After facing a public uproar and faux-outrage from the New York and New Jersey governors, the Port Authority on Friday announced a reduced series of fare and toll hikes for its river crossings and PATH trains. The new plan, which is contingent on the requirement of a comprehensive review of the agency’s capital plan and operations to ensure accountability, will help fund a $25.1 billion capital plan over the next four years, and it will see PATH fares increase by 25 cents a year over those four years.
This new version of the budget ostensibly takes into account “toll and fare payers’ economic realities,” and it represents spending cuts over the previous version as well. Instead of a $33 billion capital plan for 10 years, this new one covers the same time span but for $6 billion less. These cuts came amidst public pressure from Governors Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie that many thought was less than sincere. Clearly, these governors were aware of the fare and toll hike plan but were able to curry voter points by proclaiming public outrage.
Still, the Port Authority responded and agreed to limit the increases to $4.50 over the next five years. “Because of the leadership of our Governors, I believe we have reached the right balance by prioritizing our infrastructure needs while heeding the concerns of our toll and fare payers. We also now have the direction to ensure that our future finances and operations are prudently managed and efficient,” PA Chairman David Samson said. “By our action, today we demonstrate we are getting back to our original mission and continuing our more than 90 year tradition of being the economic engine and transportation infrastructure leader of New York and New Jersey.”
The new fare and toll increases, then, look a little something like this:
- Tolls on cars using E-ZPass will increase $1.50 in September 2011 and then 75 cents in December each year from 2012-2015 for a total increase of $4.50 over five years, down from the proposed $6 increase over four years.
- Cars paying with cash will have the same increase, but will be subject to an additional $2 penalty (rounded up to the nearest whole dollar).
- Tolls on trucks using E-ZPass will pay an additional $2 per axle in September 2011, and then an additional $2 per axle in December of each year from 2012 -2015.
- Tolls on trucks paying cash will have the same increase but will be subject to an additional $3 per axle cash penalty.
- Fares on the PATH train will increase 25 cents per year for the next four years.
It is currently unclear what the full structure of the PATH increases will be. After four years, the base fare will be $2.75, but the costs for the discounted unlimited ride cards are unknown. In the original plan, the 30-day card jumped from $54 to $89. Riders were of course outraged, but this plan seems to ensure that the PA can continue to grow while providing for over 100,000 jobs in the area.
According to the PA’s report, over 60 percent or nearly $15 billion will be spent over the next four years, and projects funded include work on the George Washington Bridge, the Lincoln Tunnel Helix rehab, the Bayonne Bridge roadway, PATH car, signal and station modernization and airport runway modernizations. These are, of course, some badly needed projects.
“I can tell you what the effect would be if they didn’t raise the tolls,” Mayor Micheal Bloomberg said. “The bridges eventually would fall down. We wouldn’t be able to make the commute better and let business go back and forth under the river and over the river. If you want services you have to pay for them.”
And therein lies the rub. If you want services — and better ones at that — ultimately, you have to pay for them.
11 comments
“If you want services — and better ones at that — ultimately, you have to pay for them.”
However, because Generation Greed wanted more and better for itself and refused to pay, even if those coming after do pay more for services, they will probably not get them.
Thus the lack of willingness to contribute to our institutions is increasingly rational, and their future is increasingly destroyed.
The PA toll hikes at least have a hidden bonus for the working and most of the middle class: less traffic coming into the city. I’d really love to see a study looking at the possibility of reduced traffic reducing inflation in our region – it seems very likely to me.
The troubling thing about boomer narcissists is that increasingly higher taxes are going to be paying decreasingly useful government services. Secondary and tertiary road routes aren’t going to be able to do what the PA can do to cover its ass. When the Tea Party campaigns on lower taxes, they’re actually campaigning on future taxes.
Governors Andrew Cuomo and CHRIST Christie? HAHA. Maybe you should change that. 🙂
I mentioned this last time you brought this up, and I still take issue with the toll hikes, particularly the one on the George Washington (and to a lesser extent, the Goethals) Bridge. Both operate over Interstate highways which, by definition, exist to serve a region larger than one or two states. The $3 PER AXLE penalty for Cash-paying trucks is obscene and will drive up prices of goods and services for people who live nowhere near New York or New Jersey. Are truckers who do most of their business in a part of the country where E-ZPass isn’t supposed to get it for their infrequent deliveries from Virginia to Massachusetts? A six-axle tractor trailer will pay an additional $18 just for not having E-ZPass, in addition to the regular toll. The federal government should really be helping with the Interstate highway crossings.
I think they meant it to be obscene, to essentially force trucks to get E-ZPass. I assume any truck that crossed regularly would have had it anyway, but this would give them even more motivation. And if they cross rarely, then $18 isn’t as significant for them.
I cannot understand the lack of outrage on a transit oriented blog about a move that will double the cost of mass transit to pay for commercial real estate development in Lower Manhattan.
You can at least make an argument that higher tolls on cars have external benefits, even if the increase comes not by calculating which toll would have the most benefit but by calculating how much the PA needs to compensate for its WTC incompetence.
But there is no argument for raising the Path tolls.
The way for the PA to handle the WTC overruns is to spin that out into a separate agency, sell the sight for whatever it will fetch and default on whatever debt remains. Ward should be out for even suggesting that mass transit finance office construction (particularly when any competently run agency could make the office construction finance mass transit, as is done all over the world).
You are right about this… the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, by definition, has no business building or operating commercial office space in Lower Manhattan. (Nor does the PATH station need an ostentatious glass-roofed, palatial station when the MTA is building one across the street, but I’ve grown tired of that argument). But the tolls, quite honestly, affect many more people than PATH, and will even have repercussions on those who don’t cross the bridges and tunnels.
I guess you have a point, but my general lack of outrage owes to PATH’s longstanding low fare, and it’s no doubt a money loser.
OTOH, it’s supposedly very over-staffed, but it’s probably just politically easier to raise the fare than fire people.
Is any of this money going towards the Gateway/ARC 2 Project? We’re going to need that money once Christie is gone.
That project sounds like it is completely unfunded, as of now.
What if you want services , but the politicians lie about how much they will cost , and the cost is triple what they say
Should we accept subway rides of $4 ???