Fissile

50 Cents each way.

CB HI

You beat me to it.

So motorist would pay about 0.167 cents per pound for their car as their toll,
but
cyclist would pay 2 to 2.5 cents per pound for their bicycle as their toll.

And it is all to pay for mass transit. Guess you NYC cyclist are not doing enough by simply riding your bicycles. You need to feel the group toll pain as well.

njkayaker

It's a proposal.

DX-MAN

I have a proposal for them, too...it involves grabbing their ears and pulling until they hear a loud POP........

johnny99

How are they going to collect tolls from bicyclists? Pay a couple of people to stand there all day and make change for dollar bills?

redtires

wait....don't all cyclists enjoy carrying loose change with them?

CB HI

Exactly why NYC cyclist should keep their eyes closed and ignore this thread.

rpclark

Everybody carry $20s. Every crossing. And count your change. Twice.

degnaw

Couldn't you just dismount and walk past the booth as a pedestrian?

njkayaker

The likelihood of it happening is close to zero.

It would be costly to set up. costly to administer, largely impossible to do with pedestrians mixed in, recover little $ for the effort, and NY'ers would riot.

I'm guessing you've never been there.

Digital_Cowboy

If we want equal access to the roads, and equal treatment under the law, then why shouldn't we pay a toll based on our actual weight? The same for pedestrians. If it's equatable to charge motorists a toll then it's equally equatable to charge both pedestrians as well as cyclists.

And just as motorists are able to get an "express pass" cyclists and pedestrians could likewise get an "express pass."

lostarchitect 

Actually, these aren't roads. And I don't want equal treatment. (Don't bother arguing about that, I'm not interested in an internet fight today.)

Anyway, it doesn't matter. I'm confident that there won't be a toll over the East River bridges any time soon. Not for cars, not for bikes, not for pedestrians.

lostarchitect 

Check out the linked article. The plan is to REDUCE tolls at the uptown bridge crossings while adding the tolls at the lower Manhattan East River crossings.

Translation for those that don't know what that means: The rich folks who commute in from Westchester County, Connecticut and Long Island would pay less, and the burden would be shifted to working people who actually live in the city, in Brooklyn, mainly! Amazing. Just amazing.

CB HI

Still the damage is done in having more printed articles that imply cyclist do not pay their fair share. Seems you always miss little facts like that.

Another stupid little guess by you, that is completely wrong.

Bikepacker67

I'd gladly pay $0.50 to safely cross a major metropolitan bridge on my bicycle. But I'd expect premium service, given I'm paying a premium per pound price.
In all my travels across the Hudson, Connecticut, Charles, Indian - and more recently Fraser and McKenzie I've never actually ENJOYED the process - even though these expanses provide some of the most breathtaking of scenes, my amygdala is on far too high alert during these busy/narrow crossings to give the aesthetics anything but a passing nod.

How I'd love to lollygag my way upon a safely segregated section of the George Washington.

rydabent

Again here is a bunch of tax and spend b'crats looking for more money to spend. Hey maybe they could charge a shoe tax for the walkers.

gcottay

Save the political shot for another day. The plan is being floated by a former traffic commissioner who talks about being an "equal opportunity pain throughout the region.” No bunch. No public officials.

Fissile

Yup. I've been across the GWB many times.....don't get to see much for the reasons you've stated. If they dedicated an entire traffic lane for bikes, I'd be all for a toll. Ain't gonna happen.

Fissile

Bloomberg has been pushing for "congestion pricing" for a long time now. If the price of gas goes up another dollar a gallon, it will be a moot point. The only people who will able to drive private cars everyday will be the 1%.

dougmc

Aren't tolls usually done by axle rather than weight? I don't ever recall a toll being done on the basis of weight -- it's either type of vehicle or number of axles.

If we want equal access to the roads and equal treatment under the law, then why shouldn't we be fit into existing laws rather than having special laws made for us?

I should also say ... $0.50 for a bike, $5 or $7 for a car ... their proposal is already being very generous to bikes.

And really, if they did do it by weight -- it should be weight of bike+rider vs. weight of car+riders, which brings a typical weight ratio down from 1:160 to 1:20. Considering the non-EZ tag price ratio (cyclists won't have EZ tags, will they?) is 14:1, the proposal *is* mighty close to doing it by weight after all.

And of course it's just a proposal. People make crazy proposals all the time -- but the bicycle part of this one seems pretty reasonable.

dougmc

Dude, you're nuts. The price of gas could *double* and I'd say that at least 75% of the people who drive private cars every day would still be driving their private cars every day. They'd be massively grumbling about the price and looking to vote everybody out of office (as if the politicians set the gas prices) just out of spite -- but they'd still be driving.

You have seriously underestimated how much people in the US love their cars. They'll give up a whole lot of other things before they give up their cars.

Look at Europe -- their gas prices are around double what ours are and even if we get all excited about 20% bicycle mode share in some particular city -- that means 80% not bicycle, and a bunch of that is still private vehicles. And these are generally cities that are a good deal more "things other than private cars" friendly than ours.

Standalone 

again, couldn't one just walk a bike?

(Formerly of Astoria, Qns.)

Fissile

So you are arguing the the demand for gasoline is inelastic? Now with gas at $4/gal, gasoline consumption in the US has dropped 10% from this time last year. Some of that may be from increased efficiencies.....people buying smaller cars, more efficient use of motor vehicles...trucks making delivery runs only when full....but I'll bet that most of that drop in demand is caused by people cutting out discretionary driving. Soon people will cut auto driving for their commute by switching to mass transit where possible.

dougmc

Largely inelastic, yes. Certainly it's not perfectly elastic -- rising gasoline prices do obviously affect consumption, but the effect seems small.

Citation? (I'm skeptical that it's actually down 10% from March 2011, my sources say otherwise, more on that later.)

But let's not look at just two data points. This stuff is heavily charted, after all. For example, this chart shows only small changes in gasoline usage, even though the price varies from about $1.70 to $4.00 or so . Alas, it only goes up through March 2011.

But your claim was far more extreme --

I hope this was intended as hyperbole. If adding a dollar to the price of gasoline only reduced consumption by 10% (and I question this figure), do you really think another dollar will reduce it by 50% or more?

According to this article, dated today -- drivers are using 3% less gasoline than a year ago (not 10%), but gasoline prices went up 24% in that period. Isn't that a great example of a largely inelastic relationship?

Doubling of gasoline prices would indeed greatly increase these things. Mass transit and bicycle usage would explode -- going from (to make up figures, I don't claim these are accurate) 5% of the total to say 20% -- but still leaving 80% of the people still driving almost every day.

hotbike

I caught this story on a Talk Show, a little earlier today. I recorded it for you all.


This was the Jason Mattera show, on WABC, 770 AM. New York.

Someone asked a good question: Where would the Toll Booths be located? It is a Sidewalk, after all. Toll Booths on Sidewalks would be kind of ridiculous. Will we have E-Z Pass for Cyclists?