A new newsletter from NYC City Council member Alan Gerson (lower Manhattan) addresses the issue of East River Bridge tolls and the Council.

[T]he Brooklyn and Queens Council delegations have effectively blocked consideration of bridge tolls.  Whether we like it or not, the only way out of this political morass is to develop, creatively, a new consensus in the Council.  To accomplish that, I have spearheaded an unprecedented agreement among all members of the Staten Island, relevant Brooklyn, and lower Manhattan Council delegations, across party lines, requesting a comprehensive, regional traffic management study, including consideration of tolls on bridge crossings. 

If Gerson and his colleagues manage to pull such a study off, it will be remarkable. The Council has generally weighed in on the issue of bridge tolls in the form of the Queens-Brooklyn shouting-down campaign, as Gerson indicates. On the other hand, Mayor Bloomberg has included bridge tolls in future year budgets and made a variety of supportive comments about them, but his administration hasn’t otherwise lifted a finger to prepare for toll implementation or develop concrete findings about tolls’ likely benefits and impacts.

Indeed, citizen participants in the NY Metropolitan Transportation Council’s Southern Brooklyn major investment study report that NYC DOT representatives have blocked that study from including East River Bridge tolls in the overall mix of policy options and projects to be analyzed. East River tolls would likely have a strong impact on transportation mode choice, truck routing and traffic levels throughout Brooklyn, and thus should obviously be considered in any comprehensive look at transportation in the borough. It’s unknown whether the NYC DOT staffers are acting without instructions from City Hall or the transportation commissioner, or whether Bloomberg administration leaders are trying to keep a lid on the issue.

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