This might seem obvious but...Just because you stopped paying your EZ-Pass bill (or never got an EZ-Pass) doesn't mean the Port Authority will stop charging you for using its bridges and tunnels. In fact, they'll add a $25 administrative fee for each skipped toll. Which can add up fast, as Gemma Schreiber of Staten Island has learned. The PA recently sued Schreiber for $26,664 for skipping out on more than 900 tolls between July 29, 2009 and September of last year. more ›

Watching Wings reruns all day and telling your grandchildren how they never call are just a few of the joys of retirement. But if you worked for the Port Authority, you could also count on a free E-ZPass to cross as many bridges and tunnels as necessary in search of discount Metamucil. But last year, with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's blessing, the PA abolished the free E-ZPasses for retirees to save $1.5 million annually. 65-year-old former PA police sergeant Thomas Westfield believes it's unfair, and is suing. "It's a benefit that I earned and counted on. It was promised to us," he told the Wall Street Journal. No word on the Port Authority's promise to allow retirees to "skip the line at Port Authority Prom." more ›

Because the toll for his tractor-trailer to go onto the George Washington Bridge is $65, Nelson Vaquiz decided that it was much easier to build a contraption that lifts up and hides his license plate instead of just paying the pesky toll. Except he didn't count on a Port Authority cop to notice the disappearing license plate. more ›

Commuters weren't happy about the Port Authority's obscene plan to raise tolls 50%, but now Governors Cuomo and Christie—who sit on the PA's board—are crying foul, saying they weren't told of the move despite reports that they had "confidentially signaled their grudging support." A source tells the Post that Cuomo was "shocked and less than pleased" about the proposal, which would hike E-ZPass holders' tolls up to $12 from $8 and cash tolls to $15 from $8. PATH commuters would pay an extra $1 a trip. But how much of this outrage is political theater? more ›

We've always wondered what would happen if you just said "screw it," and drove through the toll booth without paying the fare, laughing heartily into the sunset as George Thorogood blares through your cheap stereo. As it turns out, nothing. Until you rack up $5,254 in unpaid charges. The Port Authority is charging Staten Island resident Alfred Buono with $25K in "administrative fees" after he skipped through open E-Z Pass lanes 998 times without paying. According to the Staten Island Advance, Buono has been getting a free ride since March of 2003. more ›

While we learned yesterday that Europe is doing all it can to encourage people to walk or take public transit instead of their car, New York City is inadvertently doing the same thing thanks to the MTA's toll hikes on bridges and tunnels that went into effect back in December. Car crossings were down 3.9 percent this April from the same month in 2010, and trucks and buses dropped 6.6 percent. Fees at most crossings increased by 18 percent, or around $1, except for the Henry Hudson Bridge, which increased by 33 percent to $4 (if paying cash). All this, the Post reports, resulted in a $6.4 million drop in revenue in the first quarter of 2011. If they can't close their budget gaps from tolls, guess whose fares are about to get hiked up? more ›

It's almost time to kiss those de-magnetizing flimsy excuses for transit currency goodbye. The MTA is planning on phasing out MetroCards and replacing them with sturdier, microchip-implanted "MTA Cards," says the Daily News. On Tuesday, the agency will release a "140 page roadmap" of the future to technology-related companies in the hopes that one of them will create what the MTA's CFO calls "E-ZPass for transit." more ›

As the MTA continues to struggle to close its $800 million budget gap, drivers will now have to dig deeper into their pockets to pony up the cash to cross the city's bridges and tunnels. In a measure approved 12-1 today by the MTA board, fares will increase in January by about 18% for drivers paying cash, but only about 5% for those using EZ-Pass. According to a statement sent out by the MTA, fares at the Queens-Midtown Tunnel and Throgs Neck bridge will increase by one dollar (to $6.50) for those paying cash and 23 cents (to $4.80) for those using EZ-Pass. Over at the Verrazano, the cash toll will increase by 2 dollars (bringing the cost of crossing the bridge to $13), and those using EZ-Pass will pay $9.60. more ›

Taxi driver shenanigans are certainly no new phenomena, but that won't stop some intrepid reporters from heading undercover to expose the secret world of cabbie trickery. And what they discovered is that many taxi drivers are ignoring their required E-Z pass tags at tolls and bridges to instead use cash lanes that cost riders more. more ›

As the Metropolitan Transportation Authority considers far-reaching service cuts that could eliminate free Metrocards for students and nix entire subway lines, the MTA's chairman unveiled a series of agency-wide goals intended to make commuting easier. MTA Chair Jay Walder said the city's public transit needs a "top-to-bottom overhaul" because "many service improvements are long overdue and ... customers are tired of hearing excuses." more ›

