A report released last week by the Tri-State Transportation Campaign surveys the spread of high-speed toll collection facilities around the metropolitan region and the United States, and considers the MTA’s objections to adopting similar congestion-busting methods. Non-stop tolls have already blunted initiatives to eliminate tolls from some highways in the region, and are probably a key to more widespread use of roadway pricing in the future. The report, entitled The Open Road: The Region’s Coming Toll Collection Revolution, urges:

1. The MTA to immediately investigate the possibility of abolishing barrier arms at toll facilities on bridges that are parts of limited access highway networks, and to increase the 5 mph speed limit.

2. The MTA to create an open-road toll pilot program by 2005, to install lanes designed to match the 40-45 mph speed limits on the Verrazano, Throgs Neck, Whitestone and Henry Hudson Bridges.

3. The MTA to test "roll-through" lanes at the Midtown or Brooklyn Battery Tunnel by 2006.

4. Governor Pataki to establish a Non-Stop Toll Task Force among the MTA, Port Authority, and NYS Thruway to develop a uniform strategy for designing and implementing open-road tolls.

A front-page Staten Island Advance article about the report confirmed the MTA’s long-held position that it has no plans to follow its sister agencies forward toward realization of the congestion relief promise of electronic toll collection. MTA Bridges and Tunnels spokesman Frank Pascual told the paper, "We remain consistent in our belief that the plaza is safer for customers and our employees with gates as traffic comes off both levels of the bridge into E-ZPass and cash lanes."

Pascual also told the Daily News that the higher speeds would make some toll plazas unsafe because they have "unique configurations" — as if toll plazas elsewhere do not, for instance on Port Authority bridges — and that the gates defeat toll-beaters.

Despite the MTA assertions, our report, based largely on conversations with toll operators around the region and country, found that the toll road industry views non-stop toll facilities as safer and more economically efficient than the traditional toll plaza design the MTA is clinging to.

High speed tolls save money by reducing shipping costs and congestion. They cut back on air pollution by reducing vehicle idling time. They also enable cash paying and EZPass paying cars to separate hundreds of yards or even miles before the toll facility, reducing the number of toll lanes and eliminating the dangerous merges that presently exist at toll facility.

"Every U.S. toll road operator we spoke with said open-road toll facilities were nearly accident-free," said report author Jennifer Siegel. "The MTA’s case against non-stop tolls gets weaker as more and more agencies successfully implement them." The report is available in PDF format at www.tstc.org. 

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