NY-NJ Toll- Fares to Steeply Increase in region with far too few major infrastructure projects

Public hearing scheduled for August 16-

public should demand additional crossings, new RR tunnels, Lincoln & Holland Tunnel Augmentation, Cross County Bridge to New Jersey, and expedited Cross Sound Link and Cross Brooklyn-Harbor Tunnels*

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/06/nyregion/port-authority-proposes-steep-toll-and-path-increases.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey proposed its steepest toll increase in modern memory on Friday, unveiling a plan that would raise the cost of crossing the tunnels and bridges that span the Hudson River by 50 percent for most drivers and raise the price of a monthly PATH train pass by 65 percent.

E-ZPass users would see a jump from $8 to $12 at peak hours on the three major Hudson River crossings — the George Washington Bridge and the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels — as well as three other bridges between New Jersey and Staten Island. Drivers who pay with cash would be charged $7 more, or $15 a trip, making the toll one of the highest in the country.

The provenance of the larger-than-expected proposed increases was mysterious. The two men who control the agency, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, issued a statement saying they shared “obvious and significant concerns” about the proposal.

But privately, the Cuomo administration signed off on the plan within the past week, according to two sources familiar with internal discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid angering administration officials. The agency had been planning for months to impose a $2 toll increase. The $4 proposal caught agency officials off guard.

Asked whether Governor Cuomo had pushed for the $4 increase, a spokesman, Josh Vlasto, responded, “That’s not true.” But he would not elaborate on the discussions or the governor’s view of the proposal.

“There is nothing more to say,” Mr. Vlasto said.

Of course, governors often like to step in and halt unpopular increases and fees, and proposals to raise Port Authority tolls tend to start a familiar political dance: the agency puts forward a bracing plan, the public reacts angrily, and governors relish the role of advocate for the overburdened commuter. Usually, a more reasonable compromise is reached.

A public hearing on the proposal is expected to be held on Aug. 16, and the Port Authority’s board of commissioners will consider the new tolls and fares at a meeting this month.

If the board votes for the plan, both governors would have 10 days during which they could veto the increases.

The board and the Port Authority’s top administrative staff members are entirely selected by the two governors, and few decisions at the agency, which controls many of the region’s bridges, tunnels, shipping ports and airports, are made without some form of consultation with Albany and Trenton.

The Port Authority, which receives all of its revenue through tolls and fees, has seen its budget wither from the poor economy, which has reduced the number of drivers on its crossings, and the siphoning off of funds for nonagency projects.

After Governor Christie decided last year to end an ambitious plan for another train tunnel under the Hudson because of its cost, he successfully pushed the agency to redistribute $1.8 billion of the money it had earmarked for the project instead to be used for road and highway repairs in New Jersey.

Some regional transportation advocates endorsed the toll increases on Friday, saying the additional revenue was sorely needed for major infrastructure projects. But critics said drivers and PATH riders would not be asked to make such large sacrifices if the agency’s budget had not been raided.

“This increase is not surprising given the financial pressure” put on the agency, said Kate Slevin, executive director of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. And some New Jersey politicians said the big increases were a way for Mr. Christie, who has sworn off tax increases, to squeeze revenue from the commuting public.

“If you say you’re not going to raise taxes on anybody to fund transportation, it’s disingenuous to take money from the Port Authority and have them raise tolls, and act as if you’re not responsible,” said Assemblyman John S. Wisniewski, Democratic chairman of the State Assembly’s transportation committee. The toll increase, he said, “is Chris Christie’s toll increase.”

Under the proposal, a single fare on the PATH train, the diminutive commuter subway system that connects parts of Manhattan to New Jersey, would be raised $1, to $2.75 a ride.

The price of a 30-day unlimited pass for the PATH system would be raised by 65 percent, to $89 from $54 a month.

The proposal calls for the crossing tolls to be raised again in 2014, with an increase of $2 for drivers. The PATH fare would not be raised again in 2014, under the current proposal.

Revenue from this year’s increases would generate an additional $720 million for the agency. The second phase of increases, in 2014, would raise $290 million.

