Why would both the existing bridges and the new bridge have to be tolled?
The purpose of this project is to reduce congestion across the river and on the connecting street system. Tolling is being explored as a way to pay for the project but it does not work if only one bridge is tolled. If only the new bridge is tolled, many people would choose to use the existing (non-tolled) bridges instead of the new one. This would result in little improvement to congestion on the existing bridges. Since so many fewer people would use the new tolled bridge, not enough money would be generated to pay for it. If both bridges are tolled, traffic is balanced between the new and existing bridges and tolls are captured for a much larger number of trips across the river.
