As the city gears up for another debate about tolling the East River bridges, Sewell Chan at City Room offers up a 125-year history of the efforts to charge for these river crossings. While the horse drivers had to pay to cross the Brooklyn Bridge when it first opened, since the Depression, City history is littered with failed efforts at reimplementing fees on the river crossings. Will this next effort finally be a successful one? [City Room]
A history of the East River tolling efforts
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4 comments
Am I right in thinking that any tolls on these bridges goes to the City, not the MTA? I think Mr. Bloomberg has his own ideas for any tolls that get collected, and that the money is more likely to pay for city workers’ generous pensions than for subway service.
Those “generous” city pensions you talk about are hard earned and the main reason anyone would even take alot of these jobs!
Yes, that probably is the reason. It’s not like city workers seem to enjoy what they’re doing.
That’s true at the moment, but as legislation is required to toll the bridges, that same legislation can stipulate where the money will go. The legislation that created the MTA in the 1960s required that the bridge & tunnel surpluses would go to mass transit—which is exactly what has happened.