Bridge Tolls
FAQ |
East River Bridge Tolls, Who Will Really Pay[Page: Previous 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next] 9. Commercial Drivers Trips by commercial vehicles — commuter vans, commercial vans, buses, and trucks of all sizes — account for a quarter of all travel on the East River bridges (see Table 3), or 47 million crossings a year. These vehicles stand to pay a quarter of the total toll cost, or $175 million a year, if the toll levels are set to generate $700 million as we have assumed here. (The actual amount could be higher since heavy vehicles and trucks with more than two axles would be charged proportionately higher tolls, an important detail we have bypassed here.) As can be calculated from Table 3, commercial trips are roughly one-third each by (i) buses and commuter vans, (ii) trucks and (iii) commercial vans. Tolls charged to the first category presumably would be split among passengers of these vehicles. While the daily round-trip toll per-vehicle would be $7.50 (based on the one-way flat-rate average of $3.72) or $10 (assuming value pricing of peak travel), this would equate to just 75¢ or $1.00 a day per passenger assuming 10 passengers; and less for higher occupancy rates. For most daily van or bus commuters traveling around 200 days a year (the same 45 weeks a year and 4.5 round-trips per week assumed above), the annual toll cost passed through to their fare should be no more than $200, and considerably less for those riding high-volume buses. This leaves 30 million trips (15 million round-trips) a year by trucks and commercial vans, with an implied annual toll totaling $111 million. Unfortunately, no data are available as to the distribution of these trips by origin and destination; it is probably reasonable to distribute the 30 million trips among the boroughs and counties in the same proportion as the commuter trips, so that roughly 33% originate in Brooklyn, 24% in Queens, etc. (see Table 1). However, without more detailed information on the affected businesses — dollar volume, profit margin, opportunities for consolidating trips, etc. — it is difficult to gauge the true impact of tolls on commercial vehicles. A countervailing effect, of course, is the time savings commercial drivers will realize from the lessening of traffic congestion due to lower usage of the East River bridges once tolls are charged. (The hue and cry from some Brooklyn and Queens officials about worsening gridlock from toll plazas is, of course, nonsense; in fact, “boothless” systems will collect tolls electronically from drivers’ E-ZPasses at high speeds.) In my report on MTA tolls cited in the previous section, I estimated that converting uniform tolls to value pricing would generate enough time savings to peak-period motorists to offset roughly a quarter of their higher toll cost. Tolling the East River bridges should produce an even greater boon in time savings for commercial drivers, for two reasons. First, commercial drivers (or their companies) value traffic time savings at more than the $25/hr average I imputed to peak drivers, mostly ordinary motorists, in the MTA study. Second, the rudimentary model I used there to calculate the toll-induced gains in travel time only captured the speedup of traffic on the primary bridge and highway system, and thus missed additional time savings on local feeder roads. A truer estimate of the time savings that commercial and other drivers can expect from East River bridge tolls can be gotten only from a comprehensive computer-based travel-demand model that incorporates the hundreds or thousands of neighborhoods and districts that are our region’s travel “origins” and “destinations,” and also includes traveler “choice factors” such as time, price and convenience. Fortunately, such a model does exist. After years of work and expenditures of more than $10 million in taxpayer money, the “Best Practices Model” is up and running under the auspices of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council (NYMTC), the state-run “metropolitan planning organization” for the New York area. Unfortunately, the taxpayers are not getting the return they have every right to expect. Despite repeated requests, NYMTC has refused to use the model to estimate the effects on traffic flow and travel time from East River bridge tolls, which are still anathema to Governor Pataki. Until the NYMTC ostrich removes its head from the sand and runs the model, any estimates of these offsetting benefits from bridge tolls, which are of special interest to any business, small or large, that sends goods or personnel across the East River bridges, remain speculative. A segment of the commercial sector that could be particularly hard hit by East River tolls is delivery businesses and service personnel who frequently make more than one round-trip per day. Jeff Zupan, the veteran transportation expert for the Regional Plan Association, has suggested waiving or reducing the tolls on second (or third, etc.) same-direction trips on the same day for commercial vehicles. Since relatively few trips would presumably be involved, this would cost little in lost revenue while easing a burden that could otherwise appear punitive. (The exemption would not apply to for-hire vehicles such as medallion and “gypsy” cabs and “black cars.”) |