Motorists adjust to Atlantic Beach Bridge toll hikes

By HeRnesTO GALdAMeZ hgaldamez@liherald.com

When the Nassau County Bridge Authority raised its tolls on the Atlantic Beach Bridge at the beginning of the year, Robert Sanchez, a Long Beach resident and an Uber driver, changed his daily routine.

Sanchez, who has a degree in economics from Binghamton University, has always loved driving, and he applied to Uber in 2014 to see if it might be the career for him.

“Nobody knew about Uber when I started, so you really couldn’t do any business on

Long Island,” he recalled. “You had to really commute into Manhattan if you wanted to get any business.”

For Sanchez, that meant using the Atlantic Beach Bridge. “The bridge is really the fastest way if you were starting off in the morning,” he said.

In January, tolls on the bridge rose from $2 to $3 for passenger vehicles, and from as low as $4 to as high as $16 for trucks. The cost of the popular annual decals issued by the Nassau County Bridge Authority increased from $130 to $199 for vehicles registered in Nassau County, and from $175 to

ROBeRT sAnCHeZ Long Beach

$349 for those registered elsewhere.

On a typical day before the increases went into effect, Sanchez picked up riders in Long Beach, or across the bridge in Far Rockaway or other parts of Queens, and drove them into Manhattan. At the end of his shift, he came back across the bridge to get home.

Now, when the day starts for him and he checks his Uber app in his apartment, he prioritizes Long Beach Uber riders and is less inclined to respond to those on the other side of the bridge. Over the course of his day, if he is headed to or from Manhattan, he goes the long way, taking Long Beach Road and the Southern State and

Belt Parkways in order to avoid the bridge, and the higher tolls. Sanchez, who cannot purchase a yearly decal because his Toyota Camry is listed as a commercial vehicle, now buys a 20-trip card — whose prices jumped from $15 to $30 at the beginning of the year — every two to three months.

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