Bridge Tolls
Advocacy Project

East River Bridge Tolls, Who Will Really Pay

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2. Executive Summary

Slightly more than half-a-million motor vehicle trips were made each day on the Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg and Queensboro Bridges in 2000, the last “normal” traffic year before the events of September 2001. After carefully analyzing Census and other data about travel on these crossings, we have reached the following conclusions:

• Most (nearly 78%) of the toll revenue will be paid by residents of New York City, with the largest shares to be paid by residents of Brooklyn (who will pay 33% of the total) and Queens (24%). See Tables 1, 2, and 7.

• Nassau County residents will pay the third highest amount (13% of the total), followed by Manhattan (10%) and Staten Island (8%). Counting Suffolk County (5%), Long Island residents will pay 18% of the total toll amount, while residents of New Jersey will pay 4%. The total “take” from Long Island and New Jersey will be almost $160 million, at least a third of the “out-of-town” revenue that New York City lost when the commuter tax was repealed in 1999. See Table 7.

• East River bridge commuters — those who drive daily across one or more of the East River bridges — will pay heavily once the bridges are tolled, unless they switch to transit or form carpools. Regular bridge commuters who drive alone will face annual toll costs of around $1,500. Cars with more than one occupant will pay the same amount but can share the cost. See Table 5.

• While these costs are high, few people will pay them. Just 75,000 New Yorkers, plus 23,000 from Long Island or New Jersey, now commute solo between home and work via a free East River bridge. The number of East River bridge-using carpool commuters is smaller still: 38,000 from the five boroughs plus 8,000 from Long Island and New Jersey. See Table 6.

• In New York City, these East River bridge-using commuters add up to only 2% of people “of driving age” (persons aged 18-80) — 1.3% solo commuters, 0.7% carpoolers. The other 98% of New York City adults — nearly 5¾ million people — will pay, on average, less than a dollar a week — $47 a year — in East River bridge tolls. See Table 6.

• Compared to their neighbors who don’t drive to work via an East River bridge, bridge commuters earn, on average, $14,300 a year more — enough to cover a solo driver’s annual bridge tolls almost ten times over. See Section 7.

• Notwithstanding the handwringing from some elected officials, on a total dollar basis the prospective cost of East River bridge tolls for Brooklyn residents is less than Manhattan residents are already paying from last fall’s 18.5% boost in residential property taxes. When the two big budget-balancing measures — higher property taxes and bridge tolls — are added together, it is Manhattan that absorbs the greatest “hit.” When the impact is calculated per capita, the burden on Manhattanites is even greater compared with the other boroughs. See Table 2.

  These findings assume that the tolls are priced to gross $700 million a year, with the same toll charged at all times. If toll levels are set to gross a different figure, then the dollar amounts above should be adjusted proportionately. If premium prices are charged for peak trips, with off-peak discounts to keep overall revenues constant, the findings above would be little changed. Costs to peak-period commuters to Manhattan would rise by a third, but off-peak discounts would minimize the borough-wide impact. The boroughs and counties that feed peak commuters into Manhattan will pay just 2-3% more overall under value pricing than with a flat fee. See Table 7.

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