East River Bridges May Not Be Free For Long
The city’s fiscal crisis is such that nothing is off-the-table when it comes to raising funds, not even a sacred cow like the no-toll bridges over the East River. For some commuters, this would add up to $100 a week in extra taxes. “Where am I going to get that from?” said one man who…
The city’s fiscal crisis is such that nothing is off-the-table when it comes to raising funds, not even a sacred cow like the no-toll bridges over the East River. For some commuters, this would add up to $100 a week in extra taxes. “Where am I going to get that from?” said one man who drives his wife to and from work across the Williamsburg Bridge every day. While such a move is unlikely to be a crowd pleaser, “Desperate times require desperate measures,” says Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers’ Campaign.
Better to toll the bridges than to cut money for education and health care!
Besides, even if it’s expensive for those who want to drive, it’ll make life a lot better for the 70% of us in downtown Brooklyn who don’t own cars, and are sick of the drivers congesting our streets and spewing toxic waste into the air, so they can save $8 that they would spend on the battery tunnel.
I worked in government for a while and I can tell you, most of what we did was to try to figure out new ways to tax the folks. That’s all it was. Let’s try taxing this….let’s try taxing that….it becomes a sort of game of “you” meaning the Mayor’s Office and all the bureaucracies under its command, and “them” meaning the poor saps who are working New Yorkers. That’s what I recall. I doubt it is very different today.
What of the fact that from some neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens that it takes considerable time AND numerous bus transfers before you can even get to a subway to get to the city? Do Park Slopers realize that it can take over one and one half hours for some outer borough people to get to Manhattan via public transportation? I am opposed to east river tolls or congestion pricing UNTIL the New York transportation system actually grows up and becomes a world class one. Once it’s like London’s or Tokyo’s then I’ll be behind congestion pricing and East River tolls 100%. New Yorker’s are far too complacent about how substandard the transportation system actually is!
I should imagine all the zero brooklynites that commute to Manhattan via St. George would be up in arms.
How do people feel about starting to charge to the SI Ferry?
Pay up drivers.
I like having the option now of paying for the Battery Tunnel instead of waiting to get on the Brooklyn Bridge for free (from the FDR).
Where’s that asshole Sheldon Silver on this issue!!!!????
I am finally getting around to reading The Wisdom of Crowds by New Yorker writer James
Surowiecki. He devotes a chapter to the congestion pricing issue and covers it well from both the theoretical and implementation angles.