A sex offender who had lost his teaching license a little over a year ago for making sexual advances online to several adolescent boys was apparently up this old tricks again while working for E-ZPass. After a supervisor spotted Bradley Dieffenbacher's picture in an article about sexual predators, he had the company's computers searched and discovered that once again the former middle school teacher was sending hundreds of instant messages while searching for sex with minors—17 pages worth at his new job. The Daily News says that it is unclear how long Dieffenbacher was working at E-ZPass, but he was fired immediately after the new material was uncovered and then turned over to the Department of Probation. Dieffenbacer had been arrested last year after police found IMs where he had sexual conversations with several of his former students and attempted to have one masturbate while being filmed by a web cam. He will now head back to jail before his next stab at a new public sector career. more ›

E-Z Pass is coming to the Brooklyn Bridge after all—just not as part of any East River crossing toll plan. City officials announced that E-Z Pass transponders will be installed on the bridge, as well as several other spots throughout the streets of lower Manhattan below Canal Street in order to monitor the flow of traffic and come up with potential ways to ease congestion in that part of town. The Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center will be in charge of the project, which they emphasize will not be able to detect either license plate numbers or the drivers inside the vehicles. An LMCCC spokeswoman says that the routes and travel times of lower Manhattan motorists they'll be collecting will simply allow the agency to know where to dispatch traffic agents to deal with problems. more ›

The Parks Department is making an example out of a high-ranking employee who used his official E-ZPass on personal trips. Even though the accumulated tolls totaled only $52, the Department is fining the official $11,000—or 211 times what he admitted stealing. What's really embarrassing is that Martin Brenner, the admitted E-ZPass abuser, was director of the agency's Management Information Systems at the time. So as chief technology officer, he should have known E-ZPass transactions are easily traceable, a fact that's also, you know, common knowledge. As part of his punishment, Brenner was demoted to deputy, had his pay cut from $101,000 to $95,000, and lost the right to drive any city vehicle. This wasn't the first time for Brenner either; one Parks source tells the Post, "He was warned not to do this again. Then he did it again. He could have been fired." The stern punishment comes on the heels of an MTA crackdown on bureaucratic abuse E-ZPasses. more ›

The MTA is about to start turning the wheels in motion towards transitioning their bridges and tunnels to be entirely registered by electronic scans, eliminating toll booths altogether—potentially affecting the Midtown Tunnel, the Battery Tunnel, the Verrazano Bridge and the RFK Bridge. The agency is expected to begin a study for a little over a year to figure out the best way to operate the crossings via a transponder attached to your car or a video camera that focuses on passing license plates. A spokeswoman told the Post, "We will use the upcoming study to consider all implementation options at this point." The other toll crossings operated by the Port Authority have been under the scope of a similar study since 2007. Collecting entirely by scanning was a major part of the discussions prompted by the Ravitch Comission, which concluded that introducing a toll to all of the East River passages could avoid a severe fare hike for subway and bus commuters. more ›

After much speculation and the local papers preparing commuters for what was to come, the MTA made their official budget proposal today and as expected, the cutbacks were dramatic. In addition to the slashing of the W and the Z lines among other cuts listed Tuesday, today's 2009 budget also included the following: more ›

Anyone who has ever been scraping for quarters out of the armrest storage console as a line of toll booths approaches has probably wondered just what would happen if you went through an E-Z pass lane despite not having one of the scannable tags on your windshield. Well, if you ever went through with it, you'd be just 1,086 illegal trips through an E-Z Pass lane behind Catherine Cappelluti. Records show the Weehawken resident owes the Port Authority $32,879 in unpaid tolls from taking advantage of the unmanned lanes. She received 361 citations between 1998 and 2004. Her excuse? She claims her boyfriend did it. The Port Authority lost $14 million last year in unpaid tolls. more ›

Yesterday the MTA board voted to revoke the free E-ZPasses for city employees, 7 votes to 6. According to NY1, the plan, which the Bloomberg administration opposed, was also "narrowly approved" by the MTA's finance committee. The move will force police, fire and other city agencies to get E-ZPass accounts for the MTA's bridge and tunnel crossings. City budget director Mark Page said, "The bookkeeping management argument and ill will arising from this proposal is probably more expensive, in terms of the likelihood of coming together on the extremely serious issues that face all of us, than it's worth," but MTA executive director Elliot Sander emphasized that the transit agency's dire financial situation--like the $900 million deficit it faces-- required the free ride to end. more ›

