Enviros hit e-toll

A major enviro group the NY area Tri-State Transp Campaign has hit at electronic tolling in NY City saying it “promotes driving” and “breeds more cars and jams.” This was in an e-mail posting by the group Sept 23. The group accepts that the use of e-tags (known as E-ZPass in the NY/NJ area) improves throughput at the toll plazas and reduces delays there but say this encourages “more driving” which is a bad thing, in their view. At the same time TSTC say that traffic jams have just been moved to other points in the crowded NYC road system. If the jams have simply been moved around, it is unclear how more driving could have been encouraged by e-tolling, but logic is not a strong suit of such fanatics.

TSTC say they favor using the new technology to introduce time-of-day variable toll rates, though it is fair to predict they might have second thoughts about such pricing if they saw that it allowed the roads to be used more efficiently and to carry more vehicles — the same way they flipped on HOV. Their apparent wish is to use peak hour toll premia as a coercive mechanism to force people into their favored transit modes and to raise more money for even larger cross-subsidization of transit by motorists.