Bridge Tolls
FAQ |
Letter to NYMTCMarch 27, 2003
Mr. Joseph Boardman Re: NYMTC "Best Practice Model" and East River bridge tolls Dear Commissioner Boardman: During the Annual NYMTC Council meeting last week, I asked you to use the Council's taxpayer-funded Best Practice Model (BPM) to assess the effect of East River bridge tolls on traffic volumes and travel times on the bridges and the associated highway network in and around New York City. More than 13 months have passed since Mayor Bloomberg signaled his intent to toll these bridges by penciling $800 million in "congestion pricing and E-ZPass" revenues into his 2006 budget plan. During this time, East River tolls have come to be seen as increasingly necessary; bridge and highway congestion continue unabated, while New York City's fiscal problems have grown more dire. Three of the City's four major dailies have editorialized repeatedly in favor of the tolls, and tolls are now a prominent political issue with ongoing op-eds, rallies and advocacy campaigns for and against. This debate is occurring in an information vacuum, however, so far as the traffic impacts are concerned. Although it seems highly likely that bridge tolls using high-speed electronic collection will improve traffic flow, the extent of such gains can't be estimated without modeling how New Yorkers will adjust their travel preferences to the tolls and how the changes in travel volumes will affect travel speeds and times on the bridge and highway network on both sides of the East River. The only model capable of such an assessment is your organization's BPM. In July 2002, I met with NYMTC executive director Tom Schulze and asked him to apply the model to East River tolls. Eight months later, that request is still pending. At the Council meeting last week you reported that NYMTC staff was using the BPM to test transportation scenarios for Brooklyn, the Bronx and lower Manhattan. Yet your response to my request to use the BPM to assess East River tolls was that "I will consider it . . . and the answer may be no." Commissioner Boardman, an arbitrary "no" answer isn't acceptable. No technical reason or other factor justifies withholding the Best Practice Model from East River bridge tolls. On the contrary, there are a host of reasons to use the model as soon as possible: the policy debate over bridge tolls is, appropriately, intense; the model can shed significant light on this debate; and the taxpayers have spent more than $10 million on the BPM. They are entitled to see it used for the purposes it was designed for, without arbitrary, politically-based restrictions. Indeed, a refusal to run the model on bridge tolls would fly in the face of your own agency's public statements about the BPM. For example, your Web site proclaims, "[The BPM] will provide decision makers and planners of this region with a very valuable tool, for the long range plans, sub-area and corridor analysis." (http://www.nymtc.org/BPM/bpmmodel.html,) If that isn't clear enough, consider what your agency said in its original Request for Proposals for the model: "[T]he forecasting procedures must assist NYMTC and its member agencies to examine changes in travel patterns in support of a variety of planning analyses including determining the impacts of various pricing and other TDM [travel demand management] strategies." (Emphasis added. NYMTC, Transportation Models and Data Initiative, Technical Memorandum No. 1.2.2, Final Model Structure and Framework, p. 1-3, dated June 25, 1997, submitted by Parsons Brinckerhoff, the prime contractor for BPM.) Clearly, withholding BPM from the East River toll discussion runs counter to the purpose for which the model was developed - with public funds. Commissioner Boardman, when I met with Tom Schulze last summer, I appealed to his professional pride. Using BPM to estimate the travel impacts of East River bridge tolls would, I suggested, show the public that the transportation planning process can actually benefit people's lives. I would like to make this appeal to you as well. But time is slipping away. There is no room for further delay, and no justification for it, either. I would like to hear from you in the very near future that NYMTC will run BPM to assess the impact of East River bridge tolls on traffic volumes and travel times on the bridges and the associated highway network in and around New York City. Sincerely,
Charles Komanoff |