NJ, NY govs' toll plan: Cars pay $15, not $17

The Wall Street Journal 08/18/2011 08:52

The governors of New York and New Jersey are proposing a scaled-back toll increase on bridges and tunnels into New York City. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie laid out the plan on Thursday in a letter to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs area bridges, tunnels and transit hubs and owns the World Trade Center site. The toll hikes were to go for a vote before the authority's board at its Manhattan headquarters on Friday morning.

Two top Port Authority officials, Chairman David Samson and Vice Chairman Stanley Grayson, lent their support to the governors' proposal in a statement issued a short while after the letter was released.

The Port Authority's original plan would have more than doubled the toll for a car without an EZ-Pass electronic payment device from $8 to $17 by 2014.

The governors' plan would raise tolls to $15 for those motorists, who pay in cash, by 2015. The tolls would go up $1.50 in September and then 75 cents each December from 2012 until 2015, totaling $12.50. There would be a $2 penalty for motorists without EZ-Pass devices. The total would then be rounded up to the nearest whole dollar, to $15.

The authority controls the George Washington, Goethals, Outerbridge Crossing and Bayonne bridges and the Holland and Lincoln tunnels, all of which link New York and New Jersey.

The $1.75 fare to ride the PATH train between Manhattan and New Jersey would increase 25 cents a year for four years, instead of $1 right away.

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