![]() ![]() "As the end of the year approaches, we know the exact days when we expect our streets will see the most traffic and unwelcome congestion," said DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez. Gridlock Alert Days are days in which city officials anticipate unusually high traffic volumes on New York City streets, with residents encouraged to use alternate forms of transportation, like walking, cycling or taking mass transit. On Thursday, the Department of Transportation announced 19 Gridlock Alert Days scheduled through the end of 2022. New York City is urging residents to ditch their car on what are expected to be some of the most heavily trafficked days of the year. “That’s more time on the road every day.Sep. “I’ve been feeling the traffic rising for months now,” said Lirdon Dautaj, 48, a doorman from Staten Island who drives across the Verrazzano-Narrows and Brooklyn bridges to his job in Manhattan. While the MTA’s subways, buses and commuter railroads face potential service cuts by 2023 if ridership does not bounce back to pre-pandemic levels, the bridges and tunnels have nearly returned to 2019 levels, when there were nine months with more than 27 million crossings.īridge and tunnel toll revenue accounted for 12% of the agency’s nearly $17 billion budget in 2019 and is expected to provide 11% of the 2021 budget. In April 2020, there were just 3.9 million trips on the bi-state agency’s bridges and tunnels. “We are doing everything we can to drive customers, former customers, new customers, to mass transit.”Īt Port Authority crossings, the number of trips in May was more in line with figures from 2019, when all but two months had at least 10 million trips. “We are concerned about it,” MTA Chairperson Patrick Foye told THE CITY. In July, MTA data shows, the number of trips have been off by only a few percentage points from equivalent pre-pandemic days, while subway and bus ridership remains down more than 50%. Since June of last year, the number of trips on MTA bridges and tunnels has topped 20 million every month except for February (which was extremely snowy), hitting 26.8 million in May. ![]() The collapse in crossings did not last long. The number of monthly trips across bridges and tunnels plummeted in the early days of the pandemic, with trips on MTA crossings sinking to 9.7 million in April 2020 - down from 27.4 million in April 2019. Toll increases on MTA crossings also took effect in April, while the Port Authority last hiked fees in January 2020. “Tailpipe emissions contribute to rising temperatures, which in turn makes our region hotter and more susceptible to stronger storms and flash floods that destroy property and make underground transit service much more vulnerable.” ‘More Time on the Road’ “The worst effects, including high rates of asthma, infant mortality, and upper respiratory diseases, will be felt in historically disadvantaged communities of color and low-income areas that lack transit accessibility and are often located adjacent to highways,” Blank said. He noted the increasing traffic volume also contributes to worsening air quality and climate change throughout the region. That’s the highest since February 2020, when 249,486 vehicles traversed the East River spans, a month before the pandemic paralyzed the city. The city’s Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg and Ed Koch Queensboro bridges recorded 246,044 Manhattan-bound vehicle crossings in May, according to Transportation Department numbers. The busiest Port Authority span - the George Washington Bridge - saw its monthly number of vehicle crossings grow from nearly 3.6 million in January to 4.3 million in May, data shows. Meanwhile, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s six bridges and tunnels logged more than 10.1 million vehicle trips in May, the most since the 10.3 million tallied in December 2019. ![]() ![]() More than 27.9 million vehicles crossed the nine tolled crossings controlled by the MTA last month, according to the transit agency, the most since October 2019, when the number of paid trips hit 28.1 million. Traffic has rebounded to pre-pandemic levels on bridges and tunnels across the city, data shows - spurring concerns that New York is headed “right back to gridlock” as mass transit use lags. ![]()
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