Change is always difficult, but there doesn’t seem to be a more logical and smart way to improve New York’s tolling system than the Move NY Fair Plan. Millions of New Yorkers deal with transportation every day and it is a huge part of our lives. There is discontent among bridge users because the toll increases every year. To avoid tolls, drivers sometimes go out of their way to go on bridges without tolls, which may be dangerous. For example, truck drivers go through the Queensboro Bridge, which can barely hold massive trucks up, to avoid tolls. In addition, there is a lot of traffic on bridges with no tolls. There also doesn’t seem to be a good reason why some bridges have tolls and others do. There is much to improve on the city’s tolling system to make bridges safer, less traffic-heavy, and cost-friendly to users.
Move NY advocates a great plan to do exactly that. To deal with traffic, it makes sense to have low tolls on bridges that have low congestion and higher tolls on bridges that do. This will give people that use highly congested bridges the incentive to use other bridges. This may also lower the number of people who unnecessarily change their routes to save a few bucks, and therefore not risk possible dangers. Lowering tolls itself is a great benefit to bridge users.
Queens’ public officials are not on board with this plan, however. They should reconsider because although Queens may not be affected much, the plan has the possibility to improve life in New York overall.
Rosa Kyung
