New York – Thruway Tolls to Increase 5% on Sunday for Commercial Vehicles

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    Some E-Z Pass users will pay 28 percent more to travel the New York State Thruway in 2010. New York – The toll increase will help fund the final phase of a five-year, $2.1 billion capital plan to improve the Thruway’s roads and bridges. The toll increase will be 5 percent for both cash customers and those with E-ZPass tags.

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    The $5 round-trip toll on the Tappan Zee Bridge will not increase for passenger vehicles, but it will increase 5 percent for commercial vehicles. The commercial rates will also increase 5 percent on the Spring Valley toll barrier in Rockland County.

    There are no new toll increases at the barriers in Yonkers and New Rochelle in Westchester County, or at the barriers in Harriman, Orange County, and Grand Island, Erie County.

    A one-way trip on the Thruway from exit 46 near Rochester to exit 23 in Albany — a 221-mile trip — will increase from $9.90 to $10.40 for cash customers.

    The state Thruway Authority has been criticized in recent years for mismanagement, and political leaders have urged the authority to not go forward with the toll increases.

    But authority officials said the increases have been necessary amid a decline in traffic and the need to raise more revenue to fund road improvements. Higher construction costs, however, have forced the authority to scale back or eliminate some projects in the five-year plan.

    The toll increase will be the second since last year, along with a cut in discounts motorists receive through use of E-ZPass. The latest increase is expected to generate $27 million a year in revenue.

    The average toll rate per mile on the Thruway is still lower than most major thoroughfares in the country, the authority said.

    “We have made investments that were needed investments to maintain the infrastructure, to keep our roads and bridges safe and to relieve congestion, particularly in the downstate region,” said Michael Fleischer, the authority’s executive director.

    Assembly Transportation Committee Chairman David Gantt, D-Rochester, said the toll increases have pushed more motorists off the Thruway and to local roads, limiting the amount of revenue raised by the toll increases.

    “There’s no reason for them to be raising tolls on the Thruway,” Gantt said. “It runs people off, they still don’t meet their goals, so what benefit is it to them?”

    Traffic on the Thruway has seen steep declines in recent years, but statistics show less of a drop recently. The total trips on the Thruway from January through November are down 1 percent compared to the same period in 2008, or 2.2 million fewer vehicles.

    In 2010, the authority plans to seek contracts on $630 million in road improvements, the largest total during the five-year plan, which runs through 2011.

    The projects include $192 million for deck replacement on the Tappan Zee Bridge, $32 million on improvements between Newburgh and New Paltz and $9 million work near Batavia at exit 48.

    Robert Sinclair, spokesman for AAA New York, said the toll increases reflect, in part, the Thruway Authority’s cost in overseeing other services, such as the state’s canal system.

    Over the past 15 years, the authority has taken ownership of the state canal system and some downstate roads and bridges, including Interstate 84 and the Tappan Zee Bridge. The authority estimated that it has spent $1 billion on upkeep for the canal and other non-Thruway roads.

    Sinclair said the Thruway is “probably one of the best roads in the state, but there is a still a substantial diversion of Thruway revenue to non-Thruway related entities, most notably the Erie Canal system.”

    He added that that “burden, if removed, would provide some relief to the desperate finances of the Thruway Authority.”


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    4 Comments
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    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    Now the bunglalow colonies will have another reason to jack up their rates again.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    I would like to know who is going to keep track of all this money. They never seem to know where the money is. Somehow, computers may be good, but a good old fashioned set of books, may be better!! The trouble is, they do not train accountants now, how to use ledgers. They train people to push buttons!!!

    yosse nathan
    yosse nathan
    14 years ago

    those of us who are old enough to remember might remember that the new york state throughway were supposed to get rid of all the toles by 1990 once all the bonds were paid for , and that is why it is called interstate 87 and interstate 90 .
    however the powers that be in new york state with all the money coming in from the toles , lets keep this cash cow just like here in new york city with the bridges and tunnels that have toles from the tbta.