| Issue 239 | October 1, 1999 |
Editorials this week in the Staten Island Advance and the Hudson Valley Journal News argued that adding lanes in congested highway corridors would likely increase the scale of gridlock, rather than provide lasting congestion relief.
Responding to a truck crash that turned the Staten Island Expressway into a parking lot for much of Monday, the Advance reflected on the Island's limited transportation options and the highway expansion proposals that continue to be floated by the Port Authority and NY State DOT:
If the highway carrying capacity were expanded to allow a trip from the Goethals Bridge to Brooklyn in 10 minutes, many more commuters who now get to work by other means would opt to use that faster, easier route to drive to work, quickly creating the same problem on expanded highways. Then what? Expand the highways more?
Discussing growing support for a new span to replace the creaky Tappan Zee Bridge on Monday, the Journal News noted that "[Maureen Morgan of the Federated Conservationists of Westchester County] and other environmentalists and public officials on both sides of the Hudson don't want two bridges because that would generate even more traffic. They are probably right."
Journal News Backs Variable Tolls
In the same piece, the Journal News opined that:
The time has come to seriously consider so-called congestion pricing for passenger cars...People do have a right to move far away from their jobs on the other side of the Hudson River. In doing so, however, they impose a terrible strain on roads and the bridge. To halt that trend, commuters either have to change their hours of travel, car pool, switch to public transportation, pay more in tolls or move closer to work.
The paper was commenting on the Thruway Authority's recently completed study that found that even a modest differential between peak and off-peak toll rates at the Tappan Zee Bridge could significantly ease peak hour jams (see last issue).
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