Drivers Not Happy With Higher Tolls At Port Authority Bridges, Tunnels
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- Many drivers who use Port Authority bridges and tunnels say the last of five annual toll increases that took effect Sunday is punishing to their pockets.
Cash-paying customers now pay $15 during peak periods, up from $8 four years ago. E-ZPass motorists pay $12.50.
"Who ever appointed them should be voted out of office," driver Sebastian Rollo said.
"The roads are still bad, it's not going for fixing the roads," said driver Richard James. "They say this is the last year a while though, but it'll probably still go up again."
"It's a whole snowball effect, everybody wants more money and everybody's gotta make more money," another driver said.
Truck drivers are also paying more.
A five-axle rig now pays $105 while a six-axle truck costs $126.
"There's a lot of people up there using a lot of money for a lot of things that are not going back into the services they guaranteed us," said truck driver Keith Rupinski.
Public information from the Port Authority shows that the hike will be used for projects like replacing suspension rope on the George Washington Bridge, raising the Bayonne Bridge and rehabilitating the Lincoln Tunnel, CBS2's Janelle Burrell reported.
But business experts say the impact on trucking companies may ultimately have a trickle down effect on others who don't even use Port Authority crossings.
"Those costs will be accumulated by the trucking companies or truckers who incur them and then they'll factor into their prices," said Scott Rothbort of Seton Hall University.
Port Authority Chairman John Degnan said the bistate agency isn't likely to raise tolls again anytime soon. He said he's looking closely at how to get revenue from the agency's real estate holdings.
The toll increase come as the agency finds itself in the cross hairs of a fiscal challenge.
A recent report by Moody's Investors Service concluded that the Port Authority now relies more on revenue from bridge and tunnel tolls than on revenue from its airports. At the same time, bridge and tunnel traffic has been steadily, if slowly, declining over the past several years, and future toll increases are a potential political minefield.
Add to that a lengthy slate of large capital projects that includes the new bus terminal projected to cost about $10 billion and a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River, and the challenges become starkly evident.
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