Streetsblog New York City

Crossing the Hudson River will get much more expensive under a proposed Port Authority plan to sharply increase tolls and fares on its four bridges, two tunnels and the PATH train. The increases are a result of the poor economy, the costs of rebuilding after the attacks of September 11, and the expensive repairs needed on the agency’s aging infrastructure, said the Port Authority. Left unstated was the enormous cost of raids on the agency by the state governments of New York and New Jersey.

Under the Port Authority proposal, the cost to drive a car across a bridge or tunnel would increase by $4 this September, with another $2 increase in 2014. Tolls will increase the most on the costliest users. By 2014, the peak E-ZPass toll would be increased by 75 percent. Off-peak tolls would be doubled.

Truck tolls will nearly double during most times of day, reflecting the exponentially greater wear and tear inflicted by heavier vehicles. The Port Authority also hopes to disincentivize cash payments by tacking on a $3 surcharge, rising to $5 in 2014, for those who haven’t switched to E-ZPass.

PATH riders will also be forced to pay. The base fare will rise from $1.75 to $2.75; with discounts, the average fare will increase from $1.30 to $2.00 per trip. PATH riders will be spared from additional fare hikes in 2014.

To sell the toll package, which needs approval from both Governor Andrew Cuomo and Governor Chris Christie and is sure to be a heavy political lift, the Port Authority is broadcasting both its record of fiscal responsibility under popular but politically threatened executive director Chris Ward and the necessity of the projects the toll increases would fund.

The agency’s operating budget has been flat for three years, they said, while the capital budget has already been cut by $5 billion. That comes even as the costs of rebuilding at the World Trade Center have topped $11 billion and extra security requirements have added another $6 billion to the agency’s costs. The proposed toll increases, including those scheduled for 2014, would raise roughly $1 billion, according to the New York Times.

But Christie and Cuomo also bear responsibility for the Port Authority’s budget.

Read more…

The NYC Bridge Centennial Commission, co-founded by “Gridlock” Sam Schwartz, organized a re-enactment today near the Williamsburg Bridge, calling attention to the hundredth anniversary of the last toll collected on the East River bridges. Mayor William J. Gaynor’s century-old decision to eliminate bridge tolls translates to a cumulative loss of $31 billion in potential revenue for NYC. Tune in to hear what $31 million could do for the city’s transportation system.

What transportation projects would you build with $31 billion? That’s how much would have been raised had the tolls on the four city-owned East River Bridges not been removed 100 years ago today.

“We would have a subway that runs on Second Avenue from the Bronx to the Battery,” said Sam Schwartz, the former city traffic commissioner and the co-founder of the New York City Bridges Centennial Commission. “We would see a subway to Staten Island which was started in 1923 and was aborted.”

Not only would $31 billion have paid for major new transit projects, said Schwartz, it would have kept those free bridges in a state of good repair rather than the near-collapse they fell into in the 1980s. In 1988, recalled Schwartz, he had to close the entire Williamsburg Bridge for three months in 1988 to prevent it from falling into the river. “I would jealously look over at the Verrazano Bridge being painted and repainted,” he said. “The difference at the Verrazano Bridge is you pay a $13 toll. You get what you pay for.”

When Mayor William J. Gaynor tore out the tollbooths, driving across the bridge only cost a dime. Cyclists paid a nickel, and horse riders three cents. Even at those now-minimal rates, the payment of which was reenacted today by advocates in period dress and antique vehicles, the tolls would have raised over $1 billion in the last century, according to Schwartz. Had the tolls remained in place and then been raised over time to match the tolls on the Triborough Bridge, they’d have raised $31 billion in 2011 dollars.

Today’s reenactment took place at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge. The grinding traffic in both directions spoke to another motive for restoring the tolls one hundred years later. In addition to raising revenue, bridge tolls would effectively curb congestion by ending the giveaway of some of the world’s most in-demand roads.

At the time, Gaynor saw removing the tolls as a way of knitting together the new unified city of New York, which had only been formed thirteen years earlier. But even then, it was widely understood that taking out tolls meant giving a break to relatively privileged drivers over the rest of the city. The New York Times wrote that Francis Bent, a Tammany-aligned alderman from Brooklyn, “did not believe in removing tolls paid for the most part by wealthy automobile owners ‘who did not care whether they paid tolls or not.’”

