East River tolls: Fact vs. fiction
am New York
By Paul Steely White
Transportation Alternatives

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A toll on the Brooklyn Bridge is politically unpopular, but it may help save the MTA.

It now costs nine dollars to drive into central London. Though they bristled at first, today the clear majority of Londoners love the new “congestion charge” because everyone now gets to work faster.

Traffic volumes are down 15%, and congestion has been cut by 30% and the toll revenue is funding much-needed transit, bicycle and pedestrian improvements. Commuters are foregoing car trips and finding attractive alternatives, bringing more revenue to buses and subways. At least a dozen cities around the world are planning to introduce “congestion charge” zones.

Tolling the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges could raise as much as $700 million per year to improve subways and buses and go a long way towards saving the MTA from its budget crisis. Mayor Bloomberg said last week that tolling East River bridges is “politically impossible.” Confirming the mayor’s pessimism, the governor’s office, State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, and Queens Councilmember John Liu, chair of the City Council Transportation Committee, all voiced their opposition.

The political resistance is based on five fictions:

Fiction #1: The city-owned East River bridges are currently free.

Fact: “Free” bridges cost taxpayers a bundle. Tolling them will raise money for maintaining the bridges and improving mass transit. “Free” bridges cost $600 million to maintain and operate and $1.62 billion to rebuild over the last decade. “Free” bridges will cost $600 million to maintain and $833 million to rebuild over the next decade.

Fiction #2: “Free” bridge crossings help ease congestion and decrease travel times.

Fact: “Free” bridges cause traffic congestion and increase travel time. Traffic on the free East River bridges has increased 20% since 1981, compared to only 6% on tolled crossings. Tolling the East River bridges would reduce traffic on the bridges by 24-26%.

Fiction #3: Tolling requires toll plazas and will cause traffic backups.

Fact: By using a combination of E-ZPass and London-style license plate cameras and instant payment systems, cash lanes and toll plazas would not be needed.

Fiction #4: Bridges tolls are unfair to low-income New Yorkers.

Fact: Tolls would have little impact on low-income New Yorkers.

• Motorists crossing the bridges are skewed toward the upper income ranges. Lower income New Yorkers are far more likely to take public transportation--and pay the increasingly high subway and bus fare--than to use the bridges. Thus, equity considerations support the argument that bridge users should, like transit riders, pay for what they use.
• 8% of bridge users have household incomes under $25,000, compared with 16% of transit riders using the subway, bus or commuter rail to cross the East River.
• At the other end of the income scale, 21% of bridge users but only 16% of transit riders crossing the East River have incomes over $100,000.

Fiction #5: Tolls are unfair to residents of Brooklyn and Queens

Fact: Tolls on New York City's East River bridges would reduce traffic on and around the bridges and reduce travel times by an average of five minutes, a boon to all New Yorkers. 80% of the reduction of traffic congestion will be in Brooklyn and Queens or on the bridges themselves, which means that tolls will primarily benefit Brooklyn and Queens residents.

This reduction in traffic through downtown Brooklyn is crucial to the success of the massive new development planned in that area. Without tolls on the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, downtown Brooklyn will choke on massive traffic jams.

Time saved from the tolls would be worth an estimated $650 million a year to drivers. This savings translates to more than 90% of the expected $700 million annual out-of-pocket costs of tolls.

Only 2% of Brooklyn and Queens residents would pay more than $50 a year on tolls. This 2% that can afford to pay for parking and all the other expenses associated with driving a car daily in NYC.

The sooner the facts about East River bridge tolls are widely understood, the easier it will be for our City’s leaders to muster the political courage necessary to employ them. And the sooner the better, for New York City cannot afford to sit in traffic while the rest of the world charges ahead.

For more information about toll facts, and for sources for the above figures, please visit:
http://www.transalt.org/campaigns/sensible/congestion.html

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