Cashless Tolls Coming To New Bayonne Bridge

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Cashless tolls are coming to the new Bayonne Bridge.

Instead of slowing through toll booths drivers will maintain their speed. Electronic devices will collect money from drivers through E-ZPass, or a bill will be sent in the mail for those who pay with cash.

Roger Prince, of the Port Authority, says the design of the bridge makes the toll booths impractical.

"It is much deeper and it would be very difficult for us to create a toll plaza that was level to the area," Prince told WCBS 880's Peter Haskell.

Without toll booths, officials say driving across the new bridge will be safer and more efficient.

"We anticipate with the free-flow travel that you have less merging and weaving since people don't have to jockey for the toll lane," Allison de Cerreno, of the Port Authority, said.

Cashless tolls on the MTA's seven bridges and two tunnels are part of a $100 billion transportation overhaul, what Gov. Andrew Cuomo called the "largest infrastructure investment in the state's history."

Automatic tolling is already in effect on the Henry Hudson Bridge, the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel, the Tappan Zee Bridge and elsewhere around the country.

The Queens Midtown Tunnel is also set to go tollbooth free, followed by the Rockaway bridges in the spring, the Robert F. Kennedy and Verrazano–Narrows bridges in the summer and the Whitestone and Throgs Neck bridges in the fall.

In:
• Peter Haskell