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28-712: The Atlantic Beach Bridge is a 1,173-foot (358 m) long toll drawbridge across the west end of the Reynonds Channel , connecting NY 878 in Lawrence with Park Street in Atlantic Beach , in Nassau County , New York , United States . The bridge also provides direct access to the Rockaway Peninsula , via Seagirt Boulevard. The original Atlantic Beach Bridge opened in 1927 and

56-478: A bridge, they hoped to recoup their investment by charging tolls for people, animals, vehicles, and goods to cross it. The original London Bridge across the river Thames opened as a toll bridge, but an accumulation of funds by the charitable trust that operated the bridge ( Bridge House Estates ) saw that the charges were dropped. Using interest on its capital assets, the trust now owns and runs all seven central London bridges at no cost to taxpayers or users. In

84-620: A builder from Brooklyn , New York . Austin Corbin formed a partnership with the Long Island Rail Road to finance the New York and Long Beach Railroad Company which laid tracks from Lynbrook to Long Beach in 1880. The company also opened the 1,100-foot-long (340 m) Long Beach Hotel, at the time the largest in the world. The railroad brought 300,000 visitors the first season. By the next spring, tracks had been laid almost

112-569: A dedicated source of funds for ongoing maintenance and improvements. Sometimes citizens revolt against toll plazas, as was the case in Jacksonville, Florida . Tolls were in place on four bridges crossing the St. Johns River, including I-95. These tolls paid for the respective bridges as well as many other highway projects. As Jacksonville continued to grow, the tolls created bottlenecks on the roadway. In 1988, Jacksonville voters chose to eliminate all

140-466: A form of triple taxation, and that toll collection is a very inefficient means of funding the development of highway infrastructure. Nakamura and Kockelman (2002) show that tolls are by nature regressive, shifting the burden of taxation disproportionately to the poor and middle classes. Electronic toll collection , branded under names such as EZ-Pass, SunPass, IPass, FasTrak, Treo, GoodToGo, and 407ETR, became increasingly prevalent to metropolitan areas in

168-402: A region may incur e-toll tag fees imposed by their rental car company. The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980 identified and attempted to address a similar problem associated with the government collection of information. Approvals were to be secured by government agencies before promulgating a paper form, website, survey or electronic submission that will impose an information collection burden on

196-410: A vertical clearance of only 13 feet (4.0 m). The bridge reduced travel time to Atlantic Beach by 30 minutes. Traffic bottlenecked as populations grew on both sides of the bridge in the 1940s, and by 1945, Robert Moses urged officials to construct the current span, to be operated by the then-new Nassau County Bridge Authority. On October 14, 1950, Governor Thomas E. Dewey drove the first pile for

224-468: Is $ 162 for Long Beach Barrier Island residents, $ 199 for Nassau County residents, and $ 349 for non-resident passenger vehicles. Toll rates for commercial vehicles are higher. Toll bridge The practice of collecting tolls on bridges harks back to the days of ferry crossings where people paid a fee to be ferried across stretches of water. As boats became impractical to carry large loads, ferry operators looked for new sources of revenue. Having built

252-706: Is one of the outer barrier islands off the south coast of Long Island , New York , United States. Long Beach is the westernmost of these barrier islands, fronting on Reynolds Channel to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the south. The first inhabitants on the Long Beach Barrier Island were the Rockaway Indians ; the island was sold to the New Netherland colonists in 1643. Local Long Island baymen and farmers used

280-637: The James River , and the 4.5-mile long James River Bridge 80 miles downstream which carries U.S. Highway 17 across the river of the same name near its mouth at Hampton Roads . In other cases, especially major facilities such as the Chesapeake Bay Bridge near Annapolis, Maryland , and the George Washington Bridge over Hudson River between New York City and New Jersey , the continued collection of tolls provides

308-591: The New York Legislature in 1945 to manage the bridge. Though the construction costs of the bridge have long since been paid off, the tolls remain. A 1999 audit of the agency by New York State Comptroller Carl McCall found many instances of patronage and mismanagement. The authority failed to seek competitive work for engineering work. In 1997, 71% of the bridge's budget was spent on personnel. The authority and local communities continued to resist toll conversion to E-ZPass . One community leader believes

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336-432: The "Toll Collect" syndicate after much negative publicity. The term "Toll Collect" became a popular byword among Germans used to describe everything wrong with their national economy. It has become increasingly common for a toll bridge to only charge a fee in one direction. This helps reduce the traffic congestion in the other direction, and generally does not significantly reduce revenue, especially when those travelling

364-669: The 21st century. Amy Finkelstien, a public finance economist at MIT, reports that as the fraction of drivers using electronic toll collection increased, typically toll rates increased as well, because people were less aware of how much they were paying in tolls. Electronic tolling proposals that represented the shadow price of electronic toll collection (instead of the TSC) may have misled decision-makers. The general public has additionally endured an increased administrative burden associated with paying toll bills and navigating toll collection company on-line billing systems. Additionally, visitors to

392-495: The United States, private ownership of toll bridges peaked in the mid-19th century, and by the turn of the 20th century most toll bridges were taken over by state highway departments. In some instances, a quasi-governmental authority was formed, and toll revenue bonds were issued to raise funds for construction or operation (or both) of the facility. Peters and Kramer observed that "little research has been done to quantify