More pictures after the jump.

Read more…

Five Senate Republicans, led by Sen. John Bonacic, are making transit advocates an offer they can probably refuse. The payoff is appealing: state authorization for bridge tolls on the East River bridges. But the price they are demanding in return, the total repeal of the payroll mobility tax outside New York City, is too high to pay.

The basic contours of a road pricing-for-reduced payroll tax swap could potentially turn into a big win for transit riders — the right deal would reduce traffic, improve bus speeds and reliability, and raise a substantial amount to plug the gap in the MTA capital program.

Bonacic’s bill, however, is not the deal transit advocates want to aim for. It would only authorize the New York City Council to institute tolls over the East River bridges, not the Harlem River bridges (a fact which may be related to the fact that four of the five sponsors represent the Hudson Valley, not Long Island). And it seems that the rate to charge motorists would be left up to the city. So right off the bat there’s a lot of uncertainty about whether the City Council would act and what level of tolling they would consent to.

If the city charged $2 tolls in each direction, as was proposed by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and endorsed by Public Advocate Bill de Blasio in a 2009 plan, East River-only tolls would likely raise around $240 million, according to an analysis by road pricing expert Charles Komanoff. (UPDATE: Due to revisions in his model, Komanoff now estimates that $2 tolls would bring in $300 million.)

In comparison, the seven suburban counties in the MTA region contributed roughly 30 percent of total payroll tax revenues. In 2010, the payroll tax brought in just under $1.35 billion. Without the suburban counties, that would have dropped by $405 million.

In other words, swapping the suburban payroll tax for $2 East River bridge tolls would end up costing the MTA roughly $165 million each year.

The Bonacic bill does not appear to have an Assembly equivalent yet, suggesting that it isn’t going anywhere right now. It does, however, mark the first attempt to legislate an often-suggested swap: a lower suburban payroll tax in exchange for bridge tolls or congestion pricing. A differently structured deal, one which partially reduces the suburban payroll tax while guaranteeing a more robust road pricing system, could be much more attractive, especially given that raising revenues through bridge tolls has the added benefit of cutting congestion and speeding up buses.

Read more…

The absence of any price on New York City’s free bridges is costing the city dearly, according to the city’s Independent Budget Office. In the IBO’s annual report listing options for raising revenue or cutting costs [PDF], tolling the East River and Harlem River bridges ranks as the second largest revenue raiser, only after reinstituting the commuter tax with newly progressive brackets. Also included: expanding DOT’s ParkSmart program and piloting a residential parking permit program.

Those transportation proposals would have merit purely for their effect on traffic congestion, bus speeds, and street safety. Now the IBO number crunchers have put some dollar figures on how much New York City is passing up with its biggest giveaways to motorists, and it’s a lot.

By the IBO’s estimate, ending the free ride over the un-tolled East and Harlem River bridges could raise $970 million each year. That’s much higher than recent legislative proposals — Sheldon Silver’s 2009 bridge toll plan would have raised roughly $450 million, for example — because rather than tie the tolls to the subway fare, the IBO considers setting prices to match the currently tolled MTA bridges and tunnels.

Under that scenario, the East River bridges would have a one-way price of $9.60, the same as taking the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel round trip, while the Harlem River bridges would cost the same as a round trip over the Henry Hudson Bridge, or $4.40. In fact, the total revenue from such a pricing set-up could easily top $1 billion. The IBO assumed that trucks would pay the same toll as automobiles, but on the current MTA bridges, they pay significantly more.

While a real-world bridge-tolling scenario would almost certainly involve Albany votes and an arrangement to dedicate the revenues toward transit, the report sticks with the premise that these measures could be used to fortify the city’s budget. Throughout the report, the IBO discusses ideas and refrains from endorsing policies (in fact it offers arguments for and against each proposal).

The IBO raises the possibility of ending the city’s on-street parking giveaway as well. A pilot residential permit parking system charging just $100 a year would raise $2 million for each 25,000 permits it put out. Given that there are millions of on-street spaces in New York City, and market prices in many neighborhoods are probably higher than $100 per year, the city could conceivably raise a huge sum if a large-scale parking permit program, which needs Albany approval to be enacted, were politically tenable.

