Well congestion pricing improves vehicle traffic in tunnels, that's the point.
And trains can be ramped up and down mostly in response to demand, no? It's not a question of underlying track capacity, is it?
I mean I've never heard of someone driving from NJ to NY instead of taking the train because the train was too full. It's usually the opposite -- they take the train instead of the car because the traffic is too slow.
Los Angeles is the closest metropolitan area to me and there's no comparison. You can't easily live in or around Los Angeles without a car. Los Angeles actually has the highest rate of private vehicle ownership for a metropolitan area in the US at ~88%. NYC is at ~45% to give a frame of reference.
I agree with you in principle that you can rent a scooter or get an Uber in LA, but it's much more expensive in general to get around. You can blame it entirely on the lower density, but it doesn't change the fact that NYC is the only major city in the US with less than half of residents owning a private vehicle.
Sorry, I don't count LA as a city. It's endless suburban sprawl. It doesn't have the density to live up to the claim to be a city.
I'm not claiming that other cities are NYC. There's only one NYC. But there are cities, even in the US, where there's an urban core that has useful "Subways, trains, buses. Taxis, Ubers, CitiBike" or equivalent.
