Last week, the New York State Thruway Authority opened highway-speed tolling lanes at its Woodbury toll plaza in Orange County, the first Thruway plaza to offer open-road toll lanes for both personal and commercial travelers.

Also last week, the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission [...]]]>

The I-78 toll plaza near the NJ/PA border.

Last week, the New York State Thruway Authority opened highway-speed tolling lanes at its Woodbury toll plaza in Orange County, the first Thruway plaza to offer open-road toll lanes for both personal and commercial travelers.

Also last week, the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission opened two high-speed E-ZPass lanes at a toll plaza on I-78, just west of the I-78 bridge connecting New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

The new lanes will improve driver safety by reducing the need to decelerate, accelerate, and merge at toll plazas. Reduced idling at the plazas will also result in fewer emissions.

The Woodbury toll plaza is the second Thruway plaza to be upgraded to highway-speed; the first was a commercial-vehicle-only toll barrier in Spring Valley that opened in 2007. The I-78 plaza is the first use of open-road tolls by the DRJTBC, which plans to install more open-road toll lanes at its I-80 toll facility near the Delaware Water Gap.

Image: Via Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission.

One of the unresolved questions about the Tappan Zee Bridge/I-287 corridor project is who will run the bus rapid transit and commuter rail systems planned for the [...]]]>

The NYS Thruway Authority can't operate buses and trains over a new Tappan Zee Bridge, but it can help pay for the bus lanes and tracks.

One of the unresolved questions about the Tappan Zee Bridge/I-287 corridor project is who will run the bus rapid transit and commuter rail systems planned for the corridor. Another big question, which MTR looked at earlier today, is who will pay for them. In the past, the NY State Thruway Authority has claimed that neither toll money nor bonds backed by toll revenue can be used to run transit over the bridge.  While true, the statement overstates the Authority’s prohibition.  Though operating a transit line is not within the statutory powers given to the Authority, the power to construct and maintain transit facilities is.

The founding statute (Laws of New York, Public Authorities, Article 2, Title 9) of the Thruway Authority limits the Authority to maintaining and operating the “thruway system,” which consists of the Thruway itself, the New York state canal system and the Tappan Zee ferry service.  However, the Authority’s power over the “thruway system” extends to “facilities related thereto as the authority may determine.”  Therefore, any infrastructure that achieves the Authority’s purpose of facilitating a smoothly running Thruway is within their jurisdiction.  This can include bonding for transit across the Tappan Zee Bridge: as the Tappan Zee project website reasons, “adding transit to the I-287 Corridor could help minimize corridor travel delay, reduce travel times, provide travel choices, improve local and regional mobility, foster economic growth and improve air quality.”

As if to illustrate, in the early 1990s, the state legislature added section 386 to the Authority’s founding statute, which authorized the Authority to issue bonds in order to raise limited funds for “the construction, reconstruction, improvement, reconditioning and preservation of rail freight facilities and for the cost of intercity rail passenger facilities and equipment.”  The section specifically notes that one purpose served by the projects would be to “provide rail access to relieve highway congestion.” (Interestingly, the section also authorizes bonds for aviation projects, stretching the connective fiber to the thruway even further.)

In the November 2008 Tappan Zee project financing report, the multi-agency study team didn’t make any assumptions about which agencies would pay for the project, but still seemed to suggest that transit funds wouldn’t be coming from the Thruway Authority:

“A unified public debt finance mechanism is assumed… No attempt is made to simulate specific MTA credit structures for the transit financing or Thruway credits for the bridge financing (emphasis added).”

But the transit planned as part of the Tappan Zee project would run along the Thruway and over the Tappan Zee, meaning it is strongly connected to the Thruway’s traffic congestion.  Bonds may be insufficient to pay for even the transit portion of the project, given the huge cost of the project. Either way, however, the Thruway Authority shouldn’t be counted out as a source of transit funding.

Image: Rendering of one Tappan Zee Bridge replacement option (from Alternatives Analysis for Rehabilitation of Replacement of the TZ Bridge).

Transportation advocates are still fighting to get more transit funding into the economic stimulus bill, with anywhere from $9-12 billion likely to be included in the final package. But another important question is where that money [...]]]>

The East Side Access and Garden State Parkway widening projects are both in search of federal dollars.

Transportation advocates are still fighting to get more transit funding into the economic stimulus bill, with anywhere from $9-12 billion likely to be included in the final package. But another important question is where that money will go once it is disbursed.

The stimulus bill as currently proposed includes $30 billion in “highway funding,” but that term covers road maintenance, bridge repair, and even bicycle and pedestrian projects, not just new or bigger highways. Whether the stimulus actually gets spent in a smart way depends on the states, metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), and municipalities that receive the money.