Read more…

It’s been 20 months since the state legislature passed an MTA funding package with a conspicuous missing piece. In early 2009, the transit agency was reeling from the recession, and straphangers were about to get walloped by deep service cuts and a 23 percent fare hike. Albany responded by enacting just a partial fix: a regional payroll tax and a smattering of new fees on taxis and car rentals. Tolls on the East and Harlem River bridges were supposed to be part of the deal — getting car commuters who benefit from the congestion-busting effect of transit to contribute their fair share. But the State Senate insisted on preserving the free ride for motorists.

At the time, it was no secret that the package was insufficient, leaving the MTA capital program largely unfunded. The news quickly got worse. Revenue from the payroll tax, which was supposed to raise about $1.5 billion per year, kept coming up short. Throw in state raids of dedicated MTA funds, and Albany’s neglect of transit has hit straphangers with the deepest service cuts in a generation and the third consecutive year of fare hikes.

Tom Namako reports in the Post today that the payroll tax shortfall is not a temporary glitch, as State Senators claimed when the problem first cropped up. In fact, every piece of the 2009 funding packing is not meeting projections, and it’s starting to look like a fact of life:

And the latest jostle for commuters is that the wide-ranging “bailout” package of fees and taxes approved in 2009 is coming in about $400 million short of projections that were established earlier this year, statistics show.

The controversial business tax — which hits all business owners in the MTA region with a 34-cent levy for every $100 of payroll — appears to be $321 million under expectations, MTA data show.

Overall, it will bring in about $1.34 billion instead of the $1.66 billion that bean counters projected.

And the “MTA aid” levies — like a 50-cent surcharge on every yellow-cab ride along with car-rental, garage-parking and license fees — are under projections by $60 million, the numbers show.

Road pricing was the missing piece in 2009, and it’s the missing piece today, MTA board member Andrew Albert told the Post:

Read more…

The one-way tolls on the Verrazano Bridge have been a major cause of truck traffic in New York City since they were instituted in 1986. Though numerous efforts to restore two-way tolls have failed over the last two and a half decades, technological progress may finally bring victory within reach. Congressman Jerry Nadler thinks that the MTA’s moves toward cashless tolling could make two-way tolls politically feasible, and he’s trying to pass the federal legislation necessary to allow them.

The one-way tolls concentrate truck traffic in the city along specific routes and hit some communities — like Chinatown — especially hard. Trucks from New Jersey can drive into Staten Island, cross east on the Verrazano for free, drive up the BQE or Brooklyn local roads to the free Manhattan Bridge, then cross Lower Manhattan and head back to New Jersey for free through the Port Authority’s tunnels, which impose no tolls heading westbound. This long counterclockwise circle can save trucking companies a fortune in tolls, while endangering and clogging up New York City’s streets for everyone else.

“A two-way toll would eliminate the flow of trucks entering New York City via Staten Island in order to escape the charges on the Hudson River bridge and tunnel crossings,” said Nadler, who represents hard-hit Lower Manhattan. “With the MTA now poised to test new toll-collection technologies, which are likely to be implemented across the region, all New Yorkers will reap the benefits and the MTA will generate new revenue that it sorely needs.”

You may be wondering: How did such a senseless policy get enacted in the first place? The answer: Staten Island politics. Residents were sick of the long lines of traffic building up behind the tollbooths on the Staten Island side of the bridge, spewing exhaust near their homes.

In response, Congressman Guy Molinari, with strong support from Senator Al D’Amato, stuck a provision into federal transportation law forbidding two-way tolling across the Verrazano in 1986. Eliminating the eastbound charge meant that tolls only caused back-ups on the bridge itself and in Bay Ridge. The MTA was opposed to the move at the time, and the following year reported increased traffic through Lower Manhattan and millions in lost toll revenue as a result of the switch.

Read more…

Last night’s 33rd Senate District transportation debate pitted two candidates against each other who are unlikely to ever appear on the same ballot: Democrat Daniel Padernacht and Green John Reynolds. Padernacht is running a distant third place in polling for the September 14 primary, after incumbent Pedro Espada Jr. and challenger Gustavo Rivera. Neither Espada nor Rivera showed up at last night’s debate: Espada refuses to debate his opponents and Rivera chose to attend an NAACP forum instead.

