit.

I never said it did, I began by saying "Get a job working from home" if you want to avoid the burden of travel every day.

I never said it works for everyone but you could change the kind of work you do, many people change their career paths, it's the new normal.

There's no reason to call me a "self centered sack of shit" just because we disagree, but oh, I forgot, you're a trumpanzee.

 

[M14 Shooter]

They don't realize they just increased their replacement pool by an order of magnitude.

Well sure - at that point, the labor market becomes global.