Results tagged “toll”

About two dozen toll-tally fed up Staten Islanders disrupted traffic at the Verrazano Bridge toll booths for about 20 minutes yesterday by slowly paying the $10 toll in pennies to protest an imminent increase. 40-year-old Scott LoBaido led the motorcade to the lower-level midspan, where he climbed up on his 1989 Chevy Suburban's roof, blasted "Battle Hymn of the Republic" from the car stereo, and yelled, "Come on! Honk your horns!" The Verrazano cash toll will go up to $11 on July 12th, the E-ZPass toll will rise to $9.14, and the discounted E-ZPass toll for Staten Island residents will rise to $5.48. Explaining the protest to the Post, toll opponent Genevieve Grecco said, "You can't mess with Staten Island. We are going to make a fuss. We are human beings, not bank accounts you can constantly draw from." And another protester, Tina Bellino, unrolled the $10 worth of pennies she'd obtained from the bank and sprinkled them into several sandwich bags, telling the Staten Island Advance, "You didn't think I was going to make it easy for them [to count], did you?" Check out Fox News some has some great video interviews with the demonstrators.

The Port Authority stopped a tractor-trailer when its driver made its license plate disappear on the Goethals Bridge. How? According to the Daily News, Orland Payano "had a cable running from the license plate to the dashboard cigarette lighter." When the lighter is manipulated, the front plate is tucked away. (The rear plate was "bent, partially concealing its markings.") A PA officer noticed that the plate disappeared and Payano was charged with fare evasion and license plate destruction. The driver, however, tells the News, "It's not true," and says he has EZ Pass. The fare on the Goethals is $40.

It's one tall toll tale: The Post has a pretty crazy story about a toll worker who ended up pulling his "MTA Bridges and Tunnels-issued Glock 9mm pistol on a driver who handed him a wad of crumpled cash."

Four more people can be added to the total number of New Yorkers who have been run down by drivers finding it difficult to stay on the road this weekend. In the fourth incident in two days, two toddlers were badly injured when a 16-year-old driver swerved onto the sidewalk in Flatbush, Brooklyn and injured two children and two young women. Both of the toddlers needed to be hospitalized--one in critical condition and the other in stable condition.