The Tri-State Campaign recently acquired the New York and New Jersey transportation “stimulus wish lists”; Connecticut has not made its list public, and has received plenty of deserved criticism for it. New Jersey’s list contains sprawl-inducing road projects, some of which may not be legally allowed to accept federal funding because they have not undergone needed environmental reviews. New York’s list comes off as reasonable, with plenty of funds for transit and maintenance and some cycling and pedestrian projects.

Below are links to the New York and New Jersey lists, brief summaries, and analysis. MTR offers these lists with the major caveat that they are not final and may change before stimulus money is given out. Also, it is unlikely that states will get as much money as they are requesting. However, the lists do provide a look into each state’s transportation priorities.

New York

New York’s $3.7 billion stimulus wish list is split about 50-50 between roads and transit. NYSDOT’s piece of the pie is $1.9 billion, of which $260 million would go to non-MTA transit buses and two Albany-Rensselaer rail projects. Another $110 million would go to aviation.

This leaves $1.5 billion for NYSDOT road projects. The list does not seem to include any major expansion projects, at least in the downstate region; in many of the regions (such as NYC and the Capital Region) all road money goes toward maintenance. At least $51 million would go to bike/ped projects, with the main beneficiaries being the Bronx River Greenway and the upstate Erie Canalway Trail.

$324 million is requested for the Thruway Authority, all for maintenance (mostly for replacement of the Tappan Zee Bridge’s crumbling deck).

Finally, the MTA is requesting $1.5 billion, mostly for behind-the-scenes capital projects like power substations. Stimulus money would also go towards the East Side Access project to bring the LIRR into Grand Central Terminal, rehabilitating 10 Brooklyn elevated subway stations, and raised grates that would come with attached bike racks.

[Update: As we said, these lists may change, and the MTA has made some changes to its list, most significantly the addition of the Fulton Street Transit Center.]

New Jersey

New Jersey’s $3.1 billion list at least continues the state’s trend of transit investment; it includes $1.1 billion for NJ Transit projects including $600 million for Access to the Region’s Core.

Unfortunately, the list has some troubling pieces that reinforce TSTC’s concerns that the state’s transportation policy may be backsliding. For example, while NJDOT’s list includes plenty of needed maintenance it also includes money for the Rt. 206 Bypass in Byram Township, a contested road widening project which was thought to be dead.

Furthermore, the state is seeking money for the widenings of the Garden State Parkway and NJ Turnpike. Federal subsidy of these sprawl-inducing road projects would be bad enough, but it’s not clear that this is even legal. Neither project has undergone the detailed environmental reviews required under the National Environmental Policy Act to receive federal funds.

Connecticut

Despite reaching out through multiple channels, MTR hasn’t obtained a copy of Connecticut’s stimulus wish list — and neither has anyone else, it seems.  [Update 2/23 - the list is finally available!] Some details have come out, however. Television station WTNH reports that ConnDOT has $700 million in “shovel ready” projects, while Design New Haven cites “high-profile sources” who say the state will concentrate its transportation dollars on widening the I-95 “Q” Bridge and paying for the way-over-budget (and very necessary) New Haven Rail Yard expansion.

Still, this secrecy has earned the governor’s office criticism from parties as diverse as the Hartford Business Journal and ConnPIRG. Notably, the federal stimulus bill will require all grants made with stimulus funds to be published online. Connecticut and the other states in the region should be following the federal lead when it comes to transparency.

Before the New York State Thruway Authority delayed its scheduled Nov. 19 board meeting, the speculation was that the authority might finally implement congestion pricing for passenger cars on the Tappan Zee Bridge.

Truck tolls on the Tappan Zee Bridge are doubled at peak hours, but passenger car tolls are currently set [...]]]>

Before the New York State Thruway Authority delayed its scheduled Nov. 19 board meeting, the speculation was that the authority might finally implement congestion pricing for passenger cars on the Tappan Zee Bridge.

Truck tolls on the Tappan Zee Bridge are doubled at peak hours, but passenger car tolls are currently set using a perverse schedule which rewards frequent driving. Drivers of passenger cars pay a $4 cash toll or a $3.60 E-Z Pass toll, but can sign up for a plan where they pay $2/trip if they make at least 20 monthly trips.

In 1999, the Thruway Authority studied the effects of raising peak-hour tolls; that study found that different variable pricing schemes could shift up to 9% of peak-hour car traffic to the shoulder periods. To be more precise, a significant number of peak-hour commuters would shift to the shoulder periods to save money; a smaller number of shoulder-period commuters would shift to the peak to take advantage of reduced peak-hour congestion.

While the authority has not yet announced the new date of its next board meeting, advocates are hopeful that it will move towards a more rational toll structure on the Tappan Zee Bridge that would help reduce traffic congestion and air pollution. By doing so, the Thruway Authority would join the NJ Turnpike Authority and the Port Authority, the latter of which would increase the differential between on-peak and off-peak tolls at its Hudson River crossings from $1 to $2 as part of a proposed fare and toll increase.