Michael Barbaro contributed reporting

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* Best done without new general taxes and without the continuing mega boondoggle of the cigarette-pharma mercantilism drug war.

NY Times Phony Pro Automobile Slant

"Across Europe, Irking Drivers Is Urban Policy"
one sided reporting sustaining the misconception that European cities are against spending money to accomodate automobile traffic, such as reporting on efforts to remove freeways but not those to construct them underground

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/27/science/earth/27traffic.html?pagewanted=1&_r=4&hp
excerpt

“In the United States, there has been much more of a tendency to adapt cities to accommodate driving,” said Peder Jensen, head of the Energy and Transport Group at the European Environment Agency. “Here there has been more movement to make cities more livable for people, to get cities relatively free of cars.”

To that end, the municipal Traffic Planning Department here in Zurich has been working overtime in recent years to torment drivers. Closely spaced red lights have been added on roads into town, causing delays and angst for commuters. Pedestrian underpasses that once allowed traffic to flow freely across major intersections have been removed. Operators in the city’s ever expanding tram system can turn traffic lights in their favor as they approach, forcing cars to halt.

Around Löwenplatz, one of Zurich’s busiest squares, cars are now banned on many blocks. Where permitted, their speed is limited to a snail’s pace so that crosswalks and crossing signs can be removed entirely, giving people on foot the right to cross anywhere they like at any time.

As he stood watching a few cars inch through a mass of bicycles and pedestrians, the city’s chief traffic planner, Andy Fellmann, smiled. “Driving is a stop-and-go experience,” he said. “That’s what we like! Our goal is to reconquering public space for pedestrians, not to make it easy for drivers.”

The New York Times selectively ignores examples to the contrary, of European cities with significant projects to modernize and bury important express highways. Rather it sets the stage of taking out portions of the road network:

“There were big fights over whether to close this road or not — but now it is closed, and people got used to it,” he said, alighting from his bicycle on Limmatquai, a riverside pedestrian zone lined with cafes that used to be two lanes of gridlock. Each major road closing has to be approved in a referendum.

This is entirely consistent with the 'mainstream' aka organized-funded 'environmentalist' organizations, and internet media outlets, which will obsess over the freeway removal projects such as that in South Korea, though not mention the Madrid project- a notable example of this was the June 1 NY Times article about an effort in Mexico City citing the Korea project but curiously not that in Madrid.

This is a strict loyalty to a doctrine that we simply can not afford to spend more on infrastructure overall, that we can only do a zero sum game of shifting the funding from one type of infrastructure to another- and dare not even consider the WHY behind this budget constraint of continuing distraction from the overspending on military solutions, starting with that cigarette-pharama racketeering scheme of the $1/5+ trillion a year 'drug war'.

A Conversation with the Self-Centered "Cap'n Transit"

http://capntransit.blogspot.com/2011/05/swinging-with-pendulum.html

[excerpt]

Douglas A. Willinger said...
"... bring down the Tappan Zee, the Kosciuszko, the Goethals and the Pulaski"

Ahhh. Guilt out the impressionable young college studnest to believe that technology is static, that the are no alternatives to petro, and increase conjestion, and pollution by taking out valuable river crossings -- including a non contigious BQE?

It's a great way to dumb down the public to accept the obscene Pentagon- an entity that does not care a rats's ass about roads, evacuation routes nor civil defense.

Take out the Tappan Zee- and leave NO road links accross the Hudson River between the GW Bridge and Bear Mountain with its attrocious Westchester approach roads.

May 8, 2011 11:32 PM
Cap'n Transit said...
Yeah, that's about what it boils down to, Doug. Except that I do believe we should replace that lost road capacity with rail capacity.

In your worldview there is no induced demand. Who's dumbing down the public?

By the way, Doug, are you here to have an actual discussion where you listen to what other people say, or will I have to delete your comments?

May 8, 2011 11:47 PM
Douglas A. Willinger said...
How are you serving rail by eliminating the Tappan Zee Bridge crossing, rather then including rail in the replacement spans?

