I'm all for reducing traffic, but yeah, how is this not at least partially regressive? Folks who can only afford to live in New Jersey but then have to work in NYC now have yet another new expense.

But maybe I'm not aware of just how ubiquitous subway stations are in New Jersey that go into NYC. Would it be an easy transition?

Private vehicles aren't efficient, they're convenient.

In SF they allocated some extra carpool lanes (taken from the total number of highway lanes) and started calling them "express lanes" instead of carpool lanes. Everybody cheered-- because transit hipstering is a great thing for the people who it actually works well for in our mediocre system. I guess everytone else is SOL. In SF it started out that you could still use them for free if you had 2 people in the car. Now its 3 people minimum to ride free, and the prices crept higher. Now you'll very often see all non-express lanes stopped with traffic but the price for express lanes high and the express lanes clear of traffic-- that road throughput capacity underused. Its become a rich persons lane, at the cost of reducing capacity of the total system. When it got put in they said the max would be $8.00, shortly after they doubled that, with no max per day. Fees rack up since they charge over short distances. Now I've started seeing express lanes on main thoroughfares that arent highways.

Theres a patchwork of diconnected and not well thought out transit systems, with little hope of retrenching them to have usable coverage like NYC has. You'll end up using an uber or taxi to get to your final destination most of the time, and parking at transit stations is difficult, time consuming, and expensive.

This is not the solution you think it is. It just makes things better for the rich, and does nothing for the poor and middle class. This is like the "clear" lane at the airport security. Once its in, its not going away. Pricing is not in the control of people who have your best interests at heart. If you're poor, your time is not worth as much as a rich persons. They are commoditizing the hours of your life and many of you cheer for it. Without progressive pricing for this you're just getting fleeced.

The funds created arent going toward new projects . They are used for road maintenance, enforcement, and debt repayment in the county where the road is This simply frees up general funds that had been used for that before these went in, so no direct benefit in terms of transit projects is mandated.