Yay or Nay to Tolls on the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges?
If transit group Move NY has its way, moving between boroughs via car will become dramatically more expensive. The group is pushing to revive its failed plan to charge a toll of $5.54 in each direction when crossing the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges. (The plan also calls for a toll on the Queensboro Bridge,…
If transit group Move NY has its way, moving between boroughs via car will become dramatically more expensive. The group is pushing to revive its failed plan to charge a toll of $5.54 in each direction when crossing the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges. (The plan also calls for a toll on the Queensboro Bridge, as well as crossing 60th Street in Manhattan or taking the West Side Highway or FDR, and to lower tolls slightly where they already exist.) What do you think of the idea?
Transit Group Would Add Tolls to Four New York Bridges [NY Times]
Proposal to Add Tolls on Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg Bridges [Eagle]
Photo by Anne Holmes
What a terrible post. You neglected the part about LOWERED tolls on the outer borough bridges (Verrazano, Whitestone, etc.) and that all the proceeds go to transit and road improvements.
Yes, please.
wow, super eloquent response.
Prospect Heights Resident is also totally wrong about congestion pricing causing “huge backups”. He must be unaware of EZ pass and other cashless tolling technologies that have been around for decades. Indeed, in central London, there are no conventional toll booths at the entry points into the congestion zone. Rather, there are cameras that photograph license plates and electronically charge the toll. We would already have that technology, paid for by the federal government, if Sheldon Silver and the other faux populists in the legislature hadn’t killed congestion pricing in 2007.
Please read the proposal. All tolls are electronic. No toll booths.
yeah right
NYC obviously includes the five boroughs, including low-density parts of Queens and Staten Island. The density I was referring to is in the proposed congestion zone in Manhattan, which, especially after accounting for the millions of people who commute into it every work day, most assuredly is one of the densest places in the world.
And Prospect Heights resident thinks he should be able to drive into it for free, like it is a Wal-Mart parking lot in Iowa! The sense of entitlement of the automobile-driving class takes my breath away.
What an amazing sense of entitlement you have! No one has the right to drive, for free, into central Manhattan. Driving into Manhattan, from Prospect Heights (which is well-served by public transit) is an incredibly selfish thing to do. Who gave you the right to drive your car into one of the densest cities in the world, without paying for the congestion and environmental and infrastructure damage caused by your car. (Gas taxes are a pittance compared to the massive spending on roads and bridges required to accommodate car use, so don’t tell me you pay for it with your gas taxes.) We need congestion pricing to reduce car traffic into Manhattan and to provide desperately needed funds for public transit.
Also, you’re wrong, congestion pricing in London has been a huge success, as it provides a dedicated source of funding for transit, which improves from year to year in London and is now better than New York’s. London’s recognize that its future as a global city is dependent on having an excellent transit network, not on facilitating car use. Let’s hope New York’s politicians muster the political will to overcome the resistance of a minority of entitled drivers and implement the Move NY Plan.
And don’t forget we are still paying a full pension salary for anyone who has ever worked in any toll booth at any time who is still alive as long as they met whatever the requirements for that pension was – what 20 years service?. Wish I could have retired and draw a fully funded pension after 20 years. I’ll still be working and putting money in my 401K when I’m 70.
“Gas taxes, registration, fees, etc. ” don’t even come close to covering the cost of driving. This is well known and not controversial. It’s even worse when you add in the social impacts of driving and the entitlement that comes with thinking you’re owed 200 sf of free space on the street to park your metal box.