About that toll hike ...

The Thruway Authority shouldn’t be raising tolls on those who pay until it does a better job of collecting from those who don’t.

In December, after the Thruway Authority initially proposed a fresh round of toll hikes, this editorial board said the ask was reasonable, no matter how much New Yorkers might grumble about paying more.

After all, we noted, tolls had not gone up since 2010, while the cost of just about everything else has jumped significantly. Given that context, we couldn’t object to the proposed 5 percent bump in 2024, followed by another 5 percent increase in 2027. The Thruway, remember, is paid for entirely by those who use the 570-mile system.

But a toll hike is reasonable only if the Thruway Authority is doing its best to collect the money it is already owed. Turns out that isn’t the case.

A newly released audit from state Comptroller Tom Dinapoli found that the Thruway Authority, which took in between $649 million and $804 million annually from tolls and associated revenue in the three years starting in 2019, is leaving hundreds of millions of dollars on the table. In fact, a collection agency hired by the authority is seeking $276 million in unpaid tolls, but the effort is badly hampered.

You see, New York has a toll reciprocity agreement with only one state, Massachusetts, allowing both to suspend vehicle registrations of drivers in either state for unpaid fees in some cases. But since no such agreement exists with New Jersey or Connecticut, home to many of the Thruway’s worst scofflaws, drivers from those states are able to evade paying without consequences.

And get this: Despite the reciprocity agreement with Massachusetts, the Thruway couldn’t be bothered to suspend any of that state’s nearly 28,000 license plates that carry outstanding fees and fines. How can that be? We doubt Massachusetts is being so foolishly generous.

Overall, the comptroller’s office found that at the time of its January review, there were 257,917 past-due accounts that met the criteria for registration suspension, including nearly 50,000 accounts belonging to persistent violators. Yet the Thruway referred only 60 or fewer license plates weekly to the state Department of Motor Vehicles for suspension.

That’s just lazy, and it isn’t the only example of the Thruway ’s lackluster effort. For instance, the audit also found that 11 percent of license plate images from rejected transactions were identifiable and billable, with many of the photo failures resulting from factors within the Thruway ’s control to fix. Clearly, the cashless tolling system adopted in 2020 isn’t working as it should.

Overall, the comptroller’s report casts deep shade on the plan to raise tolls. The Thruway Authority should not seek to extract revenue from drivers who actually pay while doing far too little to collect from those who don’t. In our view, that’s putting the trailer before the SUV.

If the Thruway needs more money, its first step should be to crack down on scofflaws, particularly the out-ofstate drivers who account for nearly half of what we’re owed in tolls and fees. Until it does, the proposed toll hikes are, in a word, unreasonable.