Road congestion pricing works for me. We went to visit our daughter near Richmond, VA from near Baltimore last week. There was an accident on I-95 south of DC. By using the EZ Pass lanes we saved 20 minutes of drive time and a weeks worth of aggravation. They use dynamic pricing and whatever the difference was for the trip was worth it.
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Same in NH. We have many people commuting to Boston every day from NH. Weâre still considered part of the Boston housing market, but thereâs still a significant different between homes/apartments here in Southern NH and Boston. The farther north you go the cheaper homes and rents are.
In our case, the further West you go from NYC, the cheaper the prices are.
I am constantly amazed at how many apartment complexes & condo developments have been built in Central NJ over the past few years, and the construction doesnât seem to stop. While I think that the fees are high, at least they are a lot cheaper than in NYC.
The pattern in my area is for an old house on a really big piece of property to be torn down, and what is built in its place winds-up housing a few hundred people. The commuter trains to NYC are constantly jammed.
The Baltimore/Washington, DC metro area is about 146 mi north to south and 121 miles west to east. Iâm sure that NYC metro and Los Angeles metro are even larger.
I read articles in the LA Times about people who flew to LA daily - their personal planes.
Well duh. Why do they choose? Imagine NYC 500 years ago: would you choose to live there? People have made it a place people want to live. I predict they will continue to do so. @Mustangman is probably right that the magnates of finance and businesses no longer bound to place because of the Internet will leave. People, more people, will move in to replace them because they can do more and better than they can anywhere else. In a better world real estate prices will drop as well as car ownership, making it more attractive to the not-so-wealthy.
On congestion pricing I read that Liddle Donnie is trying to scotch it, that part of the deal he didnât really make with Eric Adams 
is his opposition, and that he may try to withhold NYSâs federal money to bully them out of it.
Someone I know worked with several people that commuted by plane from the Cali Central Valley to Sunnyvale, CA daily. They couldnât afford to live n the SF Bay Area and worked next to the air field at NASA/Ames. They kept a junk car at the air field to commute across the tarmac to their jobs.
I also worked on a project with an engineer that had worked at Vandenberg AFB and lived in nearby Santa Maria. His operation was shut down and he transferred to Palo Alto, CA. His wife said that was fine but she was going to live in Merced in the Central Valley and he could join her if he wanted to. He did and commuted over 100 miles one way to work. Eventually his company opened a hydrazine fuel facility at VAFB and they moved back. I never did hear what he did with the extra 3 or 4 hours of commuting time he got back after the move.
500 years ago - impossible to say. But 250 years ago - it was obvious. Itâs geographic location made it ideal for international trade. And still does today. Has a natural harbor for large ships to come and go with cargo. So, it was the main reason businesses wanted and needed to be near NYC. No port on the East Coast was as good making it the trade mecca. And it grew from there.
Five hundred years ago, the only human residents of Manhattan islandâas well as all of the other parts of present-day NYCâwere Native Americans, who apparently favored the area for its rich supply of oysters and other shellfish.
The first European settlers in NYC were the Dutch, who arrived in the 1620s. The Dutch stayedâand prosperedâbecause they used the harbor for the export of furs to Europe and for the importation of enslaved people from Africa.
The city must have held some allure at that time, because the English conquered it only ~40 years later. Fast-forward another 10 years, and the Dutch retook the city, albeit for only one year, until the English reclaimed it.
Despite the ravages of disease and ongoing assaults from Native Americans, Europeans saw NYC as a good place for them to emigrate to. Commerce has changed drastically over the intervening centuries, and the city remains a vital commercial hub, even with its congestion problems.
IIRC it was the Erie Canal that made NYC the premier port. Other canals were started, like the C&O Canal from DC to Lake Erie but the Erie Canal was finished first. The C&O ends at Cumberland, MD, a long way from Lake Erie.
Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston, Norfolk, Charleston, Savannah are good ports. NYC had first mover advantage, and that because the Dutch found it; the Dutch found it because they were coming from the north. New Orleans has a location nearly as valuable: all the river traffic between the Appalachians and the Rockies ends up on the Mississippi. Itâs nowhere near as important as NYC. The people who came to NYC grew it far beyond the bounds of the port. They may have come for the port but they stayed and built far more than the portâs commerce.
Thereâs probably an interesting lesson in how the commercial Dutch made NYC a business hub while Puritan Englishpersons tried to make Boston a New Jerusalem.
I thought the C&O was supposed to go to the Ohio River at Pittsburgh. They built the first half, to Cumberland, but not the second. Before the St Lawrence waterway the NYS Barge Canal (its official name) was the only water route between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic. It made Buffalo an important city, a status Buffalonians failed to keep.
Philly and Baltimore ports are not as large as NYC. You asked about 500 years ago which is irrelevant since it was really sparsely populated no trade was really established. 200 years ago was relevant. New Orleans wasnât part of the US until 1803 long after NYC was well established as a major port so the Mississippi wasnât even part of the equation 200 years ago. But NYC did have the Hudson which gave easy access to Canada,.and connection to the Great Lakes.
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At one time New Orleans served about half NYCâs shipping, never came close to NYCâs size, and it has nearly a monopoly on all the internal traffic that comes down the Ohio, Missouri, and other rivers that drain our interior. If NYC were just a port that would provide business for perhaps a million people. Thereâs a lot more going on in NYC than shipping.
Of course there is. But it all started with shipping. Once established as its dominance in shipping other industries moved there and it grew and grew. Itâll take DECADES to reestablish another city to take over NYC dominance.
Probably a moot point due to the supremacy clause where federal law supersedes state and local laws. Agree, the golden goose has been looking for better place to build a nest