420-711: The appointment of Samuel Nahmias to serve as Chair of the Nassau County Bridge Authority. Nahmias was nominated and appointed with full support from the Nassau County Legislature, and he has served as the Chairman Commissioner of the Nassau County Bridge Authority since 2022. The Atlantic Beach Bridge's southern terminus at Park Street was proposed to be the western terminus of the canceled Long Beach Expressway. The original bridge opened on June 29, 1927, and had

448-484: The financial stress of lost toll revenue to the authority determining the levy. One such example of shunpiking as a form of boycott occurred at the James River Bridge in eastern Virginia . After years of lower-than-anticipated revenues on the narrow privately funded structure built in 1928, the state of Virginia finally purchased the facility in 1949 and increased the tolls in 1955 without visibly improving

476-678: The full length of the Long Beach Island, but after repeated winter storm washouts they were removed in 1894. The Long Beach Bridge connects to Island Park , the Atlantic Beach Bridge connects to Lawrence on the mainland of Long Island, and the Loop Parkway bridge connects Lido Beach to the Meadowbrook State Parkway . The Long Island Rail Road 's Long Beach Branch terminates at

504-555: The general public. However, the act did not anticipate and thus address the burden on the public associated with funding infrastructure via electronic toll collection instead of through more traditional forms of taxation. In some instances, tolls have been removed after retirement of the toll revenue bonds issued to raise funds. Examples include the Robert E. Lee Memorial Bridge in Richmond, Virginia which carries U.S. Route 1 across

532-472: The impact of toll collection on society as a whole" and therefore they published a comprehensive analysis of the Total Societal Cost (TSC) associated with toll collection as a means of taxation. TSC is the sum of administrative, compliance, fuel and pollution costs. In 2000 they estimated it to be $ 56,914,732, or 37.3% of revenue collected. They also found that a user of a toll road is subject to

560-402: The island for fishing and harvesting salt hay ; no people lived on the island year round for more than two centuries. The United States Congress established a lifesaving station in 1849, a dozen years after 62 people died when the barque Mexico carrying Irish immigrants to New York ran ashore on New Year's Day. Development began on the island as a resort and was organized by Austin Corbin ,

588-412: The new Atlantic Beach Bridge. To accommodate the new six-lane span, Nassau County and New York City spent $ 2.5 million for approach road rights-of-way. The new Atlantic Beach Bridge, designed by Hardesty & Hanover , opened to traffic on May 10, 1952, at a cost of $ 9.5 million. The new span is 1,173 feet (358 m) long with a 33-foot (10 m) vertical clearance. Shortly after the new span opened,

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616-542: The old bridge was demolished. In 1998, a $ 19 million project was begun to bring the bridge up to federal standards. It involved the reconstruction of the approaching roadways and replacement of the existing concrete bridge deck. The project was completed in November 2000. There have been allegations of patronage since the inception of the Nassau County Bridge Authority, which was created by

644-416: The one direction are forced to come back over the same or a different toll bridge. A practice known as shunpiking evolved which entails finding another route for the specific purpose of avoiding payment of tolls. In some situations where the tolls were increased or felt to be unreasonably high, informal shunpiking by individuals escalated into a form of boycott by regular users, with the goal of applying

672-582: The resistance is not based on costs but because this would necessitate accounting of toll monies. Toll collection was temporarily suspended in mid-March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic in New York . Tolls were reinstated at the beginning of June 2020. In late December 2022, the Nassau County Bridge Authority voted to implement E-ZPass ; concurrently, it raised tolls for the first time in fifteen years to provide funding for maintenance. The E-ZPass equipment

700-459: The roadway, with the notable exception of a new toll plaza. The increased toll rates incensed the public and business users alike. Joseph W. Luter Jr. , head of Smithfield Packing Company , the producer of Smithfield Hams , ordered his truck drivers to take a different route and cross a smaller and cheaper bridge. Tolls continued for 20 more years, and were finally removed from the old bridge in 1976. Long Beach Barrier Island Long Beach

728-593: The toll booths and replace the revenue with a ½ cent sales tax increase. In 1989, the toll booths were removed, 36 years after the first toll booth went up. In Scotland , the Scottish Parliament purchased the Skye Bridge from its owners in late 2004, ending the requirement to pay an unpopular expensive toll to cross to Skye from the mainland. In 2004, the German government cancelled a contract with

756-534: Was expected to cost $ 5 million, and a renovation of the toll booth was to cost another $ 6 million. The toll increases faced some local opposition, but the Nassau County Bridge Authority said in 2023 that it would not raise tolls for another ten years. The bridge started accepting E-ZPass on December 14, 2023, after a week of testing. Typically, the toll is $ 3.00 ( USD ) with E-ZPass for vehicles under 5 tons (10,000 lb) in each direction as of December 2023. Cash tolls for vehicles under 5 tons are $ 4. An annual bridge pass

784-722: Was replaced by the current span in 1952. The bridge was rehabilitated in 1998. The Atlantic Beach Bridge is the only bridge owned and managed by the Nassau County Bridge Authority . Raymond Webb was appointed Executive Director of the Nassau County Bridge Authority in December 2022. Around that time, Bruce Blakeman , the County Executive of Nassau County, informed the Nassau County Legislature , through written notification, of

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