Bridge Tolls

Here's another wake-up call for state legislators dithering over a transit funding package: The sinking economy continues to choke off revenues for New York City's subways and buses. The MTA finance committee announced this afternoon that the agency's budget gap is $621 million bigger than previously forecast. That's on top of the $1.2 billion hole that brought about the imminent doomsday fare hike and service cuts. The culprit? Plummeting revenue from dedicated taxes, fares, and tolls.

Just days after saying he would keep his MTA rescue advocacy efforts behind the scenes, Mayor Bloomberg today criticized the Senate's latest toll-free plan. The Daily Politics has quotes from a morning Q&A session:

The Municipal Art Society came out with a report yesterday urging New York State to start analyzing greenhouse gas emissions in its environmental review process (SEQRA). MAS argues that the policy could be adopted without changing existing laws, which raises an interesting question to ponder on this Earth Day afternoon: Would the State Senate's latest MTA funding plan pass muster if it were subject to an EIS that factors in climate change?

So, just in time for Earth Day, the State Senate has proposed an MTA rescue plan that's bad for both business and the environment. Here's a refresher on the basics: The plan calls for an eight percent hike in transit fares and existing tolls, and a higher payroll tax (85 percent of the non-hike revenue comes from this one source), combined with a smattering of fees on renting and owning cars. Half of the $190 million from a new $1 "drop charge" on cabs won't even help the New Yorkers who pay it, going instead to fund bridge and highway projects outside the city.

Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith has come out with another MTA funding proposal, which again gives commuters who drive across East and Harlem River bridges a free pass. The $1.76 billion it would generate annually for the MTA falls more than $300 million short of the projected revenue from the original Ravitch plan ($2.1 billion). Liz Benjamin at the Daily Politics has the details:

State legislators are about to head home for the Easter and Passover holiday, leaving transit riders to twist in the wind a while longer without an MTA funding plan in place. Martin Malave Dilan, chair of the State Senate's transportation committee, gave Politicker's Jimmy Vielkind one last debriefing before the legislative break:

Here's State Senator Andrew Lanza, a Staten Island Republican, explaining why he supports tolls on the East River bridges. For Staten Island drivers looking at a $3 hike in cash tolls to cross the Verrazano (or a $1.32 hike for locals with E-ZPass), the sight of other motorists getting a free pass into Manhattan must be a source of perpetual gall and resentment.

Yesterday, after bridge tolls were officially ruled dead and before the latest breakdown in MTA rescue talks, the Working Families Party sent out an alert that its "Halt the Hike" campaign is back in full swing. In an email exchange with WFP spokesman Dan Levitan, I asked why, given the big income disparities between car commuters and transit riders, the party waited so long to join the fray. Does the Working Families Party oppose bridge tolls and road pricing? He wrote back:

The Fare Hike Four have absorbed most of the fire from advocates and editorial boards for derailing the Ravitch plan, and rightfully so. But by calling so much attention to themselves, they've also given cover to other members of the State Senate. So, what does the rest of the Senate majority have to say? Here's what Brooklyn's Velmanette Montgomery, re-elected on the Democratic and Working Families Party ballot lines in 2008 (with more than 96 percent of the vote), told her constituents: