Should you really feel like ripping out your EZ-Cross after studying the MTA has failed to gather over $5.1 billion in unpaid MTA tolls and costs the previous 4 years, we don’t blame you.
Particularly because the company’s political overlords have resorted to a new toll, the “congestion pricing” scheme, to make up the distinction.
After stonewalling our reporters for every week, the MTA is speeding to clarify issues aren’t that dangerous, but it surely did in actual fact cite the $5.1 billion determine because it regarded to rent invoice collectors.
And it’ll want them, because the loss will certainly develop with the brand new congestion-pricing tolls — which look unlikely to usher in as a lot because the company loses to toll-evaders.
It’s laborious to think about a extra elementary breach of the social contract: The MTA — or, relatively, its political masters in Albany — is charging the law-abiding extra as a result of it’s unable to gather its due minimize from scofflaws.
And so encouraging a vicious cycle wherein ever extra people look to evade all tolls.
At situation is failed collections because the MTA went for cashless tolling on its bridges and tunnels: License-plate readers are supposed to gather the information for automobiles missing EZ-Cross to permit billing-by-mail.
However obscured plates, or paper ones, frustrate the readers, whereas most different states received’t implement New York tolls by penalizing their residents.
As for the MTA’s harm management: Its bridges-and-tunnels chief assures The Submit that 96% of tolls are collected every year, and roughly half of unpaid tolls get collected finally — although we haven’t seen numbers on how a lot it prices to gather from the deadbeats.
And none of it will get away from the truth that the company is quietly promoting a necessity to gather unpaid payments that can quickly strategy $2 billion a yr.
Once more, the MTA is in the end a creature of its masters in Albany, so don’t take out all of your anger on CEO Janno Lieber and his minions.
Ultimately, it’s the politicians who run state authorities who’re as soon as once more slamming the law-abiding relatively than making the law-breakers pay.
