Bridge shoppers may soon be forced to give up their free rides into Brooklyn.
Rep. Max Rose (D-S.I., Brooklyn) announced Sunday that he would be moving legislation forward to change the structure of the tolls on the Verrazzano Bridge. Currently, only drivers entering Staten Island from the span pay a fee, which is as much as $19 for cars without an E-ZPass.
Rose wants to split the toll and charge drivers going each way up to $8.50, which he says will put more money into MTA coffers while reducing traffic problems around the city.
“Out-of-state folks are using the one-way toll to sneak into Manhattan and leave without paying a dime while the rest of us get hammered every single day,” said Rose.
“Not only are they cheating the system,” he said, “trucks are clogging up our expressway and making a hellish commute even worse.”
The Verrazzano is the only bridge in the country that has a toll structure set by the federal government. Legislation passed in 1986 mandated that cars should be charged only for entering Staten Island because some local residents feared that lines of cars waiting at tollbooths would lead to a logjam in the borough.
Now, with electronic toll systems across the five boroughs, those concerns have been eliminated.
There are no tolls on East River bridges.
Rose’s proposal has the backing of two of New York’s most influential members of Congress, Reps. Jerrold Nadler and Nydia Velazquez.
Nadler (D-Manhattan, Brooklyn) and Velazquez have been trying to restructure the tolls on the Verrazzano for years, Now that Rose holds Staten Island’s congressional seat, they have a member of their own party who is willing to play ball.
“For far too long, the one-way tolling system on the Verrazzano Bridge has resulted in excessive commercial traffic making its way across Staten Island and then through Brooklyn neighborhoods as trucks seek to avoid local tolls,” Velazquez (Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens) said.
Rose plans to amend the bridge’s toll structure by attaching legislation to an upcoming Transportation, Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill.
He hopes to get the change approved by the end of the year. MTA Chairman Patrick Foye said it would take some 12 months after the bill’s passage to set up a new two-way toll system.
