New York – This Memorial Day, as you grind your teeth in a logjam at New York City’s bridge and tunnel tollbooths, consider this:
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Sometimes a tollbooth isn’t a tollbooth. Sometimes it’s a battleground where life’s little conflicts unfold.
Friction between collectors and drivers is clear in a review of dozens of complaints filed with the two agencies that collect fares at the city’s 15 toll crossings.
Tempers flare. Threats ensue. Epithets fly.
– A furious toll worker counts out 44 singles when he gets a $50 bill at the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge. When the driver starts counting her change, the worker yells at her to move her car. An MTA official later assures her the officer had been reinstructed on collection procedures.
– One worker slaps a motorist with a $120 ticket for switching lanes and snippily adds, “If you had taken my lecture, it would have saved you $120.”
– A toll officer calls a motorist with a faulty E-ZPass a “punk a– jerk.” An angry motorist calls a toll officer an “Irish drunkard.”
Every day, more than 1.1 million vehicles pass through the city’s tollbooths. This Memorial Day weekend, the Port Authority expects 3.4 million travelers. The MTA got nearly 1 million on Friday alone.
Records show few motorists take the time to register complaints via e-mail, phone and letter. The agencies, which often apologize for the incidents, say the small numbers reflect the professionalism of their staff.
In a 19-month period the PA said it got just 24 complaints; the MTA tallied 153 complaints in 2008/2009 and provided documentation of only 76.
MTA bridge and tunnel officers get $39,900 to $58,444 per year; three of the 76 MTA complaints resulted in suspensions. PA toll workers get $29,000 to $62,200 in salary; 13 of the 24 complaints resulted in two suspensions and two terminations.
Still, the complaints reveal there’s always the potential for confrontation at our toll plazas. Here are some more of New York’s toll tales:
– At a Port Authority crossing in October 2008, a driver hands the collector a $10 bill. The collector returns it, claiming there’s a rip. The customer fishes out another $10 bill and asks, “Is this better?” “F— you,” the worker replies.
– In January 2009, a customer tries to pay his Lincoln Tunnel fare with a $100 bill. The toll collector snarls, “What the hell you in a hurry about? I have to … make sure you get the right change.” “Whatever,” the customer replies. As he drives away, the collector slams his car with the tollbooth door.
– In January 2009, a man who has just moved to Brooklyn on a military assignment misses the Fort Hamilton exit and winds up on the Verrazano Bridge in the wrong direction.
He has no money for the toll and requests a deferred toll payment that the MTA issues to motorists short of cash as a one-time courtesy. The toll collector is “so nasty and foul about the whole thing,” the driver writes. “She told me in so many words that I was a stupid idiot.”
– Two women encounter surly toll officers on the RFK Bridge within three hours of each other on the same day — April 22, 2009.
The first woman is stopped for using a cell phone. She tries to explain that she’s using a hands-free device, but is brought to tears by an officer who won’t stop yelling.
The second woman says an officer tells her to back up to pay the toll, then gives her a ticket for doing it. Both officers are later admonished; one is barred from issuing summonses.
– An out-of-towner pays the toll for the vehicle behind him at the Henry Hudson Parkway as a “random act of kindness.” He asks the toll worker to let the driver know what he’s done.
The worker first refuses to pass on a “random act of kindness” card, then he refuses to even tell the beneficiary why his toll has been paid.
“When I told him he was making it awfully hard to try to do a random good deed, he threatened to give me a ticket,” the man writes.
MTA official Frank Pascual apologized. “This situation was handled very poorly by our officer.”
The worst think about them is that they give a bad name to so many nice toll officers.
Thank g-d I have ez-pass that I don’t have to deal with them
i’m in retail, i see many diff types of people. when it comes to money people are different than usual. especially frum people (i work in a frum retail enviroment). you would be shocked by the behavior i see by many (respectable) people. im not siding with the toll clerks, but patience and emotions run high when $ is involved.
Very few toll collectors know how to say youre welcome. i say thanks every time and all i get is a blank look.
B”H I’ve never met a nasty toll collector on the Parkway, Verrazano or Outerbridge crossing, or on the Thruway. Those are the usual toll roads I take. I don’t have any experience with the others.
I often told the bridge collectors a humorous thought, like “If they really wanted to make money, they’d charge people to get OUT of New York City. People would throw them their wallets.”
They know I’m really not joking.
I once told a toll booth guy on the NJ Turnpike, ‘get a real job’. There was smoke coming out of his ears, as I left.
There is no reason why anyone should not have an EZ Pass at this point. It avoids all of these unpleasant encounters.
Never knew about one time deferred payment courtesy. Good to know even if I hope to never need it.
I make a point to thank the toll booth collectors, I usually get a kind response. In my Fifteen years of driving I maybe can remember 1 or 2 incidents of brash behavior.
By the way EZ pass charges a service fee of $1 a month if you live in the MTA zone.
They changed over $70 over the course 6 years .. I finally canceled and reapplied in Rockland County where there is no fee . They owed me $20 from my balance. To get that money, I had to call them 8 times and fax them 5 times and wait 2 months!! What a joke!