Unseating Espada this cycle is perhaps the top target of public transit supporters (and good government organizations, and tenants’ advocates, and labor unions, and… let’s just say he’s made some enemies in the last few years). The district, which covers the area west of Bronx Park and south of Van Cortlandt Park, has extensive transit coverage, including the B, D, 4, and 1 subway lines, two MetroNorth lines, and the Fordham Road Select Bus Service. Among all households in the district, 71.5 percent don’t own a car [PDF]. But even so, Espada led the opposition to tolling the free bridges onto Manhattan, all but dooming his constituents to fare hikes and service cuts.

Since Espada’s cardinal transportation sin was over transit funding, it’s worth asking if his challengers are any better. Though Padernacht said he’d fight for state funding for transit at last night’s debate, he told the crowd that he doesn’t want either road pricing or increased taxation to raise revenues. “The Bronx will become a parking lot for Manhattan,” he said of congestion pricing, and argued that higher taxes would only drive residents and businesses from New York.

I approached Padernacht after the debate to ask him how he would find the billions that the MTA needs, if those two revenue sources are off the table. “The first thing I would do is look to cut costs,” he said, suggesting that limited buses could be eliminated during midday hours and that smaller vehicles might be cheaper to operate on low-ridership routes. After that, he said, he’d have to “brainstorm the issue.”

In Rivera’s response to the TA/TSTC transportation survey, he rightly pointed the finger at Albany for cutting off transit funding over the past few decades and forcing the MTA to drop ever deeper into debt. On what to do, however, Rivera showed himself to be an expert hedger.

Read more…

The journey of the new Willis Avenue Bridge has been a sight to behold. Over the past few weeks, the gargantuan span that will replace the existing bridge linking Harlem and the South Bronx has floated down the Hudson from Coeymans, NY, up the East River and over to the Harlem River, between First Avenue and Willis Avenue. It was an awesome spectacle.

Today the new span settled into its final position, where crews will put on the finishing touches to connect it to approaches on each side of the Harlem River. The new Willis Avenue Bridge will be an upgrade in many ways (for starters, it's not 110 years old), but like its predecessor, it will be free to drive across, beckoning to toll-shopping motorists and incurring all sorts of costs in air pollution, lost time, noise and danger caused by unnecessary traffic.

The act of replacing the bridge is rather expensive too. To mark the arrival of the bridge at its destination, the city released some figures today showing the pricetag for the replacement -- $612 million -- as well as how much all the recent bridge work in the city has cost.

Since 2002, the city has spent more than $5 billion on bridge projects. It has cost a bundle to maintain the linchpins of NYC's ostensibly free road network, including:

• $508 million on the Brooklyn Bridge;
• $364 million on seven bridges along the Belt Parkway;
• $277 million on the Williamsburg Bridge;
• $168 million on the Queensboro Bridge; and
• $150 million on the Manhattan Bridge.

These are important investments that need to be made. The question is why motorists should continue to get a free ride on all this expensive infrastructure.

The results are in from the City Council Progressive Caucus budget survey, and when it comes to road pricing, they're telling, if unscientific. Road pricing remains unpopular across a broad swath of New York City, though among proponents, support is intense.

The newly-formed caucus is still in the process of inventing itself. Though the 12 members have signed on to a general statement of principles, precisely what they will advocate for remains to be seen. Two months ago, the caucus released a survey asking New Yorkers how they'd fix the city's budget gap. That survey included a question about tolling bridges into Manhattan.

The results show just how much organizing remains to be done around tolling. Of all the revenue sources surveyed, bridge tolls were the second-most unpopular. Only a property tax hike fared worse. Bridge tolls still had more supporters than opponents, but since every revenue option did, that's probably just due to the framing of the question.  

Interestingly, despite the opposition to bridge tolls, when it came to open-ended responses, support for congestion pricing was one of the most common. So was raising revenue through stepped-up enforcement of traffic and parking regulations. 

In other words, support for road pricing is strong -- proponents went to the extra trouble of filling in the open-ended questions -- but not broadly distributed. And there are a lot of opponents, even among self-selected respondents to a Progressive Caucus survey.

The caucus's statement of principles calls for "a more sustainable and environmentally just city" and mentions a "sound transportation system" specifically. That should entail strong support for transit, the clean mode choice of most working-class New Yorkers. But if the Progressive Caucus pays attention to these survey results, support for bridge tolls (and presumably congestion pricing as well) may end up pretty low on the agenda.