By Philip Newman
The Queens-Midtown Tunnel reported 29,371,210 trips and the Cross Bay Veterans Bridge 7,677,577 trips in 2007.All together the nine facilities of MTA Bridges and Tunnels handled 304.3 million trips last year, the most trips in the 72-year operating history of the agency and more than its previous record of 303 million set in 2004.The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge had 70,349,348 trips; the Triborough Bridge 62,491,348; the Throgs Neck Bridge 41,913,767; the Henry Hudson Bridge 24,109,519; the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel 18,131,899; and the Marine Parkway-Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge 7,830,957.MTA Bridges and Tunnels also reported that it recorded its two billionth E-ZPass transaction since it introduced the technology to New York City motorists in 1995.The Queens-Midtown Tunnel opened in 1940 to relieve traffic congestion on the East River bridges and was among the largest public works projects of the New Deal era of President Franklin Roosevelt. The tunnel links the Murray Hill section of Manhattan and the Hunters Point district of Long Island City.The Cross Bay Veterans Memorial Bridge opened in 1970 and replaced a drawbridge connecting the Rockaway peninsula of Queens with Brooklyn, as well as the Belt Parkway and the Southern State Parkway.
