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Though it might be a good idea to also encourage carpooling with reduced tolls, because presumably one bigger car carrying 5-7 people is better than 5-7 smaller but still bigger-than-city-cars carrying 1 person each.


Presumably the toll is per vehicle, so carpooling already divides the fee among the carpoolers.


Wonder about the road damage aspect of this. If the relationship is a 4th power of weight, assuming a single vehicle with 2x the weight, it would need to replace 16 individual cars to break even.


"According to a 2022 study from the Environmental Protection Agency, the average weight of a car is 4,094 pounds."[1]

Going from 1 person of 200lb to 4 people totaling 800lb (in a 4,000lb car) increases the damage by less than an additional car (4,800 / 4,200) ^ 4 = 1.71

[1]: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/average-car-weight-140033718....


I imagine the average car commuter in NYC weighs about 150lbs


Good question. Maybe the amount of toll reduction should depend on the number of people carried and the weight of the vehicle, encouraging lightweight vehicles that can carry a lot of people. Probably should have a hard cutoff too so e.g. over a certain weight loses the reduction altogether.




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