Mario M. Cuomo Mysteries

After almost a decade without toll hikes, the state Thruway Authority voted last week to raise tolls on the new Mario M. Cuomo Bridge starting in 2021 to help pay for the $4 billion span. But it’s still not enough to cover the construction costs.

“They are still kicking the can down the road. Even now, they have yet to present a full and detailed financing plan for the new Tappan Zee crossing,” notes the Empire Center’s E.J. McMahon. This hike wasn’t “just inevitable,” he adds, “it’s overdue.”

Back in July 2017, Gov. Cuomo announced to the Association for a Better New York that after 2020 the new bridge would be “paid with toll revenue from the entire system.” When that caused a furor, his budget director walked back Cuomo’s words.

Even now, the gov is trying to keep the pain invisible to most of the public: Regular E-ZPass users will only see a $1 hike, to $5.75 in 2022, while trucks will see tolls jump from $32.75 now to about $43 in 2021 and $55 in 2022. Westchester and Rockland County residents will get special discounts, too.

Yet the proposed hikes will raise only about $100 million a year, far short of covering the agency’s projected increase in debt service. Toll hikes for the rest of the Thruway system, as Cuomo said long ago, seem likely.

The obvious reason for even this much honesty about tolls that, after all, won’t kick in for another year: Ratings agencies had been flagging the silence on higher tolls as a risk, which could have caused problems for the Thruway Authority’s fast-coming $2.7 billion bond sale.

As we’ve said many times before, Cuomo deserves great credit for getting this bridge built: The old Tappan Zee was falling apart. But his refusal even now to be up front about the costs still guarantees future sticker shock.