Bridge Tolls
Advocacy Project

Does Everybody Win, or What?

By Carolyn S. Konheim

When the Twin Towers collapsed, they toppled the prospect of using World Trade Center revenues to finance the much-needed Second Avenue Subway.

Transit advocates have been eyeing another funding source for decades. Real estate interests and business leaders appear to agree the time is ripe.

The former Mayor's ban on one-person commuter cars into Manhattan shattered the myth that "free" East River bridges could not be regulated. The next step is ordained by an undreamed of confluence of forces: traffic management imperative, fiscal need, fear of fare hikes, heightened security, social equity, technology, a new generation of politicians, a new- thinking new mayor, and the need to show the nation that New Yorkers are ready to earn national largesse.

What bigger signal could we send than by charging ourselves for that most protected American privilege - driving where and when we wish?

As most New York drivers have learned, some the hard way, an EZ-Pass tag on the windshield speeds them through tollbooths. Drivers in Toronto move along even more smoothly. A major roadway is equipped with overhead detectors that can read tags at highway speeds and charge tolls that prompt enough drivers to double-up or switch to transit or off-peak hours to keep traffic flowing.

In NY, EZ-Pass readers could easily be mounted on East River bridges where time of day pricing could pay-off in faster crossings. Tolls could spin off a $1 billion a year in cash, billions more as backing for bonds, making a $12 billion Second Avenue Subway very doable, without pressuring the fare.

Toll incentives to avoid the most congested times to enter Manhattan could lower the $400 surcharge on trucking into the Central Business District (CBD), and unclog local approaches to "free" bridges from toll-evading traffic that overwhelms neighborhoods and pre-empts road capacity needed for economic growth.

But East River bridge tolls have long been a political taboo among voters in Brooklyn and Queens - the 60% who own cars and the 40% who aspire to. [Ed. note: year-2000 census data indicate that 55% of combined Brooklyn and Queens households own cars; the other 45% are car-free.]

They see no equity in new tolls to reduce gridlock for Manhattan motorists and taxi riders who can afford luxury rents, yet are not charged for the congestion they create. They don't share the political urgency of funding a new subway on the East Side that will take decades to reach Brooklyn, where long subway rides are even more jammed. They see a loophole in bridge tolls that allow drivers from affluent northern suburbs to use of a free back door through upper Manhattan.

London's Mayor Ken Livingstone is tackling similar issues in instituting an $8 fee from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. to cross a cordon on all roads around the city's core. New York could close the loophole by installing overhead EZ- Pass scanners across 59thth Street to charge time-of-day fees without stopping traffic.

But the political courage to back EZ-Pass would become easier with a big fat quid pro quo for Brooklyn, which has three untolled bridges. The first cut of toll proceeds could be used to relieve crowding on the #4, #5 and L (worse in Brooklyn than on the in- famous "Lex"), shorten excessive travel times to southern and eastern Brooklyn, install reliable escalators on elevated lines, and connect nearby routes.

Running the Long Island Railroad on shared subway tracks or extending an idle track spur that lies beneath Downtown Brooklyn into the Wall area to serve both Brooklyn and Long Island Railroad riders who work in Lower Manhattan could reinforce the symbiosis of the two CBDs, both poised for redevelopment. An LIRR super subway could connect to PATH in a new Lower Manhattan transit hub, and become the first leg of the Second Avenue Subway, providing promise during its long gestation.

Other toll revenues could be used to accelerate rail service to Long Island City or create a rail link to the transit-starved Co-op City. We could start with variable tolls on trucks, which don't vote and are very price sensitive. If the benefits of tolls are made clear to all (London is spending $30 million on congestion pricing education), politicians may actually join the chorus of economists: "Does everybody win with EZ-Pass - or what?"