As reported in Wednesday's Daily News, drivers and straphangers traveling between Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan will have to endure:

• Nighttime lane closures on the Manhattan, Brooklyn and Williamsburg bridges starting in April.
• A May shutdown of subway service on the Williamsburg for over five months for subway track rehabilitation - a move that will leave 90,000 daily riders in the lurch and cut off a potential relief valve for commuters who want to avoid driving.
• Continued night work on the Midtown Tunnel, forcing shutdown of one lane in each direction.
• Potential traffic tie-ups in the Battery Tunnel, which will be the only unobstructed connection between Brooklyn and Manhattan.

DOT seems to believe that doing the work during low-traffic hours is enough to help ease gridlock. But a better bet would be implementation of a long-discussed policy to sort out NYC's traffic mess: tolling the city's free Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg and Queensboro bridges. The rationale for East River toll proposals has persisted over time (see MTR #183) because it has the potential to reduce ever-growing amounts of traffic entering Manhattan and produce an additional source of revenue - especially for transportation capital needs - for the city.

East River tolling would enable congestion relief pricing on the crossings, spreading out the traffic more evenly throughout the day.

The historic argument against East River Bridge tolls - that toll plazas on the bridges would create traffic nightmares - is moot with new barrier-free non-stop tolling techniques that allow cars to pay tolls while driving at normal speeds. Non-stop toll technology makes East River bridge tolls a traffic management tool waiting to be taken advantage of in New York City.

Tolling and time-variable pricing as a congestion buster can no longer be ignored for the East River crossings. Former NYC deputy transportation commissioner Sam Schwartz was quoted in a 1996 New York Magazine article saying, "Dedicate the money [from East River bridge tolls] to transit upgrades and bridge maintenance, and New Yorkers will see bridge tolls not as a penalty but as a means to a quality trip."