Bridge Tolls
Advocacy Project

FAQ
Primer
Pols and Polls
What They're Saying
Endorsements
Research
High-Speed Tolling
Think Tank  (New!)
Links
What You Can Do
Message Board
Contact Us
 
Home 		 


Research

The Hours      

"The Hours: Time Savings from Tolling the East River Bridges"

BTAP calculates how much time NYC drivers will save when East River tolls go into effect. "The Hours" got major coverage in the Daily News on July 20, 2003

Key Findings
  • Bridge tolls will raise average speeds on the four East River bridges by more than a third, reducing round-trip times by an average of 5 minutes.
  • Bridge tolls will eliminate 9% of all traffic-congestion delays in NYC, yet total vehicular travel will decrease less than 1%.
  • By thinning the traffic stream approaching and leaving the bridges, tolls will improve vehicle speeds by an average of 2% throughout large swaths of Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan.
  • The vast majority of the time savings, almost 80%, will be realized in Brooklyn and Queens and on the spans themselves, rather than in Manhattan.
  • The saved time will be worth an estimated $650 million a year to drivers -- more than 90% of the expected out-of-pocket costs of the tolls.


Who Will Pay?

"East River Bridge Tolls: Who Will Really Pay?"

This report was released in tandem with a Daily News op-ed piece by BTAP's Charles Komanoff.

It examines the patterns of East River bridge commuters, and finds that few New Yorkers use the bridge every day and that those who do are more affluent than average. The report was featured in a Daily News story, "Bridge Tolls Get Push" on April 6, 2002.

Key Findings
  • The 98% of New Yorkers who don't commute on an East River bridge will spend, on average, less than $50 a year in East River bridge tolls.
  • East River bridge commuters earn, on average, $14,300 a year more than their neighbors who don't commute on those bridges - enough to cover the annual cost of bridge tolls to a solo commuter ten times over.
  • Toll revenue from non-residents of New York City will replace a third or more of the revenue lost when the commuter tax was repealed in 1999.
  • While more than half of the tolls will be paid by residents of Brooklyn and Queens, the prospective toll burden on either borough is lighter than the cost to Manhattanites of the residential property tax surcharge enacted as a budget-balancing measure in 2002.