Bridge Tolls
Advocacy Project

Marty Mark-Up

The Daily News recently ran a pro-tolls op-ed, "Budget Deficit Must Be Shared," by BTAP's Charles Komanoff alongside an anti-tolls piece by Brooklyn Borough president Marty Markowitz. Here's Marty's piece with our rebuttals interspersed in italics.

Toll East River Bridges?
No. Economy, Traffic, Air Would Lose.
By Marty Markowitz

East River bridge tolls: Fuhgeddaboudit!

Should we also forget about the City's disastrous budget deficit and the imminent cuts in schools, fire and police unless we tap new revenue sources?

Tolls would be a job-killing tax that would strike another blow at the city's economy.

That would be a good line, Marty, if the governor hadn't said it first. Unfortunately, snappy phrases are about all Pataki is offering the city to replace $600 million in revenue from bridge tolls. And speaking of phrases, when has either of you had any ideas about "job-killing" traffic congestion?

Take the industrial sector: Since manufacturers and distributors rely almost entirely on trucks to move goods, the tolls would add substantially to their already high cost of doing business here.

Wrong. Trucking is a $15 billion a year business here, so the $70 million that trucks will pay in East River bridge tolls will hardly register. And some of what trucks will pay in tolls will be recouped in faster travel on less-congested bridges.

New Jersey's economic development officials work overtime to attract city jobs. Tolls would make their job easier.

What will keep families and jobs in NYC is safe streets and good schools. That takes money. Where will the money come from, Marty, if not from tolls?

The Brooklyn Restaurant Association opposes tolls because its members know that many of the Manhattanites who have helped spark the borough's restaurant and nightlife renaissance would think twice about coming if a $7 - or the MTA's expected $8 - round-trip toll were tacked onto their cab fare. Brooklyn's cultural institutions are concerned about tolls for the same reason.

By Marty's logic, Manhattan stay-at-homes will be replaced by Brooklynites whom tolls will keep on their side of the river. Of course, most Manhattan-Brooklyn travel is by transit. (Say, where was the Brooklyn Restaurant Association when the MTA jacked up the transit fare?)

Since three of the four bridges that would be tolled are in Brooklyn, tolls would be a new tax primarily on thousands of Brooklynites who have no reasonable transportation alternative.

Primarily? Based on bridge traffic counts, for every dollar tolled from a Brooklyn resident, two dollars will be paid by drivers from other boroughs, Long Island or New Jersey.

Many Brooklyn drivers don't live near mass-transit lines. Others drive over the bridges on their way to New Jersey or beyond. Some need cars to get to work or to visit friends or see a Broadway show, and they are understandably hesitant to take the subway late at night.

And they need to pay for the bridge maintenance, traffic enforcement, accident clean-up and other public outlays that now subsidize their ride. Just like subway riders pay for their use of public facilities.

These Brooklynites don't ride in limos. Tolls would squarely hit hardworking people already struggling to make ends meet. An $8 round trip would cost a commuter $2,000 annually, adding to the burden of skyrocketing auto insurance premiums - particularly in Brooklyn.

Fewer than 50,000 Brooklynites commute on an East River bridge (17,000 in carpools, 32,000 in single-occupant cars). The other 97% - 1.7 million adults - either work in Brooklyn, Queens or LI; drive to Manhattan on a toll-charging MTA bridge or tunnel; take transit; or are out of work or retired. They will average just $70 a year each in East River tolls - a small price for the municipal services the revenue will rescue from cuts.

There is absolutely no credible evidence to support the claim that tolls would reduce congestion or air pollution.

Everyone who knows anything about the subject agrees that they would. Including Brooklyn's own Gridlock Sam, who has practically offered to eat his Daily News column if the tolls don't shift some trips to carpooling and transit and open up clogged roads and bridges.

Even if the so-called high-speed E-ZPass system doesn't cause backups - and it hasn't been tested on such a large scale - proponents do not adequately explain how the drivers without E-ZPass will pay.

It's simple. The few holdouts without E-ZPass will either pick up a limited-use "toll card" from their local re-seller, or pay cash at the Triborough Bridge or the Brooklyn-Battery or Queens-Midtown Tunnels.

Diverting drivers to tunnels where they take cash will cause confusion and congestion. Collection by mail is an enforcement nightmare.

Enforcement nightmare? By that logic we should stop writing parking tickets. Drivers without E-ZPass or toll cards will be billed by mail and pay the East River toll, just like a parking ticket. The tolls will end the real traffic nightmare - downtown Brooklyn immobilized and bus riders on Flatbush Ave. trapped in gridlock caused by drivers going out of their way to the free bridges.

A modest income-tax surcharge on high-income households and restoration of the suburban commuter tax are much fairer ways to reduce the city's deficit.

Talk to your friend and phrase-maker George Pataki about the commuter tax, Marty. Not that there's anything wrong with it. To close massive deficits without gutting essential services, the City needs higher taxes on luxury income and the commuter tax and bridge tolls. In fact, bridge tolls are a form of commuter tax: the $160 million toll "take" from Long Islanders and New Jerseyans will get back a third of the "out-of-town" revenue lost when the commuter tax was repealed in 1999.

The city also should get back a fairer share of the taxes it sends to Albany.

Don't hold your breath. Brooklyn has a better chance of becoming the 51st state.

Tolls would take pressure off Albany to give the city more assistance. And under the most likely tolling arrangement - where the Metropolitan Transportation Authority takes over the bridges - the city wouldn't even get all the money. Current law says that at least half the estimated $600 million that would be collected annually would subsidize the MTA's commuter railroads.

Hey, we agree on this one. There's no good reason for the City to turn over the bridges to the MTA. The East River bridges are our bridges; the revenue from tolling them should be ours too.

New York City has never been more united. Brooklyn's state Senate, Assembly and City Council delegations and the overwhelming majority of New Yorkers, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll, join me in opposing tolls.

Sure - because politicians like you, Marty, haven't laid out the choices honestly. The choice isn't tolls vs. no tolls, it's tolls vs. devastating cutbacks. Last summer, when a Quinnipiac poll gave New Yorkers the real choice - higher taxes or transit hikes or bridge tolls - every borough chose tolls, resoundingly.

As one city, we shouldn't have to pay to travel from one borough to another.

Have you taken the subway lately, Marty? Most New Yorkers already pay to travel from one borough to another, by bus or subway, and even by car on the MTA bridges and tunnels. Empty slogans won't relieve NYC's budget and transportation crises. Bridge tolls will.