Why aren't the East River bridges tolled in NYC?

The City Room has an interesting quick history of the efforts to toll the bridges across the East River linking Manhattan with Brooklyn and Queens. As is usually the case, politics is at the root of the problem. The story points out that technologically the infrastructure for tolls is already in use through the popular EZ Pass system. This is interesting because technological hurdles was a major concern for tolling for many decades. Now that barrier has been overcome, but the political problems remain. We've written about how to make tolls a politically viable policy. Hopefully New York City will validate our hypothesis.