Influx Reflux

Study Predicts 300 Fewer Vehicles Per Day on Local Streets If Verrazzano Toll Changes

The Verrazzano Bridge is located more than eight miles from Lower Manhattan, but a new study indicates that tolling patterns there have a significant impact on traffic congestion here.

A new analysis commissioned by the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority (the arm of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that oversees the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge) has quantified the possible impact on Lower Manhattan traffic of a proposal being spearheaded by U.S. Congressman Jerry Nadler and City Council member Margaret Chin to reform tolling policy on that span, which connects Brooklyn with Staten Island.

Although Verrazzano is eight miles away from Lower Manhattan, its toll regimen is a significant contributor to Downtown traffic patterns. According to a 2018 study performed by Sam Schwarz Engineering, collecting a toll for cars headed in both directions (rather than the current policy of levying double that amount, but only on cars headed from Brookyln to Staten Island) could would divert up to 130 cars per hour, during peak driving periods, away from Lower Manhattan.

This comes down to financial incentives. Traffic (especially large trucks, for which bridge and tunnel tolls are much costlier) seeks the path of least expense. As a result, each day, more than 1,000 trucks making a round trip between New York and New Jersey cross the Verrazzano on their way into the City, and then exit via the Holland Tunnel, which collects no toll on westbound traffic, but does charge for vehicles moving eastward.

Traffic on Canal Street exiting into the Holland Tunnel

This counter-clockwise vortex brings into Downtown’s already-congested streets many hundreds of trucks that would otherwise never enter Manhattan, but chose the route because the combination of the free East River crossings, such as the Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges, with the Holland Tunnel, gets them to New Jersey free of charge. On the last leg of this journey, vast fleets of trucks use Kenmare, Broome, and Canal Streets as an interstate highway, on their approach to the Holland Tunnel.

As Ms. Chin noted recently, “since the institution of one-way tolling on the Verrazzano Bridge more than thirty years ago, Lower Manhattan residents have been subject to a continuous flood of vehicle traffic that has only delivered more congestion, noise and traffic safety issues to our overburdened thoroughfares.”

The new report, prepared by transportation consulting firm WSP Global, predicts that imposing a toll in both directions on the Verrazzano would largely eliminate this perverse incentive, and estimates that the bridge would gain an additional 4,361 New Jersey-bound vehicles each weekday. Of this number, WSP estimates, some 38 percent (or slightly more than 1,650 vehicles) would otherwise use the Holland Tunnel, meaning that they would travel through Lower Manhattan (primarily via Canal Street) to get there. Almost all of the remaining 2,700-plus vehicles, the firm estimates, would also pass through Manhattan, but use either the Lincoln Tunnel or George Washington Bridge to cross the Hudson River into New Jersey.

Somewhat surprisingly, the WSP report also projects that the changed Verrazzano tolling policy would motivate approximately 4,325 additional vehicles originating in New Jersey to enter Manhattan each weekday via the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels, or the George Washington Bridge. Of these, the firm estimates, 31 percent (or 1,340 vehicles) would come through the Holland Tunnel.

In net terms, this amounts to a daily decrease of more than 300 vehicles (many of them large trucks) using Lower Manhattan streets to enter or leave the Holland Tunnel each weekday.

“Canal Street and Varick Street are likely to see the highest net reduction of traffic, about 50 vehicles, during the peak midday hour,” the WSP report notes. But for Lower Manhattan residents hoping that the chronically snarled traffic on Canal Street will pick up the pace, the report predicts that changes will be incremental, rather than dramatic, foreseeing that “speeds… would decrease up to 0.3 mph, from 4.6 mph to 4.3 mph, in the eastbound direction and increase up to 0.3 mph, from 5.8 mph to 6.1 mph, in the westbound direction during the off-peak periods, 10:00 am to 3:00 pm and 7:00 pm to 6:00 am.”

The 2018 report from Sam Schwarz Engineering noted that since 1986, when the Verrazzano stopped collecting tolls in both directions, and began charging a double-toll on westbound-traffic, both vehicular volume and statistics about accidents have spiked upward. Even in 1986, the effects of the change were apparent almost immediately. In the three years before the Verrazzano changed it tolls, one pedestrian was killed along Kenmore and Broome Streets. In the years that followed, the rate jumped to an average of one death per year.

U.S. Congressman Jerry Nadler (center) and City Council member Margaret Chin (left) look on as MTA chief Patrick Foye describes a plan to reinstitute two-way tolling on the Verrazzano Bridge.

And these metrics appears to be trending upward. Transportation Alternatives, an advocacy group that aims to wrest control of New York City’s streets from the automobile and supports better bicycling, walking, and public transit, says that on Canal Street alone, there have been 13 pedestrian deaths since 2009, plus more than 120 pedestrian and cyclist injuries since 2013.

Last July, Ms. Chin introduced a City Council resolution calling for two-way tolling on the Verrazzano Bridge. Ms. Chin’s resolution noted that while every other bridge or tunnel operated by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) collects tolls in both directions, “under the current system, drivers, especially those traveling between New Jersey and points in Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island, can significantly minimize the amount of tolls they pay by entering the City via Staten Island and crossing the Verrazzano, then leaving via the free East River bridges, crossing Manhattan, and using the Hudson River crossings, which are only tolled in the eastbound direction.”

Ms. Chin’s resolution also observed that, “at the time it was enacted, the rationale for [the one-way Verrazzano toll] was to decrease congestion and pollution caused by traffic backing up in Staten Island,” but, “those concerns are now largely moot because cashless open-road tolling was introduced at the Verrazzano in July 2017, so drivers no longer slow down to pay tolls at tollbooths.”

Under ordinary circumstances, a measure such as the one that Ms. Chin sponsored could be expected (if enacted by the full City Council) to result in changed policy, since both ends of the Verrazzano Bridge sit within the five boroughs of New York City. But in this case, the City Council, the Mayor, and even the Governor are all reduced to an advisory role, because the United States Congress enacted a law in 1986 prohibiting the MTA from collecting tolls in both directions on the span. This bill was sponsored by then-U.S. Congressman (and later Staten Island Borough President) Guy Molinari, in response to pressure from his constituents, who complained about air pollution from Verrazzano’s toll plaza. (This makes the Verrazzano-Narrows the only bridge in the United States with a tolling policy mandated by the federal government.)

It is that measure that federal legislators, led by Mr. Nadler, hope to overturn. In June, the U.S. House of Representatives enacted a spending bill that contained a provision ordering two-way tolling on the Verrazzano. That measure now awaits action from the U.S. Senate.