That would be more anti-highway than pro transit: a conclusion I likewise have, in a mirror image version, with - alas -- Reason and CATO

They spend their efforts decrying rail. But they DON'T promote the needed highway links (such as I-287 to 135 Long Island Sound Crossing and Cross Brooklyn-Bay Tunnel), nor Washington, D.C.'s incompleted I-395 at NY Ave. [Though to their credit they at least give some lip service for ending some aspects of the cigarette mercantilism].

IMHO it's no accident that the lamestream jesuitical 'intelligensia'that gets many people to support ideals to serve fewer people, serving existing technologies.

May 13, 2011 3:17 PM

Cap'n Transit said...
You're not getting it, Doug. I'm not serving rail. Either rail is serving my goals or it's not.

May 15, 2011 12:33 AM
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TSTC Shortsightedness on N.Y.'s Tappan Zee

Writes letter to Gov Elect Cuomo asking to scale back the Tappan Zee Bridge Project, including deleting the rail component.

http://blog.tstc.org/2010/12/23/an-open-letter-to-governor-elect-cuomo/
excerpt

On the capital side, the next Governor should also support the LIRR third track project (key for Long Islanders to reap the benefits of East Side Access) and plans for bus rapid transit in the Tappan Zee Bridge/I-287 corridor. Additionally, plans for Tappan Zee Bridge replacement could be scaled down and proceed without the commuter rail connection from Rockland to NYC. Most commuters using the Tappan Zee are travelling to suburban destinations, not ending their trips in Manhattan, so the bus rapid transit connection, which provides much greater utility at the most affordable cost, should be retained.

"Scaling back", without stressing modularity of design -- aka a design allowing components to be added in seperate stages -- for such a major corridor is simply asinine.

The project should include the rail component from Suffern to Tarrytown, with the design permitting a future extension to White Plains and Portchester, and eventually, via the proposed Cross Sound Tunnel, to Long Island and ultimately Jones Beach. Such would be extremely sensible later addition, for serving future desification-redevelopment of the I-287 Cross Westchester Expressway's numerous office parks, which would significently add potential risership.

Likewise, the project should include a barriar seperated 'busway' designed to be expandable to a minimum of two lanes in each direction, given the economics of scale (the 'busway' like any other seperate carriageway requires its own ramps), and serving as a seperate express truckway- more effectively providing additional east-west road capacity where it's scarce, and the ability to better seperate types of traffic.




The twin configuration variant with the best modularity of design
Indeeed, I-287 is Westchester County's sole east-west interstate highway, and one of two of the county's east-west freeways: the other, the Cross County Parkway does not permit trucks -- hence the 'parkway' designation -- and is missing its extensions east of the Hutchinson River Parkway and west of the Saw Mill River Parkway, let alone any bridge or tunnel connections to Long Island or New Jersey. A third planned east-west freeway -- the Bear Mountain Parkway, remains significently unbuilt, despite the proximity of the Indian Point nuclear power station.

Meanwhile, the two closest completed east-west interstate links are I-84 to the north and the heavily used and most difficult to widen I-95 George Washington Bridge/ Trans Manhattan Expressway/ Cross Bronx Expressway.

As the mid-point between I-95 and I-84, I-287 continues to the west of the Hudson River, yet currently has its eastern terminus at I-95 in Portchester/Rye, and currentl lacks a continuation to Long Island- now proposed in the form of the Cross Sound Tunnel. Yet despite the clear need for additional capacity upon the Westchester approach roads, there appears to be a lack of planning for improving the approaches to this new tunnel in Westchester

That the 'mainstream' organizations would rather chip away at a vitally important project for improving regionally scarce east-west high speed road capcity, including adding that which does not yet exist- the rail component, with not a word about designing to add other components later with minimal wasteful demolition (a strange and curious disregard), let alone dare suggest other projects to place less of a reletove burden upon the I-95 Cross Bronx Expressway, speaks volumes about these organization's nature as part of a broader effort to acclimatize people to expect less butter, and more security theater state, cigarette-pharma market protection 'drug war' nonsense.