Speed Up East River Bridge Tolling
By CHARLES KOMANOFF
New York Daily News
Original Publication Date: 6/12/02
It's all over but the screaming. Tolls are coming to the East River
bridges. Before long, drivers using the Queensboro, Williamsburg,
Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges will pay tolls comparable to those
now collected on other area bridges and tunnels. The only question
is when.
For the city's sake, it should be as soon as possible. Four months
ago, Mayor Bloomberg penciled $800 million in "congestion pricing
and E-ZPass" revenues - code for East River bridge tolls - into his
2006 budget plan. In doing so, he clinched the argument that the
tolls are a fiscal necessity.
East River bridge tolls can offset 15% or more of the city's $5
billion budget deficit. Each day we don't charge the tolls is at
least $2 million in lost revenue. That's real money - money that
could be available as early as next year, money that could help
maintain our schools, parks and libraries, and spare the most
vulnerable among us the worst of the budget cuts.
The old bugaboo about tolls, of sprawling toll plazas creating
traffic jams, has disappeared with the plazas themselves. All across
the U.S., new transparent toll-collection systems read E-ZPass-type
cards from overhead gantries, letting drivers cruise at normal
speeds.
There would be no toll plazas on the East River bridges. Drivers
wanting absolute anonymity would be able to purchase toll cards at
drug stores or vending machines. Those wishing to steer clear of
E-tolls altogether could continue paying cash at the Battery and
Midtown tunnels and the Triborough Bridge.
Besides the money, there's another conclusive argument for East
River bridge tolls: They would save drivers hundreds of millions of
hours a year they now spend stuck in traffic.
Visualize the bridges and the connecting strands of highways.
Wherever traffic streams merge or contract, each driver slows down
another driver. Sometimes you beat me to the merge, other times I
beat you. Each little bit of delay pulses upstream to dozens of
other vehicles behind us. If we could add up the delays we inflict
on each other under congested conditions, we would find that each
driver's choice to drive has cost all the other drivers more time
than they might have thought they would save by driving.
Bridge tolls offer a way out of this trap. Charging for use of the
bridges would weed out some portion of the bridge and highway
traffic, which would do away with a large part of the congestion.
A good rule of thumb is that taking away 10% of the traffic during
congested periods eliminates 50% of the time lost. As a result, most
drivers could save a good deal more in time than they would pay in
the tolls.
Fortunately, Bloomberg grasps all this. And in ordinary times,
calling for East River bridge tolls to be up and running in just
four years - after 30 years of political gridlock on the issue -
would be considered visionary. But these are not ordinary times, and
four years is too long to wait.
New York City needs every dollar it can get its hands on without
harming the economy or our quality of life. East River bridge tolls
would improve both by letting people (and goods) get where they need
to go faster and more reliably.
New Yorkers of every political stripe, from every borough, drivers
and nondrivers alike, need to call on their elected officials to end
the gridlock. Bridge tolls now!
Komanoff, an economist, operates the Web site www.bridgetolls.org
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