If you live in the Bronx, get ready to pay nothing on the Henry Hudson Bridge

Tolls are increasing throughout the city later this month. But it is about to get a lot cheaper for Bronx residents. And this time, the long-promised toll rebate seems it will really happen.

Remember when Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz fought to make the Henry Hudson Bridge free for Bronx drivers with an E-ZPass?

The Assemblyman said this was supposed to kick in 2020, but the pandemic delayed it. The source of funding dried up funding for the rebate plan as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority hit its own budget hurdle. However, he was “assured”  the program will begin sometime by the end of the year.

“If you live in the Bronx, if you have an E-ZPass but you registered your car upstate. Sorry, you will not benefit. But you’re not really supposed to do that anyway,” Dinowitz said.

How it works is, if your car is registered in the Bronx and you have an active New York EZ-Pass, you will receive an instant refund while crossing the bridge.

That toll will increase Aug. 20  to $3.18 for city residents with an E-ZPass and $8.25 for those who don’t and are out-of-state.

Dinowitz said that two years ago, creating the toll rebate would cost the transit authority $6 million a year. But that number might have changed, not because of the toll increase but as more people swapped their Metro cards for car keys. 

More than 75,000 vehicles per day cross the bridge. That could add up to about approximately $230,000 a day. Some say any rebate is taking away money from the MTA and leaving it in the driver’s pockets.

But this could be a money-saver for most drivers. If a driver crosses the bridge five days a week in both directions, that is around $1,500 a year.

Dinowitz said the bridge has irked a lot of people for many years. “It’s a tiny bridge, you sneeze, and you cross the bridge, and yet you have to pay a toll which is generally about approximately half the toll of the major bridges,” he said.

“This is not meant to encourage more people to drive — I’m sure it won’t,” he said.   No one will get in their car simply because they know a bridge is free.” “It will alleviate to a limited extent some traffic in Kingsbridge and Marble Hill,”

The traffic can help eliminate some of the traffic, especially near the Broadway Bridge, which connects Manhattan without a toll. But now, it is still being determined how much traffic will be diverted since congestion pricing was approved.

The toll rebate plan “is not an exemption of congestion pricing,” he said. “It kind of has nothing to do with congestion pricing itself, although it was done the same time.”

The assemblyman told The Riverdale Press he had concerns about the congestion pricing plan. “Concerns that would impact the Bronx,” he said.

One was pollution.

U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres said the Bronx will not be a sacrificial lamb on the alter. He admitted he once supported congestion pricing. However, he slammed the plan the MTA is implementing.

“Every day in the South Bronx, there are 15,000 diesel truck trips to and from the Hunts Point Food Distribution Center,” Torres said in a news release.

“Those diesel trucks, as well as tens of thousands more, create extensive congestion on the Cross Bronx Expressway and unleash massive quantities of air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.”

In the end, his fear is it would increase asthma rates in the Bronx.

He hopes the state government will cap the Cross Bronx Expressway to prevent air pollution, “green” the Hunts Point Terminal Market by retiring 1,000 diesel-powered refrigerated truck units, allow the South Bronx EV charging stations, and more.