New York – Reviving a congestion-pricing idea that has been rejected before, an influential transportation coalition proposed implementing tolls for all cars that cross 60th Street in Manhattan and the free bridges spanning the East River.
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The plan announced Tuesday by transportation guru Sam Schwartz, known as “Gridlock Sam,” would attempt to solve the looming problem of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s underfunded $32 billion five-year capital plan, which will subsidize important mass transit repairs and expansions on subways, bridges and tunnels around New York.
But the transit authority has only identified funding sources for half the budget, setting off a contentious debate over who should pay to keep the nation’s largest mass transportation system in working order. The tolling proposal would raise $1.5 billion a year, which advocates say could be used to underwrite bonds to cover the entire funding gap.
Schwartz, who backed a similar funding proposal in 2012, questioned why some people cross bridges for free while others pay ever-increasing amounts. Next month, the MTA will again raise subway fares and tolls on its bridges and tunnels.
“In 2015, it’s time that we are fairer about how we collect tolls in the city of New York,” Schwartz said.
The new toll of $5.54 each way with E-ZPass would be charged to drivers crossing 60th Street on every avenue, northbound and southbound, from the West Side Highway to FDR Drive. It would also apply to four major bridges owned by the city: the Queensboro, Williamsburg, Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges. That matches the current toll fare on the Queens Midtown and Brooklyn Battery tunnels. Metered taxi cabs would be exempt from all tolls.
In exchange — and to appease outer-borough politicians who have opposed Schwartz’s previous toll proposals — the plan would decrease existing tolls on the city’s major MTA bridges by $2.50 in each direction, including the Verrazano and Throgs Neck. In addition, 25 percent of the money from the new tolls would go to highway maintenance.
The notion of charging motorists driving into the busiest parts of Manhattan has failed to gain support in the past, most notably in 2008, when state legislators shot down former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposal to use tolls at peak travel times to reduce traffic and ease city pollution. Bloomberg’s plan would have charged motorists $8 and truckers $21 to drive into the most heavily trafficked parts of Manhattan.
The plan announced Tuesday was endorsed by a wide coalition of transit, labor, business and political leaders. Advocates say the fact that some city bridges are tolled and others are not creates a system in which drivers “bridge-shop” in order to avoid paying the fare, intensifying traffic congestion on the streets leading up to the free bridges in neighborhoods like downtown Brooklyn, east Midtown and western Queens.
“There is no such thing as a free lunch,” said Gene Russianoff, staff attorney for the Straphangers Campaign, an advocacy group for subway riders. “There are no free subways or buses or commuter rails.”
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has called the MTA’s budget plan “bloated,” did not respond to a request for comment on the toll proposal.
“We’ll review the plan, as will everyone who shares concern about seeing the MTA’s capital plan funded and transit fares kept affordable,” said Wiley Norvell, a spokesman for the mayor.
One more reason to move out of this demented city
Idiot! It’s the same people who have the opportunity to use all the bridges. Most people aren’t regulars on any bridge. Let’s leave the free free.
Its not bad enough that we have the politicians squeezing us , now we have a person in the private sector doing it !!!!
I still don’t know how toll lanes/booths can be constructed on the Brooklyn Bridge without causing major traffic. The bride is over 100 years old and is very narrow – and the approach roads from both ends are narrower still. All you need is one accident in the toll plaza and havoc will ensue. The “major” MTA bridges were built between 1936 and 1964 and were intended to have tolls on them all along, and were designed accordingly.
Thank G-D I left NY thirty years ago. What a hellhole and for what?
Next they’ll charge for crossing the street. Get out while you can and when leaving just skip all the tollbooths.
Stop with tolls!! Anything more than.50 is two much!!!!?!
there are not enough subways so they will be more crowded it will be many years before new rail lines will be built buses will be more packed merchandise will be more expensive but these idiots don’t care just to pass some liberal agenda also 60th street tolls will only add congestion and pollution
its true, theres nowhere to charge toll on those crossings without killing the city traffic
TOLLS for what, to give the fat cats bigger salaries?What has the M.T.A. or others done for mass transportation to ease the congestion in the city and now they want to build taller apt houses when there is no room to walk in the streets.
If the issue is traffic congestion impose the same fee on a car that resides in lower Manhattan after it moves past any avenue.
This attitude that Manhattan residents are superior and above any limits seems to be getting truer and truer every year.
When this idea was raised under Bloomberg this charge for manhattan cars being driven was included and mysteriously dropped from the final plans.
Maybe they will charge us for the dirty air we breathe. After all, they have to charge for something. They are charging for water. parking, etc…….
To #5 -Texas Jew- Do you really think that it is such a paradise where you live? In spite of Texas’ high capital punishment rate, murders and heinous crimes are still an ongoing problem.
If New York City’s government wants to reduce congestion, it should lobby the Federal Government to enforce the immigration laws and deport those who are here illegally.
How many houses are they going to knock down to make room for the toll plazas? I thought Robert Moses was dead and buried?