G.W. Bridge Tolls: Cash Cow for Port Authority
by Judd WileyApril 11th, 2008, 1:32 pm
Every time I drive through New York, I’m reminded of a maddening article I read in Forbes back in 2006. From what I can tell, not much has changed since then.
George Washington Bridge, which connects New Jersey to Manhattan, is the busiest bridge in the world. Averaging 300,000 crossings per day, it is the main access point to the busiest city in the nation. But rather than allowing commuters easy access to and from the bridge, the government has been using this chokepoint to grab your tax money.
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, a massive, bloated bureaucracy, charges a whopping $8 per car and $16 per truck crossing the G.W. Bridge.
The same fares apply to the Lincoln Tunnel, Holland Tunnel, Goethals Bridge, Outerbridge Crossing, and Bayonne Bridge. But the G.W. Bridge is the main cash cow: $327 million per year! Another way to look at this is that this one bridge accounts for 10% of the $3.3 billion annual operating revenue of Port Authority, which supports 7,000+ government workers.
75 toll collectors guard all access points to the G.W. Bridge, making sure that no one sneaks by without coughing up his $8. Union members all, they earn an average of $45,000 per year, or $3.4 million for the whole lot. This doesn’t include health benefits, vacation time, pension contributions, extra overtime pay (time and a half), or the costs of maintaining the toll collection booths themselves.
Each toll collector works only 6 hours per day, and spends the other 2 hours “resting, eating and watching television in one of the bridge’s three single-sex lounges.” They’d work more, except that 70% of vehicles crossing the G.W. Bridge have EZPass. So the toll collectors only service 30% of the traffic.
Isn’t that nice. We pay tax money to Port Authority, which hires toll collectors, who service 30% of the traffic, slow traffic down to a crawl, and make our commutes even worse than they already are.
Port Authority should force all motorists to use EZPass and fire all 75 toll collectors. Or eliminate the $8-16 tolls altogether.
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Posted in Bridges, E-ZPass, Tolls, Traffic Congestion |