As the MTA looks for any possible source of revenue, it has made a bold suggestion: The agency wants city departments to pay tolls over MTA bridge and tunnel crossings. As WCBS 2 puts it, that includes "firefighters and police responding to emergencies or calls to service." Currently, those city departments are using about 11,000 free E-ZPass tags, so if the MTA gets its way, then the city would need to pay for the approximate 300,000 crossings each year. (The MTA also emphasizes it wouldn't stop responders heading to a scene.) A spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg called it "an underhanded attempt to increase the city's already large subsidy of the MTA by charging the city for responding to emergencies or performing other essential services." Uh, the city's subsidy to the MTA hasn't really changed since 1990, according to the IBO. more ›

Note to MTA board members: Think before you speak! Maybe even pre-think before you think! MTA Board Vice Chairman David Mack has learned this lesson, maybe, after his controversial, elitist remarks explaining why he would fight for unrestricted free E-Z pass usage, "Why should I ride [the train] and inconvenience myself when I can ride in a car?" more ›

It's a tempest in an E-Z Pass tag teapot! With scrutiny about the MTA's decision to give lifetime free E-Z passes to board members (past, present, even dead) coming from Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, some board members who enjoy the perk plan to fight the MTA's attempt to take away E-Z passes and subway/bus and train passes for board members. It's against the law for MTA board members to take any pay for their jobs; the members would still be able to use the passes for official business. more ›

"Uncompensated" MTA board members are not the only ones benefiting from a policy of free E-ZPasses. As the board found it necessary to pass toll and fare hikes to regular commuters, it made sure that not only were they insulated from the cost of traveling around NYC, but their wives were as well. One member even gave his girlfriend an all-inclusive Metro-North rail pass. The value of these perks is in the thousands of dollars annually for each individual. more ›

Faced with reports that MTA board members get E-ZPass for free, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo thinks the policy should end. His office's letter to the MTA was even titled, "Illegal Compensation of Board Members." more ›

Remember how the Port Authority wanted to put Geico ads on various toll booths at the George Washington Bridge? Maybe it's a good thing that plan was scotched, because now the Port Authority is considering elmination of tollbooths at all Hudson River crossings. From the NY Sun:

The plan, which is expected to reduce traffic bottlenecks on the highways leading into the city, would complement Mayor Bloomberg's proposal to charge drivers a fee to use the city's most crowded streets, Port officials said. The Port Authority would use the same camera technology to charge drivers that the city is planning to use if it implements congestion pricing.

Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg presented PlaNYC: A Greener, Greater New York, his administration's thinking about what the city needs to do by the year 2030 in order meet sustainability goals. The plan involves 127 initiatives under the areas of Brownfield Remediation, Housing, Open Space, Transportation, Energy, the Water Network, Water Quality, Air Quality and Climate Change, but the big topic was congestion pricing. After much speculation, Mayor Bloomberg even acknowledged that congestion pricing was the "elephant in the room" and explained that the city would ask the state to embark on a 3-year pilot program:

I’ve thought about [the congestion pricing] question a lot. And I understand the hesitation about charging a fee. I was a skeptic myself. But I looked at the facts, and that’s what I’m asking New Yorkers to do. And the fact is in cities like London and Singapore, fees succeeded in reducing congestion and improving air quality. Many people are already paying to drive into Manhattan – there are tolls on most bridges and the four tunnels. But to avoid those tolls, many people drive through neighborhood streets. That not only clogs the streets, it increases air pollution – and asthma rates... more ›

Have you sworn at the subway turnstile/bus display that says "Insufficient fare"? Have you suffered "Turnstile Groin" after trying to walk through with an insufficient fare Metrocard? Or do you hate the Metrocard vending machine with a secret passion? more ›

Can you explain what my rights are as a taxi passenger regarding EZ-Pass? I travel weekly, and when returning to the city, I want to avoid potential cash lines at the tolls. Therefore, when I enter a cab at the airport, if I don't see an EZ-Pass attached to the windshield (which is often) I ask the driver if they have EZ-Pass. I get a lot of grumbling, some lies, and last night a cabbie at LGA went ballistic and started screaming at me for asking! I promptly exited the cab and went to another, but was unnerved by the situation. On a couple of other occasions, cabbies have told me they had EZ-Pass at the airport and then paid cash for the toll. Am I supposed to pay the EZ-pass toll amount or the cash amount? The TLC website drivers rules explicitly state that the driver must have an EZ-Pass and the EZ-Pass discounts are to be passed on to passengers. If you can shed light on any of these areas I would really appreciate it. My experiences have been so varied that I think I may need to carry my own EZ-Pass with me! more ›