> NYC DOT owns, operates, and maintains 789 bridges and tunnels throughout New York, including the Brooklyn, Ed Koch Queensboro, Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges, 24 movable bridges, and four tunnels. There are no tolls on bridges operated by NYC DOT. Some bridges in New York City are operated by other agencies.
Also, you can walk across many of the bridges to Manhattan:
First, two points that are less relevant, but I feel like I need to respond to:
1) It might be true that you can get from other boroughs to Manhattan without paying a bridge toll, but getting to those other boroughs without paying a toll along the way is hard.
2) Walking or biking also limits the areas that you can come from
Both of these combined are equivalent to Venice's free tickets for people in the surrounding zone.
But, in focusing on bridges and tunnels, you missed the important new development in NYC. Manhattan is going to charge people a toll directly for using the streets to drive. I think it's six months old at this point.
So, yes, if you live close enough you don't need a car, you can get there. But I challenge a non-NYC resident to do so in a realistic way that doesn't involve mass transit.
You moved the goalposts across the planet. Manhattan is an island. You can walk or bike across almost every bridge free of charge. If you want to drive into the city you’ll have to pay a one way bridge toll. It’s not a fee per person per day, it’s a one way fee to cross an expensive bridge or tunnel.
On the tolling it actually hasn’t happened yet and it’s only applicable south of 60th. Free to drive anywhere in NYC at no additional cost except for the dense traffic riddled area of lower Manhattan.
You could also fly directly into NYC and move about by the magic of walking. It’s free. Unfortunately, airfare is also not free and so based on your logic NYC has an airfare surcharge.
I recently took a train from Rome to Tuscany. I was outraged that Tuscany charged me a train fee to enter the area.
How did I move the goalposts? I mentioned mass transit options in my first post.
I wasn't aware of the limitations on the tolls inside Manhattan to below 60th. I can see how you may have focused on the bridge/tunnel tolls (and maybe I should have been more explicit), but that's the word they have been using for those charges.
> Free to drive anywhere in NYC at no additional cost except for the dense traffic riddled area of lower Manhattan.
This is similar to how you are free to go anywhere in the PATREVE metro area except for the dense, canal-filled area of Venice.
> Unfortunately, airfare is also not free and so based on your logic NYC has an airfare surcharge.
Apparently LGA (unlike JFK or EWR) is considered walkable. I didn't think it was, but it is with 3 hours.
AFAIK, unlike tolls and mass transit, no portion of the airfare goes to NYC, nor does NYC have any direct control over the costs. So it's a good counterexample.
> Try to get to Manhattan without paying the city a toll, for a helicopter permit, or a public transit ticket. I'll wait.
Which was trivially answered. But now you want convenience.
I am not sure why you’re fixated on this. Venice charges you per person per day to enter and stay in Venice. This is in addition to highway tolls on the way to Venice and tolls to cross the bridge to enter Venice. Roads aren’t free. Bridges aren’t free.
NYC does not charge a fee per person per day, but you will similarly pay to cross bridges.
So to recap for you:
In Italy you pay to travel to Venice via your preferred method of travel. In Venice you pay a fee per person per day.
In the US you pay to travel to NYC via your preferred method of travel. In NYC you do not pay a fee per person per day.
I've got to wonder why Venice wouldn't just do something similar to NYC instead of having an "entry fee". I would think that adding/raising city fees on train, bus tickets, parking, boat landing, etc would accomplish similar congestion control, without ever needing "ticket checkers" scattered throughout the city. They could also set the parking fee to 4x the individual fee, and have easy price discrimination for price insensitive couples.
The entry fee is the only way to do congestion pricing that is predictable and scaling. To achieve those it has to get done in advance. If the cheapest tickets have been sold in advance for the day you want, you can still get a ticket but the price went up. Meanwhile you need to know if you'll be able to get into Venice (or afford to) when booking tickets or selecting hotels.
So your plan works if you just want to raise money/raise the cost to discourage people. It doesn't work if you plan on increasing the cost to act as a soft cap on the tourists per day and you want people to know if they got in on a given day.
I don't really understand what you're saying. How does needing to book two things (transportation and entry ticket [0]) make for a more responsive market of people deciding to come/not? It seems like people would be more likely to get a deal on transportation and then pay higher congestion entry, or vice-versa.
Meanwhile, baking the entry fee into modes of transportation bundles it all in one ticket, letting people make one decision to go/no go. Each of those entry modes has a given (or at least designatable) capacity, and would have its own increasing price curve administered by the ticket seller. This has the added bonus of reserving capacity on each transportation mode for the locals traveling at the last minute.
[0] Hotel seems to bake in the entry ticket, which actually keeps the book-factor at the standard tourism "2" (transport+hotel), and only increases it to 2 for day trippers.
